Books read in 2019

No real patterns to what I read this year, other than that I read what I felt like reading. Most of the stuff I wanted to read in Portuguese came to my attention too late in the year to complete before 31 December, and frankly, I've been so burned out on translation that reading in anything but English has seemed like a chore. Here's hoping 2020 is different.


January

White Line Fever: The Autobiography, Lemmy Kilmister and Janiss Garza (1.1.19)
My brother got me this for Christmas, and it's exactly what you'd expect from Lemmy. It was fun to read.

Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky (1.11.19)
Linda's pick for sci-fi book club. While the human characters were uninteresting, and things could've been a little tighter, the book as a whole was awesome, dealing in the sort of big ideas science fiction is good at. Recommended for sure.

Flying Saucers Are Real!, Jack Womack (1.21.19)
Over the period of a few decades Jack Womack collected all the UFO-related books he could, and the result is this book: a coffee table-sized compendium of book covers interspersed with bibliophile data and stories about the books' authors and subjects. Simultaneously wild and banal, I dug the shit out of this.

Forbidden Nation: A History of Taiwan, Jonathan Manthorpe (1.25.19)
A pretty good overview of Taiwan's history from pre-Qing times to present day (or rather, 2005, when the book was published). Manthorpe's argument that Taiwan has until recently been a colony—of imperial China, which barely exercised any sovereignty over a mere third the island, of Japan, and, after WWII, the Kuomintang's mainlander dictatorship—is pretty sound, and the book gave me a much better understanding of Taiwan's place in the world.


February

Macao: People and Places, Past and Present, Jason Wordie (2.10.19)
This massive, and massively illustrated, tome takes readers through every Macau neighborhood save Cotai and NAPE, telling stories from the city's distant and recent past and pointing out landmarks. Wordie is extremely knowledgeable, opinionated without being (too) snobby, and has written the best overall book about Macau I've yet to read. I can't recommend it enough.

Tao: The Watercourse Way, Alan Watts, with the collaboration of Al Chung-liang Huang, 2.13.19
A short, very Alan Watts-ish introduction to Taoist philosophy, replete with calligraphy. I'm always a little skeptical of folks who find the written Chinese language to be some kind of pseudo-mystical thing, but Watts reins it in just enough. Pretty good, overall.

The Wanting Seed, Anthony Burgess (2.22.19)
Dave's sci-fi book club pick. This was terrible. I don't care much for satire to begin with, so this was bound to irk me somewhat, but Burgess goes above and beyond. His vocabulary, while impressive, is used primarily to show off, and the characters are all utterly unlikeable caricatures. Whatever point he's trying to make, aside from advancing a pet philosophical/historiographical theory that makes little sense, gets lost in a stultifying plot that takes place in a lazily sketched future society. Things readers are supposed to find funny fall flat under the weight of all this, and Burgess comes off as a bitter crank who can't make up his mind about what he likes and what he hates. The pervasive racism, sexism, and homophobia, heavy even for the 1960s, is sour icing on an already barely edible cake.

American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology, D.W. Pasulka (2.27.19)
I heard the author's conversation with Erik Davis on Expanding Mind recently, and her book sounded pretty intriguing. Her thesis, that belief in UFOs is a sort of modern religion (not in the sense of going to church, at least not yet) being propagated through media and technology, is interesting at the very least, and she makes some good arguments in its favor. Still, the book relies heavily on a couple figures whose lives seem almost unbelievable, and the author's personal regard for these subjects can come across as approaching hero worship. Those things aside, it's a thought-provoking book. I intend to re-read it at some point and do a better job of digesting it.


March

Autonomous, Annalee Newitz (3.15.19)
Natalia's sci-fi book club pick. I liked this; it wasn't amazing, but it was tightly written, the world-building was good, and it reminded me in some ways of Bruce Sterling's late '90s/early '00s stuff. Cyberpunk without some of the baggage; hopeful, but realistic.

Casa Grande e outras recordações de um velho Goês, Leopoldo da Rocha (3.16.19)
I've read some of Rocha's work on a former archbishop of Goa, and even exchanged a couple emails with him, so I figured I'd give this a shot when I found it in the Portuguese bookstore in Paris last year. It's a thinly-veiled autobiography, and I can see why it supposedly irked some Portuguese-speaking Goans, given the depiction of priests behaving badly and a general bitterness toward the Catholic church. It certainly didn't pull any punches about Goan society, and Rocha (via his stand-in(s)) comes across as a complex figure who's a rather unwilling product of his environment.


