The Good Stuff

The surprise goodies for me were the Hunger Games trilogy and Santa Olivia. My brain usually turns off at anything hyper-popularized by the media. Nor is boxing exactly a topic I’d care to hear much about. But these, whoa. Go read them! And, well, any of the other fiction I’ve denoted with the bulb icon.

As for cookbooks, if you like Mexican food, get your hands on The Essential Cuisines of Mexico. If you like Mediterranean food, check out Ottolenghi: The Cookbook. Both are inspiring, yet approachable, and offer weight measurements, whee! If you want the book on chocolate cookery, obtain Bittersweet — by the woman who introduced the concept of truffles to the United States. Finally, if you share my obsession with food pairing and substitution reference tomes, you’ll see that I’ve discovered, uh, more.

…And The Bad

I endured really horrible erotica written by Autumn Dawn and Tina Folsom. Although some of the erotic bits weren’t bad, it was the anti-feminist theme of the women protagonists getting married and knocked up — because no matter how independent or assertive they were to begin with, that’s what they truly wanted and needed in order to become fulfilled. What… the… fuck? (As it were? Haha.) Forgivable for some individuals, I guess, but for hot fiction written in the 21st century? Eegad, give me some anthologies edited by Mary Anne Mohanraj or Susie Bright, please, to clean out my poor neurons. Moreover, if I wanted werewolves or vampires thrown into the mix, I’d happily recommend books by Maggie Stiefvater and Robin McKinley as far superior. Anyhow, my lesson is to be more wary of stuff from Smashwords. But, hey, if they have high quality publications, do let me know.

For easier list jumping:

• Comics
• Longer fiction
• Shorter fiction: Warning, it’s a very long list!
• Art monographs
• Non-fiction
• Unfinished books

Comics

Thanks to friends and the interwebz, I’ve added some ongoing webcomics to my reading list in the past year:

• Gunnerkrigg Court
• Malaak: Angel of Peace
• The Meek
• Oglaf. Warning: Lots of NSFW content. As in explicit sex. As in hilarious sexual content. I am not kidding.
• The Wormworld Saga

Brogsol, Vera. Anya’s Ghost.

Hagio, Moto. A Drunken Dream and Other Stories.

Hernandez, Gilbert. Sloth.

Hernandez, Gilbert. Speak of the Devil.

Korea: As Viewed by 12 Creators.

Urasawa, Naoki. Monster, volume 1.

Urasawa, Naoki. Pluto, a manga series of 8 volumes.

Long Fiction

Including a few anthologies. I read and listened to gobs of individual short stories, and decided that they deserved special mention in a separate section.

Barnes, John. A Million Open Doors.

Barnes, John. Orbital Resonance.

Bell, Alden. The Reapers Are the Angels.

Beukes, Lauren. Zoo City.

Buckell, Tobias S. Tides of the New Worlds.

Caine, Rachel. Undone: Outcast series book 1.

Carey, Jacqueline. Kushiel’s Dart and Kushiel’s Chosen.

Carey, Jacqueline. Santa Olivia.

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay.

Dawn, Autumn. The Charmer and Scent of Danger.

Folsom, Tina. Samson’s Lovely Mortal.

Hopkinson, Nalo. Brown Girl In the Ring.

Hopkinson, Nalo. Midnight Robber.

Hunt, Stephen. Court of the Air.

Jemisin, N.K. The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and The Broken Kingdoms.

Lafferty, Mur. Heaven, Hell, Earth, Wasteland and War.

Link, Kelly. Stranger Things Happen.

Lo, Malinda. Ash.

Malki!, David, editor. Machine of Death.

Marr, Melissa. Graveminder.

McKinley, Robin. The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword.

McKinley, Robin. Pegasus.

McKinley, Robin. Sunshine

Miéville, China. The City and the City.

Mohanraj, Mary Anne (editor). Wet: Aqua Erotica.

Pratt, Tim. The Nex.

