Quality over Quantity in a Time of Troubles: Books I Read in 2025

At last, 2025 is over. I'd hoped to surpass 100 books this year, but other things became more important. 

In 2025, I read

• 67 works of fiction and 17 works of non-fiction
• 39 science fiction novels, 17 mainstream novels, six Star Trek media tie-ins, and five fantasy novels
• 26 books by women and 58 books by men
• 42 books from the 2020s, 17 from the 2010s, nine from the 2000s, five from the 1990s, four from the 1980s, two from the 1970s, four from the 1960s, and one from the 1950s

COMMENTARY AND ANALYSIS

For the first time in a long time, only a couple of books this year were re-reads for me. This wasn't an intentional choice, but in retrospect it seems to have left me open to some wonderful discoveries. Here are my favourite reads of the year, plus a disappointment or two: 

I Who Have Never Known Men, by Jacqueline Harpman. 39 women and a girl are locked in an underground cage for years, then suddenly released to emerge to an emptied world, barren and inhospitable. Whatever calamity befell the world is left a mystery. A compelling rumination on the struggles of womanhood in hostile spaces, and a bleak commentary on human empathy--or the lack of it. 

Titan, by Stephen Baxter. I've never been Baxter's biggest fan, but 2025 was the right year for me to finally finish his so-called "NASA trilogy." The book's political climate eerily mirrors the troubles we're facing today, and as the world turns inward, NASA has one more shot to perform some pioneering science and exploration--a do or die, one-way trip to Saturn's largest moon, Titan. The technical details of the mission are fascinating, especially set against the frightening backdrop of an American government sliding into theocratic fascism. No parallels to 2025 in this book from 1997! Even more compelling are the battle for survival on Titan itself and the speculative leaps made by novel's end. 

A Short Stay in Hell, by Steven L. Peck. So it turns out that when we die, unless we follow Zoroastrianism (the one true faith; who knew?) we go to hell. Hell is a library that contains every book that fits onto 410 pages, and if you find the one book that tells your life story--without any spelling errors, typos, or grammatical errors--you're free to leave. Unfortunately, every letter, number, and punctuation mark is randomly generated, which means that the vast, vast majority of the trillions and trillions and trillions of books in Hell is garbage. Your book exists, but the time required to find it would take longer than the age of our universe. Much longer. There's no torture in hell, and its residents are supplied with good food and comfortable quarters. But there's no entertainment other than chatting or having sex, and no one gets sick. Of course, people can hurt and even kill each other, but you always wake up fully healed. Practically speaking, you're trapped in an eternity of boredom. This book terrified me. 

James, by Percival Everett. A retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, the escaped slave befriended by Huck in Mark Twain's novel. Offers excellent perspective on the Black experience in white spaces--this is a rich novel, an angry novel, uncompromising in its critique of the world we've built. 

Julia, by Sandra Newman. George Orwell's 1984 seen through the eyes of Julia, Winston Smith's lover. It's just as bleak and nauseating as Orwell's original story, given more dimension thanks to its new perspective. We even get to see the fall of Oceania, an event foreshadowed by 1984's afterword. Spoiler: the new regime may or may not be an improvement on the old regime. 

Exordia, by Seth Dickinson. The first couple of chapters led me to believe this novel was going to be comic. I was wildly wrong. Dickinson's story of alien invasion is one of the scariest, most visceral, and most exciting examples of the trope in years. A wonderful cast of characters, human and alien, take us on a thrilling rollercoaster ride. It's smart, fun, terrifying, and satisfying. 

The Bridges of Madison County, by Robert James Waller. This is one of several books I read from Mom's collection after her passing. I wasn't expecting to enjoy this novel as much as I did, but I admit to tearing up by the end. A beautiful love story that captures the feeling of those special moments in time we know must be brief, but stay with us forever. 

The Compound, by Aisling Rawle. 20 (quickly 19) young men and women play out a dystopian version of Big Brother against the backdrop of the world we might live in in just a few years--a catastrophically warming world with constant wildfires and resource shortages, civilization finally beginning to play the price of our greed and ignorance. The Compound is a thoughtful critique of consumerism, the male gaze, and violence--but it offers a thread of hope in its tale of resilience and reconciliation. Or, if not hope--then at least some grace. 

The Rose Field, by Philip Pullman. I was enjoying the last of Pullman's Lyra Silvertongue novels until about three-quarters of the way through, when Pullman seems to lose focus and direction. The big action setpiece feels like it's been inspired by a video game or a poorly-run Dungeons & Dragons campaign, and the ending, well...I think the only word is anticlimactic. Although maybe ironic also fits, since a search to recapture Lyra's imagination seems to end in a rote critique of runaway progress--a topic handled with far more dexterity by The Compound, above. 

Prelude to Space, by Arthur C. Clarke. Clarke chose the perfect title for this one; it really is a prelude to the big space adventures we never get to see. Instead, Clarke covers the technical and bureaucratic challenges of getting men (of course men) into orbit. I found it interesting, but most readers will consider this very, very dry. Which it is. 

