Considering Art, Prayer, and Deep Reading this New Year
Happy New Year to you and your book pile! I start the new year gently, and this post discusses asking the universe for artistic guidance and highly specific reading pile pleasures.
Books
Living the Artist Way
By Julia Cameron
2023, St. Martin Essentials
Julia Cameron’s The Artist Way was my favorite inspirational read last year. It offers a sustainable system for cultivating creativity. Basically, journal, pay close attention, go on walks, and pray. But that’s easier said than done!
Cameron’s newest book, Living the Artist Way, is out today and goes deep into the fourth tool,
Guidance. Structured as a six-week course, Living the Artist Way offers a workbook of advanced study for introspective journaling.
Living the Artist Way by Julia Cameron
Cameron writes in the first person to discuss the spiritual impact of prayer and art on the artist (her). Guidance is The Artist Way’s deepest, most mystical, or elusive tool; the author calls it “woo woo.”
And yeah, guidance might be God or the human spirit, and asking for it is a lot like praying. Through dozens of examples, she convincingly suggests that asking the universe for guidance builds confidence, intuition, and relationships and deepens artistic practice.
I think of the monks making a beautiful painting out of sand in Samsara.
Buddhist monks creating a sand mandala in “Samsara.” | Credit: Oscilloscope Laboratories, NYT
“What if it’s just my imagination?” Cameron asks for guidance and then answers, “What if it’s not?”
In the high-tech 21st century, where anything that can’t be coded into a computer isn’t real, it’s easy to forget God, praying, and our souls in the universe. Praying is what other people do. That’s not for busy metropolitans like me!
But what if it’s not?
Living the Artist Way offers practical application for prayer in an artist’s practice structured as a journaling workbook. The workbook encourages artists to pray, and the author says the word often. She describes daily prayer rituals, calling friends to offer prayers, asking others for prayers, and incorporating prayer into artistic practice. The journaling prompts hint at a process of deep introspection that can be described as meditative, neither exactly secular nor religious.
People who already pray and meditate would probably see the benefits as obvious. But skeptics like me? We have valid reasons to distrust organized religion. Some of us naively read Richard Dawkins as teenagers.
And yes, I’ve previously encountered books that discuss uniting prayer and art with “magick.” Idolizing Satan, tapping occult symbology, walking down the left-hand path, nerd boy crap. Or there’s also David Lynch asking you to pay $1500 a year to learn mantra meditation.
The book extolls readers to ask the universe for what they need and be attuned to the universe to listen, particularly for making art. Cameron’s approach is much gentler and more human than the magickal wizard stuff. In a way, Cameron is just a really nice, thoughtful friend who surrounds herself with really nice, thoughtful friends. After writing Morning Pages, she recommends using a separate notebook to ask for guidance. Ask whatever you want. Questions like What should I write next? Or How do I make my painting better? Answers come, she insists, perhaps through divine intervention, perhaps through believing in your own inner strength to live your fullest life.
So, who’s talking, exactly? Or who’s listening? Is it our subconscious mind? Cameron describes how, after a lifetime of cultivating this, she might just be following intuition. Perhaps our own voice can be one of the wise truths learned from meditation.
But what if it’s not? A strict objectivist might oversimplify things there. They might say daily journaling and intention setting provide buzzwords like mental clarity and action orientation. But Cameron stresses guidance can be unclear, deliberate, and slow. Sometimes, it might discourage action and encourage self-acceptance.
A few people said the guidance could be a picture. The author discusses the topic with dozens of friends who consider guidance might be ancestor spirits, a stillness in the universe, or God, and multiple speakers don’t try to explain it. They just swear by it.
I really adore The Artist Way, and Living The Artist Way offers dozens of helpful examples to put the tools and rituals into daily practice. I recommend the new book to people who enjoy creative, inspirational writing or self-help. Asking for guidance is a resolution I’m setting for myself this year.
Comics
Revenge of the Librarians
By Tom Guald
2022, Drawn and Quarterly
I was looking up the word “Librarians” at the library, which is a silly and discursive thing to do, and it led me to Tom Guald’s 2022 collection, Revenge of the Librarians, winner of TK the Eisner for Best Humor Publication. This type of silliness is exactly what I found in Guald’s book.
Take this one about book piles, for example; it is literally the point of this newsletter.
