Year End Book List

I did a midyear roundup, but here's the wrap of the books I read this year:

• Persuasion, by Jane Austen (Fiction, Woman Author, Book Club)
• Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fiction, Woman Author, POC Author)
• Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe by George B. Dyson (Nonfiction, Book Club)
• Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic (Fiction, Translation)
• Crossroads of Twilight, Knife of Dreams, Gathering Storm, Towers of Midnight, A Memory of Light all by Robert Jordan or Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson, the end of my Wheel of Time re-read.  (Fiction, SFF) 5 books
• The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt (Nonfiction, Book Club)
• Fire with Fire by Charles E. Gannon (Fiction, SFF, Nebula award nominee)
• King Rat by James Clavell (Fiction, book club)
• An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield (Nonfiction)
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (Nonfiction, Book Club, Woman Author)
• The Desert of Souls by Howard Andrew Jones (Fiction, SFF)
• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (Nonfiction)
• The Martian by Andy Weir (Fiction, SFF)
• Stardust by Neil Gaiman (Fiction, SFF)
• The Absolute Sandman Vol 1 by Neil Gaiman (Fiction, SFF)
• Charlemagne: From the Hammer to the Cross by Richard Winston (Nonfiction)
• Dawn by Octavia Butler (Fiction, SFF, Woman Author, POC Author)
• The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch (Fiction, SFF)
• Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century by Christian Caryl (Nonfiction, Book Club)
• On Basilisk Station by David Weber (Fiction, SFF)
• Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History edited by Rose Fox and Daniel José Older (Fiction, Short Stories, SFF) - editors are nonbinary and person of color
• Swords and Deviltry (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #1) by Fritz Leiber (Fiction, SFF)
• Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie (Fiction, SFF, Woman Author) 2 books
• Jaran by Kate Elliott (Fiction, SFF, Woman Author)
• Eifelheim by Michael Flynn (Fiction, SFF, Book Club)
• Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley (Fiction, SFF, Woman Author)†
• Swords Against Death (Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser #2) by Fritz Leiber (Fiction, SFF)
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles C. Mann (Nonfiction, Book Club)
• Night's Black Agents by Fritz Leiber (Fiction, SFF)
• Upgraded edited by Neil Clarke (Fiction, Short Stories, SFF)
• Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor (Fiction, SFF, Woman Author, POC Author)
• Heart of Veridon (The Burn Cycle #1) by Tim Akers (Fiction, SFF)
• A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin (Fiction, SFF, Woman Author) 3 books
• Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin (Nonfiction, Book Club)
• The Three-Body Problem (Three Body #1) by Cixin Liu, Translated Ken Liu (Fiction, SFF, Translation, POC Author)
• Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler (Fiction, SFF, Woman Author, POC Author) 2 books
• Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking (Nonfiction, Book Club)

That's 45 books.
Book Club - 8 books
Written/Edited by woman/nonbinary - 13 (9 in the second half of the year)
Written/Edited by person of color - 7 (only male POC are Daniel José Older, co-editor of Long Hidden, and Cixin Liu, the Chinese author of The Three Body Problem) (5 of these came in the second half of the year)
Sci-Fi or Fantasy - 32 (20 second half of the year)
Nonfiction - 9 (3 in the second half of the year)

General observations - basically all of my nonfiction reading came from book club, which I find a bit disappointing. I have good intentions of reading nonfiction, I just rarely pick it up. I dove back into Science Fiction/Fantasy in a big way later in the year. Some re-reads, some new-to-me older reads, some contemporary titles. (I read all but 2 of the currently buzzing titles that I'm at all interested in.  Still want to check out Goblin Emperor and maybe City of Stairs).  I am encouraged that my reading was more diverse in the second half of the year (partly simply because I finished The Wheel of Time)

Standout reading experiences of the year included -

Long Hidden - This kickstarted anthology was simply fantastic.  What amazes me is that every discussion/blog post I've seen about it highlights different stories.  For me, Marigolds, Collected Likenesses and Lone Women were three of the most engaging stories, but nearly every story would stand out as a "best" of nearly any other anthology I've read.