April

The Overstory, Richard Powers (4.7.19)
Tracey got me this for Christmas, and I made a point to read nothing about it before starting it. Simply put, this book was amazing. It would be easy to have read it as support for my own pessimistic view of humanity's fate and its insatiable appetite for more at the expense of everything, but it was never that simple. I hope the appreciation I felt for the natural world while reading this translates into my daily life.

The Job: Interviews with William S. Burroughs, William S. Burroughs and Daniel Odier (4.8.19)
Burroughs is always worth reading, even if (maybe, partially, because?) he's pretty hard to stomach as a person. The misogyny found in parts of this book is grotesque, for example, and far too many pages are dedicated to repetition of his ideas about using tape recordings for purposes of social control or revolt. Still, for interviews that are 50 years old, a lot of incisive ideas remain.

The Accidental City: Improvising New Orleans, Lawrence N. Powell (4.14.19)
I picked this up at Beckham's in NOLA last fall, and took my time reading it. It was quite good; I found the sections on Spanish New Orleans and the social workings of slavery and freedom especially interesting. A good history of the city until 1815 or so, this touches on everything that made New Orleans what it was and is.

The Last Conquistador: Juan de Oñate and the Settling of the Far Southwest, Marc Simmons (4.21.19)
A concise, straightforward history of the Spanish arrival in New Mexico. Simmons provides some insight into the mindset of late 16th century Spanish explorers and soldiers. He limits his speculation about those of Oñate's actions that aren't supported by documentary evidence, and when he does speculate, it's plausible. An easy, informative read.

Derangements of My Contemporaries: Miscellaneous Notes, Li Shangyin (Chloe Garcia Roberts, trans.) (4.22.19)
This was fantastic. Garcia Roberts' translation of Li Shangyin's notes strikes a perfect balance between fidelity (though I wonder about the tobacco reference, which is anachronistic) and being meaningful to modern readers. It's also pretty hilarious, too. I look forward to reading her other translations of Li's poetry soon.


May

Coyote Songs, Gabino Iglesias (5.8.19)
Hardboiled, weird, brutal stories of life along the US-Mexico border. Iglesias does a great job of giving the reader a wide range of characters to follow, and doesn't pull any punches w/r/t the physical and psychic violence that haunts the border these days. Good shit.

Red Earth: Poems of New Mexico, Alice Corbin (5.9.19)
I picked this up before our trip to southwest New Mexico and read a few poems a day while we were there. I really liked the more modernist/free verse stuff, and some of the translations were good too. I'd never heard of Corbin before, and intend to look into some of her other work. To steal White Pine Press' phrase, a fine companion for the journey.

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin (5.9.19)
Tracey's sci-fi book club pick. Le Guin rules, and this book was no exception. It's justly considered a classic, which explains why it took me forever to get around to reading it, and why I don't need to explain why it's great—plenty of others have done that for me.

Green Island, Shawna Yang Ryan (5.25.19)
A history of modern Taiwan as told through the lives of a single family, and primarily through the eyes of one of that family's members. This was a good book. The pacing was great, the details numerous but not overkill, the characters all relatable in their own ways and deeply human. This is a book I'd highly recommend to anyone interested in Taiwan and/or just solid prose.

On a Red Station, Drifting, Aliette de Bodard (5.31.19)
I heard about Aliette de Bodard on Metafilter's Fanfare sub-site and was intrigued by her premises, and lo, I was not disappointed. It gets repetitive at times, which I think was intentional, and it reinforced my distaste for Confucianism, but— nah, no but. Those are things I liked about it. How often do you read a sci-fi novel that features Iain Banks-esque Minds and the Confucian society (and, since it's Vietnamese and not Chinese, another culture's take on 儒家 is even more interesting) that built them? I'll definitely read her other two Xuya novellas, stat.


June

The Other Side of Philip K. Dick: A Tale of Two Friends, Maer Wilson (6.8.19)
A quick, conversational memoir of writer and actor Maer Wilson's friendship with PKD. While he often comes off as a needy, dramatic twit (which serves as a useful counterweight to other images of him, as Wilson notes), it's pretty cool hearing about him in this way. Wilson's own life during this period ('72-'82) is interesting as well, and I liked her easygoing, unpretentious style. I should check out her fiction.

The Citadel of Weeping Pearls, Aliette de Bodard (6.9.19)
Another Xuya novella. I liked it as much as I liked the first one, maybe a bit more. Looking forward to the next one.

