Welp, this is the last day of this did-you-get-the-number-of-that-truck-that-hit-us-and-then-backed-up-and-ran-over-us-again-several-times-freaking year. As Dave Barry said, I used to think some of my years were the nadir (my major-relationship collapse/abortion/diagnosis of stage 3 cancer summer springs to mind) but now I have a baseline for all eternity. Of course that’s what I thought about the summer of ’83, too, so please god, let this be the low point in years. One of the redeeming factors: books. Lots and lots of very good books.
This week it was My Girls, Todd Fisher’s memoir of his life with Debbie and Carrie, a re-read of Loretta Chase’s Last Night’s Scandal, and the fantastic Antiquarian Sticker Book. But if I look back at the whole year, I think the best book memories are the new writers I discovered, the ones I can re-read over and over and be enthralled each time: Mhairi MacFarlane (If I’d Never Met You), Casey McQuiston (Red, White, and Royal Blue), Sarina Bowen (The Year We Fell Down), Alexis Hall(Boyfriend Material), Naomi Novik (A Deadly Education), and ohmygod Martha Wells (I will buy Murderbot books as soon as they’re published forever). I know a lot of those are not new authors, but they were new to me and made me very happy.
So what good book did you read this week? What were your faves this year (this no-good, horrible, very bad year)?
Oh, and Happy New Year! (Just read until it’s 2021. And drink, but mostly read.)
Kay Keppler has a new story out: Skirting Danger.
This week I re-read a lot because I’m looking for stability and safety. Tried some samples, but they all had the hero smirking and I just cannot. Went back and read A Deadly Education because I wanted to see if it was as good as I remembered. It was, it’s brilliant. Remembered a book I’d read awhile ago that started out great–members of a small high school’s senior class are dying mysteriously–until it ended with the heroine alone left to tell the tale, sitting on her porch watching the sun go down (come up?) and waiting for her own inevitable death, never understanding WTF was happening. Or maybe she did and I just missed it. One of those books you need brain bleach for, not because it’s gross or horrifying but just because it’s so damn depressing. That’s fine, just give me a head’s up in the blurb so I don’t read it, although now that I come to think about it, “This book is confusing and depressing as hell” is probably not a good blurb.