2020 imposed a narrative arc on all of us that we never expected to have. From the impeachment in January to the early days of the pandemic to the lockdowns, race riots, conspiracy theories, and finally to the US election and the last month of 2020 that saw us limping sadly over the finish line — we’ve unintentionally been a part of something big and terrible. Normally my year’s reading gives me a chance to reflect on what I’ve read, but this year’s reading also reminds me where I was in that narrative.
The Grammarians was my book group’s first book of the year (my pick — I liked it, but nobody else did). We talked about it at Bar Tonique on N. Rampart where they served a cocktail that had to be shaken for five minutes. The bartender had nice arms, so we were ordering five-minute cocktails all night. I read Naked on the aeroplane to San Francisco for work and The Cloven Viscount in a friend’s flat in Reno. I read Dark Tales sitting in a wine bar in the French Quarter, one of the last times I went out before the lockdown came. My book group discussed Full Service just after the lockdown had started to lift so we put on masks and met at Wrong Iron, confused and half-joking about the contact tracing and social distancing. We haven’t met in person since then. I read four Doctor Who novels on the train to and from Los Angeles when I was so desperate for a holiday that I sealed myself in a metal coffin and spent a whole week looking out windows instead of actually doing anything. I read We Are Legion (We Are Bob) during the blackout following Hurricane Zeta when the only light I had was candles jammed into the necks of wine bottles and the glow of an ebook reader. I read Justina Ireland’s wonderful Dread Nation and Deathless Divide thanks to Parker, who gave these to me as birthday and Christmas presents.
We’ve all done a lot of reading to forget this year, but reading weirdly also helps you to remember. I hope reflecting on what you’ve read will give you the opportunity to gain some perspective on the bad times and be thankful for the good ones. I think we’ll all be hoping for a much less memorable 2021.
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The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine
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The Hippopotamus by Stephen Fry
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Patience by Daniel Clowes
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Naked by David Sedaris
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The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino
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Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson
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Chatterton by Peter Ackroyd
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The Hundred Brothers by Donald Antrim
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The Library of the Unwritten by A.J. Hackwith
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Adorable Monsters by Brent Reichenberger
Reichenberger is a poet who looks haunted af. This chapbook of his poetry is a masterpiece. I keep coming back to it — full of hurt, humor, and vengeance. It’s guileless but not artless, and its honesty is what makes some of the poems stick so hard. One reads simply, “we’re both looking at the same moon & you’re a fucking asshole”. Beautiful.
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Doctor Who: Sky Pirates! by Dave Stone
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Doctor Who: The Romance of Crime by Gareth Roberts
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Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
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I Like What I Know by Vincent Price
My friend Sabine died in 2018 and earlier this year I was really touched to be given this book from her belongings. We were both big Vincent Price fans so it was a lovely way to remember her. When I opened it up I discovered it was actually autographed by the man himself! Now I know it’s passed through both his hands and Sabine’s.
While it’s not always a compelling read, Price’s memoir really sings. It’s less a book of autobiography and more about his life-long love of art. It inspired me to pay more attention to art in my own life. I own a couple of pieces that were (for me) on the expensive side, but I’ve never for a minute regretted spending the money. Buying and enjoying art is one of the best things you can do with your cash, and it pays you back every day. Price makes you see each adventure and each work of art through his eyes, and most of us would be lucky to feel even a fraction of his passion.
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Rupert of Hentzau by Anthony Hope
I finally picked up the sequel to The Prisoner of Zenda and it’s an equally good read. I found the ending slightly disappointing, but Hope knew how to write a good swashbuckling page-turner. It’s not hard to see how he inspired the whole genre of the Ruritanian romance. It’s a pity that some classic adventure books have fallen out of the public consciousness. Despite it being one of the most filmed novels, people don’t read Zenda any more and I can’t figure out why. It’s a cracker.
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Full Service by Scotty Bowers
Bowers, Hollywood’s behind-the-scenes procurer for the rich and famous, writes a tell-all memoir. I can never watch a Charles Laughton film again.