I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Foe, and We Spread, by Iain Reid. Nothing is what it seems in Reid's work, and I love that. All three novels are creepy, atmospheric, heartbreaking, mysterious, and best left unspoiled. I ached deeply for all his poor doomed protagonists, trapped in worlds they never made. 

Weird Medieval Guys, by Olivia Swarthout. Gorgeously designed, brilliantly illustrated, and hilarious, a balm for my battered nerves this year, a great gift from Leslie. 

The Gone World and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Tom Sweterlitsch. I wish this guy would write more novels! Sweterlitsch combines deeply sympathetic characters with high-concept speculative fiction settings and challenges in a way that's unlike any other writer. 

And finally, this year I read the seven existing novels in Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Not only are they great fun, especially for anyone who's ever played a tabletop role playing game, the bad puns, crass humour, bloodthirsty violence, and existential dread are tempered by a truly empathetic and humanistic outlook; Carl, our protagonist, never gives in to despair or hate despite the cruelty of the alien invaders who have turned Earth into the latest of their sadistic interstellar reality show playgrounds, wiping out almost all life on the planet. 

MONTH-BY-MONTH

January: 11

The Dead Fathers Club (Matt Haig, 2006)
The Possession of Mr Cave (Matt Haig, 2008)
Notes on a Nervous Planet (Matt Haig, 2018)
Julia (Sandra Newman, 2023) 
How to be Perfect (Michael Schur, 2022) 
Tower of Glass (Robert Silverberg, 1970) 
Light Raid (Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice, 1989) 
Take a Look at the Five and Ten (Connie Willis, 2020) 
Seasons of Light and Darkness (Michael A. Martin, 2014) 
Golden State (Ben H. Winters, 2019) 
Terra Incognita (Connie Willis, 2018) 

February: 10
Some Desperate Glory (Emily Tesh, 2023) 
The Art of Mike Grell Volume 1 (Mike Grell, Tom Monarch, and Jeff Messer, 2025) 
Water Witch (Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice, 1982) 
The Fall Risk (Abby Jiminez, 2025) 
Promised Land (Connie Willis and Cynthia Felice, 1996) 
The Armageddon Engine (James Swallow, 2024) 
The You You Are: A Spiritual Biography of You (Ricken Lazlo Hale, 2022) 
Vulcan’s Soul Book I: Exodus (Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz, 2004) 
I Who Have Never Known Men (Jacqueline Harpman, 1995) 
Shadow Play (James Swallow, 2024)

March
The Whole Man (John Brunner, 1967) 
Titan (Stephen Baxter, 1997) 
The Godwhale (T.J. Bass, 1974) 
Star Trek: Lost to Eternity (Greg Cox, 2024)

April
American Housewife (Anita Abriel, 2025) 
Exordia (Seth Dickinson, 2023) 
Dungeon Crawler Carl (Matt Dinniman, 2020) 
Carl’s Doomsday Scenario (Matt Dinniman, 2021) 
The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook (Matt Dinniman, 2021) 
The Gate of the Feral Gods (Matt Dinniman, 2021) 

May
The Butcher’s Masquerade (Matt Dinniman, 2022)  
Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis (Robert F. Kennedy, 1969) 

June
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (Matt Dinniman, 2023)
George Perez: Storyteller (Christopher Lawrence, 2006)
This Inevitable Ruin (Matt Dinniman, 2024) 

July
Never Flinch (Stephen King, 2025) 
James (Percival Everett, 2024) 
The Enemy Within (Kristine Kathryn Rusch, 2014) 
Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy (Martha Wells, 2025)
White Eagle Speaks: Reflections of Lives and Passing Thoughts (Leonard Carriere, 2000) 
Prairie Light (Courtney Milne, 1985) 
Keith Langergraber: Theatre of the Exploding Sun (Liz Wylie, 2013) 
Shadow of the Machine (Scott Harrison, 2015) 
The More Things Change (Scott Pearson, 2014) 
Christmas with Norman Rockwell (John Kirk, 1990) 
The Professionals (Keith Langergraber, 2016) 
The Adventure of the Demonic Ox (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2025) 

August
Vulcan’s Soul Book II: Exiles (Josepha Sherman and Susan Shwartz, 2006) 
The Making of The African Queen, or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall, and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind (Katherine Hepburn, 1987) 
The Bridges of Madison County (Robert James Waller, 1992) 
The End of the World as We Know It (Christopher Golden, 2025) 
A Short Stay in Hell (Steven L. Peck, 2012) 
When the Moon Hits Your Eye (John Scalzi, 2025) 

September
I Hope This Finds You Well (Natalie Sue, 2024) 
The Gone World (Tom Sweterlitsch, 2018) 
Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Tom Sweterlitsch, 2014) 
Dominion (C.J. Sansom, 2012) 
Not Quite by the Book (Julie Hatcher, 2025) 
The Shattered Peace (John Scalzi, 2025) 
The Art of Fantastic Four (John Lind, 2025)
A New History of the Future in 100 Objects: A Fiction (Adrian Hon, 2020) 