The Three Body Problem - This hard Chinese science fiction was an engaging read that I've been wanting for a while without quite being able to put my finger on.  The science explanations, going into problems of multiple star/planet systems, how a computer works, and delving into some more theoretical physics, encouraged me to imagine how science works.  All of this was presented from the unfamiliar perspective of modern china.  I'm not sure how realistic or complete this perspective is (Ken Liu has me pretty well convinced that looking for a "complete" view of Chinese speculative fiction would be nonsense), but I wrote about how important it was for me to read something that didn't center me.

Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor is a first-contact story with aliens landing in Lagos, Nigeria.  Due to publishing quirks it's not yet available in the US (and I'm going to be very disappointed if this ruins its award chances), but I grabbed the Audible copy, which was a great choice.  The narrators and accents were excellent.  I enjoyed Okorafor's style, but also the interweaving of science and popular culture, the visions of the natural world, and the optimistic tone.  

Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice was fantastic, as all of the awards, reviews, etc. indicate.  I'd have been blown away by Ancillary Sword had it been anything other than the sequel to Ancillary Justice.

Octavia Butler (Dawn and Parable of the Sower/Parable of the Talents) - I've heard Octavia Butler's name for years now, but hadn't ever read anything of hers.  Dawn was an incredibly good first contact-ish story that raised some very important questions about human identity and power relations.  The Parable books are prophetic dystopias that feel incredibly relevant in the age of #BlackLivesMatter.  I've more or less sworn off dystopias (post I still need to write), but the Parable stories feel like the essential dystopias that should stand up and be cited along with 1984 or The Handmaid's Tale.

Rereading Kate Elliott's Jaran and N. K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy Omnibus has been a great pleasure.  My wife was recently between books and commented that "maybe I'll just read Jaran.  It's so good, which is why I end up reading it twice a year." I think this is exactly right.  I tend not to read for character interactions (one weakness of The Three Body Problem that I didn't even notice until I read some other reviews) but Jaran has a fantastic group of characters interacting in fascinating and delightful ways inside a fully-realized culture.  

When I first read the Inheritance Trilogy I was simply carried away by Nahadoth, who is such a compelling and overwhelming character.  I was actually worried about rereading this series, but it's even more fascinating and rewarding than I had remembered.  Having grown up on Lord of the Rings, Shannara, and The Wheel of Time, the Inheritance Trilogy gives me all of the vast, epic feel I love while simultaneously highlighting so many of the weaknesses in "Epic" fantasy.  I had remembered that Jemisin's gods are so vast and unknowable that they overhang the entire series (and show up every Olympian-ish god out there), but I had forgotten (or just missed) how much the series sets up a privileged group that aspires (literally) to cast the world in it's image and undercuts those notions of universality.  

Both Jaran and The Inheritance Trilogy are things I'll return to frequently, and recommend to anyone interested in speculative ficiton.

I also discovered short stories this year.  I'm rereading the Science Fiction Hall of Fame (an interesting anthology that's definitely showing it's age), read Long Hidden, Women Destroy Science Fiction (another kickstarted anthology, good but with a more uneven fiction selection), and Upgraded from Clarkesworld.  Short fiction is still a struggle for me - there are a lot of outlets and I haven't really worked short stories into my reading patterns, but I've been encouraged enough by what I've found that I really want to read more.

Disappointments - My big disappointment this year was The Martian.  Aaron Roberts' review (and in particular Ian Sales' comment) hits the nail on the head for me - this was so pedestrian as to be both uninteresting and unrealistic.  Man cannot live on potatoes alone.  It does occur to me that I've been wanting to read "hard" science fiction (which for me means stuff that foregrounds science that can be measured, although I realize this definition has some problems) and jumped at The Martian for that reason.  Maybe there's just not much out there right now? Rec me some, please!

Fire with Fire was awful in its portrayal of women, and the obsession with guns was uninteresting for me.  Nebula award nominees will probably not be a reading challenge I try again.  

I may re-read The Wheel of Time again sometime (I think Sanderson actually did a great job salvaging a series that had lost its way), but it's very much lost it's lustre.

Going Forward - In 2015, I do want to read some older "hard" SF to understand where that's coming from.  I'd like to avoid Heinlein and Asimov's Foundation series (which seem to have a lot of bizarre pseudo-social sciences) and find some things more like Hal Clement's Heavy Planet.  I solicited recommendations, but please drop me more.

