Top 9 Books of 2019
Unlike my list of 9 top films from 2019, I have no intention of keeping my book list confined by what was published in 2019. There are a few reasons for this, but the major one is that I just don't read that way. Like many of my bookish friends out there, I have a TBR (To Be Read) pile. It is a enormous list of books that I want to read, and realistically, will never get through all of. New books come along, interests diverge, goals for my reading suddenly shift, and some I just forget about. I'm certain that I will die with at least one book that is on my TBR pile right now, still sitting on that list waiting. Also, 2019 was one of those years where I had specific goals in my reading.
After finishing up my last sections of Comics as Lit at Pima Community College, I realized there was a major gap in my knowledge base. Most of the students I had been getting over the last couple of years may not have known mush about comics from the US and Europe, but many had a deep well of knowledge when it came to Manga, Manhwa, and Manhua, (Japanese, Korean, and Chinese comics). I felt bad that since I only have a passing knowledge of Eastern comics, I was cutting off a road in for lots of my students, so I made an effort to read more this year. That does mean I read some great new stuff, and some stuff that people told me was good, but either ended terribly or just weren't that great...is there a thing about ending Manga series in the most train wreck way possible? Asking for my time. I also wanted to get back into reading more speculative fiction and fantasy. I've kind of missed it. So as we go through the list, do note that it has been affected by all of these choices.
So, let's hit this list:
1 - This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone: The more I think back on this book, the more I think of it as lyrical rather than a standard narrative. At the beginning I felt I was being set up for lots of descriptive battles, bloodshed, and far future tech. That was definitely not what I got, and I couldn't be happier. Charting the correspondence between two agents, Red and Blue, as they travel along threads and strands of time and possible time to build a future where their particular faction is in charge, This is How You Lose the Time War is a fascinating a beautiful take on time travel and war. While many of the things you would expect are there, changing history, meeting past versions of famous people and groups, that isn't the focus. Similarly, we aren't inundated with discussions about how time travel works or details of future devices and places. In fact, how Red, Blue, and their factions travel through time isn't even discussed. Thank goodness. So often time travel narratives get bogged down in the technicality of it that the only thing the narrative has time for the technicality. This is How You Lose the Time War instead leaves the bulk of its narrative for the human aspect (well, human-ish) and the relationship between two enemies who taunt, fight, and eventually realize how they exist in relation to each other between sumac seeds and beakers of water that instruct you to boil before reading.
2 - Anthony Bourdain: The Last Interview As one of the shortest books I read this year, this one took me the longest to actually finish. It was emotionally hard to get through it. The summer of 2018 was not an easy one for me. And in no way am I trying to rank Bourdain's death with the emotional weight of the other deaths that occurred that summer, but it was a heavy loss. I first stumbled across Bourdain's show No Reservations during the last year I was living in Cedar City. That show, and his subsequent other tv and books did a lot to father me to where I am now in my own food writing, study, and cooking. The Last Interview isn't anything hugely new. In fact it is just a few interviews from different places and different parts of his life compiled together. It gives a strong picture of his personal development and growth as a person, the way his perception of the world changed and shifted as he was constantly willing to learn and to seek understanding. There is definitely a void in the discourse around food and culture without him, one that a lot of people have tried to fill. And while some may come close, it will probably take legions to fill the space that he occupied for lots of us. So if you decide to give this one a read, get your favorite beverage, have a comforting and loving meal, and if at a point you have to put it down to cry or compose yourself, those who know understand why.
3 - Gideon the Ninth by Tamsin Muir: The opening paragraph to this book is simply, "In the Myriadic year of our Lord-the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!-Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth." So yeah, that's Gideon the Ninth, lesbian goths in space. If you aren't on board already, why not? This is the first book of a planned trilogy and after finishing this first book I was quite upset that the second one hadn't come out yet (June 2020 is how long I have to wait). The world building here is fantastic and Muir does this great thing of writing science fiction, but keeping everything sword and bone fantasy grunge. The characters, especially the title character Gideon, are enjoyable to read and easy to connect with. I have always been a fan of books that can get me to stop at the end of a sentence because of how fired up I am about the action. Unfortunately, it has been a while since a book has really made me do that. Gideon the Ninth though had me doing it over and over again. At one point Gideon is asked what the Ninth House does, and her enthusiastic, "We do bones, mother fucker" just made me love this book even more. One part murder mystery, a bit of horror, just a touch of romance, and you really have something that is a great read from lots of different threads. So yeah, just get me those next two as soon as you can.