And I think Guald installed a camera in my apartment and took pictures of my desk????
Many of Gauld’s strips represent book piles. We pilers are not alone in the world. Other people are willfully surrounding themselves with precarity.
I felt like Violet and found this strip relatable as I shoved old basement paperbacks in my suitcase and left my socks and underwear behind at my parent’s house.
It’s fair to say that these comics make me feel seen, even though they often depict faceless stick-figure silhouettes. Finally, a gag comic for pile people, folks who spend time equal time reading and reformatting piles. This might be how lesbian readers feel for Alison Bechtel, or British wizards feel for Alan Moore.
The comic reminds us to appreciate the librarians. The ones who pile for their livelihood. I hope to one day join their ranks.
I’ll be reading all of Gauld’s previous books. I recommend this book as a present to anyone who thinks of themselves as a “bookhead,” if you dig these comics, he’s posted scores more on his Instagram and Tumblr.
Pile of the Week
The first pile of the year has been set very intentionally. I continue to work on my novel like a skeleton angel in heaven.
Thanks for reading! Check out more of my book reviews on nickywebsite.com
Three years ago, I started a reading database. In 2023, I started learning about the data analysis process and, indeed, spent the best parts of the year reading and learning about data.
While many posts try to convince their reader to build a “Second Brain,” this post has no such Frankensteinian ambitions. Instead, I will show you my virtual brain, and we will consider what happens when you habitually use the e-brain and how it impacts reading and writing.
The Big Numbers
First, how many books did I read in the year? The 21st century adds significant complexity to an otherwise simple question. The books were primarily digital, borrowed, electronic, or audio. I could not pile the books. I often think about book piles as I write a newsletter about my reading piles, but there is no pile. The Pile Is A Lie.
So, without a database, this simple question would be difficult to answer because most books were not printed on physical paper.
Counting big numbers showed me interesting things about the veracity of truth and the grand, epistemological nature of knowledge. Far out, number stuff.
Number of Books – VERIFIED TRUSTWORTHY!
One hundred eighty-three books is a strongly verifiably datapoint. I opened many books and went from the first to the last page. It averages 3.5 books a week. Of course, this is all self-reported data. I could have forgotten to log a book, or I could be making all this stuff up! But to me, 183 is a strongly knowable number.
What’s interesting about this number is that I cared a lot about it from 1/1/2023 to 12/31/2023, but today, it is one of the least insightful numbers because the collection is complete. Creating the records drives the collection, but once it’s done, the records become self-evident.
Number of Pages – UNTRUSTWORTHY!
Here, things get vaguer and much more imprecise. I am not confident I read 50,574 pages this year for a few reasons. I read about 40% of non-fiction books, which include indexes and footnotes, valuable tools that show the skeleton of a good, well-argued book (or the amorphous blob of a poorly written one). But these pages make the numbers go up arbitrarily.
Furthermore, page count information online is not reliable. I’ve decided to track this more closely this year. I’ve found wrongly reported numbers of numerous books. I’ve held a copy of a book in my hands and saw a different number on Amazon. Various editions, layouts, and formats all impact a quantifiable fact. But despite it being knowable information, it is not always known. Amazon has consistent errors, and this imprecision must somehow affect their warehouse usage and shipping costs. While exact page counts of books is mostly useless, random information, I find this imprecision hints at the fallibility of Big Data and monopoly capital.
Authors Read – VERIFIED TRUSTWORTHY!
In 2022, I read 73 authors and 91 books in total. Thus, I set the goal to read 100 authors. Achieving this goal was one of the drives pushing me to read this much in a year. Again, this is easy to count. I limited each book (record) to one author field, so multi-author books list both authors but count as one author.
Something I realized binging Elmore Leonard novels was that getting the hang of an author’s style dramatically increases the speed at which one reads their books. I could start pounding these out in a day, even with other stuff to do! I think this quality explains why readers can voraciously consume an author like Brandon Sanderson, who’s written dozens of books and well over a million pages.
Fiction Vs. Non-Fiction – UNTRUSTWORTHY!
A new edition to my database, [Fiction: Y/N?]. The checkbox asks the user to consider what is true and what is false.