I'm planning to reread another big epic fantasy series.  I was considering Erikson's Malazan, but I think it'll be Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars.  Likely in conjunction with reading a bunch of Elliott's backlist as well as her three(!) new books coming in 2015 (a collection of short stories, Black Wolves, a new epic fantasy, and Court of Fives, a debut YA novel).  N. K. Jemisin also has a new series starting next year.  My other goal is to dive into short fiction.  I want to read it, understand what's going on with short fiction, and find some more exciting authors.  Finally I want to read more people of color.  Daniel José Older's Half Resurrection Blues drops January 6.  I'm going to retry David Anthony Durham's Acacia, and try Samuel Delaney.  Again I'd love more recommendations!

Marigolds

Marigolds in Long Hidden has perhaps the most gripping introduction of any of the stories in the anthology.  It's a visceral and horrifying opening scene set in a brothel in Paris during the french revolution, and I can still remember the creeping horror of realizing what is happening as the scene unfolds.  As I read the rest of the story, I found myself vacillating between intense disgust and fascination, and a somewhat dull disinterest until the climax of the story.  At the end, I felt a dissatisfaction which, the more I reflected on it, seemed more a comment on my own reading blind spots than any weakness in the story.  Review below, with spoilers.

"I watch Maurepas enter the room, framed by my knees. He is plump and old, like the others that come to us ... Smelling of cognac and roasted birdflesh, their doughy skin scored by silks and velvets cut for younger bodies. He strips now, this minister, and when the last piece of cloth is discarded he is just another old man." (from Marigolds, p. 91)

The opening of Marigolds is captivating.  The physical details that lead from a woman looking at the ceiling, to her placement in a brothel servicing her client, who is in turn stripped of his finery and revealed as a wrinkly old man, anxious to reclaim some semblance of vitality through the act of sex while the woman is having her period are very effective.  The scene unfolds slowly, revealed through the implication of these details.  Later in the story, characters dig through chamber pots, and the entire magical element of the story is built on the powers of a woman's body when she is having her period.  Magical sigils are being used to encourage the terrible excesses of the revolution  L. S. Johnson excels at presenting these physical details, and while the scenes are disgusting, they also held my attention & were some of the strongest writing in the story.

It's also soon revealed that Claire, our protagonist, is in love with Isabella, one of the other women in the brothel.  In the month between the first and second moments of magical sex, there are a handful of scenes where Claire is teased, survives a riot, and uncovers the secret to the magic that is being worked.  Here is where I found myself disengaging from the story.  The errands seemed mere placeholders, the danger of the riot is clearly not a threat to either Claire or Isabella, so it is mostly just a chance for Claire to be out with her beloved before the climax the following month.

Eventually, though, the women are ready to perform their magic again, and the great ministers come to the brothel again.  Only this time Claire has learned the secrets of the magic, and is putting up a different spell for Isabella.  (I will confess that on first reading I feared Claire was going to essentially give her beloved a love potion.  I was happy to be proved wrong).  The next day, the course of events has not been changed as desired.  Claire and Isabella have both done magic to try to help the other escape! They fight their employer and leave to live happily ever after.

"We do not plot; we suggest.  No hunger, no suffering, no murderous rage. Just the slightest touch on the tiller, turning the world towards something a little kinder, a little sweeter, a little more like love." (Marigolds, p. 104)

I am dissatisfied with this ending.  It feels too pat, and simple.  My reactions after a second reading are less strong than on first reading, however.  When I first read Marigolds, I essentially stopped reading about the relationships after the opening scene.  Claire was secretly in love with one of the other women in the brothel.  From this, I made a whole series of assumptions that laid down blinders as I read the story: Claire would need to keep this attraction secret because it was shameful.  Her love could not be reciprocated because when you're attracted to someone of the same gender, what are the odds that they'll feel the same way?  When the story ended with the two living happily ever after, all my assumptions rose up angrily.  Too pat.  Too much author manipulation.  Implausible.

On a second reading it's clear that in fact Claire's feelings are an open secret in the brothel.  While Claire and Isabella never discuss them, Claire is often teased about her devotion in front of Isabella.  Isabella, for her part, initially rescued Claire and seems to have feelings for her.  Everything I objected to was foreshadowed throughout the story, I simply ignored it because of my own assumptions (and to some extent because I didn't find the prose compelling).  I'm still not particularly satisfied with the conclusion to Marigolds, but after two readings, it's pretty clear that most of my issues on first reading had much more to do with me than the story.

