2018: My Year in Books

It's time for my annual look back at the words that paraded in front of my eyes over the previous 12 months.

It was a good year for books, although as always I wish I could have spent a lot more time reading -- and especially more time reading in-depth novels and nonfiction books. Still, I did read 111 books last year, slightly higher 2017's total of 96.

I'm not going to try to pick my absolute favorite, but I will note some exceptional reads.

First was the excellent graphic novel UPGRADE SOUL by Ezra Clayton Daniels. It's a marvelous science fiction story about race and identify. Powerful doesn't even begin to describe it.

I loved the three-book graphic novel series ROYAL CITY, an inter-generational tragedy written and painted by Jeff Lemire. I have so much to say about this series, but adding anything more here would give too much away.

Lemire is also writing a new horror series called GIDEON FALLS, illustrated by Andrea Sorrentino. The first volume came out this year; it starts off slow but ultimately blew my mind.

EXIT STAGE LEFT: THE SNAGGLEPUSS CHRONICLES was the weirdest and most perfect book of the year. Writer Mark Russell and artist Mike Feehan turn the old Hanna-Barbera cartoon to an examination of the politics and culture of the 1950s -- and today. Highly, highly recommended.

I rounded out the year by reading a few nonfiction books about environmental issues. The one that resonated the most with me was ECODHARMA, David Loy's new look at how Buddhism can save the planet. This was an early review copy, and I think the book is officially released this coming week. I say it's worth your time.

On top of the "new books," five of 2018's books were re-reads as I returned to series that weren't fresh in my brain -- the excellent, paranoid, horrific INJECTION series by Warren Ellis, Declan Shalvey and Joride Bellaire; and the quite wonderful RESIDENT ALIEN cozy mystery series by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse. Those series both get high recommendations.

There were plenty of other good books (and one or two stinkers) in 2019. You can see my full list here.

What's up for my reading in 2019? Well, I have a massive stack of environmental books to be read and reviewed, so that's a start. I'll also be trying to read more books by women and people of color through the year. And I'll probably read a graphic novel or two (or 20, or 50).

So what are you reading? I'd love to hear your recommendations at any time.

2017: My Year in Books

Well, well, well... another year gone by, another few dozen books consumed. This was both a really good and really bad year for me and books. I read quite a few -- 96 books, by my count -- but didn't come anywhere close to my totals for previous years.

Of course, there were a few reasons for that. Most importantly, my new job launching and editing The Revelator dominated my time this year. This required me to read a ton of material -- mostly articles -- which didn't leave much time for reading. I'm quite happy with that trade-off.

We also moved again this year, something I would have been happy to skip. Our landlord wanted to move his family back into the house we were renting, so the first half of the year was dominated by searching for a new place to live, packing and moving (and, to a lesser degree, unpacking). Oh well.

All of this meant some of my reading time found itself devoted to shorter material -- graphic novels, comics and short stories. Honestly, sometimes that's all the energy that I had. (But it added up. Last month, in a rare period of binging, I read something close to 250 Spider-Man comics written by Brian Michael Bendis and illustrated by a variety of artists. If I had counted those as their trade paperback collections, my total number of books read for the year would have been much, much higher.)

So anyway, how did the books that I actually got to read pan out? The best -- by far -- was Borne, the excellent post-apocalyptic novel by Jeff VanderMeer. That's an incredible book -- so good I may just re-read it in 2018.

The worst book? Again, by far, it was Frank Miller's latest Dark Knight opus, The Master Race. Holy abomination, Batman, that was truly awful on just about every level.

Other highlights: Critical Critters by Ralph Steadman and Ceri Levy; the Rachel Rising series by Terry Moore (which I finally got to finish this past year); and the most recent Walking Dead volume (book 28), which I thought was the best of the series so far.

So that's my brief look at my book list for this year. Check out past entries in this rarely updated blog for my lists from previous years. There's some good stuff.

What will this coming year hold? Well, The Revelator is going to dominate my year again -- as well it should, because I'm enjoying the hell out of this job (the hardest and best I've ever had) -- but I'll make sure to carve out some time for a few good books along the way.

216: My Year in Books

My name is John and I like to read.

A lot.

