Dungeons and Dragons Art and Arcana: A Visual History by Michael Witwer: A lot of great art in here. Also, some lovely anecdotes about what’s basically my favorite game.
The Feral Detective by Jonathan Lethem: The West Coast never looks stranger than in the eyes of someone from the East Coast. He’s less of a detective and more of a magnet for strays, people and animals. It captures a certain something about the strangeness of the times we’re living through.
Confessions of an Imaginary Friend: A Memoir by Jacques Papier by Michelle Cuevas: Recommended by a friend. A delightfully charming children’s book. There are lyrical flights of fancy here that should be the envy of writers everywhere.
Smoot: A Rebellious Shadow by Michelle Cuevas: A picture book. Simply charming, as everything by Cuevas is. What if someone told the story of Peter Pan’s stray shadow, basically.
The Uncorker of Ocean Bottles by Michelle Cuevas: A picture book about the guy who delivers the letters found in bottles at sea. What it’s like to feel unappreciated, but then to suddenly realize you are.
Battle Angel Alita (Deluxe Edition) v. 4 & 5 by Yukito Kishiro: These books get increasingly strange. It’s weird that I didn’t really notice (or don’t remember noticing) how super weird they get. It becomes almost like a horror story at points. I suppose I (and probably a lot of other people) was distracted by the pretty amazing art on the first go round. It’s definitely a product of its time and place.
Godbound: A Game of Divine Heroes by Kevin Crawford: I read this because a friend of mine wanted to a run a game of it. A game for those times when you really want to jump to the most epic stuff. This book is quite readable and the game has been a lot of fun to play, which is really what you want out of a roleplaying game book. The world setting is extremely varied and provides a lot of fun character possibilities, from necromantic witch queens to steam-powered robot pilots to pyramid-dwelling gene splicers and a whole lot more.
All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault by James Alan Gardner: Probably the most entertaining novel I’ve read in the superhero genre. A fun, light, popcorny sort of novel. Kind of perfect for what it is, like a chocolate doughnut or a candy bar.
Age of Anger: A History of the Present by Pankaj Mishra: Read it for background info on the forgotten thinkers behind the worst of humanity in the 20th century. Refreshingly, not USA/Europe-centric. Makes a compelling case that the failures behind the promise of the Enlightenment in improving life have created a void of meaning that is easily filled with hatred and violence. I’m super dumbing this down based on my dim recollection. It’s very well-researched.
The Labyrinth Index by Charles Stross: Book 9 already?! The USA comes off super creepy in this one. What if everyone woke up one day and forgot the president existed? One of these spy stories where nothing goes to plan and no one’s happy, but it kind of works out in the end.
I Love Dick by Chris Kraus: Most pomo novels I find pretty insufferable, but this one is quite good. And so very funny. Is it an epistolary novel if the letters hardly ever get sent? Also, the biggest fuck you by letter I’ve ever seen. Simply brutal. My kids found the title endlessly funny. Which, I guess in a way, it is.
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn: I read this because I liked her other books. It’s well-written, but so freaking dark. Yeah, I get it, women can be terrible too. Almost no one comes off looking good in this one. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it, exactly, but it does what it does very well.
Judgment on Deltchev by Eric Ambler: You know who shouldn’t get involved with intrigue in a Cold War-era Eastern Bloc country? A playwright, that’s who! The protagonist is nerve-wrackingly out of his depth and outmatched at nearly every turn.
The Blue Hawk by Peter Dickinson: A kind of YA novel that doesn’t get written anymore. Slow and moody and literary and wrestling with big questions of religion, ritual, and tradition. It’s very good. I can’t remember where I read about it, but I’m glad I did.
X-Men Grand Design – Second Genesis by Ed Piskor: If you’re into the X-Men’s convoluted history, these books can’t be beat. I bought this one. Totally worth it.
Ant-Man: Second-Chance Man by Nick Spencer: Almost entirely worth it just for the guy in the Grizzly suit. This Scott Lang is almost too much of a wastrel to be charming. It’s a real fine line. Can anyone be this dumb? Yes, it turns out, yes, someone can be.
Beyond the Laughing Sky by Michelle Cuevas: A book about being different and figuring out who you are. Sentimental without being mawkish. Cuevas can write sentences like almost no one else. (I still like Imaginary Friend the best, though.)
Cyclonopedia: Complicity with Anonymous Materials by Reza Negarestani: A book I’d been trying to track down for about a decade then, boom, one day it turned up at my library. Lovecraftean-style horror as told through academic gibberdegook. It was definitely an experience reading it, but I don’t know of anyone who’d have the kind of patience it takes to work your way through it. Strikes me as the kind of book that people love the idea of rather than the thing itself. The kind of post-modern novel that people think of when they talk about hating post-modern novels, obscure and pedantic and inscrutable. Not horror, exactly, but there are horrific ideas in it.