The Tea Master and the Detective, Aliette de Bodard (6.19.19)
A bit harder to get into than the other two Xuya novellas, but pretty good. I read most of it while half-asleep, so I'm going to re-read it before the sci-fi book club meeting.

Monsignor Quixote, Graham Greene (6.20.19)
The proprietor of the Silver City Bookshop recommended this to me. I absolutely loved it; it's thoughtful, funny, and quite observant. I especially liked the friendship between the titular monsignor and his Communist Sancho Panza analogue. I'm going to buy a copy of my own so I can re-read it regularly.


July

Accidental State: Chiang Kai-Shek, the United States, and the Making of Taiwan, Hsiao-Ting Lin (7.18.19)
This was a well-researched look into the years during which Taiwan became the "Republic of China." History, like everything else (hell, maybe more so than most things), is never cut and dried, and rarely follows whatever narrative we've been taught. This was a solid, easy-to-follow book.

High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies, Erik Davis (7.25.19)
I've been a huge fan of Erik Davis for at least 20 years, and was looking forward to this for a while. It did not disappoint; my only complaint would be that there's simply so fuckin' much in here to digest. Good shit, man.


August

Orphan of Asia, Wu Zhuoliu (Ioannis Mentzas, trans.) (8.2.19)
This novel, written by a Taiwanese who grew up in Japanese-ruled Taiwan, does a solid job of conveying the sentiments and experiences that accompanied such a life. The writing is very Chinese, even though it was written in Japanese. I can see this rightfully being on a college syllabus.

Fighting Monks and Burning Mountains: Misadventures on a Buddhist Pilgrimage, Paul Barach (8.20.19)
Having recently learned about the 88-temple Shikoku pilgrimage, I thought this would make for an interesting read, and I was right. It was an honest, funny, and thoughtful account of what must be a grueling undertaking, even for those who don't do the whole thing on foot like Barach did.

FKA USA, Reed King (8.22.19)
Scott's sci-fi book club pick. I did not enjoy this book. The humor fell flat, the satire was ridiculous rather than sharp, and I gave no shits whatsoever about any of the characters. Naturally this will be a big hit, at least in its inevitable movie form.

O Arquivo das Confissões: Bernardo Vasques e a Inveja, Carlos Morais José (8.26.19)
This was a pretty cool read. I wish there'd been more about the secret archive of confessions, but the titular Bernardo Vasques' desperate need to be as good as his nemesis, whose identity is immediately obvious, makes for a pretty compelling tale. I think it's already been, or being, translated into English, and I'd recommend it to anyone.

Chan and Zen Teaching, First Series, Charles Luk (8.30.19)
The Empty Cloud parts of this didn't do a lot for me, but the discussions of the Diamond and Heart Sutras were really solid.


September

The Nakano Thrift Shop, Hiromi Kawakami (Allison Markin Powell, trans.) (9.12.19)
I liked this a lot, though I'd be hard-pressed to say why, exactly. The overall tone, perhaps, or the unpretentiousness of the writing. Good stuff.

Macau e a China no Após Guerra, José Calvet de Magalhães (9.15.19)
A short memoir, which I picked up in Paris last year, by the former Portuguese consul to Canton in the late 1940s, at the end of the Chinese civil war. His account is no-nonsense, professional (mostly), and not tinged with the Portuguese fascism of the time, possibly because it was published in 1992. A neat little book.

Afterlife: Ghost Stories from Goa, Jessica Faleiro (9.20.19)
As far as ghost stories go, these weren't particularly scary, but the writing was good, and there was a nice twist at the end.

The Forever War, Joe Haldeman (9.28.19) (reread)
Re-read as Jay's science fiction book club pick. Once I got to the ending I remembered it, but the whole time I was reading I totally thought it had a different ending. I have no idea where that came from, but I'd like to find out.

Kettlebell Simple & Sinister, Pavel Tsatsouline (9.30.19)
I normally don't include training manuals like these on my list of books I've read, but I read this cover to cover and loved it. Pavel's style is just bombastic enough to get you fired up, but grounded enough not to sound like a load of horseshit. I've already started the S&S regimen and dig it— I think it's exactly what I've been looking for.


October

Delta Green: The Way it Went Down, Dennis Detwiller (10.8.19)
A very short, almost too short, collection of DG vignettes. Good atmosphere, and nicely creepy at times. I'm kinda burned out on the Cthulhu mythos, but Delta Green has a way of reframing it that usually gets my attention.