As in, I really like to read and I really read a lot. Last year, according to my tally, I read a surprising 132 books. That's up from 123 in 2015 and the highest number I have read in a given year, at least as an adult. And that doesn't even count the thousands of articles, comic books, comic strips, short stories and related ephemera that I consumed over the year.

How the hell do I read so much? Easy -- I have a tendency to pick very short books, like graphic novels, which comprised the bulk of my reading once again this year. I would love to take more deep dives into novels or whatever, but I don't always have time for that. That means that I have (no exaggeration) hundreds and hundreds of novels on my bookshelves and in my Kindle waiting to be read.

I'll get to them all one of these days.

(Cue me in another decade or two, looking like Burgess Meredith in "The Twilight Zone"...)

Anyway, here a a few recommendations (and one non-recommendation) from this year's list.

Best novels: NOS4A2 by Joe Hill and JOYLAND by Joe Hill's dad, Stephen King. That's one talented family.

Best nonfiction book: THE MADHOUSE EFFECT by Michael E. Mann and Tom Toles. An essential examination of the science of climate change and the industry devoted to denying it.

Best graphic novel: MURDER BY REMOTE CONTROL by Janwillem van de Wetering & Paul Kirchner. Boy, that's a truly weird book, luckily rescued from obscurity and brought back into print this year.

Best art book: EYE TO EYE,  collection of photographs by the mysterious Vivian Maier (subject of the great documentary, "Finding Vivian Maier"). I think this is already out of print due to fights over Maier's copyrights and estate, but it's worth trying to track down a copy.

Worst book of the year: Amazing Fantastic Incredible: A Marvelous Memoir by Stan Lee, Peter David & Colleen Doran. I'll admit that I love Stan Lee, but this was biography by way of publicist. Sublimely awful.

It's January 1 as I post this blog, so if you'll excuse me, I think I'll stop writing and start making some headway on this year's list of books.

2015: My Year in Books

Good lord, I read a lot of books in 2015.

How many? Try 123. That's the highest number that I've read in years and a full 23 books more than I read in 2014. Wow.

Of course, the majority of this year's books (once again) were graphic novels. There are a few pretty good reasons for that. First off is the incredible Portland library system: they stock so many graphic novels that I have wanted to read for a long time -- along with quite a few books that I never even knew existed. Second, I spend most of my days reading and writing articles, so turning to a visual medium is a nice change of pace for my evenings. Finally, even though I read a lot, my reading schedule is a bit unpredictable. I'd rather get in and out of a book (or comic, or article, or poem, or short story, or whatever) when I know I can finish it than start a book and not know when I'm going to be able to pick it up again.

Looking back, I'm actually a bit disappointed in this number. I wanted to read even more books this year -- especially novels -- but that wasn't in the cards. Too much work, too much stress, too many responsibilities.... but oh well, I still knocked quite a few volumes off the "to be read" pile.

Even though I didn't get to every book that I wanted to, I managed to read some amazing books this year. Here are a few of the standouts:

Best Fiction Book: North American Lake Monsters, a stunning short-story collection by Nathan Ballingrud

Best Non-Fiction Book: The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, a wonderful memoir/history book/cultural study by Jennifer 8. Lee

Best Graphic Novel: The Sculptor, Scott McCloud's amazing opus is a work of rare genius (runner-up: March: Book Two, an important piece of first-person history by John Lewis and his artistic collaborators)

Best Art Book: Nextinction by Ralph Steadman and Ceri Levy, a true feast for the eyes and a blow to the soul

Well, that's that. On to 2016. I have a few days off from work (a rarity, let me tell you), so maybe I'll get a head-start on this year's list. I have a few shelves of unread books staring at me from the bookshelf next to my computer, so I have plenty of options to choose from.

As for you, here's to a year of great books, no matter how many you read!

New blogs: Bicentennial Comics!

Oh man, I get obsessed sometimes.

Remember a few months ago when I posted my initial research into comic books published around the time of the Bicentennial?

Well, that post proved popular enough -- and it inspired enough thought from me -- that it has now spun off into its own blog.

Appropriately enough, I'm calling it Bicentennial Comics.

Each week I'll take a look at a different comic book related (in one way or another) to the Bicentennial. The first few posts are already up and I'll be posting new ones every week or so. My list of Bicentennial-themed comics has already almost doubled in size, and I've started looking into comic strips as well, so this could go on for quite a while.