4 - Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama: I feel like the big hype for this series hit the west right around when I was in England, 2013 or 14, at least that is when I remember seeing lots of stuff for it. But hey, I was working on a PhD, I didn't really have time for it. So, when I started my dive into manga, it was a series that was at the top of a lot of lists and recommendations. Even though the series hasn't ended yet, it is exceptionally good. I have seen some critics about the art being to rough, but the rough nature of the art style really only adds to how brutal this story can be at times...most of the time. It is a brutal story in the best way. The basic premise is that humanity has been confined to a small area that is protected by a series of concentric walls. These walls function to keep people safe from the titans, a race of giant primal humanoids that seem to only exist to eat the humans. Things are okay until one day a never before seen colossal titan appears and smashes a whole in the outer most wall. The narrative changes pace from action, to human drama, to political intrigue, but for me, the most interesting aspect is how the series functions as the progress of trauma. No matter how many victories the humans may eke out, the emotional cost often outweighs the lives and families lost. How long can you just barely survive, be the one that lives while everyone around you dies, before it starts to fundamentally change who you are? Rumor has it that the series is coming to its end in the near future, and I'm excited to see how Isayama will draw this all to a close.
5 - Food Wars by Yuto Tsukuda and Shun Saeki: Where Attack on Titan is a series that is high intensity and drama, Food Wars is just ridiculously fun. It follows some pretty standard tropes among shonen manga, often you have a school that specializes in something (superheroes, basketball, boxing, fighting, magic, etc) and a new student who, despite everyone's expectations, is exceptionally gifted that that specialty. In this case, it is one of my favorite subjects, food. The series focuses on Soma, a kid who has always worked at his dad's family restaurant enrolls in in the worlds most prestigious culinary high school in Japan. Because he mostly cooks what the other students see as commoner street foods, they under estimate him and then he proceeds to destroy everyone in Iron Chef style cooking battles and crazy exams that the school sets up. The series does have its flaws, the battles start to get a bit cliche, they rely on the concept of umami way too much, and they are irrevocably insistent on working with the sex/food dichotomy (a dichotomy in lots of food writing that just needs to be buried next to all of Batali's cookbooks). When people eat something really incredible they go into orgasmic bliss, sometimes literally having their clothes blown off. That said, the renderings of food, the explanations of how cooking works, and the actually reproducible dishes make this a fun series to work through. I haven't actually made any of the dishes that they give recipes for in the mangas, they are pretty labor intensive and are geared for a Japanese kitchen, but it is literally a mouth watering comic.
6 - How Long 'Til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin: A big question that often comes up in reading any type of speculative fiction is, why is it so white? At some point all of Middle Earth and Martian colonies got really gentrified. Yes, speculative fiction has often used aliens or robots allegorically and metaphorically to talk about things like civil rights and racism, but like with a lot of my media, I have been craving stories that center experiences of people of color and women. Having dived in to Jemisin's work with this collection of short stories, it has really hit that spot, and I need to find some more. The great thing about this collection is that you do get so many different genres of speculative fiction, science fiction to fantasy to alternate history steam punk and all kinds of things in between. So no matter your current mood, you can probably find something your speed here. Like most short story collections, not every story is a home run, but there are stories here that I keep thinking back to well after I finished it. From the intrigue of "The Effluent Engine"s New Orleans, to the descriptions in "Cuisine des Memoires" Jemisin is incredible at building impactful places and situations. Her characters run the gamut and in such short snippets are fully realized in wonderful strokes of dialogue and detail. Whenever Black Future Month is, I am ready to celebrate it.
7 - For All the Tea in China by Sarah Rose: Look, there are going to be a lot of food and drink related books on this list. It is one of my things now. I got a PhD in comics and then I decided I wanted one in food, but I don't want more student loan debt so I'm just doing all the things I did at Nottingham without the approved and recognized structures. Though speaking of Nottingham -> England -> Tea. I love tea, and For All the Tea in China was an incredible deep dive into the surprisingly espionage filled world of getting tea to England actually was. There was a time when the people in England didn't even know if Green and Black tea came from the same plant. Until I read this book, I didn't either. By the way, same plant, just subtle differences in the process from plant to cup. And that is just one of the small bits I learned. The trial and error, the science, and how it was all wrapped up in the complete shit show that was imperial England and the East India Trading Company. Those guys were ass holes. Admittedly, this book isn't for everyone. For some, it could probably feel like work, but it is one of the books this year that I would constantly interrupt whatever Amanda was doing so I could tell her some random fact.