I read Mike Tyson’s memoir, Undisputed Truth, which approaches this question from the title. Mike admits to a lot in the book, and there are undoubtedly truths in it. I marked this non-fiction.
But a book I marked fiction, The Siberian Job, begins with an introduction stating how the book is fact but barely fictionalized because those involved started getting death threats. The book might be total bullshit, but there are also a lot of truths about privatization in the USSR.
Or one like James Ellroy’s essay collection, Destination Morgue, which is half fiction, half non-fiction, the author recounting his childhood improprieties of huffing paint and breaking into houses, but it’s also fictionalized accounts of him as a police officer solving murders.
That’s to say nothing of obvious roman à clef French, for a book about real life that probably got the author a vicious enemy. No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai and Queer by William S. Burroughs are two such examples.
To binarize fact/fiction is to oversimplify reality into an abstraction that doesn’t always capture narratives’ strange, contradictory nature.
Genre & Format
Genre –
A pie chart that doubles as a nifty abstraction for my brain.
Categorizing what I read has made me keener on the contours of subcategorizations. Whereas most bookstores shelf together crime, mystery, and true crime, because they’re my most represented reading, I break them apart.
Format –
Analyzed independently of the content genre was the information’s format. Or, how did I consume the book? Did I read it in physical or digital? Did I own it or borrow it?
There’s a clear insight from this chart. 64.1% of reading was done with the library. Using digital library apps makes reading cost-free. Most of the books I borrowed were in audio format. These are too expensive to buy individually, so a cost-free way of accessing this information doubled my consumption.
Multi-modal consumption made reading and writing easier. Borrowing the audio and the digital copies allowed me to copy and paste text or highlight useful passages.
Next year, I plan to correlate genre and medium and see which books I prefer in which mediums. I currently need to gain the technical skills to do that.
Age and Quality of Information
Publication year –
This tells me the age of the information consumed. Most of them are very new. My most represented year is 2023, with 34 books, and books read from the 21st century (137) outnumber books from any previous century (46).
I think this is for a few reasons:
This graph prompts the most straightforward conclusion of how to broaden my reading depth. I only read things from the 20th and 21st century. I don’t read any classics. In 2024, I intend to read something written in the 19th century.
How did I read so many new books? I think there’s three reasons.
Advanced Reader Copies
Requesting ARCs explains why 2023 is the year most represented in the data. With a Goodreads account and a website, I could receive free copies in exchange for a review. ARCs are an efficient way to read contemporary books.
Library Power User
Again, the library keeps more recent materials in its collection. Because I use the library, I am more likely to read more current work.
Publishing Press Reader
I’m also subject to advertising for new books. Because I read blogs like ShelfAwareness, Booklist, and Crimereads, I am recommended new books more frequently than old ones.
Quality of information –
This is arguably the most subjective data point captured. I grade a book on a 5-star scale and am not a harsh grader. I like most books I read, with the overwhelming majority getting five stars. I find rating the books to be my least favorite part of this process, as it feels arbitrary and inconsequential. So what, more or less? I grade the information on whether I found it relevant. Did I enjoy the thrill of the story? How does it compare to others in the genre? Unlike comparisons is the problem with this category. How do I compare a reference book on sentence structures to an expose of an FBI coverup of the Osage massacre to a literary masterpiece to an enjoyable potboiler thriller? I can’t! I could rank the books I read this year, but that would be excruciatingly dull for me and the reader. If you want that, feel free to print out the blog post, cut it up, and rank it accordingly. Which one was better? WGAF?
I’ve also noticed this is the field I’m most likely to revise. If I pick a number in a bad mood, it’s lower than one in a good mood. It’s capricious, but my awareness keeps it relevant enough to keep recording. Perhaps it will be fun to compare year after year after a while.
Narrative Voice
My favorite category in the database is narrative voice. It asks, how is the story told, whatever the story is?
Traditionally, there’s first person (I, me), second person (you, yourself), and third person (He, his name), and it’s a way to define fictional tellings. Who Says? By Lisa Zeidner inspired to look closer at narrative voice and how an author chooses to tell a story. Books can have more than one narrative voice. The bar has multiple colors overlapping to show this.
This year, I noticed more texture in non-fiction tellings. These are terms or flavors. I mostly made up. Historical would be citing multiple sources; Essay is opinionated writing; How To is a descriptive guide; Reporting is interviewing first-hand sources; Fandom is writing about a thing one passionately engaged with for multiple years. I intend to write up something longer about this column in 2024.
