1. The Black Mage – Daniel Barnes and DJ Kirkland
2. West and East – Harry Turtledove
3. Ready Player Two – Ernest Cline
4. The Incendiaries* – R.O. Kwon
5. Killing Poetry* – Javon Johnson
6. Snapdragon – Kat Leyh
7. Trick Mirror – Jia Tolentino
8. Why Won’t You Apologize? – Harriet Lerner
9. Save It For Later* – Nate Powell
10. Love and Rage** – Lama Rod Owens 
11. Girl Haven** – Lilah Sturges, ET al
12. Super Black – Adilifu Nama
13. Klara and the Sun – Kazuo Ishiguro 
14. Self-Compassion – Faith Harper
15. Daddy – Emma Cline
16. Rip It Up and Start Again-Simon Reynolds*
17. First Person Singular – Haruki Murakami
18. The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club – Peter Hook*
19. Leave the World Behind- Rumaan Alam*
20. Are You Listening? – Tillie Walden
21. Supernova Era – Cixin Liu
22. Depart, Depart – Sim Kern
23. Library 2.0 – Casey and Savastinuk
24. Palaces for the People – Eric Klinenberg
25. X-Men: Grand Design – Ed Piskor
26. Nuking the Moon – Vince Houghton
27. Mooncakes – Suzanne Walker & Wendy Xu
28. Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir**
29. Remain in Love** – Chris Frantz
30. Scarred – Sarah Edmondson
31. Lafayette in the Somewhat United States – Sarah Vowell
32. Lovecraft Country – Matt Ruff*
33. We Have Always Been Here – Lena Nguyen*

RE-READS

• Parable of the Sower – Octavia Butler
• Parable of the Talents – Octavia Butler
• A Feast for Crows – George R. R. Martin
•  A Dance with Dragons – George R. R. Martin

OVERVIEW

• The gender balance across authors/editors this year is 22 men, 15 women,  and 1 nonbinary author. (Balance is 23 men, 16 women, 1 nonbinary author with re-reads.)
• The above list includes graphic novels, which I include as books when they are singular narrative works. Trade paperback collections of serial issues of a comic book are counted separately below.
• I also re-read four books — Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, as well as George R. R. Martin’s A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons. The latter two of which are fairly substantial in length, and I read them in a combined fan-generated version based on chronology. All of these are considered recommended, particularly the Butler books.
• As with last year (2020), this year was full of a lot of heaviness, which affected my motivation for reading. I started several books that I didn’t finish for a few different reasons, such as a book being interesting, but not as interesting as another prospective read; heaviness/emotional activation potential; and just plain proximity to year’s end. I’m currently ACTIVELY reading about four different books, but likely have about 20 that I started last year or this year, and have yet to finish. A few highlights among those I’m in the middle of, but haven’t finished yet: Polysecure by Jessica Fern, Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell, and The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal.
• I’m eagerly looking forward to a year from now, when I’ll be done with my library science graduate school program, and thus, have more free time to read as I wish, as opposed to squeezing things in here and there. I’d really like to get back up to about 45-50 books a year.

SPECIFIC REVIEWS

The reason this booklist took longer than usual for me to post is because it was hard to muster the focus and energy to dig through and consider even just a handful of books towards writing reviews for them. But I eventually got here, with this combination of reviews and honorable mentions. 

Love and Rage by Lama Rod Owens

This book — along with the teachings and spiritual mentorship of Lama Rod Owens — was a godsend to me this past year. It combines memoir, ruminations on Blackness and queerness, elements of Tantric Buddhism teachings, and even toxic dynamics in Buddhist spiritual community to gesture twoards a newly emergent synthesis of intersectional, spiritual practice. I’ve been into Buddhism since I was a teenager, and found myself unsatisfied with many of the answers that Christianity provides around how we develop meaning and purpose for our lives, as well as why suffering, hurt, and injustice exist. However, I’ve similarly struggled through some experiences with Buddhism to find practices and ideas that reflect my experience as a Black man in a society where Black life is so cheap and disposable, and which work to include not just individual experience, but collective experiences of suffering and harm from an unapologetically political perspective — in other words, that reflects the full complexity (or at least, a more full complexity) of who I am in the world. 

