Tag: book chat

2024 in reading

fiendfullyreading

Usually about this time, I start listing all the books I gave 5 stars to, sorted into categories like ‘fiction’ or ‘poetry’ and trying to split out books that were released that year or not. This year, inspired by Kat’s great musing on reading pre-2004 books, I’m going to be a bit less list focused, and just talk about my reading in general and my recommendations out of that.

I didn’t have any reading goals going into 2024. For the past few years I’ve stopped trying to read a certain number of books, which is nice. I ended up very busy at work and often too tired to read more than a few pages before sleeping, so it was less stressful to not care about racking up more books. My aim was just to keep my Netgalley ‘to read’ books manageable and try to get through a range of other books. I actually did read either 194 or 195 books in 2024 (depending on whether I finish Peter Straub’s Ghost Story today or not), which is a huge number but less than I’ve read in a year since 2018. Is that something I should be able to find out? That’s a separate rant about the datafication of hobbies.

I end up with such a long list of books I want to read that when I do finally get to read them and they’re good, it’s like an extra treat. This year, I read a bunch of books I’d been wanting to read for a while which lived up to my waiting, like Boys Weekend by Mattie Lubchansky, Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom, Little Blue Encylopedia (for Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante, Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas, and These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever. The latter two really hit the terrible part of me that wishes I could go back and read The Secret History for the first time again.

Looking back, I enjoyed a lot of new 2024 (and upcoming in 2025) fiction, but not to a level where I really loved it. However, there are a few notable exceptions to that: Katherine Packert Burke’s Still Life was a great exploration of writing trans autofiction; Model Home by Rivers Solomon was rich and haunting; and Santanu Bhattacharya’s Deviants (coming out in 2025) tells a three-generation story of being gay in a way that sold me on a structure (three concurrent narratives of generations) I usually don’t like. There was a lot of great poetry too, but for some reason I’m much worse at summarising what I like about poetry so I’m just going to say that Them! by Harry Josephine Giles in both printed and audiobook format was wonderful and transformative. I didn’t read many technology books this year, but Supremacy by Parmy Olson is my current recommendation for getting a sense of the race that led to generative AI products and where the money, power, and decisions came and continue to come from.

And finally, inspired by Kat’s discussion of reading older books, I really need to read more older books again (that aren’t just Dennis Cooper, who I seem to continue reading every year—this year I enjoyed The Sluts and its playful form). I did tackle The Godfather and loved it, reminding myself how fun it is to read a long book in physical form for a sense of achievement. Amongst others, I also read more Shirley Jackson, Poor Things, some haiku in translation, Samuel Delany’s Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, the first couple of volumes of Death Note, and Queer before going to see the film, so I think my pre-2005 reading has a few distinct strands. 

Storygraph’s stats just told me that I’ve not reread anything this year (if you discount the two different formats of Them!) so I think I also need to resolve to reread some books (The Haunting of Hill House, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Ada or Ardor, and Detransition, Baby are all on my reread radar currently). My physical to-read pile threatens to topple and crush my sleeping head, so I really should read more of those, too. I’ll return this time next year and we’ll see how I did (in the meantime, you’re welcome to find me on Goodreads or Storygraph to spy on what I read).

A person next to a huge tower of unread books
The author as apprehensive, next to the towering to-read pile on the last day of 2024.

My favourite non-2023 books of 2023

fiendfullyreading

I forgot to finish and post this in 2023, but seeing as the books didn’t come out then either, I think it’s fine. These are my favourite books I read in 2023 that didn’t come out in 2023, with a caveat that Greta & Valdin actually comes out in the UK in 2024, but was already published in New Zealand so I’m counting it as already out. The list is short and weirdly varied (two novels, two poetry books, and one horror manga), but I think it does give a good insight into what kind of books I like.

Uzumaki by Junji Ito – I’d been watching the Netflix adaptation of some of Junji Ito’s stories and finally read my first book, which very much lived up to expectations (and the whole obsessed with spirals premise wasn’t helped by the fact I keep feeling dizzy, made for an immersive experience).

full-metal indigiqueer by Joshua Whitehead – Having read Whitehead’s novel Jonny Appleseed, this poetry collection was very exciting to find in my local queer bookshop.

Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly – A bit of a 2024 spoiler seeing as it is coming out in the UK this year, but I really loved this novel about chaotic queer siblings in New Zealand.

Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrara – I’ve had a couple of a three-month book subscription where they picked specific books based on your taste, and my taste must be weird as a lot of them were just okay, but this novel really hit the nail on the head in terms of being a literary action thriller about immigration, feeling like the sort of film I would enjoy.

Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency by Chen Chen – I love Chen Chen’s poetry and this title really can’t help but draw you in (I love witty poetry, but I especially love witty, long titles).

My favourite books of 2023

fiendfullyreading

2023 had some ups and downs in reading, but the best part was probably that a number of my highly anticipated books turned out to be great, which has the side effect that this list isn’t particularly surprising. If I was doing some kind of “unwrapped” thing, I would have to note that the number of 2023 books I’ve bought t-shirts of is 2 (and both of those books are on this list). Note to publishers: I love inexplicable merch for queer literary fiction.

I’ve split into prose and poetry, though one of the prose is non-fiction and the rest are fiction. Links in titles to full reviews where I’ve written them.

Prose

Machine Readable Me by Zara Rahman – Reinvigorated my tech book reading by being compelling and interesting, and making me think a lot more about digital borders.

Brainwyrms by Alison Rumfitt – The first (on this list) of my much anticipated books did not disappoint. I loved the body horror and the influence of the internet on the plot and the way it felt so much like edgy books teenage me liked.

How to Get Over the End of the World by Hal Schrieve – Having also read Schrieve’s Out of Salem for the first time this year, I was glad this one was great too, fully of messy queer teens and adults not living up to their role model status.

The Unfortunates by J.K. Chukwu – This novel really delves into the mental health of a Black queer college student whilst also be darkly comic and cutting.

Penance by Eliza Clark – What can I really say? Another highly anticipated book that knocked it out of the park, by being a meditation on teenagers, weird internet fandoms, Sims mods, true crime, and whose stories we are really telling. I just love literary fiction about being weird on the internet.

Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabel Waidner – And the third on my highly anticipated list, Waidner’s latest experimental novel is my favourite to date, blending class commentary, Joe Orton, queer relationships, and Bambi in their distinctive, surreal style.

Never Was by H. Gareth Gavin – Another book with a distinctive style, Never Was is a queer hallucination about storytelling with narratives within narratives and a mysterious unreal party.

Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison – Sometimes my favourite books are because they are fun, and Such Sharp Teeth is one of those: a funny werewolf novel that does the ‘supernatural creatures in real world setting’ well and plays with the body horror elements of being a werwolf.

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah – Tense and brutal, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a future of blood sports featuring incarcerated people and a book full of heart and a lot of perspectives.

Bellies by Nicola Dinan – Such a tender book about how a relationship between two people changes when one of them transitions, and how they both search to find themselves after university.

Open Throat by Henry Hoke – The queer mountain lion novel you never knew you needed (but you do).

How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix – I wasn’t expecting Grady Hendrix to come out with my favourite of his novels to date, but How to Sell a Haunted House takes a high-concept sounding title and turns it into an emotional horror novel about grief (and weird puppets).

Wild Geese by Soula Emmanuel – Another novel about a changing relationship, as a trans woman’s ex-girlfriend appears on her doorstep and they have to face the past and the present. I loved how it was beautiful and wistful, but also full of references to things like Blåhaj).

Poetry

Ex-Cetera by HLR – I loved this punchy poetry collection that is hard-hitting, but also has references to things like Strongbow Dark Fruits.

Hard Drive by Paul Stephenson – My four word review from Goodreads says it all: “Deeply emotional; wonderful stylistically.”

Tomorrow Someone Will Arrest You by Meena Kandasamy – Powerful and varied (and the title poem is so memorable).

Synthetic Jungle by Michael Chang – Witty, catchy, funny, referential: all the things I like poetry to be.

Not A Book Review: my poetry chapbook is out tomorrow!

fiendfullyreading
COVER Syntax Error Siobhan Dunlop Title and author's name appear on black rectangles in commodore 64 text input format set against a field of white text on blue that spells out a repeat of the "Hello World" programme code

As the title says, this isn’t a book review, because it’s about my book! My debut poetry chapbook, Syntax Error, is out tomorrow from kith books. If you’re a fan of poetry, computer code, or living on the internet, you might enjoy it (and check out kith’s other books too)!

It is the result of a number of years of writing poetry relating to digital things, based on both my job teaching digital skills and various interests in digital things. There’s some definite inspiration from books like Several People Are Typing (especially the way that book plays around with the self in relation to chat app Slack) and also a lot of poetry I’ve read recently and tweets I’ve seen. It also pairs very nicely with the VERY ONLINE zine, which a couple of the poems in it were first published in.