Have I mentioned that I've learned a lot from Long Hidden, including a lot about my own blind spots as I read?

Safe Stories in Long Hidden

I started this post a bunch of times, and kept getting bogged down.  And then the Hugos happened, and Kameron Hurley's "We Have Always Fought" won (deservedly) and I re-read it (you should to), and I stopped focusing on arguing about the place of women in wars (not really the point, and the fact that I was focusing there showed I was missing the point), and instead started focusing on llamas and the way they're written about versus how we actually experience them (hint, not actually about llamas).  And then I realized that not only had I re-read a darn good (and award winning!) essay, but also I could lean on Kameron for this piece.

So let's take as a given that stories give us a lens to look at the world, and that sometimes the lens of story can be as influential as our actual experiences, particularly when we don't have a lot of firsthand experience.  And if you don't want to take that as a given, then maybe go read "We Have Always Fought", don't argue with it like I did, and then come back here.  I'll also drop some more links at the bottom.

Long Hidden is an anthology of stories from the margins of history.  (Have I mentioned you should buy it?) Many of those stories are about experiences and histories that I have very little firsthand exposure to, and haven't even read much about.  One of the things I'm most grateful to the authors and editors for is creating a safe space to read these stories.  I don't have to go in with my guard up, looking for a Magical Negro, Damsel in Distress or other damaging stereotypes, but could instead open myself up to unfamiliar experiences.  Two stories in particular really created a safe space for me: The Witch of Tarup and A Score of Roses.  (Witch of Tarup discussed first, with few spoilers, Score of Roses second with all the spoilers).

In The Witch of Tarup, there are a number of characters with physical disabilities.  Some permanent, some temporary.  Traditionally, disabled characters tend to be portrayed as either bitter and angry or else fonts of wisdom who transcend their disability.  Either way, they are defined by that disability.  The Witch of Tarup features neither.  The disabled characters fit into their story and community.  They need assistance at times, but can function with their disability, and are defined by their other characteristics and other ways they've fit into the community.  The story was one of my favorites from the anthology simply in the way it spun out and revealed the very touching conclusion, but also because it gave me a safe space to think about disability as a part of the whole person, rather than the defining characteristic.

Troy Wiggins' A Score of Roses also provides a safe space to tell a story too often negatively stereotyped in both fiction and media.  (Spoilers ahead!)  The two characters in 1870's Memphis are clearly identified as members of the black community by the use of African American Vernacular English (since I had to look up AAVE when I first saw it), but also as non-human spirits.  Together they fall in love, court, raise a child, and the mother (at least) leaves the family.  It is, viewed baldly, a story about what could be described as a broken family, where the child is growing up with only one parent present, the other absent with no clear indication when or if she'll return.  But mostly it's an incredibly tender story about parents falling in love and passing on their strength and identity to their children.  I did not, at all, get the sense from A Score of Roses that the family was broken in any way.  Instead I found myself smiling at the affirmation of strength and love that the characters had for each other.  It was only reflecting afterwards that I realized Troy was threading a needle by telling a story about strength and love in a family situation so often demonized or characterized as broken.  A Score of Roses may not all by itself tear down all of my preconceptions about what family means, but it certainly highlighted some of the ways those preconceptions are dangerous, flawed, and created by narratives.  (Scaly llamas!)

(After re-reading A Score of Roses, I've also remembered what a simply beautiful story it is.  Unfinished: a more detailed response to A Score of Roses by itself, because I have done this story an injustice by only bringing up the way it presents a nontraditional family in a safe, loving and supportive way).

Many of the stories in Long Hidden create safe spaces in one way or another, or challenge the stereotypes that other narratives have created.  I'm grateful to the authors and editors for doing so in a respectful way, and providing me a space to read stories that may make me uncomfortable, but also always challenged and rewarded me.  It's an incredible anthology.

