THE YEAR IN BOOKS

This year’s reading was rabid, diverse, and orbital — circling identity, grief, transformation, the odd shadow in the woods and a lot of vampire camp. It was a year of robots with souls, vampires with drama, Zen monks, radical cosmic humanity, cult classics, heartbreakingly human librarians, and monsters both literal and metaphorical.

It was messy, curious, beautifully weird.

the list

1. A Closed & Common Orbit- Chambers

2. Mystery lights- Valencia

3. 1Q84- Murakami

4. Marigold (.5)

5. Greek Lessons- Kang

6. The Meg- Alten

7. The Housekeeper & the Professor- Yōko Ogawa *

8. Ghost Wall- Moss *

9. Universal Harvester- Darnielle

10. Jailbird - Vonnegut (.5) 

11. The Impossible will Take a Little While - various

12. The Will to Change - Hooks 

13. The Future - Leroux

14. We will not cancel us - brown

15. A Fine Balance - Mystery

16. Guilty Pleasures - Blake

17. Something in the woods loves you - Anderson (x2) *

18. Blackfish City - Miller (.5) 

19. All About Love - hooks 

20. Toward Eternity-  Hur

21. Dracula - Stoker 

22. Pattern recognition - Gibson *

23. Idoru - Gibson 

24. Loving Corrections - brown

25. Psalm for the wild built - Chambers *

26. Hum - Phillips (.5) 

27. Orbital - Harvey 

28. Prayer for the crown shy - Chambers *

29. Old Romantics - Armstrong

30. All About Love - hooks 

31. Rabbit Island - Navarro

32. Bear - Engel *

33. Dead and Gone - Harris 

34. Dead in the family - Harris 

35. Dead Reckoning - Harris 

36. Indelicacy -  Cain

37. Deadlocked - Harris

38. Dead Ever After  - Harris 

39. The Factory - Oyamada 

40. Dayspring - Oliveriera *

41. Ordinary Wonder: Zen Life and Practice - Beck (x2)

42. Beyond Thinking - Dogen (x2) *

43. Wild Sheep Chase - Murakami

44. Dead Until Dark - Harris 

45. What You are Looking for is in the Library - Aoyama

46. The People in my Neighbourhood - Kawakami

47. Healing Justice - Anthology, various 

48. Animal Person - MacLeod

49. Portalmania - Urbanski

50. Outer Worlds Inner Lands - k laGuine 

51. Her body among animals (.5) - Ferrante

52. Revival - King 

53. The Galaxy and the Ground Within - Chambers 

54. The Dispossessed - La Guine 

55. Club Dead - Harris 

56. Tuesdays with Morrie - Albom

57. Dying well - Byock

58. Calling in - Ross

59. I've got a wolf by the ears - van Dan Berg (x2) *

60. Brat (.5) - Smith

61. Lost Souls Meet Under A Full Moon - tsujimura *

62. Of the Flesh (18 stories in modern horror) - various ( by Borough Press)  

63. A Grief Observed - CS Lewis 

64. Bloom - Dawson 

65. Perfection - Latronico 

66. Love in a Cold Climate - Mitford

67. We are Not Rrich ( stories ) - Murtagh (.5)

68. Piranesi - Clarke *

69. All's Well  - Awad

the year in reading

Total: 65+ 

Recurring themes & obsessions:

• Sentience, Consciousness and Observation (Chambers, Gibson, Le Guin)

• Weird ecology (Bear, Something in the Woods Loves You, Monk&Robot books)

• Memory & Identity (Harvey, Murakami, Ogawa)

• Love & Grief (hooks, Ross, CS Lewis, Aoyama)

• Vampires as a Lifestyle (the Harris summer binge)

• Zen as Anchor (Beck, Dōgen)

• Healing & Community Care (hooks, Ross, brown) 

My reading year was expansive and emotional, and wonderfully feral. I read stripped-down and calming psychological fiction and several grief and restorative justice works as part of my Year of Kindness project, memoirs of hope after violence and harm and a lot of vampire camp.

Genres blended:  Sci-fi,  horror and fantasy • Zen and meditative autofiction • queer lit and alt-classics with speculative sociologies • grief memoirs and ecological weirdness

vibes

MICRO-REVIEWS & VIBES Every Book in One Breath. I don’t usually read this much, maybe 30 more books than usual? but I took a long summer off, all I did was read in the shade, or at the beach, or in bed (and go to therapy). A real convalescence. A gift.

Sci-Fi / Fantasy Speculative Hopeful & Cosmic

• A Closed & Common Orbit – Chambers Tender AI soul-searching; space found family at its warmest.

• Orbital – Harvey (read twice!) Quiet, luminous. An ode to observation.

• Blackfish City – Miller (.5) Climate neon fever dream, it just didn’t hook me

• Toward Eternity – Hur “Very meh, honestly” — AI-immortality ennui.

• The Future – Leroux Techno-dread wrapped in ache

• The Dispossessed – Le Guin A feast of utopia, anarchy, and longing.

• Outer Worlds Inner Lands – Le Guin Mythic thinking and weird ecology, Le Guin classics

• Pattern Recognition & Idoru – Gibson Capitalism-as-almost-a-form-of-sorcery; romantic digital ghosts, Pattern Recognition is especially familiar

• Portalmania – Urbanski Dimensional slipstreams but make it existential, and great, very van den Berg

• The Galaxy and the Ground Within – Chambers' gentle sci-fi in the best way: kindness as plot.