Double Booked for Death, Ali Brandon (10.14.19)
I've been in the mood for mystery novels, and I found this on the Cozy Mystery List website. Since it features a cat and a bookstore, I figured I couldn't go wrong. I was pretty much right: this was a pleasant read, and just the sort of antidote I needed to a lot of the other stuff I've been reading. I'll read more of Ali Brandon's books.

The Spook in the Stacks, Eva Gates (10.22.19)
This was okay, but that's it. The setting was perhaps a little too cozy, and the characters were pretty flat, but it made for good vacation reading, which was why I bought it.

Ghost Month, Ed Lin (10.25.19)
This novel's Taipei setting is what initially attracted me to it, and I'm glad I read it. Doing so just after visiting Taiwan made it all the more enjoyable. The plot is a little slapdash, but the atmosphere and detail make up for it. Good stuff.

The Pint of No Return, Ellie Alexander (10.31.19)
Another cozy mystery. The beer angle might've been more interesting to readers who don't know much about beer (i.e., not me), but I liked the characters well enough—Sloan, at least, felt pretty decently fleshed out. The mystery itself wasn't terribly intriguing, but that's okay.


November

Chinatown Days, Rita Chowdhury (11.7.19)
I bought this at GALF last year, since it sounded really interesting. It was, to a point; the story was, broadly speaking, quite good, and I learned a lot about a time and place of which I previously knew nothing. Unfortunately, it was really repetitive, overly long, and populated by flat characters. Patriotism is always a sucker's game, and this novel did a great job of showing that; unfortunately, the way it did so was too long-winded and dull. A shame, really.

Convenience Store Woman, Sayaka Murata (Ginny Tapley Takemori, trans.) (11.20.19)
I loved this novel, not only because I love convenience stores of all kinds, but for the unique and unashamed voice of the narrator. For such a short book, it tackles a lot of society's awful hypocrisies and failures, and does so without being heavy-handed or obnoxious. I'd love to read more of her work, and hope her translator, who did a solid job here, makes more of it available in English soon.

Doomsday Book, Connie Willis (11.29.19) (reread)
This month's sci-fi book club read. I read this in high school and only remembered a few specific details, none of which included this book's glacial pacing, sheer repetitiveness, or tissue-thin characters. It could've been half as long as it was, and had a third of the number of scenes involving people milling around hospitals, and still been kinda tedious. That said, there was a decent story here beneath all the cruft, so it wasn't a total drag to read.


December

California Red: A Life in the American Communist Party, Dorothy Ray Healey and Maurice Isserman (12.1.19)
Dorothy Healey's story is fascinating. Between her oral recollection thereof and Isserman's use of other material (CPUSA publications/documents and FBI reports among them) to frame it, this book was a smooth, reflective, and entertaining look into the life and thought of an American communist, and American communism in general. Healey really comes off as a likeable, honest, no-bullshit person. And I didn't know she joined what would become the DSA after leaving the Communist Party!

A Novel Way to Die, Ali Brandon (12.7.19)
I find these cozy mysteries interesting for their formulaic writing (not using that term pejoratively, mind you) and almost surreal detachment from the real world. Despite the crime and interpersonal intrigue at the heart of every book, the characters' sense of social hierarchy and respect for authority, along with the role the authorities play, reflects a conservative worldview. It's still pleasant light reading, even if I'm not the intended audience.

Slow Horses, Mick Herron (12.19.19)
Spy novels are cool as long as they're not jingoistic snoozefests. This book was cool. British intelligence is always kinda neat, and the cast of characters' washed-up natures made for a good twist on the usual spook tropes. The writing was super sharp and keen-eyed, too. I'll have to check out the other books in the series.

Lotus Moon: The Poetry of Rengetsu (John Stevens, trans.) (12.23.19)
Poems by a 19th-century Japanese Buddhist nun. I liked the way they were arranged by season; I took my time and read each season's poems in its due time, or as close as I can since Texas really only has two seasons. Evocative and simple, but nonetheless rich with emotion and Dharma.

Lovecraft Country, Matt Ruff (12.29.19)
Goddamn, this was good. I read it in about two days. You could argue that it might fall into the "white people explaining black people's problems and profiting from it" category, and you might not be wrong, but it was well-written, sympathetic, and a welcome change in the Lovecraft-adjacent horror field (though it's not really horror, outside of the racism angle). Highly recommended.


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