If "We Have Always Fought" wasn't enough for you, more resources on the way our worldview is shaped by narrative, and some of the dangers that entails:
MedievalPOC, which shows how people of color have been removed from our view of medieval and early modern european society.
Nnedi Okorafor on The Magical Negro
Mary Robinette Kowal on writing the stereotype of the "psychotic half breed" while trying to combat other stereotypes
Ta-Nehisi Coates' point that Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns blows up the myth that black ghettoes were caused by illiterate broken families migrating to the north
Ann Leckie on restaurants that do (or don't) punch people in the face.  (Again, not really about restaurants)

Edited to correct title of The Witch of Tarup

Unfinished -
Review of A Score of Roses

A Long Hidden Closeup: Collected Likenesses

I'm not yet done with Long Hidden, but so far my only post has been about how I was challenged as a reader, and I'm having trouble articulating the feeling of safety that so many of the stories give me, so here's a closer examination of the story that had the biggest impact on me: Jamey Hatley's Collected Likenesses, which left me physically tense long after I finished it. (General spoiler warning.  If you want to read the story naively, come back later.  Pretty much everything but the twist at the end is here.)

At the conclusion of what seem to be gentle introductory paragraphs, we suddenly get "He cut figures of my people ... How I loved to cut."  Then an iteration of sharp things the narrator loves: "Long, slender hatpins ... buttery leather shoes with pointed toes."  As the catalog increases, the items become more explicitly dangerous "A threat sidled up next to such delicious beauty".  Set in 1913 New Orleans, the opening of the story sandwiches these pointed threats between the memories of a grandmother who remembers the evils of slavery time.

In some ways the opening is very tender - the protagonist a young woman, isolated and hated by her family and caring for her beloved grandmother.  Except these sharpened threats keep creeping into the story.  "This is how you learn to trip and bite and scratch and pinch and fight even when they are kin."  ... "You use your sharpest scissors to clip your Grannie's nails." (emphasis mine)  Even in apparently tender moments, these dangerous words crop up.

By the time the protagonist goes out on her own, the goal of escaping her hated family and avenging past wrongs seems clear.  I had expected that after a glance towards the difficulties of living as a day worker in New Orleans, the story would return to the quest for revenge, but Hatley keeps the focus on the protagonist's long hours, precarious situation, and expanding circle of friends and eventually lovers.  Even in these passages, though, the story keeps returning to "tweezers with and without a slant, needles ... the sting and burn of astringents".  The tension established in the opening builds, and by turning away from it towards the difficulties of day to day life, Hatley extends the tension even as the notion of revenge, always postponed continues to hang over the protagonist.

The concluding twist was unexpected, though I think well telegraphed by the story.  It complicates the narrative and also casts the entire story and time period in a different light.  Collected Likenesses doesn't allow for an easy or triumphal narrative, and both literally and figuratively rejects easy black and white categorization in favor of shades of brown.

I don't think that Collected Likenesses will be my "favorite" story of Long Hidden.  And I don't have enough experience with the short story form to place it in the genre more generally.  I do distinctly remember being physically affected by the tension of the story, and also being acutely aware that Hatley was using the tools of her craft to cause this reaction.  On the first read, I caught the sharp and dangerous words that created the tension.  On the second, I noticed how the narrator's gaze, and the extension of the scenes acting as a day worker enhanced and extended that tension while also presenting a more realistic, and often overlooked, picture of life.  By turning away from the established narrative, Hatley also sets up the concluding hook brilliantly. (Aside - the story is told in second person.  I have no idea what to do with this.)  Collected Likenesses is an incredibly enjoyable story.  It's also a story to learn craft from.  It's just not a story to read shortly before you plan to go to sleep.

Bonus - a few of my Twitter reactions to Collected Likenesses, and a comment from the author.

@jsuttonmorse just starting @jameyhatley 's Collected Likenesses, but I'm really tense waiting for it to develop
— Jonah Sutton-Morse (@jsuttonmorse) July 15, 2014

.@jameyhatley wow, I'm shaking with tension right now. I kept waiting for the axe to fall, but when it did it wasn't what I expected. Thanks
— Jonah Sutton-Morse (@jsuttonmorse) July 15, 2014

@jsuttonmorse I feel like I should make you a cup of chamomile. Thanks for reading and sharing!
— jamey hatley (@jameyhatley) July 15, 2014

Bouncing off stories & how I read

I'm slightly over halfway through Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History now, and I'm beginning to see some patterns in my reactions.  (Tracked here).  A few days ago I mentioned that with Long Hidden, there are 4-5 stories competing for my "Favorite", and only a couple that I've bounced off of.