Takeaways
I have internalized some big takeaways as I am steadfast about continuing and deepening this project in 2024.
Libraries vs. Book Buying
I started using the library with regularity in 2022, but I still bought books. I quit my job in 2023, so I “stopped” buying books (I buy fewer anyway). This has dramatically increased my reading, and I now think buying books wastes time more than it wastes money. The biggest takeaway for me in 2023: buying books cuts into reading time. When browsing the library, the evaluation is so much simpler. “Does this look cool?” When buying a book, I ask about ten questions from “Is this a reference text?” To “Do I want to lug this around to more apartments?” Hours wasted browsing used bookstores were better spent walking and listening to books. Last year, I saved thousands of dollars not buying books—this year, I am thinking of it differently. I’ve internalized library usage, and I’ll never buy books in significant numbers again (lol, says the addict, time will tell).
It Is Surprisingly Easy To Read New Stuff For Free in 2023
This year, I realized what many book reviewers already knew: reading new books in exchange for a review is a valuable service readers provide. Publishers and authors need this, and asking for free virtual copies is not an imposition on them. Without 5-star reviews, new books are not aggregated on buying markets like Amazon, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, or even library apps like Hoopla. So, in 2024, I’ll keep asking for more free stuff!
Querying Time vs. Inputting Time
A subtler trend, but I realized this year I spent comparable time querying the database than creating it. Intuitively, cataloging would take more time in 2023, which intuitively makes sense: more records = more time. However, I streamlined my process for faster entry. So, writing 183 lines in a spreadsheet didn’t take much time at all, especially compared to the time spent reading the books. How often I referred to my notes from this year compared to previous ones surprised me. I referenced the database in bookstores, online conversations, and while writing. I’m comfortable with this data now. I also created the dashboards at the end of 2022 and was able to use them throughout 2023. Through reflection, I could comprehend the iterative progress of these milestones.
Methodology and Tools
I used an Airtable database to input, track, and filter the information. Here’s an Interface displaying these visualizations. [link]
Here’s the entire list of all 183 books considered:
I read 183 books in 2023. In this post, I consider each book with a sentence-ish review. The books are not ranked but instead clustered based on what you, the reader, might like to read. I liked 175 of them (95.6%), so I recommend every book on this list with rare exceptions. The images are AI-generated from Microsoft Bing because AI-generated images were also a theme of 2023.
Brilliance That Defies Classification (12)
Brilliance that defies classification, Credit: Bing AI
All of these books were favorites of the year; they also don’t really stick to one genre, or they’re so unique I felt they needed to topline the list.
Inherent Vice | Thomas Pynchon | Mind Control Real Estate Scams
Doc figures out the Golden Fang run a big piece of the drug trade, plus the police, and…woah, California real estate, man. It’s my fourth read, and it remains an all-time favorite.
MK ULTRA beauty pageant queens rise up and destroy the Monarch program, my new favorite novel.
Grief Is A Thing With Feathers | Max Porter | Tone Poem
A family’s mother dies, and a black crow comes to visit, linger, and represent raw sadness; it is an incredible read.
A Visit From The Goon Squad | Jennifer Egan | Rock Music
Interconnected stories about the music industry, aging, and international regime change: I thought this would be stuffy, but I found it fun and strange.
The life of a 4chan person in all the gory detail; very dark, but an experimental work that forces empathy from the reader
Negative Space | B.R. Yeager | Suicide Suburbs
It is a strange, Satanic horror novel about the empty suburbs and the drive to suicide; more traditionally a novel than the previous entry, but exceptionally good.
Alice Knott | Blake Butler | Art Destruction
Exploring how burning priceless art would set the world on fire and the intellectual baggage associated with art preservation, I wrote about this here.
How To Sell A Haunted House | Grady Hendrix | Haunted Will
It is a traditional horror story framed around the complications of dividing a parent’s estate with an estranged sibling; the relationship is so well rendered here that I wrote more here.
Pin Action: Small-Time Gangsters, High-Stakes Gambling and the Teenage Hustler Who Became a Bowling Champion | Gianmarc Manzione | Bowling and Gambling
Turns out bowling had a vibrant criminal history associated with it in the middle of the 20th century, perfectly chronicled in this book straddling crime, sports, and New York.