Pratt, Tim. The Strange Adventures of Ranger Girl.

Riordan, Rick. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief.

Robson, Justina. Keeping It Real, Selling Out, and Going Under.

Stiefvater, Maggie. Shiver: The Wolves of Mercy Falls, book 1.

Stross, Charles. The Atrocity Archives.

Stross, Charles. The Family Trade, The Hidden Family, The Clan Corporate, The Merchants’ War, The Revolution Business, The Trade of Queens.

Tanner, Lian. Museum of Thieves.

Taylor, Laini. Daughter of Smoke and Bone. Book 1 in a series.

Taylor, Margaret. Grizelda.

Valente, Catherynne M. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In a Ship of Her Own Making.

Vernon, Ursula. Nurk: The Strange, Surprising Adventures of a (Somewhat) Brave Shrew.

Vinge, Vernor. A Fire Upon the Deep.

Short Fiction

Due to sheer volume, I’ve limited myself to my favorite shorts of 2011. Many of these are free to read, or listen to, from these sources:

• Escape Pod
• PodCastle
• Podiobooks.com
• Clarkesworld Magazine
• Lightspeed Magazine and Fantasy Magazine
• Tor.com

Arkenberg, Megan. “Lessons from a Clockwork Queen.”

Baker, Kathryn. “Celadon” and “Herding Vegetable Sheep.”

Bear, Elizabeth. “Tideline.”

Bernobich, Beth. “River of Souls.”

Brin, David. “Bubbles.”

Burgis, Stephanie. “Some Girls Can.”

Burke, Sue. “Aliens Love Oranges” and “Poet For Hire.”

Butler, Pete. “Squonk the Dragon.”

Card, Orson Scott. “Elephants of Poznan.”

Castro, Adam-Troy. “Her Husband’s Hands.”

Chance, Karen. “The Queen’s Witch.”

Clare, Gwendolyn. “Perfect Lies.”

Coates, Deborah. “Magic In a Certain Slant of Light.”

Cooper, Brenda. “My Father’s Singularity.”

Cooper, Constance. “The Kings Tail” and “The Team-Mate Reference Problem In Final Stage Demon Confrontation.”

de Lint, Charles. “The Invisibles.”

DeRego, Jeffrey R. “Union Dues: Off White Lies.”

di Filippo, Paul. “Shadowboxer.”

Doctorow, Cory. “The Things that Make Me Weak and Strange Get Engineered Away.”

Falksen, G.D. “Mr. Salad Monday.”

Farland, David. “Against Eternity.”

Foster, Eugie. “My Friend Is a Lesbian Zombie.”

Frost, Gregory. “The Girlfriends of Dorian Gray.”

Howard, Cat. “Sweet Sixteen.”

Jasper, Michael. “Natural Order.”

Jemisin. N.K. “L’Alchimista.”

Kress, Nancy. “Ej-Es.”

Lafferty, Mur. “I Look Forward to Remembering You.”

Lee, Yoon Ha. “Blue Ink” and “Eating Hearts.”

Le Guin, Ursula K. “The Silence of the Asonu.”

Marsh. Ed W. “Head of State.”

Martens, Paul E. “Connie, Maybe.”

McIntosh, Will. “Bridesicle.”

Monette, Sarah. “The Devil In Gaylord’s Creek” and “White Charles.”

Morrow, Bradford. “Fall of the Birds.”

Morton, Lisa Noeahlani. “How Maartje and Uppinder Terraformed Mars.”

Murphy, Hilary Moon. “Run of the Fiery Horse.”

Myers, Kitty. “Stuck In an Elevator With Mandy Patinkin.”

Nazarian, Vera. “Mount Dragon.”

Okorafor, Nnedi. “From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7.”

Parks, Richard. “Four Horsemen, at Their Leisure.”

Pelland, Jennifer. “Burning Bush.”

Pratt, Tim. “Lacrymose and the Golden Egg,” “Life In Stone” and “Silver Linings.”

