They sustain me, they keep me healthy.
I've been on a reading jag and I know you like to read, so I'll share the best of my meals with you. I sifted through a few piles from last year, the tastiest morsels. I want to feed you with them if you are still hungry from that last book you read; if you can't stand the common fair of the Big Mac Book variety; if twaddle such as Twilight and 50 Shades bore your taste buds as much as they bore mine; if you care to sample the words that would be gods if they were so inclined.
Here is a Hand-Picked-From-The-Apple-Tree-of-Eden alphabetical list of my 5 favourites from what I read last year (Behold! This year isn't over yet!). I started out with 15, then whittled it to 10, and then decided 5 would do for blog reading. I even put them in alphabetical order for you.
1. The Glass Teat, by Harlan Ellison
Essays and criticisms of television that are in turn maddening and hilarious, eye-opening and infuriating, but mostly just terribly sad. These essays are depressing in the way only non-fiction can be depressing: when it tells us the awful and inconvenient truth about ourselves. The saddest part? Nearly 50 years after it was written we television addicts, we glass teat suckers, still have not learned our lesson. It reminds me a bit of Billie Holiday's 1939 version of "Strange Fruit." She was singing it and no one was listening, and Baltimore and Chicago (and now Dallas) continue to riot and rage. So pay attention.
2. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
The easiest way to get the hungry masses to eat a meal of their own self-loathing is to write an expose about them in impossible terms. Most don't realise science fiction is about us, just removed enough from our reality to set us thinking without revolting against what we've just consumed. If LeGuin had set her equality-bent story of feminism and brotherly--yes, brotherly--love in a place we all knew and had taken for granted, she would've been tarred and feathered by Billy Joe Cleetus somewhere (who still flies his Confederate flag), never mind the flavourful poetry of her words. The world is not safe with LeGuin writing, and we wouldn't have it any other way.
3. Legion, by Brandon Sanderson
Okay, this is a short story, but if Sherlock Holmes had been a schizophrenic, wouldn't you want to read about him and his strange intellect even more?
(A friend of mine wondered how true to schizophrenic experience it was and he asked me to read it. I can say (and did say) that it comes very, very close... if only I was enough of a genius to compartmentalize my knowledge and voices in this way.)
4. Tonio Kroeger, by Thomas Mann
This is indeed the "plastic irony of the writer's craft," as Mann himself put it. It's a fictional account of how one can criticise a culture and still remain a participant in it. A story of how an artist can manipulate his creation, and is a living example of doing so at the same time. I wish my words could maintain this kind of clarity while still retaining their poetry.
5. Resurrection Man, by Sean Stewart
I first read Resurrection Man in my early college years, and it is one of my favourites (not just of Stewart's, but of many many pieces). I reread it (again) last year--out loud, to a friend--and the re-visitation reminded me why Sean Stewart is one of the few I lovingly collect for my shelves. Like Ellison (mentioned above), Stewart skips over genres like a flat stone over water. The fantasy of it is a lot like John Crowley's Little, Big, but is perhaps a few shades darker. If you like John Crowley or Charles DeLint, or just urban fantasy in general, check this guy out. The wit and the atmosphere will captivate you.
Enjoy your reading (whatever you read)!
If you have suggestions for me too, I'd love to hear them in the comments.
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