A Little Lumpen Novelita | Roberto Bolaño | Coming of Age
A woman remembers when she tried to sleep with an old movie star to steal his gold that didn’t really exist in a beautifully written, wonderfully translated, meta-textually complex novel.
Numero Zero | Umberto Eco | Fake News
A rich guy buys a newspaper to print blackmail of other rich people, and the reports uncover Operation Gladio and the Catholic church’s role in laundering money to fund anti-Communist violence, but then the BBC reports it; this is an incredible, hilarious, insightful novel that teaches readers to read the newspaper better.
Supernatural Strategies of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Group | I. F. Svenonius | Rock Music Magik
A music journalist summons the ghosts of rock musicians to show how rock music is a propaganda tool of capitalism, and the ghosts teach readers how to make a spiritually charged, Satanic rock band informative and practical.
Crime (63)
Raymond, Elmore, Two Jims, Three Donalds, A Max, A Mickey, A Mike, Larry all go to Texas and live in a house where they solve murders with a dog | Credit: Bing AI
Crime is the most represented genre in my reading this year, just like in the previous twenty reading years. This time, I break up the list by name because crime authors marketed toward men always have real masculine-sounding names, and I think that’s fun!
Raymond Chandler (7)
The Lady in the Lake | Raymond Chandler | Dead Wife Noir
Marlowe goes out to the San Gabriel Valley to look around the mountains at a murder; the reveal halfway through the book is emotionally wrought and interrogates marriage; the silly business at the end with the stage makeup made me guffaw with delight.
The Little Sister | Raymond Chandler | Hollywood Noir
Hollywood Marlowe tries to solve the case of a missing actress in one of the best Marlowe novels with perfect tone, characters, plot, and vibe.
The Long Goodbye | Raymond Chandler | Noir detective classic
Inarguably the best Marlowe novel, his long lost alcoholic friend shows up, needs protection, but gets hit, and Marlowe drinks until he discovers the shocking truth about human nature.
Playback | Raymond Chandler | Noir Detective Classic
This one sucked; I think Marlowe got somebody’s briefcase back, but I can’t remember; this book totally sucked, and I hope it was ghostwritten.
Trouble is My Business | Raymond Chandler | Noir Detective Classic
The Marlowe novellas are fine; it’s interesting to see how he would take these novellas, mush them together, and make a novel out of it. I preferred the stories that emphasized setting and atmosphere over plot, but all were better than Playback.
The Little Sleep | Paul Tremblay | Narcoleptic Detective
I love the high-concept premise of a narcoleptic detective; the execution is sound but proves the idea is deeply flawed as a sleepy PI is obliged to black out whenever good stuff happens, and there’s no actual way to spin narcolepsy from a weakness to strength; fun try though.
The Second Murderer | Denise Mina | Noir Homage
The first published Chandler fiction by a woman is exceptional; Marlowe’s back, he has a case that takes him all over Los Angeles, including neighborhoods he didn’t visit in the originals; there’s a cool, unrequited love interest; best of all, Marlowe hangs out at lesbian bars and befriends 1940s lesbians, which seems like exactly something he would do; this was good and inarguably a million times better than Playback.
Elmore Leonard (13)
Out of Sight | Elmore Leonard | Prison Break
This book rules so hard. I’ve read it three times now, and it’s just one long, funny, effortless conversation between a bank robber and a federal agent: a charming crime romance.
Mr. Majestyk | Elmore Leonard | Migrant Crimes
Mr. Majestyk is a badass who protects migrant farmers and kills the human traffickers that haunt them; an adaption of the movie (also by Leonard) is politically strange, like a tacit comment on borders and immigration.
The Switch | Elmore Leonard | Kidnapping
The guys from Jackie Brown get the idea to kidnap a rich guy’s wife, but he’s an asshole, and he’s glad they do it! It’s one of Leonard’s best, a must-read for Jackie Brown fans, more essential than Rum Punch!
Rum Punch | Elmore Leonard | Gun Smugglers and Bail Bondsman
Source novel for Jackie Brown; this was fun, more Ordell, Max, and Jackie, but Tarnatino’s changes are better, and Leonard had the voices better in the first book, but hey, Rum Punch is still alright!