October
3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years (John Scalzi, 2025) 
The Intergalactic Interloper (Delas Heras, 2020) 
Best of All Worlds (Kenneth Oppel, 2025) 
Back to the Future: A Visual History (Michael Klastorin, Randal Atamaniuk, 2015) 
Weird Medieval Guys (Olivia Swarthout, 2023) 
Final Orbit (Chris Hadfield, 2025) 
Silver Screen Fiend (Patton Oswalt, 2015) 
I’m Thinking of Ending Things (Iain Reid, 2016) 
Foe (Iain Reid, 2018) 
We Spread (Iain Reid, 2022) 

November
Prelude to Space (Arthur C. Clarke, 1951) 
Assassins from Tomorrow (Peter Heath, 1967) 
The Productions of Time (John Brunner, 1967) 
The Collected Essex County (Jeff Lemire, 2009) 
The Rose Field (Philip Pullman, 2025) 

December
Testimony of Mute Things (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2025) 
The Compound (Aisling Rawle, 2025) 
Ten Thousand Light Years from Okay (Tracy Dobmeier and Wendy Katzman, 2025) 
The Witch Doesn’t Burn in This One (Amanda Lovelace, 2018)
The Mermaid’s Voice Returns in This One (Amanda Lovelace, 2019) 
Machines Like Me (Ian McEwan, 2025) 
Gold Dust (Catherine Asaro, 2025) 

And so ends 2025. Check out Bruce's list, and now you can see what Leslie was reading, listening to, and experiencing in 2025. 

Last But Not Least: Books I Read in 2023

 

Finally!

Here we are at what has become the traditional final post of the year here at The Earliad: the list of books I read over the course of the last 365 days. As seen in the Goodreads screencap at the top of this post, I have at last crawled my way back to my baseline minimum of 100 books a year, a goal I've failed to achieve for the last few years now thanks to COVID-19, stress, and depression. 

But hey! The world is okay now. COVID-19 is behind us, human rights and decency are ascendant, the wealth gap is steadily shrinking, and we've turned the tide in the fight against climate change. 

. . . 

All right, nothing in that last paragraph is true, but somehow I managed to read 100 books this year anyway.

Overview

In 2023, I read

• 82 works of fiction and 18 works of non-fiction
• 52 science fiction novels, 21 mainstream, five horror, and four fantasy
• 40 books by women and 60 books by men
• 32 books from the 2020s, 29 from the 2010s, seven from the 2000s, five from the 1990s, eight from the 1980s, 10 from the 1970s, three from the 1960s, one from the 1950s, three from the 1930s, one from the 1980s, and one from the 1810s
• Seven books by Charles M. Schulz, five by Kate Beaton, five by Matt Haig, five by John Scalzi, four by Stephen King, four by Nancy Kress, three by Sandy Petersen, three by Katherine Anne Porter, two by David Brin, two by Mona Clee, two by Diane Duane, two by Steven Konkoly, two by Jack McDevitt, and one by each other author on this year's list

Commentary and Analysis

Repeating my experience in 2022, I reread a lot of old favourites in 2023, including novels by Ray Bradbury, Mona Clee, Suzy McKee Charnas, Diane Duane, Daniel Keyes, Stephen King, Nancy Kress, Kate Wilhelm, and Connie Willis. I have only one thing to say about these rereads: I wish Mona Clee had written more novels. The two she published--Branch Point and Overshoot--are wonderful soft-SF tales of human folly and our efforts to do better and be better.

As promised last year, I read Roderick Thorpe's first novel about detective Joe Leland, a character Hollywood adapted twice--once as a straightforward adaptation of this novel starring Frank Sinatra, the second an adaptation of the sequel, Nothing Lasts Forever, as the action hit Die Hard. The Detective is more meditative and slow-paced than its sequel, but still worthwhile, and gives the character's journey added depth. I wish I'd read the two books in order. 

Last year Leslie gave me a novel for my birthday and one for Christmas. I don't remember which book was meant for which occasion, but I read Matt Haig's The Comfort Book first, and it really gave me an emotional lift when I needed it. Haig's style is warm and welcoming, and so is his subject matter, whether he's writing non-fiction, as in this case, or fiction, as in the other Haig books I devoured this year in response to the good feelings granted by The Comfort Book. Those books were The Midnight Library, How to Stop Time, and The Humans, works of speculative fiction with a common theme: making connections and dealing with trauma through empathy and a conscious choice to pursue understanding. All four reads left me feeling better about the world, and they were light but thoughtful. I'll be following Haig's work. 

The other book Leslie gifted me was Gnomon, by Nick Harkaway, a dense science fiction detective story about artificial intelligence, simulated worlds, and history's throughlines. It's a fascinating, nested, interweaving narrative, one I'll revisit again in a few years. 