In this book, Lama Rod pushes the reader to reflect and understand the need to not deny woundedness in its many forms, but to actually learn how to hold and sit with pain, trauma, suffering, heartbreak, and even anger. Most pointedly, he speaks of his own experiences with anger, and how he’s come to understand them as the surface expression of wounds and hurt — hurt caused by other individuals, or by larger systems and structures in society, and thus, being able to be present with — but not driven by — one’s anger enables the opportunity to gain deeper insight into yourself. He offers ways to connect to your “benefactors” —  beings and forces both seen and unseen, living and dead — to build up your own capacity to be present with those experiences and feelings you find most difficult, so you can learn from them, and understand what they are telling you what you need to be well, and to be free. Lama Rod promotes a vision of liberation that is not just individual, but collective, through learning how to shift from reactivity to challenging experiences towards responsiveness, and commitment to others’ liberation from suffering as tied to one’s own. It’s also based in breaking out of illusion — not just the basic experience of the world — but socially constructed systems of oppression, exploitation, violence, and the roles/scripts imposed on us to enable those systems to function, all of which seem so solid, but really are just creations and fictions we have created (and can thus, change). He encourages and supports the reader — particularly Black and queer folks — in working to come home to their body, to be embodied as part of this liberatory journey. Again, this is based in his belief that we don’t get free through denying our experience in the relative/subjective world (however much it may be based in illusions), but through using these experiences — learning to “metabolize” them, in his terms — to help us better understand more ultimate reality and truth. 

I get that this is a lot, but both reading this book and doing regular weekly Medicine Buddha practices with Lama Rod virtually have really made this past year transformative for me — in both rewarding and challenging ways. But as someone who wants to be free, and who also wants that for others, this book has become a wellspring for my emerging understanding of my own experiences of disembodiment and woundedness, pointing me towards healing and a more liberated sense of myself and the larger world. He’s recently been speaking a lot about how his next book — tentatively titled something like The New Saints — is actually set to an even more unapologetically Black, queer-inflected dharma, which may actually disrupt or transgress many common conceptions of Buddhism, towards a more complex vision and set of practices that work towards the goals set out in this book. 

Girl Haven by Lilah Sturges (with Meaghan Carter on illustrations) 

This is a wonderful YA graphic novel about gender identity, starting off with the premise of a main character whose mother disappeared years ago, but not without leaving her child — seventh grader Ash, ostensibly a boy — steeped in stories of a magical kingdom that also happens to be girls-only. When Ash and friends are transported there, they experience a doubled journey through this new, fantastic world, and through Ash’s growing understanding of herself as a transgender girl.  

Rip It Up and Start Again by Simon Reynolds

I’ve long been a fan of several post-punk bands from the UK in the late 1970s into the 1980s — Joy Division, Public Image Limited, The Smiths, The Cure, and others. However, this is an engaging and fascinating wider history of the overall post-punk landscape, with focus on several post-punk, electronica-based, and new wave bands in the UK and US, such as Devo (another big favorite of mine), Pere Ubu, The Slits, The Human League, Cabaret Voltaire, and Scritti Politti, as well as labels like Postcard Records and Rough Trade. Reynolds’ primary framing — laid out early on — is that while punk has been integrated somewhat into most understandings of late 20th century popular music, post-punk and some other aligned musical currents have been just as influential. Besides these histories, Reynolds also provides rich pictures of the cities, politics, art, and scenes that birthed these bands and labels (Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, London, Cleveland, Akron, NYC). As a musician who loves learning about the forces and experiences that shapes the music I enjoy, I found this to be a rewarding and educational read, even around bands I already know a lot about. One highlight was reading more about Orange Juice, a post-punk pop group from Scotland who I’ve heard referenced in music histories for years but never investigated until after reading this book; their glorious and goofy song “Rip It Up,” provides the title for the book. (Their frontman, Edwyn Collins, later had a big hit in 1995 with the song, “A Girl Like You.”)

Leave the World Behind- Rumaan Alam

It’s so hard to describe this book, but it’s simply amazing, I will try and provide a few key points of the premise: 1) A family of four heads out to the country for vacation, 2) some sort of apocalyptic event occurs, 3) they struggle to understand and deal with it, each other, and a few other characters that show up. The atmosphere of this book feels somewhat theatrical, in the best way, with a sense of ominous, heavy presence and urgency to what each character is experiencing alongside the reader that makes it feel as if it is happening right now. On top of that, the narration — third person, but deeply immersive — really draws out every nook of the characters’ internal worlds, their different ways of coping and collapsing, and their sense of disorientation and uncertainty, as they try to make their way — moment by moment — in an unnerving, disorienting new world alongside each other. Intimacy and distance coexist and oscillate throughout the story, pulling you along and continually building a delicious sense of dread and tension.