Freaky Deaky | Elmore Leonard | Bomb Squad
The Weathermen return to bomb stuff, but a cowboy bomb squad cop stops them; right, but it could have gone deeper into the Weatherman because Bomb Cop was a recurrent theme in the author’s output.
Tishomingo Blues | Elmore Leonard | Leonard, Dixie Mafia
A novel about stunt-diving, the Civil War, Robert Johnson at his crossroads, Black Americans, and the Dixie Mafia, with excellent characters and dialogue, very good, American history nerd’s delight.
Swag | Elmore Leonard | Armed Robbery
Two guys in Detroit realize it’s easy money to bust into liquor stores and stick a gun in somebody’s face and take all the cash; absolutely great, my second read, and almost gives a guy ideas.
City Primeval | Elmore Leonard | Urban Cowboys
A dead judge, a crafty Detroit detective, and a fight across the city that has somehow been adapted into a Justified season? Despite my Leonard obsession, I haven’t (yet) watched any Justified besides the (excellent) first episode.
52 Pickup | Elmore Leonard | Blackmail
A simple blackmail story with rich characters and a paranoid outlook about pornographers and capital ownership; simple, Cain-like, really fucking good.
Split Images | Elmore Leonard | Homicide Investigation
A tragic novel about an asshole factory heir who gets off on killing people, hires a mercenary, and doesn’t know he has a badass arson detective and a plucky journalist on his trail; great, fun, tragic.
Touch | Elmore Leonard | Supernatural Conman
Some guy gets stigmata, and maybe he’s a conman, or maybe he’s the real thing; Leonard tries magical realism in a departure from his typical books that a surprising amount of people call his best book (wrong), perhaps because they don’t really like crime stories.
Hombre | Elmore Leonard | Stagecoach Ambush
They call him “Hombre” because he was one tough hombre! Great western novella, absolutely feels like reading a legend.
The Tonto Woman and Other Stories | Elmore Leonard |Tales of Bandits, Outlaws, Valor Thieves and Miscegenation
All kinds of great cowboy yarns, including 3:10 to Yuma, and tales of revenge in the American Frontier; Leonard realized that the frontier project was basically a Grudge Making Machine.
Raymond, Elmore, Two Jims, Three Donalds, A Max, A Mickey, A Mike, Larry all go to Texas and live in a house where they solve murders with a dog | Credit: Bing AI
The Big Jims (3)
Destination Morgue | James Ellroy | True Crime and Fiction
Ellroy’s short essays for GQ where he confesses to breaking into houses, huffing paint, being a teenage Nazi, getting into AA, and all sorts of salacious perv dog stuff that makes him literature’s one and only Demon Dog From Hell
The Enchantress | James Ellroy | Marilyn Monroe’s Murder
The Demon Dog imagines himself Freddy Otash again and sets himself on solving the Marilyn murder, uncovers a blackmail ring, exonerates Jack the K, implicates J. the Edgar Hoover, and gives us a sequel that tops the also very good Freddy Otash book, Widespread Panic.
Pop. 1280 | Jim Thompson | Crooked Texas Sheriff
A funny, satirical noir about small Texas counties, sheriffs, incest, and the brutal truth that law exists to protect the powerful; another favorite of the year.
The Donalds (12)
Donald Goines (3)
Never Die Alone | Donald Goines | Black Power Fiction
A poor Jewish crime writer gets a hold of a Black pimp’s diary and struggles with what to do with it in an incredibly complex, meta-textual, and profound novel mediating on poverty, writing, and crime; Goines is undisputably a master of the form.
Crime Partners | Donald Goines | Black Power Fiction
The first Kenyatta novel, a badass Black Panther-stylized Black militant who is out to expose whitey for dealing drugs in Black neighborhoods and collaborating with the police: get’um Kenyatta! Always wanted to read this series, long out of print but back in audio.
Death List | Donald Goines | Meta Crime
In the second Kenyatta novel, the cops and the Italian gangs strike back at the Black radicals and attack their farm compound. This answers a question: what if Black people were allowed to publish pulp fiction in the racist American 1970s, and the answer is it’s one of the best crime series protagonists I’ve read.
