New Year’s Commentary

I am in rare form today Folks. I am writing this to you in the morning…

I am NOT a morning person, at all.

I have my coffee, black, a granola bar, and a huge glass of water because I can only remember to drink lots of water in the morning. I don’t know where I am going with this. The coffee needs to kick in.

So, New Year’s. Haley was kicking around some ideas for me, and she knew it would be catastrophic to my psyche if we went near anything “reflective” or “resolutionary.” <—(new word). She settled on something I could talk for hours about but limited me, like usual, to 350-ish words. Without further ado, here are the top 5 books I read last year and a TINY explanation why.

Fifth, I read Go Tell It on the Mountain, by James Baldwin. It was required of me, but I fell in love with the characters, the tension, the backstories, and how Baldwin is real with his ending. That doesn’t mean I liked the ending. I didn’t. But it was real, and sad. A small paperback, it is very worth your time.

Fourth, I did a re-read of Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury. I peaked at this when I was in my early twenties, but never really dove into it until this year. Formative and life changing. Very powerful. It influenced my writing more than any other reference book this year, but not mechanically. It changed more of my idea of my writing process and why I do the things I do.

Third, and this one was rough, was There, There by Tommy Orange. This shit had me crying in the last chapters. It was infuriating at the beginning, and by the end, Orange had literally pulled my heart out and stepped on it. Huge emotional responses are amazing for me in fiction, let alone, literary fiction that was published this year. Fantastic book.

Second would be Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. This is a mainstream literary fiction book published last year that garnered a massive following because of the cultural content, but I loved it for a couple of reasons. Strong, admirable male leads are hard to come by, and this book has got a powerful figure. Also, it is a fantasy-type book, with lots of ghosts. Trying not to give it away, but super powerful read that was captivating.

And first, Hunting Monsters: Cryptozoology and the Reality Behind the Myths by Darren Naish. It’s no secret that I like to base my mythos around reality and the creatures we have in our own world. When you think about it, whenever someone makes up a new creature, it is still based in our own world with pieces of our own creatures or mythologies woven in. I just think about the people that inhabit my world, and how they would see the creatures that our settlers made up their stories around, and bingo. So, I tend to gravitate to Cryptozoology every once in a while. Plus, they are so fun to read! Fantasy in real life!

Anyway, I promise to be more awake next year, 🙂 and I hope everyone had a safe holiday and is relaxing on the couch while they read this, (or in bed is good too). It’s like 8 degrees in Denver so, that’s nice.