I've long been a fan of cartoonist Kate Beaton's website, so this year I purchased all of her available works. The most notable was Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, an autobiography covering Kate's time in Fort McMurray, a place I'm familiar with through a couple of personal visits and my work in the public and private sectors. Knowing what I know about the working environment in Fort McMurray, I went into this book hoping that nothing bad would happen to Kate, but . . . well, one very bad thing does happen, and I wish I hadn't anticipated it. It made me wish that I could send Kate a message back through time telling her to pursue other opportunities. The book is very worthwhile and I'm glad I read it, but it's rough going in some places simply because Beaton doesn't shy away from the realities of her experience. 

In 2023 I read three books by fantasist Naomi Novik. The first, The Golden Enclaves, is the finale of a trilogy of works about a university of magic with campuses across the globe. I didn't find the conclusion of the series as satisfying as the first two books, but it was still engaging and enjoyable, and doesn't preclude further exploration of the world. I was more impressed by a pair of standalone novels by Novik: Uprooted and Spinning Silver. They explore the usual fantasy tropes, but Novik's command of characterization and structure make them both entertaining, breezy reads. 

Norman Spinrad's The Iron Dream is grotesquely violent, absurd, and troubling--as it should be, because Spinrad posits an alternate world where Adolf Hitler was a science fiction writer instead of the mad dictator of our reality. The book's most chilling section, though, is the framing material, which expounds upon the outsized influence of this alternate Hitler's novel on his world: he achieves a cult-like following which has, if you read between the lines, influenced his world in reactionary directions that might, in the long run, do more damage to humanity than our Hitler achieved in the real world. It's a scary book. 

I stumbled across a fun experiment in 2023--an opportunity to read Bram Stoker's Dracula across the course of the year via emails sent out on the date of the letters and journals that make up perhaps the world's most famous epistolary. (There are some editorial allowances made for the long out-of-sequence section describing what happens on the Demeter.) Reading the book this way really connected me to the characters; it was like I had to wait for the various letters and newspaper clippings just as they did. 

The Road is my first experience with the work of Cormac McCarthy, and he certainly lives up to his reputation. Dystopic, bleak, hopeless, and sparse, this is one of those works that really captures the mood of the 2020s, even though it was written in 2006. McCarthy builds a vivid world, though; even though his prose is sparing, his choices depict his chosen milieu with crystal clarity. 

I had the most fun this year, though, with Leslie Vermeer's Last But Not Least: A Guide to Proofreading Text. As with her earlier The Complete Canadian Book Editor, Last But Not Least is written with great authority--Leslie knows her subject matter backwards and forwards--but just as critical to the book's value is the way Leslie expresses that authority with empathy, kindness, and authenticity. She also peppers her texts with fun little in-jokes, this time with an emphasis on cultural touchpoints in Edmonton, British Columbia's lower mainland, and Vancouver Island. They're lovely touches that don't distract from the message, and fun Easter eggs for those who spot them. 

It must be said that I've known Leslie for years, so I'm predisposed to enjoying her work. Despite this, I'm confident in predicting that Last But Not Least will be incredibly useful to working communications professionals. Indeed, as one such professional, I've had to perform my share of proofreading jobs over the years; in fact, I have a very large proofreading task coming up in January. Leslie's book does an incredible job of clearly and carefully defining the role of the proofreader, its importance to publishing credible text, and how proofreaders can succeed at the task. Last But Not Least will be by my side for my January task and others to come. 

(I did not proofread this post, by the way; had I followed Leslie's excellent guidance, this blog would be error-free, or nearly so. Blame the student, not the teacher.) 

Plus, Leslie was kind enough to include me in the acknowledgements for my teeny-weeny contribution to the book. How cool is that? I'm genuinely thrilled. What a lovely way to end the year! 

Month-by-Month

January: 11

The Detective (Roderick Thorp, 1966)

The Comfort Book (Matt Haig, 2021) 

High School Journalist, Promoter, Jester - Kurt Vonnegut in the Shortridge Daily Echo, 1937-1940 (Kurt Vonnegut Jr., 2023) 

The Effort (Claire Holroyde, 2021) 

Hark! A Vagrant (Kate Beaton, 2015) 

Step Aside, Pops (Kate Beaton, 2015) 

Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands (Kate Beaton, 2022) 

The Princess and the Pony (Kate Beaton, 2015) 

The Midnight Library (Matt Haig, 2020) 

Fractured State (Steven Konkoly, 2016) 

The World of Star Trek, second edition (David Gerrold, 1984) 

February: 10

Rogue State (Steven Konkoly, 2017) 

They’d Rather Be Right (Mark Clifton and Frank Riley, 1954) 

Village in the Sky (Jack McDevitt, 2023) 

The Golden Enclaves (Naomi Novik, 2022) 

Uprooted (Naomi Novik, 2015) 

Spinning Silver (Naomi Novik, 2018) 