Donald Westlake (9)
The Fugitive Pigeon | Donald E. Westlake | Nephew Novel
A hapless nephew wants just to run his mafia front bar, given to him by his uncle, but the New York mafia has different plans when they pin a bum rap on him: a wonderful nephew novel, a genre I discovered this year, of which Westlake is a literary champion, and the nephews need a comeback.
The Busy Body | Donald E. Westlake | Nephew Mafia
Another nephew, this time a mobster-enforcer nephew (hardly a nephew, IMO), must investigate a missing corpse to discover a hilarious money laundering scheme.
God, Save The Mark | Donald E. Westlake | Nephew Novel
Fred Fitch is the dictionary definition of a mark, and he’s also the definition of a nephew, plus the protagonist of one of a very funny comedy caper: the platonic ideal of nephew fiction.
The Ax | Donald Westlake | Unemployed Serial Killer
A fired paper mill floor manager realizes he will only get a new job by literally killing the competition, one of the author’s best and most powerful indictments of capitalism.
Firebreak (Parker 20) | Donald E. Westlake (as Richard Stark) | Heist/Hackers
Parker teams up with a hacker to break into a .com billionaire’s stupid mansion and steal his art; while the consensus is this one isn’t great, I actually loved it, and it’s a favorite; I liked the hacker, and I thought it was funny that Parker had to react to technology and how it would affect heist professionals.
Breakout (Parker 21) | Donald E. Westlake (as Richard Stark) | Jailbreak
One of the best Parker novels, certainly the best late one; Parker breaks out of jail, plus two heists! Read it out of sequence if you must; this one is so good.
Nobody Runs Forever (Parker 22) | Donald E. Westlake | Bank Car Heist
A decent Parker novel that ends on a down note and, unfortunately, becomes a trilogy where the first entry is obviously the most interesting.
Ask The Parrot (Parker 23) | Donald E. Westlake (as Richard Stark) | Racetrack Heist
It is one of the worst Parker novels; all coincidences, no planning, and a lot of reaction. I enjoyed the talking parrot (a Perry Mason reference?), but was interesting to consider how robbing a racetrack would go, a crime also seen in Kubrick’s The Killing; this felt pastiche, which maybe was where the series was headed, and that might have been really cool once the kinks got worked out, as it certainly worked better in the Dortimer series.
Dirty Money (Parker 24) | Donald E. Westlake (as Richard Stark) | Botched Heist
The final Parker ends with a whimper; he cleans up the mess from the last two books; this doesn’t seem like the end to a series because the author died unexpectedly. And yet, an unexpected death does kind of seem like death, like what would eventually take down Parker; he’ll just drop dead of a heart attack or something and is suddenly no more. Though Westlake died, Parker didn’t. He’s still out there, he just hit this dime truck the other day.
Parker’s latest heist | Credit: New York Post
Don(ald) Winslow (1)
City Of Dreams | Don Winslow | Irish Mafia
The Irish Mob Goes to Hollywood is the second in a trilogy. I much preferred the first novel and found this one uneventful, but I will read the third. Will Winslow go through with his retirement to prevent Trump 2?
Raymond, Elmore, Two Jims, Three Donalds, A Max, A Mickey, A Mike, Larry all go to Texas and live in a house where they solve murders with a dog | Credit: Bing AI
Maxs, Mickeys, Mikes (6)
Dead Street | Mickey Spillane | One Last Case
It’s a passable nuclear noir; I still wonder what’s so great about Spillane, but it took me a few years to come around on Block, so I’ll persist in reading.
Hard Cash (Nolan 5) | Max Allan Collins | Heist series
Just fine: the bad guys from a previous volume return and make more trouble.
Scratch Fever (Nolan 6) | Max Allan Collins | Heist series
Honestly, didn’t like this at all; too much Robin (Jon), not enough Batman (Nolan). But I only have three left in the series, so I’d be crazy not to read them!
The Lincoln Lawyer | Michael Connelly | Lawyer Detective
I love the Lincoln Lawyer. I usually find court procedurals dull, but I appreciate how Holler works on multiple cases, makes deals behind the scenes, and gets involved in crimes and LAPD disputes. he’s very eccentric (like Monk or Sherlock).