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The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin
This novel’s reputation stands on its own. It’s the first Le Guin novel for adults that I’ve read (I vaguely remember reading A Wizard of Earthsea when I was a teenager). Took me a while to get into what was going on, but by the end I couldn’t put it down. That Le Guin was a hell of a writer and I’m really looking forward to exploring more of her work. With all the conversations about gender identity and pronouns going on these days, I find myself mentioning this novel quite a lot, which is extraordinary when you realise it was written fifty years ago.
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Red Dwarf: Last Human by Doug Naylor
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Red Dwarf: Backwards by Rob Grant
I read these two Red Dwarf novels back-to-back because they are both sequels to the previous novel in the series but not to each other. They both pick up where the last one left off and tell different stories, but then the concept of canon has never meant very much for Red Dwarf so I don’t think anyone is complaining too hard.
What I found striking was the stark difference between the quality of Naylor and Grant’s writing. Together they wrote some of the finest television scripts in the world, but they do very differently on their own. Naylor doesn’t quite succeed with the novel format, but Grant hits the ground running and writes a much more cohesive and sophisticated novel.
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Heartless by Marissa Meyer
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Too Much and Never Enough by Mary Trump
Hoo boy, what to say about this one. People said Mary Trump had an axe to grind. Well of course she bloody did. No-one writes a tell-all memoir about their family if they don’t have an axe to grind, and by the same token no-one tries to keep family secrets unless they’re guarding their own interests. There is no neutral party in a family drama. Frankly if even 60% of what Mary Trump writes is true, it still explains a whole lot. It all sounded very probable to me. Her account of the Trump children’s abusive upbringing was shocking, but not surprising. We knew something like this must have happened to produce a specimen like Donald, but it’s nice to know the details.
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Doctor Who: Timewyrm: Genesys by John Peel
Ah, some good ol’ fashioned pandemic reading. I decided to complete my collection of Virgin Books’ range of Doctor Who novels from the 90s and start reading them in order. Don’t judge me, there was a lockdown, we all needed some comfort reading! Besides which, the fact that Virgin had an open submissions process means that this range was where a lot of new writers cut their teeth. These books aren’t just fun, pulpy sci-fi, they are also sophisticated and show off the raw talents of their writers. Granted, Timewyrm: Genesys isn’t an example of any especially outstanding writing, but it’s a solid read and it introduces the range.
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Doctor Who: Timewyrm: Exodus by Terrance Dicks
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Doctor Who: Timewyrm: Apocalypse by Nigel Robinson
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Doctor Who: Timewyrm: Revelation by Paul Cornell
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Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
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Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
It’s not a competition and I’ve ready many equally good books this year, but I think I’m going to pick this as my favorite. It’s long, so it took me a while to get through it, but it’s so funny, heartbreaking, and sophisticated that it will stay with me for a while. It’s about a schoolboy who dies in chapter one and the events leading up to his sudden death. I went to an all-boys’ private school so you have to do some pretty quick talking to get me to read something like this — going through it all once was more than enough. But Murray writes in such an endearing and charming way that even the boys’ adolescent fuckery and braggadocio are appealing. I won’t go into too much detail because I don’t want to spoil anything, but Murray makes you fall in love with these characters and then whips the rug out from underneath you when you least expect it. It was full of laugh-out-loud passages that made me rush up to my friends and make them listen to what I’d just read.
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My Man Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
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Doctor Who: Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible by Marc Platt
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The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi
I don’t mind reading the occasional kids’ book, especially when it’s such a huge cultural cornerstone like Pinocchio. But Jesus this was a shite book. Pinocchio fucks around, is constantly saved/rewarded for no good reason, and all so the author can ladle out his shitty moral lessons with a heavy hand. Wikipedia says this is the most translated non-religious book in the world and a universal metaphor for the human condition. I say it’s flaming hot garbage. Go read Alice in Wonderland instead.