Don’t forget, you can always check out my published poetry on the my poetry page – there’s lots of stuff there you can read online for free as well.

To finish up, here’s a little sneak preview of one of the poems:

Syntax Error I tell people: you've got to be very clear because computers don't understand anything except on/off ones and zeroes binary; I tell people: syntax is so important you've got to be careful with your indentation if you don't want Python to get confused; I tell people: watch what you call things the computer doesn't know what to do with non-matching names mistaken identity; I tell people: you don't have to remember to put the semi-colon at the end Javascript can handle it but would prefer otherwise; I tell people: think like a machine to get logic right but don't forget that you can be flexible don't forget you are not the computer;

My favourite books of 2022: non-2022 publications

fiendfullyreading

As usual, I feel a need to give a shout out to my favourite books I read in 2022 that were not published this year. Apparently this is how I found the particularly good fiction this year (particular note for The Haunting of Hill House and Lost Souls for both living up to expectations) and a poetry anthology that I know I will be returning to over and over again.

See my favourite fiction and poetry books of 2022 for the more up-to-date offerings.

fiction

  • The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson – My review of this at the time was simply “Oh right yeah it is THE haunted house novel, fair.” and I stand by that. The writing, the atmosphere, the house. Watch Control, Anatomy, and the Legacy of the Haunted House on YouTube for more great haunted house stuff.
  • Jonny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead – Someone living in the big city has to return to their roots is a classic formula, and in this book, young Two-Spirit Jonny Appleseed has to attend the funeral of his stepfather and bring together the elements of his life.
  • A Safe Girl To Love by Casey Plett – Any short stories that can make it onto one of my lists must be impressive as it’s a form I often have issues really enjoying, but Plett’s range of trans girl experiences is a fantastic collection.
  • We Are Made of Diamond Stuff by Isabel Waidner – I read this whilst trying to kill time sitting outside and in a cafe and it really transported me into a surreal world of British culture to explore national, queer, and migrant identity in a very weird way.
  • Lost Souls and Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite – It was finally the year, after wanting to since my teenage horror/vampire loving years, to read both Lost Souls and Exquisite Corpse and they were so far up my street. The former is The Lost Boys run through a Dennis Cooper novel (who I also read a lot of this year) and the latter the serial killers in love novel you didn’t know you needed. I’m actually glad it took this long to read them so I could fully appreciate them rather than just like the vibes as a teenager.
  • Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo – As I wrote when I finished it: “Loved this southern gothic street-racing in-love-with-your-best-friend suspicious-academia haunting horror novel.”

poetry

  • Ports by Calum Rodger – This pamphlet from SPAM Press reimagines poems through the lens of video games and I just really enjoyed the playfulness and form, plus what you could get about poetry, narratives, and games from doing that.
  • Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Díaz – There is a lot of poetry about bodies, but this collection really stands out. I’d been meaning to read it for a long time and was very happy that I did.
  • We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics ed. by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel – A beautiful anthology that’s perfect if you’re a poet as it’s packed full of inspiration and great if not just because there’s a lot of great innovative and experimental trans poetry in there.

My favourite books of 2022: poetry

fiendfullyreading1 Comment

As I mentioned yesterday, I read a lot of great poetry in 2022, so it was tricky to put together this list. A lot of my poetry reviews boil down to ‘vibes good’ and ‘imagery or lines that just hit me in the chest’ so this isn’t the most articulate list of why these collections are good, but just some of my favourites of 2022. Links to full reviews in the titles where I’ve written them.

  • Please Press by Kat Sinclair – A powerful pamphlet that I sadly cannot say anything else about because I am many miles from my copy currently and I did not write anything about it at the time. But go get it from Sad Press and see why it’s great.
  • Limbic by Peter Scalpello – I ended up with two copies of this, one from each of the book subscriptions I had in 2022 (Cipher Press and Lighthouse bookshop’s poetry subscription), which tells you it must be a good intersection of my taste. Sex, queerness, tracksuits, tiny moments – there’s plenty to enjoy.
  • All The Flowers Kneeling by Paul Tran – A collection exploring violence and storytelling that was so compulsive I accidentally stayed up late reading it, not something I tend to do with poetry.
  • A Little Resurrection by Selina Nwulu – Some of my favourite parts of this great collection was the use of imagery and the engagement with space, as poems look at race and place and bring in elements of climate and convenience.
  • Yo-yo Heart by Laura Doyle Péan – Powerful poems moving through a breakup to show the political nature of healing, filled with wit and sadness.
  • The Moral Judgement of Butterflies by K. Eltinaé – I loved the form of these poems, which explore trauma and immigrant experience and the idea of home. One of the books I got from my Lighthouse bookshop poetry subscription and wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.
  • Time Is A Mother by Ocean Vuong – Beautiful and highly readable. I expected a lot from Vuong and wasn’t disappointed.
  • At Least This I Know by Andrés N. Ordorica – Going to steal a line from my own review to sum it up: “I knew I was going to like the collection from the first poem ‘November 16th, 2014’, which is a perfect opening for it: a moment at border control, encapsulating fear and desire for a place to belong, and a poem that almost makes you laugh and cry at once.”

