Best of 1999
So far (July 9), the books that have impressed me most in 1999:
- Blue Light by Walter Moseley
- Just published in 1999: one of the few books I've bought in hardback. I have read all of Walter Moseley's mystery novels, which are more novels than mysteries. Walter Moseley is one of my favorite mystery writers, one whom I truly feel writes literature that would satisfy my old English professor, as well as completely satisfactory hardboiled detective stories. He doesn't write a lot of books: he writes a few good ones. His first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress, was made into a good movie, too.
- Blue Light is labeled a "science-fiction/mystery" crossover. It is an excellent literary exploration of human nature, but it plays havoc with the genres. As a mystery novel it falls more toward the thriller, or crime novel genre: there is no doubt who the killer is, only whether he can be stopped. As a science fiction novel, it is more horror/fantasy than hard science: there isn't a speck of hard science in it. If I let myself start to analyze the scientific explanation of the blue light and its tranformative effects, I would start to scream and burble. But it is a powerful book, with images that stay with me, one mark of good writing. Like all of Moseley's books, it is grim and dark, filled with the shadow-side of humanity -- yet leaves me with a feeling of inspiration and hope.
- RL's Dream by Walter Moseley
- This was published in 1995. It is also outside the mystery genre: a "mainstream novel" with elements of magic realism. Black life, the Blues, Robert Johnson -- the Blues are a fitting theme for a novel by Walter Moseley, speaking eloquently of the shadow side, finding meaning and hope in the darkness.
- He, She and It by Marge Piercy.
- I noticed this book in the library and it looked like my sort of thing. Recently, the subject of golems came up on one of my book discussion lists and a fellow member commented on my posting of the story of Rabbi Loew and the Golem of Prague that that was much like the sub-plot of Marge Piercy's novel. So I was hooked. I did enjoy the book, although I became impatient with it at times. Marge Piercy's poetry is sparse and clean; her prose resembles the broad, rich, slow expanse of a great river delta. It's worth reading, but probably not if you like action novels.
- Wizard and Glass by Stephen King
- Published 1998
- My favorite Stephen King novels were the Gunslinger series, and a fellow Book Barn reader gave this a thumbs up, especially mentioning "attention to detail". It bore out all my fondest expectations. Stephen King himself regards this as his "meta-story," and I am looking forward to the next installment.
- Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
- Published 1990
- Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett set the Apocalypse on its ear and spin it. As more and more people take the coming Millenium more and more seriously, it is a great delight to find so many of its themes sent up so successfully. The catches in prophecy and predestination are examined with the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, and her Professional Decendent; the practical problems of controlling the Antichrist are explored from birth; the modern incarnations of the Four Horsemen of the apocalypse are intriguing; humanism versus religion is acted by the angels and devils themselves. I have long been a fan of Pratchett's ability to have ribald fun with social and literary stereotypes, and to be intelligent and insightful without making any pretensions about it. Now I'm going to have to check out Neil Gaiman too.
- To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis
- Published 1998
- Connie Willis writes in a wide range. To Say Nothing of the Dog is from the end that includes the short story "Even the Queen". It is a romp through time and space with Ned Henry, who must rescue human history by finding the Bishop's bird stump and either drowning, or not drowning, a cat. Connie Willis plays with chaos theory and quantum mechanics like they are delightful new toys, which I think is a healthy attitude toward them.
- Ammonite by Nicola Griffith
- Published 1992. Winner of the James Tiptree Jr. Award
- An anthropologist explores a planet on which the gender roles are greatly altered from Earth's: a premise similar to The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin. A lost human colony has evolved a society entirely of women: a premise similar to The Female Man by Joanna Russ. But in Ammonite, the isolation of the female gender is created by a virus, and the visiting anthropologist herself is under its influence, finding herself stressed and changed far more than LeGuin's diplomat was. And the society and its characters feel natural, far more than in either The Left Hand of Darkness or The Female Man.
- David and the Phoenix by Edward Ormondroyd
- A rediscovery. This story of a young boy's friendship with a bird under siege by Science, and his introduction to the lands of myth, was one of the books I loved as a child. Much to my delight, I found it among Wes's books: one of the few books he has kept with him since his childhood.
Re-Released This Year
Books I have loved, recently re-published:
- Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank
- A classic nuclear-holocaust-and-after novel, originally printed in 1959.
- Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
- Reprint of the 1957 fantasy novel, with a 1974 introduction by the author.
- Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
- Another of the classic author's classic books, originally printed in 1962. This edition has a new afterword by the author.
- The Slave and the Free by Suzy McKee Charnas
- Omnibus edition of the first two novels in the ''Holdfast Chronicles'', Walk to the End of the World (1974; selected by David Pringle as one of the 100 Best SF novels) and Motherlines (1978). Both received a retrospective James Tiptree Jr. Award. Re-released in conjunction with the publication of the fourth book in the Holdfast Chronicles, The Conqueror's Child. (The third was The Furies, 1994.)
- More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
- Originally printed in 1953, this was one of my all-time favorites SF novels, with a powerful effect on my young and impressionable philosophy. I don't believe it's been read at all enough.
- Camp Concentration by Thomas M. Disch
- Originally published in 1968. This was one of the few "cyberpunk" novels I read, and liked. A classic of the genre that Disch largely created.