Prineas, Sarah. “Seamstress.”

Rambo, Cat. “Worm Within” and “Long Enough and Just So Long.”

Reed, Robert. “The Next Invasion.”

Resnick, Mike. “Down Memory Lane.”

Resnick, Mike and Robin, Leslie. “Idle Roomer.”

Rogers, Bruce Holland. “Don Ysidro.”

Ronald, Margaret. “When the Gentlemen Go By.”

Sanderson, Brandon. “Firstborn.”

Scholes, Ken. “A Weeping Czar Beholds the Fallen Moon.”

Snyder, Lucy A. “Your Corporate Network and the Forces of Darkness.”

Swanwick, Michael and Gunn, Eileen. “The Trains that Climb the Winter Tree.”

Tallerman, David. “Jenny’s Sick.”

Valente, Catherynne M. “How to Become a Mars Overlord” and “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time. “

Vaughn, Carrie. “For Fear of Dragons.”

Valentine, Genevieve. “The Sandal-Bride.”

van Eekhout, Greg. “Last Son of Tomorrow,” “The Osteomancer’s Son” and “Virus.”

Walton, David. “Anyone Can Whistle.”

Wilson, Daniel H. “The Nostalgist.”

Art monographs

Goldsworthy, Andy. Enclosure.

Goldsworthy, Andy. Passage.

Jackson, Julie. Glamourpuss: The Enchanting World of Kitty Wigs.

Purcell, Hall, Corado and Heinrich. Egg and Nest.

Uelsmann, Jerry. Photo Synthesis.

Non-fiction

Ahern, Shauna James. Gluten-free Girl.

Andoh, Elizabeth. Kansha: Celebrating Japan’s Vegan and Vegetarian Traditions.

Beranbaum, Rose Levy. The Cake Bible.

Beranbaum, Rose Levy. Rose’s Heavenly Cakes.

Bix, Cynthia Overbeck. Ideas For Great Backyard Cottages.

Black and Decker Corporation. The Complete Guide to Garages.

Corriher, Shirley O. Bakewise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with Over 200 Magnificent Recipes.

Culinary Institute of America. The Professional Chef, 9th edition. After I bought the book, I found out there was an iPad app available: Same content, plus videos and search ability. [Insert soft noises of buyer's remorse.]

Creasy, Rosalind. Edible Landscaping, 2nd edition.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed.

Goldacre, Ben. Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks.

Hildebrand, Caz and Kennedy, Jacob. The Geometry of Pasta.

Hom, Ken. The Taste of China.

Huber, Jeanne. The Ultimate Garage.

Joachim, David. The Food Substitutions Bible: More Than 6,500 Substitutions For Ingredients, Equipment and Techniques.

Kennedy, Diana. The Art of Mexican Cooking: Traditional Mexican Cooking For Aficionados.

Kennedy, Diana. The Essential Cuisines of Mexico.

Kennedy, Diana. My Mexico: a Culinary Odyssey With More Than 300 Recipes.

Kennedy, Diana. Oaxaca al Gusto: An Infinite Gastronomy.

Krause, Robert and Molly. The Cook’s Book of Intense Flavors: 101 Surprising Flavor Combinations and Extraordinary Recipes that Excite Your Palate and Pleasure Your Senses.

Lipanovich, Marianne and Wilhite, Tom. Big Book of Garden Designs.

Medrich, Alice. Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life In Chocolate.

Medrich, Alice. Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies.

Medrich, Alice. Cocolat: Extraordinary Chocolate Desserts.

Medrich, Alice. Pure Dessert.

Miller, Gloria Blye. A Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook.

Nagyszalanczy, Sandor. New Built-ins Idea Book.

Nguyen, Andrea. Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More.

Ottolenghi, Yotam and Tamimi, Sami. Ottolenghi: The Cookbook.

Ottolenghi, Yotam. Plenty: Vibrant Vegetable Recipes from London’s Ottolenghi.