Remain in Love – Chris Frantz

As noted above, I enjoy reading memoirs by members of bands I like, even if the result is finding out things I didn’t want to know about them (or their bandmates, or other musicians they have had interactions with). In this book, Chris Frantz provides this vivid rendering of his life before, during, and after his days as drummer of Talking Heads. It’s the first real full history of this band I’ve ever read, and it offers great stories about their early days in Providence, then as a hungry, struggling band living in a loft with no heat in 1970s NYC. They come off as just another band in the emergent NYC punk and no wave scene, with many tales of friendships with other familiar, more visibly punk presences such as Blondie, the Ramones, and others, as well as descriptions of how they wrote some of their most iconic and seminal songs. The book lays out fairly early some of the issues that later lead to Talking Heads’ dissolution (David Byrne’s inability to work well with others in a democracy, most prominently), and some troubling tour stories about Johnny Ramone, known for being a conservative, but revealed here to be also a massive bully. Frantz tells none of these stories with any air of sensationalism or even deep bitterness, more an authenticity and sense of regretful reflection. This is because, at its heart, this book is not just about TH, but Frantz’s decades-long marriage to Tina Weymouth, the band’s bassist, and his creative collaborator and partner; the two formed Tom Tom Club as a side project during a Talking Heads hiatus, only to have it become more successful commercially, and subsequently became producers for bands like Happy Mondays. Best of all is the news that she has her own book coming. I have a lot of respect for her — as a self-taught bass player with killer groove and creativity, and as a strong woman who Frantz presents as a major badass, who commanded respect and her due in a sometimes male-dominated scene (and band). 

HONORABLE MENTIONS

The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon

I have a morbid fascination for cults and similar subcultural communities. This novel by R.O. Kwon is a dark and engaging story of two characters’ very different paths after coming into the orbit of a charismatic leader, who is the other main character. It’s told in a nonlinear fashion, which makes it all the more compelling. (Content Warning: there is a sexual assault in the book.)

The Hacienda: How Not to Run a Club – Peter Hook

This is the absolutely ridiculous and unbelievable, yet true story of the Hacienda nightclub in Manchester, as told by Peter Hook (founding bassist/member of Joy Division and New Order). The Hacienda was essentially an art project started by several prominent figures in the Factory Records orbit, the Manchester label that released Joy Division and New Order’s music throughout the 1980s, and heavily subsidized through these band’s profits. While it featured many now-famous acts in their early days — Madonna in her first UK performance, The Smiths, and many others — it quickly turned into a colossal, but beautiful disaster, through mismanagement to outright theft, and an influx of crime and drugs. Hook pulls no punches regarding how bad, misguided, and outright wrong so many of the business group’s decisions were, many of which were clearly understood to be at the time, with others more clear in hindsight. But as scary as the ride got, it sounded pretty amazing at its heights. I’ve now read all three of Hook’s books, including this one and his memoirs on his days in Joy Division and New Order (the latter is probably my favorite). This was his first, and as such, it’s not as well-written/edited as the others, but still a wild read. And it definitely carries through what I like about his books — he’s definitely a lout, but he’s really honest about his flaws and failings. Such candor is pretty refreshing in memoirs. 

Project Hail Mary – Andy Weir

Another by the author of The Martian. Each new book by Andy Weir becomes my favorite one by him, which happened with Artemis (his second book) after The Martian, and now with this one following Artemis. The premise is an astronaut waking up onboard a ship, with no memory of why he is there, and coming to find he’s been sent on a mission into deep space to save humanity. What I love about Weir’s books is his focus on making elements of science both prominent, but accessible players in the narrative. I leave each book feeling like I’ve learned some fun new facts, but not overwhelmed. I’d say more, but wouldn’t want to spoil this one for interested folks. Just want to say if you liked The Martian or Artemis, I think you’ll like this one a lot more. (UPDATE: After talking with a friend, I have to acknowledge that Artemis is actually a weak book, due to Weir’s failed attempt to write a female protagonist. God love him, he tried, but the character was pretty unbelievable, and while the overall story is much more interesting to me than The Martian, that failure really detracted greatly from the book.)

TRADE PAPERBACKS

My trade paperback count (collections of individual comics issues into a single volume) is 17. 

Standouts this year are Sentient by Jeff Lemire, about a spaceship A.I. that takes on care of its young passengers following a disaster that kills all the adults onboard, and the newish X-Men title, Marauders, which features a team led by Kate Pryde (no longer Kitty) as pseudo-pirate style adventurers. 

The latter requires some understanding of the overall larger current X-Men narrative, which is a bit hard to summarize, but I’ll give it a try: mutants have basically formed their own nation on the island of Krakoa (itself a mutant), where any mutant is allowed to live; Krakoa produces plants which can heal most any disease, which the mutant nation is essentially providing in exchange for recognition as a nation; they also have these portals (the pugh special flowers/plants) which enable travel to nearly anywhere on Earth, and even off-world; and they have developed a means to resurrect pretty much any mutant, through a vast library of DNA harvested by Mister Sinister (evil mutant/geneticist guy) and the powers of five particular mutants. Kate Pryde’s choice to become an adventurer (one leading a crew who takes care of issues on behalf of the mutant nation) stems from the fact that she appears to be the only mutant who cannot pass through a gate to enter Krakoa; she is essentially an exile. This title is so, so fun, and really takes a character that started as a somewhat young, naive young teenage mutant and presents her as a well-rounded, complex adult who you love to root for, and a leader you’d gladly follow.