My favourite books of 2022: fiction

fiendfullyreading1 Comment

It’s been an interesting year for me for reading. As well as a lot of new and upcoming books, many of which did not make the cut for these lists, I read a lot of horror (including a month of it in October) and plenty of poetry. So much of the poetry was good that I’ve split up fiction and poetry into two different ‘best of 2022’ lists, so we’ll start with fiction. 

A lot of fiction I read this year was good, but not so good as to be one of my top books, so it is quite a brief list this year. Not only that, but two of them aren’t actually from 2022, only first published in the UK in 2022, which I’ve decided to count on a whim. Links in titles to full reviews where I’ve written them.

  • Nevada by Imogen Binnie – I’m counting the UK publication this year as making it released in 2022, though clearly it’s not from 2022. I actually read it right at the start of the year, before this rerelease, but still. Classic trans roadtrip novel.
  • Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li – This book was just very fun and I thought highly of it for that, plus it’s basically a genre of a film I enjoy. Chinese-American students do heists to steal artefacts and have various drama along the way. Ridiculous but great to read.
  • The Arena of the Unwell by Liam Konemann – A coming-of-age novel about male mental health and queerness in the grimy indie music underbelly that retains humour whilst looking at a toxic relationship and the realities of NHS cuts.
  • Shredded: A Sports and Fitness Body Horror Anthology ed. by Eric Raglin – Such a fresh way of viewing both body horror and the whole world of fitness, with a really diverse set of sports, characters, and takes on the brief. There was a lot around who can find places within sports and fitness (and what kinds of bodies), which felt like the perfect use of body horror.
  • Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton – Truly an epic. Another one where I’m counting the UK publication as making it a 2022 book, this is a complex tale of a trans woman obsessed with 60s band the Get Happiness and their mysterious leader B—. Fascinating look at music, creativity, self, and constructing stories and histories.

The Spite List 2021

fiendfullyreading

I used to always do a yearly ‘spite list’ of the books I hated, but last year I moved to more of a ‘trends/stuff I hated in books’ list, not so much to avoid harshness as just because too many things were just a bit rubbish rather than worthy of proper vitriol. Also then people can just fill in whichever books they hated in that category too. I only count things I’ve actually read, so there’s no spite for the genres I’m not a fan of, or things too terrible for me to pick up. Anyway, the spite:

  • Disappointing / irredeemable / ‘offensive and not even doing it well’ horror – In the year I fully got back into horror books, I also read some duds. Usually it’s books that made some random bad choice (whether narrative/character wise or just like some really off dialogue) and then don’t make up for it or make it work. For one of these books I actually worked out a whole different plot line keeping the same premise that worked much better, though I’ve forgotten it now. But yeah. I want good ‘what the hell’ in horror, not bad ‘what the hell’.
  • Non-fiction that just drags and takes up way too many words to say anything – This is the year I finally actually read The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. I’m saying no more.
  • Poetry that just really didn’t click with me – I find it weirdly hard to review poetry beyond ‘I liked this one and this one’ or ‘their writing style really pleases my brain’, but sometimes I read a collection and I just don’t really enjoy any of it. So this award goes out to those books, one of which I gave away in a ‘if you don’t like it keep passing it on, as it did have good reviews’ way.
  • Books that seemed like they might be similar to The Secret History but weren’t – One of my greatest disappointments is when something seems like it might have a good ‘getting weirdly too deep into some kind of academic subject and then it gets weird’ vibe and then it turns out not to be like that. This one is really on me: I should stop assuming books will be like that.
  • Books mentioned in the same breath as Sally Rooney – I really liked Conversations with Friends, I thought Normal People was fine, I didn’t hate reading her new one, but I never have a good time with other hyped books that are mean to fit into a similar space as Sally Rooney. I just tend to find the protagonists frustrating and don’t really get their angst about that somewhat naff office job and complex relationship with an annoying man.