Give it a look-see. I'm not only about wildlife, after all.

Bicentennial Comics [Updated!]

Every once in a while I like to look forward by looking back.

I was seven years old in July 1976, when the entire country colorfully celebrated the American Bicentennial. I remember school art projects, fireworks, parties, parades, all kinds of pins and other mementos, TV specials, and magazine covers.

Oh yeah, and comic books.

I honestly can't recall ever reading a Captain America comic book before Jack Kirby's Captain America's Bicentennial Battles, but that massive ("treasury"-sized) book quickly burned its way into my brain. I became a life-long fan of Steve Rogers, Jack Kirby, and, of course, history.

I still have my battered copy of Bicentennial Battles. I re-read it every few years. Of course in many ways it doesn't hold up, but in others it remains a high point of comics from that era.

But Bicentennial Battles is very lonely in my collection. Even though I fondly remember two other Bicentennial-themed comics from that year, they have long since left my possession. I want them back, and I want the rest.

Over the past few years, I have trimmed and slashed my comic-book collection over and over again. Now it's time to build it back up again, only in a more focused way. I'm going to pick a few kinds of comics that I want to collect and slowly seek them out.

Bicentennial comics shall come first.

It shouldn't be too hard. I've done some research. From what I can tell, there weren't all that many Bicentennial comics. Some of their connections to 1776/1976 were pretty tenuous. Quite a few were kids' comics. But I'm still going to try to track them down.

Here are the covers for most of the titles that I have identified so far. Some of them should be easy to find. Others may take a while. No worries, I'm not in a rush. I'll just try to finish my collection before the tricentennial.

This Adventure Comics issue is only Bicentennial-themed on its cover, but I still like it. (Similarly, almost every DC Comics title for July 1976 featured a cover banner proclaiming "DC Celebrates the Bicentennial!" As far as I'm concerned, those don't count as Bicentennial comics.)

The first of several underground comix on this list.

This was the only Batman comic to show it on the cover, but all of the above issues had Bicentennial-themed stories.

Not exactly patriotic, but I think my collection would be lacking if I didn't include this.

A restaurant freebie? I'm not sure if this will be worth tracking down, but I'll give it a shot.

This was actually the final issue in a 10-part storyline, starting in issue 193, all building up to the Bicentennial. Collect 'em all!

Okay, this one is a stretch. The only Bicentennial theme is a pun in the story title. But as a product of the time, it counts.

I don't think this issue contains any Bicentennial content aside from the cover, but apparently issue 15 does.

Who knew Dennis the Menace was so patriotic?

I had this one as a kid. Vague memories of it are what sent me down this trail.

Neither of these Jughead issues show any Spirit of 76 on the covers, but they each apparently contain Bicentennial-themed stories.

Another restaurant freebie.

Okay, so it's a calendar, not a comic book. Close enough.

A book, but it's about comics, so it counts. 

I don't think the date on this one is quite correct, but the story is set in 1776.

You can't tell from the cover art, but the text tells us there's a Bicentennial story inside.

Another restaurant freebie. Hmm.

Shazam issue 25 also seems to have had a Bicentennial story.

I had this one, too. Hmm. Maybe giant-sized "treasuries" should be the next category that I collect!

Probably more in the comic strip column than comic books, but I'm intrigued.

Did I miss any? Let me know. I'll add 'em to the list! (Update: I've already added a few -- thanks to everyone's contributions!)

2014: My year in books

I have a room in my house devoted to books and comic books. Boxes and boxes of the damn things. They've been sitting there for a few months, ever since we moved from Maine to Oregon. Some day soon I'll start to buy some new bookcases, un-box the books and spread them around the house, but for now they'll just have to sit there where the movers dumped them this past August.

Hopefully it won't take too long to dig into those boxes, because I own hundreds (if not thousands) of books and comics that I haven't had a chance to read yet. I read an average of a book or two a week, but there's never enough time to truly catch up, is there? This year's move -- not to mention my excessive work schedule and the terrible health problems that plagued my family -- also served to slow down my reading.