8 - The Potlikker Papers by John T. Edge: Of late I have become fascinated by the history of Southern food, cooking, and food ways. One of my first big intros to this was Michael Twitty's The Cooking Gene (a book I recommend to everyone. It isn't on this list because it was a 2018 read, but seriously, read it). His book really opened my eyes to understanding an accurate picture of the roots and history of Southern food. Like a lot of people, I saw images of Paula Deen drawling about butter and gravy and thought that was it. Little did I know that is just what white people have been doing for generations, taking the credit and repackaging the experiences and traditions of enslaved peoples and Black Southerners. The Potlikker Papers takes off from this and dives into all the ways food has been born, grown, exported, returned, and intertwined with a complex and often troubling history of the Southern states. From the birth of fried chicken as a fast food staple, to how cooking help fund Civil Rights movements and the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. Once you start to understand how all these systems work, you start to see how their context plays out all around us.
9 - The Best American Food Writing 2019 Edited by Samin Nosrat: I'll admit, this one is a bit of a cheat. I actually haven't finished it, but I don't care. It's that good. First, if you don't know the editor Samin Nosrat, either watch the Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat Netflix show or get her book that the show is based on. The thing is, Samin has this ability to get really stoked about something, and communicate perfectly how great it is to you so that you can get stoked about it as well. I am here for that energy all day. The selections she has made for this edition all come from that space. The variety is also just staggering, I have gone from a short piece trying to define in pop culture terms the taste of Mountain Dew to a deep dive into the insanity that is Pom Wonderful and the water and money that flows there. And everything so far has been so wonderfully written. the variety of perspectives matches the variety of topics, so even if I was getting two pieces that were close in subject matter, I am going to get two wonderfully divergent takes on the topic. A lot of times anthologies like this are easy to overlook. I have been fans of other versions of Best American stuff like Comics or Non-Required reading that have had some solid editions, but this one goes well beyond that to an archive of understanding food ways and politics that are so enlightening and distinct for where we are right now.
After finishing up my last sections of Comics as Lit at Pima Community College, I realized there was a major gap in my knowledge base. Most of the students I had been getting over the last couple of years may not have known mush about comics from the US and Europe, but many had a deep well of knowledge when it came to Manga, Manhwa, and Manhua, (Japanese, Korean, and Chinese comics). I felt bad that since I only have a passing knowledge of Eastern comics, I was cutting off a road in for lots of my students, so I made an effort to read more this year. That does mean I read some great new stuff, and some stuff that people told me was good, but either ended terribly or just weren't that great...is there a thing about ending Manga series in the most train wreck way possible? Asking for my time. I also wanted to get back into reading more speculative fiction and fantasy. I've kind of missed it. So as we go through the list, do note that it has been affected by all of these choices.
So, let's hit this list:
1 - This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone: The more I think back on this book, the more I think of it as lyrical rather than a standard narrative. At the beginning I felt I was being set up for lots of descriptive battles, bloodshed, and far future tech. That was definitely not what I got, and I couldn't be happier. Charting the correspondence between two agents, Red and Blue, as they travel along threads and strands of time and possible time to build a future where their particular faction is in charge, This is How You Lose the Time War is a fascinating a beautiful take on time travel and war. While many of the things you would expect are there, changing history, meeting past versions of famous people and groups, that isn't the focus. Similarly, we aren't inundated with discussions about how time travel works or details of future devices and places. In fact, how Red, Blue, and their factions travel through time isn't even discussed. Thank goodness. So often time travel narratives get bogged down in the technicality of it that the only thing the narrative has time for the technicality. This is How You Lose the Time War instead leaves the bulk of its narrative for the human aspect (well, human-ish) and the relationship between two enemies who taunt, fight, and eventually realize how they exist in relation to each other between sumac seeds and beakers of water that instruct you to boil before reading.