The Official Art of Big Trouble in Little China (Tara Bennett, 2017) 

The Art of Tron: Legacy (Justin Springer, 2010)

Robotic Existentialism: The Art of Eric Joyner (Eric Joyner, 2018) 

Tomb of Annihilation (Christopher Perkins, 2017) 

March: 10

How to Stop Time (Matt Haig, 2017) 

Old Venus (George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, 2015) 

The Dead Zone (Stephen King, 1979)

The Toynbee Convector (Ray Bradbury, 1988)  

Branch Point (Mona Clee, 1996)

Overshoot (Mona Clee, 1998)

Music of the Spheres (Margaret Wander Bonanno, 1990) 

Probability Moon (Nancy Kress, 2000) 

Probability Sun (Nancy Kress, 2001) 

Probability Space (Nancy Kress, 2002) 

April: 8

The Iron Dream (Norman Spinrad, 1972) 

We Think, Therefore We Are (Peter Crowther, 2008) 

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (Kate Wilhelm, 1976) 

Gnomon (Nick Harkaway, 2017) 

Fallout 4 Vault Dweller’s Survival Guide (David S.J. Hodgson, 2015) 

Dark Mirror (Diane Duane, 1994) 

Intellivore (Diane Duane, 1997) 

The Postman (David Brin, 1985) 

May: 10

The Art of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos (Pat Harrigan, 2006) 

S. Petersen’s Field Guide to Cthulhu Monsters: A Field Observer’s Handbook of Preternatural Entities (Sandy Petersen, 1988)

S. Petersen's Field Guide to Creatures of the Dreamlands: An Album of Entities from the Land Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Sandy Petersen, 1989) 

S. Petersen's Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors: A Field Observer's Handbook of Preternatural Entities and Beings from Beyond the Wall of Sleep (Sandy Petersen, 2015) 

The Actual Star (Monica Byrne, 2021) 

Murder by Other Means (John Scalzi, 2020) 

Travel by Bullet (John Scalzi, 2022) 

Wondrous Beginnings (Steven H. Silver and Martin H. Greenberg, 2003)

The Simultaneous Man (Ralph Blum, 1971)

A Deadly Affair (Agatha Christie, 2022) 

June: 12

Alien3 (Pat Cadigan, 2021) 

Old Mortality (Katherine Anne Porter, 1937)

Noon Wine (Katherine Anne Porter, 1938) 

Pale Horse, Pale Rider (Katherine Anne Porter, 1939) 

Observer (Nancy Kress and Robert Lanza, 2023) 

Peanuts Every Sunday: 1952-1955 (Charles M. Schulz, 2013) 

Peanuts Every Sunday: 1956-1960 (Charles M. Schulz, 2014) 

Peanuts Every Sunday: 1961-1965 (Charles M. Schulz, 2015) 

Peanuts Every Sunday: 1966-1970 (Charles M. Schulz, 2016) 

Peanuts Every Sunday: 1971-1975 (Charles M. Schulz, 2017) 

Peanuts Every Sunday: 1976-1980 (Charles M. Schulz, 2018) 

Peanuts Every Sunday: 1981-1985 (Charles M. Schulz, 2019) 

July: 6

The Shining (Stephen King, 1977) 

‘Salem’s Lot (Stephen King, 1975) 

Down to a Sunless Sea (David Graham, 1979) 

The Practice Effect (David Brin, 1984) 

Flowers for Algernon (Daniel Keyes, 1966) 

The Lathe of Heaven (Ursula K. LeGuin, 1971) 

August: 10

The Last President (John Barnes, 2012) 

Hope Rides Again (Andrew Shaffer, 2019) 

How It Unfolds (James S.A. Corey, 2023) 

Void (Veronica Roth, 2023) 

Falling Bodies (Rebecca Roanhorse, 2023) 

The Long Game (Ann Leckie, 2023)

Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach (Nnedi Okorafor, 2023) 

Slow Time between the Stars (John Scalzi, 2023) 

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee, 1960) 

Lincoln’s Dreams (Connie Willis, 1987) 

September: 4

Dr. No (Percival Everett, 2022) 

The Kaiju Preservation Society (John Scalzi, 2022) 

7TV Cinematic Skirmish Rules (Karl Pelleton, 2023) 

Frankenstein (Mary Shelley, 1818) 

October: 10

The Humans (Matt Haig, 2013) 

Artwork from Baldur’s Gate (Joachim Vleminckx, 2023) 

The Radleys (Matt Haig, 2010) 

Starter Villain (John Scalzi, 2023) 

King Baby (Kate Beaton, 2010) 

Holly (Stephen King, 2023) 

Return to Glory (Jack McDevitt, 2023) 

On His Majesty’s Secret Service (Charlie Higson, 2023) 

To Be Taught, If Fortunate (Becky Chambers, 2019) 

Walk to the End of the World (Suzy McKee Charnas, 1974) 

November: 2

Dracula (Bram Stoker, 1897) 

