Best Books of 2009

Last year, I just listed five books of whatever category that rocked my world in 2008. I decided to split up this year's selections into a few categories, partly to be just a little more organized and partly as an excuse to post more books. These aren't necessarily books that came out in 2009, and in fact most are probably a few years old. I just happened to have read them in 2009! I also tried to limit myself to 2 or 3 in each category.

Fiction
City and the City by China Mieville
I liked Perdido Street Station and its sequel, The Scar, but City and the City is easily Mieville's best book so far. Its storytelling is tighter than in Perdido and Mieville's talent for creating and developing an interesting, fully-formed world does not weaken in this book in the least. I'm looking forward to his other new book, Kraken.

The Love We Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak
I've blogged about this one before, and I still stand by my claim that it is a truly superb book.

The Orphan's Tales: City of Coin and Spice by Catherynne Valente
This is the sequel volume to The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden, which made my best-of list last year. Valente's use of various (uncommon) mythologies and her creative narrative structure make this volume an excellent follow-up and a fantastic read.

Non-Fiction
Science Fiction by Adam Roberts
This is another book I've already blogged about. Go figure.

Anthologies
Wastelands edited by John Jacob Adams
Not only do nearly all of the stories in this anthology rock, but the editor pieced together a handy bibliographic list of must-read apocalyptic literature. It's not a conclusive list by any means, but it makes for the perfect finishing touch on an anthology that already would have had my vote for this list.

Paper Cities edited by Ekaterina Sedia
This book took the 2009 World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology, and against some stiff competition, too. And, what's more is that this book deserved to win against such competition. It's worth reading just to take a close look at urban fantasy (though I think Hal Duncan's contribution for Nova Scotia would have been just as at home here as the story Sedia selected.)

Nova Scotia edited by Neil Williamson
Amazon claims this book doesn't exist, but I have a copy so I know they lie. Perhaps on the U.K. version of the site...anyway, there's not a flop in this anthology. There were definitely a few I liked more than others, but overall this may be one of the most solid anthologies I've ever read.

Young Adult/Children's
Vintage: A Ghost Story by Steve Berman
I've already written more about this book here, and just as with Barzak's book I stand by my recommendation.

The Blueberry Girl by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess
Gaiman and Vess make my favorite team in book writing and illustration. McKean is cool and all, but I've always preferred Vess's work. This is a very simple storybook, but it has a fantastic message and beautiful art, and I can't wait to give this book to my niece when she starts reading.

Cory Doctorow, New Arrivals

This entry was originally going to be my paper on Rousseau and Matthew G. Lewis' The Monk, but Blogger freaks out every time I try to transfer the text from my Word document. Maybe I'll upload it somewhere and post the link instead...I had the same problem with a post on mythology I went through the trouble of typing, only to find out I couldn't put it up here. Grr.

So instead of posting my paper, which probably no one wants to see anyway, I decided that today's entry would be a review of Cory Doctorow's YA novel Little Brother. This book was up for this year's Hugo Award, and deservedly so, I think. As you can probably tell by the title, Little Brother pulls heavily (and quite beautifully) on George Orwell's 1984, and would probably be an awesome follow-up to any teen reading Orwell's masterpiece.

I've been on a major kick with this whole "classics-updated-for-the-new-age-of-politics" thing (just ask me how I feel about the incredible Gundam Wing revamp that is Gundam 00) and Little Brother does not disappoint on that front. I just wish Doctorow had written this novel a few years earlier, while I was still in high school and growing up in the shadow of 9/11 inspired domestic fear-mongering legislation like the Patriot Act. I can just imagine the uproar his book would have caused in my little reading circle! I've already been advocating it to several of my friends, many of whom went to high school with me.

Honestly, at first I was a little put off by Doctorow's use of 'hip slang', which occasionally...wasn't that hip. I got a good snicker or two (at at least one moment of "WTF, srsly?") but after a few chapters I didn't even realize I was listening to a 17 year old techie geek speak. All I was aware of was how rocking awesome the book had become once it started really taking off. Doctorow's knowledge and use of technology is both frightening and seriously cool, and kind of makes me want to pick up a computer programming book or two so I can learn how to actually do some of the bad-ass tricks Marcus pulls off in the novel. Also, he managed to piss me off all over again about the U.S. running rough-shod over MY personal rights and privacy. Ooh, I felt 16 and angry again!

The plot summary on Amazon covers everything else you probably want to know. I simply felt the need to share my exciting discovery with the world! If you see a copy of this book, at least pick it up and look it over. It may be one of the best books you read this year.

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In addition to Last Drink Bird Head, I have a copy of Richard K. Morgan's fantasy The Steel Remains on its way to my doorstep. It's shipping all the way from London though (isn't it sad when directly importing something is cheaper that buying it used from a middle man?) so it may be a few weeks before it arrives.