And finally, the real question: what book things I hate will 2022 bring?

My reading trends of 2020

fiendfullyreading

I usually do a ‘spite list’ or something similar, a list of the books I didn’t enjoy in 2020, but considering the year, and the fact I mostly found a lot of books just okay rather than actively bad, I’ve decided to go for something more like a list of general observations (some complaints) about books I read this year. Not really based on what came out this year, just what I happened to read.

  • Disappointing sequels – I should’ve expected this one, as I started the year reading The Testaments when I’m not a huge fan of The Handmaid’s Tale. After that, however, I had sequels to books I did enjoy that were a let down, most notably Mantel’s The Mirror & the Light (which I read a lot of on a transatlantic flight and whilst jetlagged, desperately trying to get through it) and Ali Smith’s Summer (I loved Spring most of the quartet so it was a shame, though a friend reread the other three before reading Summer and said it worked better that way, ready for all the references to the others).
  • Just not that interesting – In-keeping with the general ‘meh’ vibe of a fair few books I read this year, I found that I kept finding books that just didn’t really grip me in any way: not the plot, or the characters, or the writing. There were a good few let down endings, or books that sounded good but turned out to be hard to be bothered to finish.
  • A return to horror – This is very much just what I decided to read, but from October onwards I made a concerted effort to read more horror, both some old Point Horror books and a few more recent ones from a library app. As a teenager I’d progressed from Goosebumps to Point Horror to Stephen King, but I’d fallen off reading anything in recent years  The Point Horror ones in particular were a joy of how enjoyably trash they are, and it’s been nice to get back into horror even if I’m yet to find new stuff that’s really gripped me.
  • Really needing to read some less recent books – Thanks to the year there’s been a lot of books to review this year, and it’s been great in a lot of ways (I don’t normally get much poetry or drama to review at all, and I did get some this year), but I’ve had a backlog to review for much of the year. That meant I couldn’t catch up on my other ‘to read’ books and in particular couldn’t read much that wasn’t from this year or next year, except the odd library ebook that otherwise would’ve been returned unread.
  • Not much that was actively ‘bad’ – I mean, a good thing, but I only gave two books 2 stars this year. One was a naff technology book about digital minimalism and the other was a book about a working class Oxford student befriending an old woman that combined an info dump with some slightly dodgy depictions of class that felt like weird stereotypes. Otherwise, most books were decent, if not mind blowing (the main book in the mind blowing category was Boy Parts, not very original, but as I love the cult American Psycho vibe and the trashy yet pretentious art school vibe, it was wonderful).

What will 2021 bring? A load of pandemic novels? Me buying more secondhand Point Horrors and remembering how little 11-year-old me understood American culture? We’ll just have to see.

My favourite non-2019 books I read in 2019

fiendfullyreading

It always feels unfair to only document my favourite books I read during a year that came out that year, so I’m also listing my favourite catchily-named-non-that-year books, as I did last year and the year before. This year my comments on each may have become a little more facetious, as the actual books got more heavy-going.

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor – The version I read was technically published this year, but seeing as it was published before it’s going here. This is Ovid for the modern day: a 90s LGBT culture shapeshifter story with a picaresque vibe.

The Arsonists by Max Frisch – Thanks to watching Philosophy Tube this year, I discovered not only works of philosophy, but also some more-modern-than-my-early-modern-degree plays, and this one had me sat up reading it in one go. In short, don’t play with fire.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo – I live-tweeted my response to reading the book I had never read due to irrational dislike until the BBC adaptation tempted me to give it a go. On here because it was actually an enjoyable, if occasionally digressive, experience.

No Exit by Jean-Paul Sartre – I said I’d got into 20th century plays (that aren’t just Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead).

The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus – Yes, really. Was it not a year for the absurd?

To Save Everything, Click Here by Evgeny Morozov – I keep recommending this or bringing up concepts from it to everyone so it has to go on here. Why finding tech solutions to everything isn’t always the answer.

Hello World by Hannah Fry – My year really was all existentialism or technology. Fry’s account of how algorithms shape our world and what we can do about it is engaging and deeply interesting. Plus it helped me shape some of the articles in our online Digital Wellbeing course.

Radical Technologies by Adam Greenfield – Another one, I know. Each chapter is about a different technology and how it has or might change our world, and it is surprisingly possible to even understand the chapters on blockchain and cryptocurrency (mostly).