Let me take a moment to suggest that you go buy Long Hidden right now and read it if you have any interest in SFF / speculative fiction more broadly, or if you enjoy short stories, or (like me) want to like short stories but usually have trouble.  Because my usual hit rate on a short story magazine or anthology is really enjoying 1 or 2, and being glad I read more than half.  So Long Hidden overdelivered with about the first 5 stories.  It's a phenomenal anthology.  Go buy it.  I'll wait.

I've read 16 of the 27 stories in #LongHidden and have bounced off maybe 2. Depending on my mood, 4 or 5 are competing for "favorite"
— Jonah Sutton-Morse (@jsuttonmorse) July 20, 2014

@jsuttonmorse I'm curious--which ones did you bounce off of and why?
— Dandy McFopperson (@rosefox) July 20, 2014

@rosefox I need more than 140 characters for this one, but I'll write about it, I promise!
— Jonah Sutton-Morse (@jsuttonmorse) July 20, 2014

Here's my attempt to talk about one story* in particular that I just think I didn't really give a fair reading, and some observations about what that says about how open to diversity I am as a reader.
(General disclaimers - this isn't a review.  I'm not experienced enough to write reviews, and I haven't even finished the anthology.  This is personal reaction and thoughts about those reactions.  Also, some light spoilers follow.)

The story I most remember having trouble with was "Across the Seam" by Sunny Moraine, centered around the 1897 Lattimer Massacre (of unarmed striking miners in Pennsylvania).  The story's protagonist is an immigrant from central Europe, haunted by the witch Baba Yaga, and perhaps beginning to identify as a woman rather than a man. (Despite some googling and listening on twitter, I don't have the vocabulary to describe the gender identity.  At the beginning of the story, Iwan is "him", but Baba Yaga and his own behaviors and feelings challenge that identity as the story unfolds).

Throughout the entire story, I spent my time alternately arguing with the author and puzzling over this choice.  The story is set during an important labor event.  The main character is an immigrant, already an outsider.  Why include this confused gender identity? Some of the time I was looking for the reason the gender identity was necessary to the story.  The rest I was deciding that it wasn't necessary, so the various hints and inclusions could be removed.

I'm going to pass over the necessity of gender identity very briefly.  It's possible that Baba Yaga is primarily linked with women and so this confusion is "necessary", or that the scenes strengthen the link to the importance of women in the labor movement, or simply that the author always envisioned the character this way.  Critiquing the "necessity" of these elements feels a bit like "a group of mostly white writers telling a hapa writer and a Pakistani writer what was culturally authentic ... about nonwhite people"  (Aside - I can dig more into how Baba Yaga figures in this time/characters, because there's a bibliography for each of the stories on the Long Hidden website!).

Instead I'm going to talk a bit more about my reaction demanding that this identity be necessary to the story, or be removed.  Because implicitly what I'm saying here is "keep your characters within a nice, safe, gender binary that I'm familiar with, or justify it."  In the real world, this has a pretty ugly corollary: "you can't identify as something other than your biological sex without constantly proving it, going through therapy, etc."  In fictional reading, I'm a half step away from "keep your characters all white men or justify it".  And that's a bit of an unpleasant realization, because I've been reading, and cheering, about why We Need Diverse Books.  I backed Long Hidden because I wanted to read diverse and unfamiliar stories.  Because diverse and unfamiliar stories by diverse authors brought me back to SFF.  I'm also just going to link to Kameron Hurley's "We Have Always Fought" and Kate Elliot's "The Status Quo Does Not Need Worldbuilding" because they also make good points about the value of diverse representation in fiction.

One more counter to my "that non-binary gender character better have a good reason to be in this story".  Here's my reaction when re-reading the Dragonlance Chronicles when Tanis asks "Who is he" about the Forestmaster and the centaurs slap him down with "She".