• Psalm for the Wild-Built & Prayer for the Crown-Shy – Chambers Robot monk therapy; gentleness and a future redefined

• Piranesi - A dream I've had

  
  

Horror / Gothic & Weird

• Ghost Wall – Moss A claustrophobic bruise of a book, like the sore spot after someone throws a rock at you

• Bear – Engel Infamous; earthy, unsettling, strangely elegant. I want to write a book like that

• Of the Flesh – Borough Press (18 modern horror stories). It was …fine

• Her Body Among Animals – Ferrante (.5) Dry but feral, maybe a bit too breathy, I left half of it for later

• Dracula – Stoker Victorian thirst traps, more gay than I remember, less gay than I wanted, xenophobic vibes, but iconic.

• Revival – King Cosmic maine darkness + ruined preacher = classic king, i guess?

• Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon A beautiful, spars,e but haunting ache

• What You Are Looking For Is In the Library – Aoyama Wholesome magic realism as a palette cleanser for reality.

  
  

Fantasy / Urban Fantasy & Vampires

My Sookie Stackhouse era was real. A comforting binge with a campy bite. I read them in the hottest part of summer, sitting in the shade. 

• Dead and Gone

• Dead in the Family

• Dead Reckoning

• Deadlocked

• Dead Ever After

• Dead Until Dark

• Club Dead

  
  

Literary / Contemporary & Minimalist

• 1Q84 – Murakami Parallel moons, reads like a dream you don’t want to wake from.

• Greek Lessons – Han Kang Silence and language braided with grief and compassion.

• The Housekeeper & the Professor – Ogawa A gentle, humbling book about love

• Universal Harvester – Darnielle VHS grief loops; dreamy dread and maybe tender

• A Fine Balance – “Mystery” Sweeping, brutal, unforgettable. I had to read it twice because the first one was missing a bunch of pages towards the end

• Dayspring – Oliveira A vicious, beautiful, tender poem of a book, queer lust and Jesus Christ, luminous honey with stingers in it.

• Love in a Cold Climate: Social comedy in blue

• Bloom – Dawson Intimate, budding, queer - honestly, i was disappointed by the end

• I Hold a Wolf by the Ears Dark, brief, razor-edged. Volcano House is one of my favourite short stories of all time

I just noticed I didn't put this one on a list? feminist boxing poems 'Glass Jaw'. I read this in one go during a long visit to my favourite coffee shop in hfx

Nonfiction / Spiritual / Essays

• The Impossible Will Take a Little While – Various Hope as political action, life-saving, life-changing.

• The Will to Change & All About Love – bell hooks Revolutionary love; masculinity unlearned,

• Something in the Woods Loves You (x2) – Anderson You're lost in the woods, and you need to learn to see it. I read it twice

• Ordinary Wonder – Beck Soft Buddhism for sharp days

• Beyond Thinking – Dōgen (x2) Zen thinking and koans that rearrange my insides, I have read it on and off for a long time

• Tuesdays with Morrie: Sentimental but sincere

• Dying Well Mortality as teacher, at times quite moving.

• A Grief Observed – C.S. Lewis Raw, stripped and honestly beautiful, a masterpiece about being human

  
  

Incomplete

My grandfather was a big reader, and he used to say there were more books than time, so don't finish a book you're not enjoying. This is a valuable lesson

• Marigold [too bleak, not a single person ever had a good day, always raining]

• Blackfish City [got distracted by something else and returned it to the library]

• Hum [too bleak and a bit too reminiscent of my actual job]

• Brat [I wasn't feeling the structure, I was having a hard time meeting it where it lived]
  

• Her Body Among Animals (stories) [wanted to save some stories for later]

• We are not Rich (stories) [wanted to save some stories for later]

the books that bit back...

These left kiss or claw and  teeth marks:

Monk & Robot – Chambers For its sincerity and hope, it was exactly what I needed when I needed it

The Housekeeper & the Professor – Ogawa For its quiet, beautiful power and, honestly, its stunning structure and elegance

Ordinary Wonder / Beyond Thinking – Beck & Dōgen For grounding, beyond thinking is an old friend I have carried with me for years, and Ordinary Wonder was comforting when I needed comfort

Something in the Woods Loves You - Anderson

So much to learn to notice in my own life, so much to learn from others

Ghost Wall - Moss

An editor once called a story I wrote 'a hypnagogic examination of despair', and Ghost Wall fits that description even more. dripping with dread and certainty.

Bear – Engel

I didn’t expect to love it so much, but this is the kind og book I'd love to write

Dayspring - Oliveriera 

There are so few that many masterpieces of prose, like Grand Central Station, but this is one of them, without question. stunning, a lover spitting in your mouth

Piranesi – Clarke

It felt like a dream iv had, a place I've seen before. invigorating, reminded me of why I love reading

themes

THEMES OF THE YEAR

1. Transformation 2. Solitude & Companionship 3. Ecology, Systems, and Society 4. Grief & Care 5. the Wilderness of the self 

My reading leaned heavily into the surreal and the uncanny. I trusted the strange, the unexpected, I trusted myself, because that's what I always do, even when I'm terrified. I read a lot more non-fiction than i have in recent... decades? But I'm also back in school.

Reading saved me this year; it expanded my life more than I expected when I thought everything was collapsing. I read for school, for help and healing, and as always, so so much for pleasure and imagination. This summer especially, I read so much fun. I got a loyalty card to the ice cream parlour and read Vampire Camp and ate ice cream cones. I have loved reading all my life, but this year, reading is necessary like it hasn’t really been before. I used stories and essays and history and the ideas of a lot of people with more experience than me to help me rebuild the world as something beautiful and safe and good.

I read widely, strange and beautiful books. I crossed genres and let books change me, challenge and comfort me. I read under the trees in my backyard, in coffee shops, in the park, on the ferry, in my kitchen, on the plane, under the sheets with my flashlight 

Next year's books are waiting

and I have my flashlight, my softness and my curiosity.