Pant, Pushpesh. India: Cookbook.

Petrowski, Elaine Martin. Design Ideas For Home Storage.

Platt, Stacey. What’s a Disorganized Person to Do?

Pollan, Michael. The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Potter, Jeff. Cooking For Geeks: Real Science, Great Hacks, and Good Food.

Provey, Joseph. Easy Closets: Affordable Storage Solutions For Everyone.

Prueitt, Elisabeth. Tartine.

Rae, Andy. Workshop Idea Book.

Roach, Mary. Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.

Russell, Natalie Ermann. New Backyard Idea Book.

Segnit, Niki. The Flavour Thesaurus: A Compendium of Pairings, Recipes, and Ideas For the Creative Cook (UK edition).

Stewart, Amy. Flower Confidential.

Stewart, Amy. Wicked Bugs: The Louse that Conquered Napoleon’s Army and Other Diabolical Insects.

Stewart, Amy. Wicked Plants: The Weed that Killed Lincoln’s Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities.

Strong, Roy. A Small Garden Designer’s Handbook.

Swanson, Heidi. Super Natural Cooking: Five Ways to Incorporate Whole and Natural Ingredients Into Your Cooking.

The Silver Spoon (2005).

Wilska, Emily. Knack Organizing Your Home: Decluttering Solutions and Storage Ideas.

Did not finish

Carey, Jacqueline. Kushiel’s Avatar.

Carney, Scott. The Red Market: On the Trail of the World’s Organ Brokers, Bone Thieves, Blood Farmers, and Child Traffickers.

Faber, Adele and Mazlish, Elaine. How to Talk So Kids Will Listen, and Listen So Kids Will Talk.

Le Guin, Ursula K. Gifts.

Lowry, Judith Larner. Gardening With a Wild Heart: Restoring California’s Native Landscapes at Home.

McKinley, Robin. Dragonhaven.

Monette, Sarah. Mélusine.

Mukherjee, Siddhartha. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.

Park, Paul. The Hidden World.

Robson, Justina. Chasing the Dragon.

Swanson, Heidi. Super Natural Every Day: Well-loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen.

Vinge, Vernor. Rainbows End.

Which podcasts do I listen to?

• Escape Pod
• PodCastle
• Podiobooks.com
• Clarkesworld Magazine
• Lightspeed Magazine
• Tor.com

I also started reading e-books last year, thanks to iBooks (iTunes link) on the iPad, which has enough screen real estate for comfort, and the iPhone 4′s Retina Display, which has enough resolution for that can even read without script correction. And both have backlighting, something that really allows me to read on an electric device.

Note: I haven’t provided comments for every item I read or listened to, as just the list of short stories would take too long to write up! But if there’s a particular book or story for which you want to know more, let me know — I might get around (not to be snarky; more due to time constraints!) to summarizing my thoughts. Once again, the denotes my recommendations.

Comics

Clamp. Legal Drug, volumes 1 through 3 (a.k.a., Legal Drugstore).

Kim, Dong Hwa. Color of Heaven.

Rivkah. Steady Beat. Ooops, I nearly forgot that I had read this back in 2008! Well, the first two volumes, that is. ABC. The final volume 3 remains in limbo due to Tokyopop’s publication snafu’s, afaict, but here’s a link from Rivkah’s blog with some excerpts and information.

Yang, Gene & Derek Kirk Kim. The Eternal Smile.

Fiction

Abu-Jaber, Diana. Cresent.

Adams, C.T. “Olga.”

Buckell, Tobias. Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin, and Sly Mongoose. I read this series because Buckell’s short stories via Escape Pod were so much fun to listen to.

Desai, Kiran. Hullaballoo in the Guava Orchard.

DiTerlizzi, Tony. The Search for WondLa. I think I’ve found an excellent young adult (YA) series to follow (even exceed) Harry Potter.

Kowal, Mary Robinette. “First Flight.”

