by mark monday
10. THE WAYWARD BUS by John Steinbeck
I didn’t like this book. I didn’t like its deterministic perspective
on humanity or its pessimistic outlook on the way people interact and love and
hate and live. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t like it. The Wayward Bus is gorgeous. It details heartbreak in miniature, lives that cross each other
briefly, sadness and pettiness and barely understood anger… the striving to be more, understand more, live
more, no matter the hopelessness of that striving. I didn’t like this book, but
you don’t need to like a thing to love that thing.
9. MARTYRS AND
MONSTERS by Robert Dunbar
My favorite book of horror read in 2013 was this masterful
collection of short stories. Martyrs, monsters, and the danger and potential toxicity
of self-enclosure. Dunbar is a thoughtful author who specializes in menacing ambiguity,
but in this book he also illustrates the flexibility and fluidity of his
talents. By turns eerie, funny, scabrous, and inexplicable, each story is its
own strange and vividly imagined world.
8. THE TOWERS OF TREBIZOND by Rose Macauley
Macauley’s 1956 novel takes its reader on an amusing and
whimsical trip through Turkey. She’s like an aunt who is full of all sorts of
stories but whose breathless storytelling style is its own reason for listening. Aunt
Rose serves you some nice herbal tea and tells you this wry story; at the end
of her tale, she picks up that teapot and smashes you across the head with it. Her
story is not meant to be amusing. Wake up!
7. RED CLAW by Philip Palmer
Dense and action-packed, Red Claw is a rollicking saga and a
demented, bloody massacre. This bizarre future society is ingeniously imagined; the
alien anthropology on display is even more impressive. Palmer is an aggressive
and brazen author who wants his rollercoaster to be as appalling as it is fun.
Plus genuine bravery and an uplifting ending! Sorta. My favorite science
fiction novel of 2013.
Amis continues his lifelong thesis on the insect nature of
mankind in this lavish and spiteful death-farce. Humans Off Earth Now!
5. THE AIRTIGHT GARAGE by Moebius
Moebius is surely one of the most likeable geniuses to ever
write and draw a comic. His visions are as loveable as they are obscure. Worlds
within worlds; super-powered humans who never bother to show those powers;
characters who jump off the page and then disappear forever. Circular
narratives! Mind-bending visuals! Demented plotlines! Nonsensical dialogue! This
charming epic is candy for the brain.
4. THE PYX by John Buell
How is this 1974 crime novel not a classic? Each sentence,
each paragraph is a work of art. Follow the haunting heroine as she walks
inexorably down her tragic path. Sit back and try to figure out the mystery
with the stalwart and humane detective as he sorts out this shadowy tragedy.
Gape, agog, at a truly fearful ending.
"But books lie, even
those that are most sincere…” but not this one. Yourcenar finds her
way to the heart of a man, his own truth, by reimagining not just an ancient
world, but all aspects of the man who lives in that world. By the end of this
book, I felt as if I looked through Hadrian’s eyes and thought Hadrian’s
thoughts. The man is the world is the book. O Death, sometimes you come not
with a sting, but with an embrace.
2. QUEEN LUCIA by E.F. Benson
My favorite reread was Benson’s classic first
novel in his Mapp & Lucia cycle. Rose Macauley is your eccentric spinster
aunt with a heart of steel; E.F. Benson is your quirky queer uncle with a mouth
full of ironic innuendo and ludicrous, hysterical tall tales. Except
these tall tales don’t involve giants or beanstalks; instead they detail a
fantastically petty and obsessive little English village full of
smaller-than-life characters who do larger-than-life things. Pure pleasure from
beginning to end.
1. THE GRAVEYARD BOOK by Neil Gaiman
Gaiman wrote something wondrous, something perfect. Again.
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