Also, the Forestmaster is a lady, so stuff your patriarchal assumptions Tanis. (Contemporary with Belgariad, shortly after Shannara)
— Jonah Sutton-Morse (@jsuttonmorse) July 18, 2014

Sometime after reading The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms I was exclaiming with someone about how amazing the scenes with Nahadoth were, and she pointed out that they were sex scenes.  I was actually a bit taken aback.  My reading identity was as someone who doesn't generally read sex scenes, particularly not from the perspective of a woman.  Except that these scenes were some of what I most enjoyed about one of my favorite books (even if I'd been hiding behind descriptors like "sensual").  It took a few days, but things finally clicked.  "OK" I thought to myself.  "I'm someone who can read and enjoy sex scenes.  They're not porn, they're not just sensual, they're sex scenes."  And when I got to sex scenes in other stories (including some of those in Long Hidden), I got to read the sex scenes.  No need to skip, get flushed, or anything else.  I'm not, right now, a reader who can read stories with protagonists who don't have a clear binary gender identity.  But I can change that.  So after I finish the anthology I get to go back to "Across the Seam" and read it again.  And I'm pretty sure also "Neither Witch nor Fairy".  And I get to set aside my expectations about the categories a character is allowed to fit in

Long Hidden is a fantastic anthology.  One that deliberately set out to tell stories from the margins of history, and stories about people on the margins.  The stories are rich, and varied and on the whole delightful.  Every story that I've been able to read, instead of arguing with, I've enjoyed.  Even those that I found a bit disappointing are stories I would have been thrilled to find in any other anthology.  And apparently I can mostly read and enjoy them, trusting the authors and editors to tell these stories respectfully, except when it comes to non-binary gender.  That's a disappointing realization for me, but also an empowering challenge.  At least, that's how I'm going to take it.


**Unfinished - Long Hidden has a bibliography.  I am so excited about this!
Unfinished 2 - Long Hidden as a safe space for me because I'm unfamiliar with many of these stories & worried about exploitative/dishonest/incomplete storytelling.
Unfinished 3 - "OK, I'm someone who can read and enjoy sex scenes"
Unfinished 4 - Yeah, I also need to talk about "Marigolds".

Midyear Reading

Since the year is half over, let's take a look at my goals for the year and see how I'm doing ...

• Read 12 books for my monthly book group
• Read 6 academic nonfiction books
• Read 6 books in translation
• Read 12 books of fiction, 1/2 by women, 1/2 SFF
• 1/2 women, min goal, 1/2 SFF max goal
• Read 50 books

(I've missed one book on book group so far.  I'm also enjoying jumping back into SFF and reading authors I haven't encountered before, so I won't be unhappy if over 1/2 my reading is SFF)

And the current list from Goodreads:

• Persuasion, by Jane Austen (Fiction, Woman, Book Club)
• Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fiction, Woman)
• Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe by George B. Dyson (Nonfiction, Book Club)
• Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic (Fiction, Translation)
• Crossroads of Twilight, Knife of Dreams, Gathering Storm, Towers of Midnight, A Memory of Light all by Robert Jordan or Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson, the end of my Wheel of Time re-read.  (Fiction, SFF) 5 books
• The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt (Nonfiction, Book Club)
• Fire with Fire by Charles E. Gannon (Fiction, SFF, Nebula award nominee)
• King Rat by James Clavell (Fiction, book club)
• An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield (Nonfiction)
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (Nonfiction, Book Club)
• The Desert of Souls by Howard Andrew Jones (Fiction, SFF)
• The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (Nonfiction)
• The Martian by Andy Weir (Fiction, SFF)
• Stardust by Neil Gaiman (Fiction, SFF)
• The Absolute Sandman Vol 1 by Neil Gaiman (Fiction, SFF)
• Charlemagne: From the Hammer to the Cross by Richard Winston (Nonfiction)
• Dawn by Octavia Butler (Fiction, SFF, Woman)
• The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch (Fiction, SFF)

22 books.  16 Fiction, 6 Nonfiction, 12 SFF.  Of the fiction, 3 written by women, only 1 of the SFF written by women. (Also probably worth noting only 2 written by a person of color as far as I know)

1 book in translation.  No academic nonfiction. 12 of the 16 fiction books are SFF.  22/50 books.

I take some consolation that my currently reading pile includes Women Destroy Science Fiction, and I just picked up Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, but Wheel of Time re-read skewed stats or not, this is a bit of a disappointment.  Still, I'm looking forward to re-reading some N. K. Jemisin later this year when her series is re-issued, and I've just discovered the wonder of Octavia Butler, so not a total loss. 

Favorite books thus far:

Dawn, and I actually quite enjoyed the end of Wheel of Time even if it drags in places.  Nothing else particularly interesting in the list, though.
(I will say that I'm right now working through a short story anthology: "Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction From the Margins of History" and it's simply fantastic.