Malki!, David (editor). Machine of Death.

Gaiman, Neil. The Graveyard Book.

Gibson, William. Zero History.

Lafferty, Mur. Playing for Keeps (audiobook).

Larsson, Stieg. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I found the first part of the book where character histories were being built up more intriguing than the rest of the book. Not bad, but somewhat exceeded my boundaries for horrific violence.

Lee, Yun Ha.

Murakami, Haruki. After the Quake.

Resnick, Mike.

Stross, Charles. “Overtime.”

Swanwick, Michael.

Taylor, Margaret. Grizelda (audiobook).

Wada, Carolyn. “Roci and the Skycat.”

Non-fiction

Bayless, Rick et al. Mexico: One Plate at a Time and Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico. The ideas behind the recipes sound good, but I really dislike the utter gushiness in Bayless’s writing style (for that matter, his TV presentation as well). Time to look at Diana Kennedy books…

Ben-Barak, Idan. The Invisible Kingdom.

Berley, Peter and Singer, Zoë. The Flexitarian Table.

Chung, Taekyung and Samuels, Debra. The Korean Table: From Barbecue to Bibimbap, 100 Easy-to-Prepare Recipes.

Delamare & Guineau. Colors: The Story of Dyes and Pigments.

Ehrenreich, Barbara. Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.

Graedon, Joe and Teresa. Best Choices from the People’s Pharmacy: What You Need to Know Before Your Next Visit to the Doctor or Drugstore.

Greenspan, Dorie. Around My French Table: More than 300 Recipes from My Home to Yours. This cookbook would’ve been a lot helpful for me if it didn’t cop out and provide only the American, volume-oriented measurements. Moreover, the name-dropping (“my friend [insert celebrity's name]…”) became unnerving. What a disappointment — perhaps to due to a publisher’s fear of scaring the audience. Hunh, not if you provide both kinds of recipe formats.

Greenspan, Dorie. Paris Sweets: Great Desserts from the City’s Best Pastry Shops. However, this one provided the more helpful weight-oriented measurements. My guess is that this book had a smaller audience and a more reasonable publisher to allow such recipe presentation.

Herbst, Sharon and Ron. The Deluxe Food Lover’s Companion.

Jaffrey, Madhur. Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India.

Kean, Sean. The Disappearing Spoon and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements.

Kennedy, Diana. The Cuisines of Mexico (1st edition). Fascinating enough that I want to read the later edition and her other books!

Keith, Jeremy. HTML5 for Web Designers.

Lee, Cecilia Hae-Jin. Eating Korean: From Barbecue to Kimchi, Recipes from My Home and Quick and Easy Korean Cooking: More than 70 Everyday Recipes.

Mesfin, D.J. Exotic Ethiopian Cooking: Society, Culture, Hospitality & Traditions, revised edition: 178 tested recipes with food composition tables.

Narayan, Shoba. Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes.

Nicey & Wifey. A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down.

Page, Karen and ABC. The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America’s Most Imaginative Chefs.

Park, Allisa (editor). Discovering Korean Cuisine: Recipes from the Best Korean Restaurants in Los Angeles.

Rathbun, A.J. and Holt, Jeremy. Double Take: One Fabulous Recipe, Two Finished Dishes, Feeding Vegetarians and Omnivores Together.

Ruhlman, Michael. Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking.

Schnetz, Thomas and ABC. Doña Tomás: Discovering Authentic Mexican Cooking.

Theroux, Paul. Ghost Train to the Eastern Star.

Walden, Hilaire. Korean Cooking: Explore One of the Orient’s Greatest Culiary Secrets.

Not finished

Bacigalupi, Paolo. Windup Girl.

Spinrad, Norman. Child of Fortune. Rather than feeling immersed in the protagonist’s culture, with her patois of French, German and Japanese mixed with English, I ended up feeling this was just too pretentious to continue reading.

• Comics
• Fiction
• Non-fiction
• Art monographs
• Unfinished

Once again, I’ve marked recommended titles with the lightbulb icon, .