2 - Anthony Bourdain: The Last Interview As one of the shortest books I read this year, this one took me the longest to actually finish. It was emotionally hard to get through it. The summer of 2018 was not an easy one for me. And in no way am I trying to rank Bourdain's death with the emotional weight of the other deaths that occurred that summer, but it was a heavy loss. I first stumbled across Bourdain's show No Reservations during the last year I was living in Cedar City. That show, and his subsequent other tv and books did a lot to father me to where I am now in my own food writing, study, and cooking. The Last Interview isn't anything hugely new. In fact it is just a few interviews from different places and different parts of his life compiled together. It gives a strong picture of his personal development and growth as a person, the way his perception of the world changed and shifted as he was constantly willing to learn and to seek understanding. There is definitely a void in the discourse around food and culture without him, one that a lot of people have tried to fill. And while some may come close, it will probably take legions to fill the space that he occupied for lots of us. So if you decide to give this one a read, get your favorite beverage, have a comforting and loving meal, and if at a point you have to put it down to cry or compose yourself, those who know understand why.
3 - Gideon the Ninth by Tamsin Muir: The opening paragraph to this book is simply, "In the Myriadic year of our Lord-the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death!-Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth." So yeah, that's Gideon the Ninth, lesbian goths in space. If you aren't on board already, why not? This is the first book of a planned trilogy and after finishing this first book I was quite upset that the second one hadn't come out yet (June 2020 is how long I have to wait). The world building here is fantastic and Muir does this great thing of writing science fiction, but keeping everything sword and bone fantasy grunge. The characters, especially the title character Gideon, are enjoyable to read and easy to connect with. I have always been a fan of books that can get me to stop at the end of a sentence because of how fired up I am about the action. Unfortunately, it has been a while since a book has really made me do that. Gideon the Ninth though had me doing it over and over again. At one point Gideon is asked what the Ninth House does, and her enthusiastic, "We do bones, mother fucker" just made me love this book even more. One part murder mystery, a bit of horror, just a touch of romance, and you really have something that is a great read from lots of different threads. So yeah, just get me those next two as soon as you can.
4 - Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama: I feel like the big hype for this series hit the west right around when I was in England, 2013 or 14, at least that is when I remember seeing lots of stuff for it. But hey, I was working on a PhD, I didn't really have time for it. So, when I started my dive into manga, it was a series that was at the top of a lot of lists and recommendations. Even though the series hasn't ended yet, it is exceptionally good. I have seen some critics about the art being to rough, but the rough nature of the art style really only adds to how brutal this story can be at times...most of the time. It is a brutal story in the best way. The basic premise is that humanity has been confined to a small area that is protected by a series of concentric walls. These walls function to keep people safe from the titans, a race of giant primal humanoids that seem to only exist to eat the humans. Things are okay until one day a never before seen colossal titan appears and smashes a whole in the outer most wall. The narrative changes pace from action, to human drama, to political intrigue, but for me, the most interesting aspect is how the series functions as the progress of trauma. No matter how many victories the humans may eke out, the emotional cost often outweighs the lives and families lost. How long can you just barely survive, be the one that lives while everyone around you dies, before it starts to fundamentally change who you are? Rumor has it that the series is coming to its end in the near future, and I'm excited to see how Isayama will draw this all to a close.
5 - Food Wars by Yuto Tsukuda and Shun Saeki: Where Attack on Titan is a series that is high intensity and drama, Food Wars is just ridiculously fun. It follows some pretty standard tropes among shonen manga, often you have a school that specializes in something (superheroes, basketball, boxing, fighting, magic, etc) and a new student who, despite everyone's expectations, is exceptionally gifted that that specialty. In this case, it is one of my favorite subjects, food. The series focuses on Soma, a kid who has always worked at his dad's family restaurant enrolls in in the worlds most prestigious culinary high school in Japan. Because he mostly cooks what the other students see as commoner street foods, they under estimate him and then he proceeds to destroy everyone in Iron Chef style cooking battles and crazy exams that the school sets up. The series does have its flaws, the battles start to get a bit cliche, they rely on the concept of umami way too much, and they are irrevocably insistent on working with the sex/food dichotomy (a dichotomy in lots of food writing that just needs to be buried next to all of Batali's cookbooks). When people eat something really incredible they go into orgasmic bliss, sometimes literally having their clothes blown off. That said, the renderings of food, the explanations of how cooking works, and the actually reproducible dishes make this a fun series to work through. I haven't actually made any of the dishes that they give recipes for in the mangas, they are pretty labor intensive and are geared for a Japanese kitchen, but it is literally a mouth watering comic.