The Machine Never Blinks (Ivan Greenberg, 2020) 

December: 8

The Road (Cormac McCarthy, 2006) 

Touch Not the Cat (Mary Stewart, 1976) 

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (Various, 1986) 

Upright Women Wanted (Sarah Gailey, 2020) 

The Defector (Chris Hadfield, 2023) 

Maybe There—The Lost Stories from Space: 1999 (David Hirsch and Robert E. Wood, 2023) 

Last But Not Least: A Guide to Proofreading Text (Leslie Vermeer, 2023) 

Books I Read in 2018

For the second year in a row, the number of books I read over the course of the year has declined, down to 86 books this year compared to 123 in 2017 and 135 in 2016. Even worse, my ratio of women to men authors has declined drastically, as has my ratio of genre to mainstream (or "literary") works.

There are a few reasons for this, some new, some carried over from 2017. First, hardly any of my lunch breaks at Stantec are devoted to reading books; instead, I'm either playing Dungeons & Dragons or catching up on Reddit politics threads over lunch. I'm also screening a lot more films than I used to. And finally, Dad's passing and the stress from the quickly unfolding global sociopolitical/environmental catastrophe has made reading more difficult for me; I don't have the same focus I used to.

What reading I did manage this year veered strongly toward nostalgia and escapism. I managed to whittle down some Hugo and Nebula award winners this year, and finally read Isaac Asimov's Lucky Starr juveniles and the first of his R. Daneel Olivaw robot novels. I also knocked off James Blish's Cities in Flight books, something I've been meaning to do since about grade six.

Here's the list:

January: 11
Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction (Grady Hendrix, 2017)
The Collectors (Christopher L. Bennett, 2014)
Miasma (Greg Cox, 2016)
Q Are Cordially Invited (Rudy Josephs, 2014)
When Angels Wept: A What-If History of the Cuban Missile Crisis (Eric G. Swedin, 2010)
Surrounded by Enemies (Bryce Zabel, 2013)
BFI Modern Classics: Easy Rider (Lee Hill, 1996)
Once There Was a Way (Bryce Zabel, 2017)
The Returned, Part 1 (Peter David, 2015)
The Returned, Part 2 (Peter David, 2015)
The Returned, Part 3 (Peter David, 2015)

February: 6
The Dispatcher (John Scalzi, 2016)
The Power (Naomi Alderman, 2016)
Sidelines (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2013)
Shadow on the Sun (Richard Matheson, 1994)
Absent Enemies (John Jackson Miller, 2014)
A Lot like Christmas (Connie Willis, 2017)

March: 4
The Home for Wayward Parrots (Darusha Wehm, 2018)
The Bronze Skies (Catherine Asaro, 2017)
The Outer Limits: Season One (David J. Schow, 2018)
The Klingon Dictionary, second edition (Marc Okrand, 1992)

April: 1
The Berlin Project (Gregory Benford, 2017)

May: 6
Action Comics: 80 Years of Superman (Paul Levitz, 2018)
Those Were the Days (Marty Kaplan and Tom Shales, 2012)
Thor Meets Captain America (David Brin, 1986)
The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era (Vernor Vinge, 1993)
The Flowers of Vashnoi (Lois McMaster Bujold, 2018)
4 3 2 1 (Paul Auster, 2017)

June: 8
The Outsider (Stephen King, 2018)
Grammar: The Easy Way (Dan Mulvey, 2002)
A Girl in Time (John Birmingham, 2016)
Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace (Joseph M. Williams, 2003)
Adventure: The Atari 2600 at the Dawn of Console Gaming (Jamie Lendino, 2018)
Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B-Movie Actor (Bruce Campbell, 2017)
Wool (Hugh Howley, 2011)
Buying Time (Joe Haldeman, 1989)

July: 18
All Our Wrong Todays (Elan Mastri, 2017)
After the Fact: A Guide to Fact-Checking for Magazines and Other Media (Cynthia Brouse, 2007)
The Stuff of Dreams (James Swallow, 2013)
Artemis (Andy Weir, 2017)
Infinite (Jeremy Robinson, 2017)
sex, lies, and videotape (Steven Soderbergh, 1990)
American War (Omar el Akkad, 2017)
The President’s Brain is Missing (John Scalzi, 2017)
They Shall Have Stars (James Blish, 1956)
A Life for the Stars (James Blish, 1962)
Earthman, Come Home (James Blish, 1955)
The Triumph of Time (James Blish, 1959)
Behold the Man (Michael Moorcock, 1969)
The Fifth Head of Cerberus (Gene Wolfe, 1972)
The Planet on the Table (Kim Stanley Robinson, 1986)
The Tale of the Wicked (John Scalzi, 2012)
Slow River (Nicola Griffith, 1995)
Powers (Ursula K. LeGuin, 2007)