Comics

I finally discovered Clamp, a famous group of women manga-ka. Indeed, I’ve added their Xxxholic series to my list of ongoing comics I read.

Byun, Byung-Jun. Mijeong. Did not like, except for the short story of a cat who fell in love with a young woman. My tolerance for the violence and grittiness was overwhelmed too often.

Forney, Ellen. I Love Led Zeppelin. A comic that speaks to me and my generation!

Kariya, Tetsu. Oishinbo: Japanese Cuisine. This is volume 1 of the Oishinbo: à la carte series. As much as I love reading about (or watching!) food, I couldn’t get into this series. The characters were too annoying and not interesting enough for me to continue with the other volumes.

Kim, Dong Hwa. The Color of Earth and The Color of Water. Turn of the 19th to 20th century story about a girl and her widowed mother in Korea. A nice mixture of traditions and themes of individual independence.

Pham, John. Sublife, volume 1.

Urushibara, Yuki. Mushishi (Wikipedia | Animé News Network), volumes 1 and 2.

Fiction

Bellairs, John. The Face in the Frost. Excellent twist on battling wizards in a delightfully eccentric estate.

Clarke, Arthur C. 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Bad: Anthropology-primatology FAIL: How could a primate have no concept of memory or knowledge of parenthood, yet still have a sense of so-called honor when battling rival tribes? The Ugly: Dated sexism; every time a female character appears, she is always a girl, with a capricious or cute manner. In a group of journalists, all the men ask questions, but the lone woman demands! Sheesh; grow up, little man. The Good (which I save for last, because it is worthwhile): the ideas of space travel, of civilizations so ancient and advanced as to be wondrous. Enough to make me curious about the remaining three books in the series; not to mention seeing if his writing actually matured (re: gender roles) over the years.

Clarke, Arthur C. Childhood’s End (reread). I had read this novel for the first time as a 13-year-old. All I got from it back then, and all I could remember, was a terrifying, oppressively depressing feeling. I’m so glad I reread it. Sure, it’s still tragic, but it’s also an incredibly thoughtful take on alien-human contact, as well as humanity’s development. Loads of super high technology, including the oldest example of virtual reality that I’ve heard of. For a book published in 1953, it’s barely dated, with only a few nods towards unequal gender roles. I hardly noticed that the Internet didn’t exist!

Gaiman, Neil. Anansi Boys. Good, although I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as American Gods.

Goto, Hiromi. Kappa Child. An odd yet touching combination of Japanese myth (from a Japanese-Canadian) and sexual identity.

Lee, Tanith. Mortal Suns. A more recent novel I picked up at the library after I had finished Silver Metal Lover. It was an overwrought fantastic epic which utterly fell flat on its face, for me. She has written much better than this.

Lee, Tanith. The Silver Metal Lover.

Miyazawa, Kenji. Milky Way Railroad (sometimes also called Night on the Galactic Railway). An interesting novella for children that considers the cruelty of children, and death. Miyazawa weaves both Eastern and Western perspectives by including Buddhist and Christian themes.

Miyazawa, Kenji. Matsuburo the Wind Imp, translated by John Bester. This is a collection of three short stories in a bilingual book published by Kōdansha. He seemed to have it in for foxes, in the other two stories.

Miyazawa, Kenji. Selections, an anthology of his poems. I enjoyed his mix of the scientific (often geologic, meteorological and agricultural) with the spiritual and humor. Particular standouts: “Report and “Traveler” for their terseness; “Winter & Galaxy Station,” “The Tsugaru Strait,” “Good Devil Praying for Absolution,” “The Snake Dance,” “The Prefectural Engineer’s Statement Regarding Clouds,” “(Untitled) No matter what he does, it’s too late,” “While Ill,” and “(Untitled) Neither rain / nor wind / nor snow nor summer’s heat / will affect his robust body.”