I know you're waiting for the total, so here it is: I read 100 books this year. That's a lot, but it's quite a bit below the 119 books that I read in 2013 and the 115 that I read in 2012. It's also a much lower number of pages: I read more short books (primarily graphic novels) than anything else this year. That's an adaptation that I needed to make. With everything going on this past year, I just didn't have the luxury of focusing on longer, more involved novels as much as I wanted to.

I did read some damned good books, though. Top of the list, "Cabinet of Curiosities" by Guillermo del Toro. If you want to read something that will inspire you and kickstart your creativity, pick this one up.

Worst book? Well, I think the most disappointing one was "To Hell You Ride," a graphic novel by actor Lance Henriksen, whose extreme right-wing politics and conspiracy theories destroy a story that had a lot of potential.

Now, looking at books alone hardly captures the true depth of my reading in 2014. I read a LOT of articles, short stories, individual comic books and essays that could never be tallied in a way like this.

Looking ahead, I'm going to work hard to get back to reading novels this year. I have a few boxes of them ready and waiting for me, after all.

Back from the Borderlands

Well this is exciting. The long-out-of-print anthology BORDERLANDS 5, containing my short story "All Hands," is finally available again, this time in a handy-dandy Kindle edition. It's hard to believe that it's been 11 years since this book first came out, initially in a limited-edition hardcover and then as a mass-market paperback (called "From the Borderlands").

Unfortunately, the e-book edition doesn't include a handful of the original stories, most notably the exemplary "Stationary Bike" by Stephen King, but the majority of the tales are still there and they're all fantastic.

This is probably the best (and weirdest) short story I ever wrote. I hope you'll give it a look.

2013 in books

I had an unstated goal this year: to read 120 books. That might seem like a lot, but I managed to read 115 books in 2012, so I figured I could beat that, right?

Well, I did beat the 115 but I didn't quite make it to 120. According to my tally on Goodreads, I read a grand total of 119 books in 2013, and that's still a number I can live with. It's a lot more than I have read in many years past and more than most people get to in a single year.

How the hell did I manage to consume so many books? Well for one thing, I read a lot of fairly short books. A good number of the titles on my list were novellas and graphic novels -- they don't take a heck of a long time to read. For another, I tend to read a lot of fast-paced crime novels -- they're often impossible to put down. For a third, we live in the middle of nowhere and my partner Colleen has spent the past dealing with some particularly troubling health issues (I won't go into details), so we don't go out very often. That leaves a lot of time for reading.

Now the reading, as much as I completed, didn't go entirely as planned. I originally set out to make this the year that I made my way through the novels of Joe R. Lansdale, who has long been one of my favorite writers. I read several of his books this year, but at some point I transitioned to reading more novels by Max Allan Collins and Lawrence Block, two of my other favorites. I don't expect I'll ever be able to get my way through all of Block's backlist (he's written a heck of a lot of novels, and I've barely made a dent in his bibliography), but I think I could get most of the way through the Lansdale and Collins lists in 2014 if I really push it. We'll see -- they both keep putting out a lot of new novels, and there are so many other authors also worth reading.

So what were the best books that I read in 2013? Well, I'll start with Block. I read most of his series about Keller, the stamp-collecting hit man, this year. The first one, "Hit Man," is especially good, but the next three are also excellent. Another Block work that simply stunned me was the novella "A Candle for the Bag Lady."

I read two Ray Bradbury collections this year: "A Medicine for Melancholy" (short stories) and "Bradbury Speaks" (essays). Both filled me with magic and joy. My Bradbury reading in the past was more the occasional short story than complete books; I'll remedy that error in the future.

Terry Moore's series "Rachel Rising" continues his trend of putting out the best comic books on the market. The first three graphic novel collections of this series were stunning.

Lansdale's "Lost Echoes," "The Boar" and "A Fine, Dark Line" did not disappoint. "The Boar," especially, impressed and stuck with me.

Almost every Collins book I read was excellent. I love his series about Nathan Heller, the fictional PI who "solves" real-world historical cases. "Blood and Thunder" and "Damned in Paradise" stand out in my mind.

Also notable: "March: Book One," the graphic novel by Congressman John Lewis and his collaborators. I can't wait for book two.

The worst book I read this year? The graphic novel "The Milkman Murders." I normally like the creators, but this one fell completely flat for me.

