Every author has to start somewhere, but while some writers take a few books to find their stride, others manage to create incredible works straight out the gate. Or, perhaps, these authors haven’t even hit their peaks yet, and these debuts are that good but there’s something even more amazing to come. I can’t wait to find out. Here are five of the best debut novels I’ve read so far this year.
At the start of the pandemic I couldn’t read at all. I sat listlessly on the couch, unable to do anything but scroll endlessly through twitter. I was afraid to see what horrible news would come out next, more afraid to miss any of it. As time went on, I ventured back into the world of books, at first slowly and then voraciously. The world of fiction let me retreat, while the world of nonfiction offered some semblance of control through education. Now, as I finally get the chance to reemerge into the world after two weeks of self-quarantine (after returning from Southeast Asia to the United States), three months of self-isolation (like hell I was racing out to crowded bars or beaches), and another two weeks of self-quarantine (after moving to Ireland—right, that also happened recently), and in that time I’ve read 29 books. Here are my favourites of the books that got me through it.
Every year I set my Goodreads Reading Challenge goal at 52, an average of one book a week for the entire year. Ideally I would like to spread out my reading in just that way, reading one book each and every week. Of course, that never happens. Sometimes I fly through three books in three months; sometimes it takes me just as long to read a single, long, dense book (for example, last year’s reading choice of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susannah Clarke). Sometimes life gets in the way—I’ve read as almost twice as many books in the month I’ve been home as I did in the nearly three months I spent on the road. However, I’m more or less on track; last night I finished reading Anne Helen Petersen’s Too Fat Too Slutty Too Loud and Goodreads informed me that I have finished 27 books and am therefore halfway to my goal. Next up is Amelia Gray’s latest novel, Isadora, but first, here is a ranking and short review of all the books I’ve read so far this year.
Note 1: I’ve read two series or multiple volumes of a series this year; I’ve grouped them together rather than ranking each separate book.
Note 2: Books published in 2017 marked with a *
Note 3: You’ll notice that I say mostly positive things about all the books on this list. I’m pretty good at this point at guessing whether I’m going to enjoy a book before I pick it up, so I don’t tend to start many duds (which is good, because I’m also determined to finish even a dull book once I’ve opened it).
Continue reading “Every Book I’ve Read So far in 2017, Ranked”
I don’t know much about the Liga Mx. I follow the English Premier League and the Spanish Liga, and I’ve even started watching a bit of Bundesliga recently (although I’ve yet to find a broadcast with English commentary so the only words I can pick up are things like “Dortmund” and “das fitness coach”), so I hardly have time to watch yet another league anyway, although I sometimes catch a match on Univisión while I’m at the gym. I know a few key words and names in Mexican football, Hérculez Gómez and Chivas and Chicarito and the Azteca, but comparatively, I’m in the dark. Before reading Robert Andrew Powell’s gripping book, This Love is Not for Cowards: Salvation and Soccer in Ciudad Juárez, I had certainly never heard of Los Indios de Ciudad Juárez.
Continue reading “This Love is Not for Cowards by Robert Andrew Powell (2012): 4.5/5 stars”
It’s no secret that I’m a big Stephen King fan. It’s even less of a secret that I’m a big Dark Tower fan, given that I have the Sigil of Eld tattooed on my wrist (although I suppose one would also have to be a big Dark Tower fan to recognize it as such). Therefore, I was excited when I heard that King would be releasing a new Dark Tower novel this year, if “excited” is a strong enough term. I was even more excited when I found out it was to be set between the fourth and fifth novels (Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla), an excellent place for a little more information about Mid-World and Roland Deschain’s ka-tet.
Continue reading “The Wind Through the Keyhole (Dark Tower 4.5) by Stephen King (2012): 3.5/5 stars”
I first picked up Ten Thousand Saints because I thought it was cool that it was written by an Ithaca College writing professor. That is cool, but the book is even cooler. The novel addresses drugs, sex, pregnancy, AIDS, love, loss, grief, death, and family set against and embedded in the 1980s straight edge scene in New York City.
When fifteen-year-old Teddy McNicholas dies of a drug overdose in a small town in Vermont at the end of 1987, teenage rebel Jude Keffy-Horn, Tedd’ys brother Johnny, and new acquaintance Eliza come together in the city to struggle with holding on and moving forward. Johnny introduces Jude to the hardcore straight edge culture, and Jude’s initiation into the vegan, celibate, drug free world is a sharp contrast to his previous life and the people in it. Meanwhile, all three characters’ lives are changed when Eliza discovers that she is pregnant.
Jude. Johnny. Eliza. Teddy. Les. Rooster. I was absolutely fascinated by every character in this novel, from the protagonists down to those who only had minor roles in a few scenes. Each one had a strong voice and motivations, and the interactions between the characters were honest and powerful. I was especially drawn to Johnny, the tattoo artist and musician who served as Jude’s guide into the scene with simultaneously coping with his own losses and secrets. I was somewhat worried that Eliza would be playing the role of Manic Pixie Dream Girl when she first showed up, brash and beautiful from the big city, ready to change the lives of our heroes, but over the course of the novel I really warmed to her. She had the vulnerability you would expect of someone her age in her situation, but an independence and strong willed personality that let her hold her own against parents, love interests, and her own fears. There are no heroes and no villains (except for maybe death and the beginning of the AIDS epidemic) in this story; each character’s flaws are on full display, but at their hearts they believe they are doing the best they can.
Henderson’s voice is as strong in her setting as it is in her characters. I know very little about the 80s punk, hardcore, or straight edge scenes in New York City. However, I imagine that the atmosphere of the time was full of the same intensity that electrifies this novel. Every page is bursting with description and emotion, so much that sometimes I felt like I didn’t know where to look or what to think. Occasionally this was overwhelming; even more occasionally it seemed unnecessary. But for the most part I was engrossed by this portrayal of a subculture rife with passionate ideals and equally passionate characters. I was fascinated by the politics and the religion, the sexual and sometimes homoerotic undertones of the culture, and the way that the people in it connect and break apart. All of this is relayed with vivid and intense description.
The novel’s “weak” point is in the plot itself, which is sometimes meandering, sometimes jagged, and mostly unresolved. At the same time, I put “weak” in quotation marks because this lack of a single focus or closed ending is fitting with the tone of the book and the characters in it. The novel captures a moment in time, and the characters go on beyond it, profoundly changed by their experiences but not stagnated within them. A more focused conclusion would artificially end their stories, when the realism of the novel dictates that they should go on. Overall, Ten Thousand Saints is a novel full of authentic characters and rich in its description of an intense, emotional era.
thebestpossibletime 