6 - How Long 'Til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin: A big question that often comes up in reading any type of speculative fiction is, why is it so white? At some point all of Middle Earth and Martian colonies got really gentrified. Yes, speculative fiction has often used aliens or robots allegorically and metaphorically to talk about things like civil rights and racism, but like with a lot of my media, I have been craving stories that center experiences of people of color and women. Having dived in to Jemisin's work with this collection of short stories, it has really hit that spot, and I need to find some more. The great thing about this collection is that you do get so many different genres of speculative fiction, science fiction to fantasy to alternate history steam punk and all kinds of things in between. So no matter your current mood, you can probably find something your speed here. Like most short story collections, not every story is a home run, but there are stories here that I keep thinking back to well after I finished it. From the intrigue of "The Effluent Engine"s New Orleans, to the descriptions in "Cuisine des Memoires" Jemisin is incredible at building impactful places and situations. Her characters run the gamut and in such short snippets are fully realized in wonderful strokes of dialogue and detail. Whenever Black Future Month is, I am ready to celebrate it.
7 - For All the Tea in China by Sarah Rose: Look, there are going to be a lot of food and drink related books on this list. It is one of my things now. I got a PhD in comics and then I decided I wanted one in food, but I don't want more student loan debt so I'm just doing all the things I did at Nottingham without the approved and recognized structures. Though speaking of Nottingham -> England -> Tea. I love tea, and For All the Tea in China was an incredible deep dive into the surprisingly espionage filled world of getting tea to England actually was. There was a time when the people in England didn't even know if Green and Black tea came from the same plant. Until I read this book, I didn't either. By the way, same plant, just subtle differences in the process from plant to cup. And that is just one of the small bits I learned. The trial and error, the science, and how it was all wrapped up in the complete shit show that was imperial England and the East India Trading Company. Those guys were ass holes. Admittedly, this book isn't for everyone. For some, it could probably feel like work, but it is one of the books this year that I would constantly interrupt whatever Amanda was doing so I could tell her some random fact.
8 - The Potlikker Papers by John T. Edge: Of late I have become fascinated by the history of Southern food, cooking, and food ways. One of my first big intros to this was Michael Twitty's The Cooking Gene (a book I recommend to everyone. It isn't on this list because it was a 2018 read, but seriously, read it). His book really opened my eyes to understanding an accurate picture of the roots and history of Southern food. Like a lot of people, I saw images of Paula Deen drawling about butter and gravy and thought that was it. Little did I know that is just what white people have been doing for generations, taking the credit and repackaging the experiences and traditions of enslaved peoples and Black Southerners. The Potlikker Papers takes off from this and dives into all the ways food has been born, grown, exported, returned, and intertwined with a complex and often troubling history of the Southern states. From the birth of fried chicken as a fast food staple, to how cooking help fund Civil Rights movements and the Montgomery Bus Boycotts. Once you start to understand how all these systems work, you start to see how their context plays out all around us.
9 - The Best American Food Writing 2019 Edited by Samin Nosrat: I'll admit, this one is a bit of a cheat. I actually haven't finished it, but I don't care. It's that good. First, if you don't know the editor Samin Nosrat, either watch the Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat Netflix show or get her book that the show is based on. The thing is, Samin has this ability to get really stoked about something, and communicate perfectly how great it is to you so that you can get stoked about it as well. I am here for that energy all day. The selections she has made for this edition all come from that space. The variety is also just staggering, I have gone from a short piece trying to define in pop culture terms the taste of Mountain Dew to a deep dive into the insanity that is Pom Wonderful and the water and money that flows there. And everything so far has been so wonderfully written. the variety of perspectives matches the variety of topics, so even if I was getting two pieces that were close in subject matter, I am going to get two wonderfully divergent takes on the topic. A lot of times anthologies like this are easy to overlook. I have been fans of other versions of Best American stuff like Comics or Non-Required reading that have had some solid editions, but this one goes well beyond that to an archive of understanding food ways and politics that are so enlightening and distinct for where we are right now.
Comments
Post a Comment