The most disappointing book? Well, I read several novellas in the "Dead Man" series created by Lee Goldberg and William Rabkin -- they're normally fun, pulpy, horror-tinged stories, and a few of them were truly excellent (Harry Shannon's "Kill Them All" and Aric Davis's "The Black Death" come to mind), but book 15, "The Killing Floor" by David Tully, contained such a badly stereotyped Native American character that it was borderline racist. It soured me on the whole series.

Anyway, that's the scoop on my 119 books for 2013. What will 2014 hold? Who knows -- but I'm already halfway through the first book of the year (which would have been #120 for 2013 if I had finished it), so I'd say I'm off to a good start.

Here's to good books in your future, as well.

Lore Four

Hey, it's here! The fourth edition of LORE -- the anthology series for which I serve is contributing editor -- is now available. There are some great stories in this volume. I hope you'll check it out. (It should also be available through Amazon soon.)

New e-books galore

My previously published short stories continue to reappear as new e-books for Kindle. I'm having a lot of fun revisiting these old tales -- which I still think are pretty darned good. I'm also have a good time adding new essays to each story and designing the covers. My earliest book cover designs were, I'll admit, fairly weak, but the latest few are actually pretty good. 

Anyway, these stories are all just 99 cents each. Check 'em out through my Amazon Author page here. I hope you enjoy them!

"Before the Beginning" was actually the beginning

Another short story from my archive has been resurrected. This time around I went all the way back to the beginning and resurrected my very first published short story, "Before the Beginning." This caveman horror/fantasy story first saw print way back in 1994. It hasn't been seen since.

But now it's back in an affordable Kindle edition, complete with a new afterword talking about the story's history and putting it into context with my own history. Yes, I wrote a history for a story set during pre-history. How meta of me.

This story doesn't display any of the humor that I started bringing to my work just a few years later, but it does showcase some of the themes that have been present in my writing from day one. I think it's a pretty solid tale and I hope you'll give it a look.

Is this the bleakest story I ever wrote?

Another of my old short stories is now available again. This time around it's "Learning to Fly," a bleak crime story about a man who has hit rock bottom. I think this happens to be one of the best stories I have ever written. In a lot of ways, it's even more relevant today than when I wrote it 15 years ago. I hope you'll check it out.

PS -- I also think this is the best cover I have designed to date. It's fun learning new things!

Poems That Don't Make Any Sense

I wrote the marketing copy for this new e-book, which also features one of my photographs on the cover:

Poems That Don't Make Any Sense is free for the next three days on Kindle. After that, it's just 99 cents. Check it out. It's funny...and more than a little odd.

I have words in my blood

1969. The year I was born, and the year my great-grandfather self-published his one and only novel, Jake, Hessian Soldier.

Clarence H. Nickerson was a civil engineer who founded C.H. Nickerson & Company, a general contractor that still employs a lot of people in northwest Connecticut. He also wrote a lot of articles about antiques and New England history, several of which my brother (the genealogist and historian in the family) has been able to track down.

Of course I never knew any of this while my great-grandfather was alive (he died when I was just a few years old), but here I am today, a writer who often covers engineering-related topics in my articles. It's amazing how connected we often are in ways we don't ever realize, sometimes until it's too late.

We only had one copy of Jake in the house growing up. That was my dad's copy, which now resides on my mother's bookshelf. My brother tracked down several other copies for family members a few years ago, and this particular copy came to me a few days ago from my grandmother's house after she passed away two weeks ago at the age of 97. It's inscribed to her, and dated just a few months after I was born.

With my grandmother's passing, another link to the past is gone. But with cherished items like this, some of the memories remain.

Lore!

Lore is back!

Back in the misty days of yore (the 1990s), Lore was the cream of the crop of horror and fantasy magazines. Like so many things it went away for a few years, but now it's back as a regular series of paperback anthologies. This time around founders Rod Heather and Sean O'Leary invited me to join them as contributing editor, starting with the third volume, which has now been released. It's a pretty darned impressive collection of all-new horror, fantasy and science fiction tales.

This is -- choke! -- the first fiction I have edited in -- gasp! -- nearly 15 years. I think it was worth the wait.

I hope you'll check it out.