August: 11
David Starr, Space Ranger (Isaac Asimov, 1952)
Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids (Isaac Asimov, 1953)
Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus (Isaac Asimov, 1954)
Lucky Starr and the Big Sun of Mercury (Isaac Asimov, 1956)
Lucky Starr and the Moons of Jupiter (Isaac Asimov, 1957)
Lucky Starr and the Rings of Saturn (Isaac Asimov, 1958)
Change Agent (Daniel Suarez, 2017)
Terminal Event (Robert Vaughn, 2017)
Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In Near You (Charles Taylor, 2017)
Trigger Mortis (Anthony Horowitz, 2015)
The Sirens of Titan (Kurt Vonnegut, 1959)

September: 10
The Keep (F. Paul Wilson, 1981)
Hope Never Dies (Andrew Shaffer, 2018)
Flight or Fright (Stephen King and Bev Vincent, 2018)
The Fountains of Paradise (Arthur C.  Clarke, 1979)
Legacies (F. Paul Wilson, 1998)
All the Way with JFK (F.C. Schaefer, 2017)
The Boat of a Million Years (Poul Anderson, 1989)
Superpowers (David J. Schwartz, 2008)
All My Sins Remembered (Joe Haldeman, 1977)
The Coming (Joe Haldeman, 2000)

October: 5
Hadon of Ancient Opar (Philip Jose Farmer, 1974)
Mockingbird (Walter Tevis, 1980)
The Dreaming Jewels (Theodore Sturgeon, 1950)
The Consuming Fire (John Scalzi, 2018)
Head On (John Scalzi, 2018)

November: 3
Nightflyers (George R.R. Martin, 1985)
Strangers (Gardner Dozois, 1978)
Flight to Opar (Philip Jose Farmer, 1976)

December: 5
Elevation (Stephen King, 2018)
The Caves of Steel (Isaac Asimov, 1954)
Star Trek: The Book of Lists (Chip Carter, 2017)
The Massacre of Mankind (Stephen Baxter, 2017)
Star Trek: Lost Scenes (David Tilotta and Curt McAloney, 2018)

Nonfiction: 16
Fiction: 70

Genre
Science Fiction: 46
Mainstream: 11
Star Trek: 8
Fantasy: 3
Horror: 3

Top Authors
Isaac Asimov: 7
John Scalzi: 5
James Blish: 4
Peter David: 3
Joe Haldeman: 3
Stephen King: 3
Lois McMaster Bujold: 2
Philip Jose Farmer: 2
F. Paul Wilson: 2
Bryce Zabel: 2

Books by Women: 10
Books by Men: 76

Books by Decade
1950s: 12
1960s: 2
1970s: 6
1980s: 7
1990s: 7
2000s: 6
2010s: 48

October 2015 Review Roundup

Among the books I read in October, two stood out as favourites: Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride and The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made, by the film's co-star, Greg Sestero.

I really loved The Robber Bride, a story about three women and their dark nemesis. I dove in knowing nothing about the book and was quickly carried away by Atwood's remarkably deft wordsmithing and her ability to evoke empathy for her characters, even the ones who behave very badly, including the titular villainess. The Disaster Artist was a huge surprise, laugh-out-loud funny one moment and deeply sobering the next, with a poignant ending that left me with a huge smile on my face. If you've ever seen The Room, Tommy Wiseau's bewildering film of romance and betrayal, you really must read this book. The Disaster Artist doesn't explain Wiseau or the film - I don't know that anything sane could - but it's a really wonderful portrait of an unlikely friendship, as well as a sympathetic look at a desperately lonely man clearly out of step with the world that surrounds him.

I also enjoyed the Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, one of the earliest novels of swashbuckling adventure that set the tone for later heroes such as Batman, the Phantom, the Lone Ranger and other masked men. Orczy's tale moves along at a brisk pace and doesn't seem dated despite being over a century old.

Katherine Addison's The Goblin Emperor is a well-crafted novel of court intrigue set in a fantasy milieu; I'm not sure why Addison felt the need to provide a fantastic setting, because it reads like a mainstream work. There's no magic here; the people are elves and goblins instead of humans, and that's as far as the fantasy element goes. Whatever her reasons for the setting, though, it works.

Ben Bova has written far better things than Transhuman, and I'm sorry to say that there's nothing really groundbreaking here that hasn't already been covered by someone else.

John Scalzi's The End of All Things is the latest chapter in his reliably entertaining Old Man's War universe, and while this novel is just more of the same, that's a good thing when you're reading Scalzi.

The Autobiography of James T. Kirk is well-written and a bit of a treat for dedicated fans, but even though the story is well-crafted I found it hard to appreciate for some reason...perhaps because it's almost better if Kirk's past is left to the imagination of the reader/viewer.

I watched 39 (!) films in October, more than ever before, but 26 of those were shorts, including the delightful The House is Innocent, a film about a couple who buy an infamous house that was the site of multiple murders. They decide to right the house's reputation with offbeat humour, decorating the home's interior, exterior and yard with eye-catching sculpture and signage. I was very sorry Sylvia wasn't there to see the movie with me, because the couple have a relationship much like the one we enjoy.