Next review- possibly Max Brooks' World War Z? Seriously, it totally rocks. Or perhaps Greg Pak's and Carmine Di Giandomenico's X-Men: Magneto Testament. Guys, when a graphic novel is good, it's really, really good, and Magneto Testament is AWESOME.

Top Reads 2008

I was digging around Half Price a few days ago with my friends, pulling out old favorites and recent good reads (and, of course, new eye-catching titles) when I came across a copy of The Book Thief. I handed it over to one of my friends and told her that it was probably one of my favorite books from last year, probably in my top five. That got me to thinking, though...What have I read recently (as in the year 2008) that really moved me? That was so good, every time I see another copy of it, I'm tempted to buy it and send it to someone else who needs to read it? My coworker and I read Hal Duncan's Vellum at the same time, and a number of our other coworkers heard us talking (very animatedly) about it and started reading it, too. Now everytime we get a customer named 'Seamus' or 'Renard' or 'Carter', we twitter a bit, exchange significant looks, and in general scare the living hell out of said customer.

Anyway, that's part of the joy of finding a really good new book, right? You share it with people you love and you know will love the book almost as much as you (because you always have first rights to fangasming, since you discovered it, right?). Well, these books made the cut out of the massive stack of things I read in 2008 to be listed as my top five. Not all of them are new- or even from this decade (Delany's for example), but all are excellent reads which I've pushed to customers at my job or to my friends and coworkers. My copy of Vellum is starting to look a bit tattered from being loaned out...maybe I should keep the next copy I buy...


The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente (I have a link to one of her interviews on my last blog)



The Motion of Light in Water: Sex and Science Fiction Writing in the East Village by Samuel R. Delany (It's the only non-fiction book to make this list, and yet somehow it's still about SF. Go figure.)



The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (Ok, ok, it's a YA novel...don't judge me! Get the book and judge it!)



Vellum and Ink by Hal Duncan (I'm counting these on one line because they're a...duology. I guess)



Perdido Street Station by China Mieville (This is another I keep talking up to customers. I plan on re-reading it sometime soon, too)

Millennium Actress

Millennium Actress is an animated feature film by the creator of Tokyo Godfathers and Perfect Blue, Satoshi Kon. Released in 2001, the film quickly established itself as a cult classic here in America as one of the highest quality full-length anime films ever translated- in fact, the Chicago Tribune declared it as "[a] piece of cinematic art. It's modern day Japanese animation at its best..." (and yes, I feel a bit like I'm typing an essay for a class) . Its reception in its homeland of Japan was even more supportive- it freaking TIED with Miyazaki's Spirited Away for the Grand Prize of Japan Agency of Cultural Affairs Media Arts Festival.

Personally, I have to say it's one of the most amazing films I've ever seen. The story follows the life of a young actress as it simultaneously follows her last interview as an old woman, and as the plot progresses it becomes increasingly challenging to tell her life apart from her roles in the movies- every part she ever played seems to have a personal resonance with her character, and often the only way you can be sure if she's playing herself versus one of her characters is to keep track of who is in what costume!

Every character in the movie plays a 'role' in her life- even the interviewer and his cameraman show up to rescue her several times over the course of the movie. Of course, it helps that he really did save her once when he was a young man and she as a much younger woman! The border between what happened in her tumultuous life and what the women she played experienced in their lives is deliciously blurred.

Her personal story of heartache and lost love is echoed across the lives of her characters- every lovesick teenager and heartbroken geisha, every abandoned young ninja (kunoichi, for those in the know) and unsatisfied housewife has one obvious, beautiful factor in common.

Every single one of them spends her life hunting for her one, true, long lost love- and find more pleasure in the chasing of this love than they ever do in reaching it.

Her tale is sorrowful and yet also full of hope and loyalty. She falls in love with a man who is an artist and a revolutionary, only to come home one day and find out that he has been forced to flee the country to avoid capture and execution. Before he leaves, he gives her a little trinket- the key to "the most important thing". She takes the key and swears to return it to him one day, and on that day she will tell him what that most important thing is. She follows him to Manchuria, acting in more and more movies in the hope that one day, he will see her and return to her. She keeps the key for most of her life, barring a few periods when it was either lost or taken from her. Not once during the course of the movie does she say what "the most important thing" is.

The movie is visually stunning in addition to being a emotional voyage. Satoshi Kon's talent for beautiful character design and selection of background animation is evident in full force throughout the course of Millennium Actress. The animation itself is graceful and flows elegantly from scene to scene, which isn't an easy task considering how jarring some of the switches between time periods, costumes, and environments could have been, given the structure of the movie. Every scene displays a vibrant array of colors that enhance the mood of the film, either by illustrating the joy and exhilaration of the actress' first love, or by sharply countering the lovers' heart-rending separation.

I've personally recommended this movie to several people and advocate watching it to anyone who enjoys either anime or those really, really rare love stories that mean something far deeper than boy-meets-girl.