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Doctor Who: Cat’s Cradle: Warhead by Andrew Cartmel
For me this is the first truly adult book in Virgin’s Doctor Who range. It’s narratively sophisticated, has emotional depth, showcases some extraordinary characterisation, and shows off just how good Doctor Who can be with the right elements. The story itself isn’t even that notable, but the way Cartmel tells it through all the normal people whose paths intersect with the Doctor’s makes it very real and very poignant. This is the birth not just of the “Doctor lite” stories in the new series, but also of the new series’ love and passion for ordinary people. I also think it’s important for the characterisation of the Seventh Doctor. We knew from stories like “The Curse of Fenric” that the Doctor plays long, complex games across time and that he freely manipulates people as pawns, but this is the first time we actually see him do it. It’s chilling to see how he uses people who are dying, and when they ask him for help he refuses — not just the ones who are morally compromised, but also the ones who’ve done nothing wrong. Shreela’s death in the opening is just something that has to happen for the rest of his plan to work.
This is where Cartmel shows us how his tenure as Doctor Who’s script editor produced the best few series the show had seen in years. The quality of his work puts this way ahead of the other novels in the range so far. This is not a slight on the other authors, who did bang-up jobs, but a mark of just how good Cartmel is.
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You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett
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The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
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We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis Taylor
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The Naked Civil Servant by Quentin Crisp
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The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
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Department of Mind-Blowing Theories by Tom Gauld
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Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum
Joseph Weizenbaum was a computer scientist known for writing a program called ELIZA that could simulate the ability to have conversations with human beings. In the 1960s this was a pretty radical achievement, but ELIZA was never intended to be intelligent or demonstrate computers’ ability for thought. Nevertheless ELIZA kicked off a lot of excitement about the future of artificial intelligence, which horrified Wiezenbaum and prompted him to write this book about the nature of tools, how computers work, the complexity of the human condition, and the ethical application of science.
Weizenbaum wrote that artificial intelligence may be possible, but that anything less than completely simulating a human being cell by cell must result in an intelligence alien to our own. He was frustrated by the extravagant claims of the “artificial intelligentsia”, the irresponsible ways computers are being used, and the obscenely reductive view that humans are machines. His book is not just limited to computers, but takes a fairly broad philosophical scope that includes the way that science has become the primary mode in which we understand the world to the exclusion of art and philosophy. He also talks about how, even in 1976, people were feeling a helpless rage at being circumscribed by anonymous computers that no-one really controls.
Weizenbaum died in 2008, so he lived long enough to see computer control of modern life become more and more deeply ingrained, but not long enough to see the effect that social media has had on the world over the last ten years. I don’t feel like I have to wonder what he would have made of it because everything he wrote in 1976 was so insightful and based on fundamental principals that it still applies. I would really like to have had his voice in the modern world, though, because I think we lack any degree of sophisticated reflection and understanding of the direction our society is moving in.
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Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
This was a surprise disappointment. I really expected a good page-turner, but it turned out to be slapdash and really poorly written. None of the characters has much personality, and Crichton will happily stop the plot to give you two paragraphs of back-story or a few pages of clunky “As you know, Bob” dialogue. Some bits were so bad they made me laugh with disbelief and exasperation. Why didn’t anyone tell me Crichton was the Dan Brown of the 1990s?
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The Cruising Diaries by Brontez Purnell
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Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
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Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis
Maybe I’m just late to the party on this one, but I’ve never seen the movie(s) and hadn’t heard of the book until just recently. I loved this right from the start where we meet Mame in all her society fabulousness. From there it continued to get more camp, rude, bitchy, and transgressive with every new escapade. At the start you might be forgiven for dismissing Mame as some airhead socialite who only lives to spend money and indulge every fad that comes her way, like Hermione in Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers (also a great read). She quickly proves you wrong, though. She’s perspicacious, quick-witted, and socially progressive in a way that looks prophetic when you read this in 2020. Sure, she’s still a profligate socialite and a scatterbrain, but that’s what makes her so much fun.
I don’t know why more people aren’t talking about this. It’s not only held up beautifully, there were parts that felt so modern they could have been written yesterday. It’s a hugely funny read and it feels long overdue for rediscovery. I can’t quite bring myself to watch the movies, which I know must have had to butcher the edginess of the book — think interracial sex, cougars preying on young college students, casual prostitution, and dirty kids singing songs about fucking pigs. But in a time when everything is getting remade, this is one of the movies that I think would actually benefit from a modern treatment.
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Doctor Who: Cat’s Cradle: Witch Mark by Andrew Hunt
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Deathless Divide by Justina Ireland
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Borges and the Eternal Orang-Utans by Luis Fernando Verissimo