The bulk of the shorts I watched came from a delightful Blu-Ray called 3D Rarities. I had no idea that filmmakers were experimenting with 3D as early as the 1920s, nor that Canada's Norm McLaren had worked in the form. This disc alone made me glad we picked up a 3D television and Blu-Ray player; the shorts on the disc are inventive, fascinating, and many are superbly done, with very convincing depth.

In terms of full-length films, I finally got around to watching Terms of Endearment, the film that beat out The Right Stuff for Best Picture to my consternation back in 1983. Having seen both films now, I still think The Right Stuff is the better movie, but Terms of Endearment is charming enough, I suppose, if conventional. King Vidor's The Champ remains moving to this day, thanks in great part to Jackie Cooper's heartbreaking performance at the film's climax. In theatres I found The Martian a rare treat, a well-paced space survival film with, for once, a positive message about not just humanity's future, but about human nature itself.

I finished off the month with a handful of horror movies on Halloween, including Night of the Demon, Curse of the Demon (two versions  of the same film, both effective), White Zombie, Night of the Ghouls (an Ed Wood classic), Tales from the Crypt (70s anthology horror at its finest), Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and the 1932 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

The Plot to Review the Plot to Save Socrates

Some time ago, I wrote a brief review of John Scalzi's Old Man's War. (Read the review at http://earljwoods.blogspot.com/2007/02/young-mans-fancy-old-mans-war.html. )

Author Paul Levinson left a short blahgthering on the review, and in response I mentioned that I'd been wanting to read his well-reviewed time travel tale, The Plot to Save Socrates, for some time.

That time has come - and without even meaning to, I've used the word "time" three times - whoops, now four - before even mentioning that the book's plot device, which drives the plot of The Plot to Save Socrates, is, you guessed it, time travel.

I love time travel stories. There's something compelling about the human desire to slip beyond our minute-by-minute existence and either correct an imperfect past or steal an advance glimpse of our tomorrows.

Levinson treats us to both in The Plot to Save Socrates. In brief, an American grad student runs across a never-before-seen Socratic dialogue, a dialogue that seems to hint that Socrates was, just before his execution, visited by a time traveller. From that starting point, an appealling cast of characters from ancient Greece to the mid-21st century tries to solve the enigma of the dialogue. Who wrote it? To what purpose? And is it possible that Socrates can be saved?

Like many time travel novels, the questions of paradox, predestination, fate and the urge to fight it loom large in Levinson's work. In fact, the philosophy of time travel has rarely been so thoroughly explored - Levinson can't resist having the father of philosophy himself weigh in on the debate, and Socrates' musings alone are worth the read.

Levinson's prose is clear, concise, and a pleasure to read, something he has in common with Scalzi, McDevitt and Haldeman, the three authors I mentioned in the review Levinson commented on. And thank goodness, because the novel's plot is rather Byzantine, with characters hopping back and forth through time and shifting points of view in both time, space and identity. A solid prose style combined with excellent storytelling ability is a rare thing, and made The Plot to Save Socrates a real pleasure to read.

I do have one small quibble. A significant subplot involving the ultimate fate of one of the leads was wrapped up "offscreen," as it were, resolved in narration rather than shown. I suppose I didn't need to be force-fed the resolution, but I was curious...

On the whole, though, The Plot to Save Socrates is worth a read because it raises the philosophical and moral questions of time travel in a new and interesting way. Is it morally correct to attempt to change history - even "for the better?" Does free will really exist, or is it an illusion? Levinson asks some pointed questions about Socrates' legacy too, and if you're a casual student of philosophy like me, you'll find the discussion fascinating.

Young Man's Fancy? Old Man's War

Last night I read John Scalzi's debut novel, Old Man's War, in one sitting. Scalzi's simple but engaging prose is a perfect fit for the compelling personal narrative of John Perry, a 75 year old widower looking for a second chance at youth and vitality. He gets it - but, since this is science fiction, at an out-of-this world price.

Scalzi sets up an intruiging premise: what if, by signing up for ten years of military service, you could trade a body withered with age for one healthier and better looking than you were at your peak? Would that be worth leaving your home planet behind forever?

Perry, having lost his wife of nearly forty years and seeing nothing in his future but a slow slide into death, pays that price. And in doing so, he finds new purpose, a new family, and new challenges: physical, psychological, and moral. Perry finds himself in a new frontier quite removed from the usual setup in similar space operas; this is no galaxy of good aliens and bad aliens, but one in which human beings are sometimes as rapacious and immoral as the beings they stoop to conquer.

This isn't a hard SF novel - there are no groundbreaking new concepts here - but it is a great character drama, with a self-effacing, witty, all too human protagonist that you can't help but root for.

Scalzi joins a short list of writers whose works I'll pick up as soon as they hit the shelves. If you enjoy Joe Haldeman's classic The Forever War or the novels of Jack McDevitt, you should give Old Man's War a try.