Ogawa, Yoko. The Housekeeper and the Professor (a.k.a., The Professor’s Beloved Equation). So much better than The Diving Pool. A touching story about how a single mother gets to know her elderly client, a mathematician whose short-term memory (due to a car accident) lasts for only 80 minutes.

Scalzi, John. Agent to the Stars. A delightfully goofy, yet thoughtful, first-contact novel.

Scalzi, John. The Android’s Dream. Superb story where Earth and humans are near the bottom of the galactic ladder (technologically-speaking). Thus it becomes an intriguing yet hilarious story involving a lot of manipulation and diplomacy. Reminds me of Stephenson’s work, but much better edited, and with more empathy.

Scalzi, John. The Old Man’s War series, consisting of Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, and Zoë’s Tale. I didn’t think I could into war-based science fiction. This series taught me otherwise!

Stephenson, Neal. Anathem. when I first saw this book I thought, “Oh no. Did his editor(s) fail their role (roll, as it were)?” In some places, yes, there could’ve been some severe trimming. But overall this novel was, at the very least, a fascinating anthropological study.

Swanwick, Michael. Stations of the Tide. Meh, took me far too long to read through this novel. Afraid I still didn’t quite “get it.” I admit, I do prefer Swanwick’s short stories…

Williams, Tad. The Otherland series, consisting of City of Golden Shadow, River of Blue Fire, Mountain of Black Glass, Sea of Silver Light. Reminded me of long-standing role-playing games, but in novel format.

Winterson, Jeanette. Lighthousekeeping.

Non-fiction

I also went through a slew of house remodeling books. Rather than listing all of them here, read about the ones I recommend.

Bastianich, Lidia. Lidia’s Italy. I often enjoy Bastianich’s television shows, where she prepares often non-fussy yet delicious-looking dishes, while at the same time describing the history of the food. This book was too much like a travelogue: Many photos of where she visited, hardly any of the dishes from the recipes! True, I’m a sucker for pretty pictures, but for something like a cookbook, I depend on such photos being relevant to the content. Show me pictures of what you’re cooking!

Art monographs

Nara, Yoshitomo. Lullaby Supermarket. A thorough retrospective of Nara’s work up to 2001. Much more informative than Nothing Ever Happens.

Nara, Yoshitomo and Sugito, Hiroshi. Over the Rainbow. Beautiful collection of their collaborative project influenced by the movie of the same name. Nara drew and painted much of the subjects (girls, dogs, etc.), whereas Sugito seemed to add subtle but mesmerizing highlights and details to landscapes, backgrounds, and what seems the subjects’ eyes.

Sowa, Michael. Sowa’s Ark: An Enchanted Bestiary. Flying pigs galore! (Without wings, too.) I particularly like “A summer night’s melancholy,” where a dog in another building seems to be sadly ignored by a purposely obscured cat.

Unfinished

Butterfield, Jeremy. A Damp Squid: The English Language Laid Bare. In spite of a disconcertingly unclear introduction (didn’t he learn that throwing around undefined terms in a preface is poor form in expository writing?), this books is chock full of interesting tidbits on the English language.

Gonick and Smith. The Cartoon Guide to Statistics. I got lost and stopped reading at z-transformations and t-distributions.

Kirino, Natsuo. Real World. The combination of gritty reality with personalities that felt superficial (not too mention blasé) didn’t work for me.

Ladinsky, Daniel. The Subject Tonight is Love: 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz. It happened again: I fell into the trap of thinking that Ladinsky translated Hafiz’ poems. No, no, a thousand times no: This collection is merely Ladinsky’s own poetry inspired by the Hafiz he has read in English. To be clear, he states in the Introduction that he’s illiterate in Farsi. So the title? Misleading. The poetic content? New-age drivel. Anything else? Ladinsky does helpfully point to The Green Sea of Heaven by Elizabeth Gray, and Fifty Poems of Hafiz by Arthur Arberry as good sources of actual, translated Hafiz.