The Brass Verdict | Michael Connelly | Lawyer Detective
Love Rehab Lincoln Lawyer, helping surfers, solving cases, and continuing to piss off his ex-wives. While my shortest review, my favorite of the three.
The Reversal | Michael Connelly | Lawyer Detective
Love DA Lincoln Lawyer; when he argues for the state, it was pretty fun to see how they build a case; the end is absolutely bonkers, silly, and kinda dumb but also very fun and full of explosions.
Larry (4)
The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes | Lawrence Block | Cain-like Cop Detective
A decent Cain-like that was hilariously pornographic and a solid 8 on the steamy rating scale.
Killing Castro | Lawrence Block | Cuban Assassination
Just as funny as the myriad of attempts to assassinate Castro; apparently, the pulp presses buying anti-Cuban agitprop, but Block gives a fairer shake to Castro’s Republic than most American media.
The Girl with the Long Green Heart | Lawrence Block | Conman
A great Conman story where feelings for a beautiful femme fatale lead to everyone’s downfall; I finally got this guy after this one, it’s really good.
A Diet of Treacle | Lawrence Block | Beatnik Bad Boy Romance
This was hardly a crime novel, more of a hippie romance set in the East Village, and I liked it more than most of the author’s books.
The Lone Domestic Thriller (1)
Beware the Woman | Megan Abbott | Domestic Thriller
A slow burn to a shocking finish that felt like a true neo-Gothic novel; I’m a huge fan of Abbott and found this book to be a significant departure from previous work, excited to see what she puts out next.
Regional Crimes (9)
The Guns of Heaven | Pete Hamill | Irish Independence
80s potboiler about a journalist who gets involved with gun smuggling and the Troubles of Northern Ireland and helps some righteous Irish freedom fighters.
Lowdown Road | Scott Von Doviak | Hicksploitation!
Two good old boys steal an ice cream truck full of weed and try to sell it at an Evel Knievel bike jump, but the cops, a smooth brother-man, and meth-smoking biker Nazis try to stop them—a romp, just like 70s exploitation movies.
No House Limit | Steve Fisher | Las Vegas Noir
A period-perfect potboiler about an incredible gambler who comes in to bet the house and the one pit boss who can stop him.
Miami Purity | Vicki Hendricks | Miami Noir
A steamy, erotic noir about Florida, incest, and industrial dry cleaning equipment; a favorite of the year for sure.
Don’t Know Tough | Eli Cranor | Football Crime
A California boy comes to coach Texas Football and ends up getting a gentle giant as a quarterback, very voicey with a good last twist.
More Better Deals | Joe R. Lansdale | Texas Cain-like
A used car salesman helps a drive-in owner kill her husband, and everything goes sour in a historical crime novel that felt period-authentic.
The Dog of the South | Charles Portis | Road trip | Mexico Meets the American South
A hilarious romp through Mexico as a man chases his wife, her boyfriend, and his stolen car.
The Siberia Job | Josh Haven | Oligarchy
Set immediately after the fall of the USSR, this book gives a compelling look at how oil oligarchies concentrated wealth by buying vouchers of publicly owned energy companies, functionally the point of dismantling the Soviet state.
Tokyo Ueno Station | Yu Miri | Nostalgic Ghost
A ghost haunts a train station he helped maintain throughout his life. It’s really sad that there are crimes against humanity and a good, vivid book with a Buddhist parting ritual beautifully described.
“Cozy” “Mysteries” (9)
Up to No Gouda | Linda Reilly | Traditional Cozy
After opening her dream of a specialty grilled cheese restaurant (lol, literally love that), our hero is privy to a murder, and she finds a dog (Yorkie Poo, I think); her best friend moves back to town, and so does her boyfriend, and she meets a homeless soldier, and there are nefarious real estate interests afoot, and I enjoyed this one a lot, and the dog on the cover is very cute.
Scene of the Grind | Tonya Kappes | Traditional Cozy
The dog is cute, and the mystery and sets were fine, kinda of predictable, but that schnauzer-wearing Sherlock Holmes outfit is honestly enough for me.
I adore these cozy fantasy stories about an orc that opens up a coffee shop with a harpy and a Ratkin; I also enjoyed the prequel.
Feel the Bern | Andrew Shaffer | Cozy Politics Parody
A silly story about Bernie Sanders, Vermont, and a maple syrup murder mystery, exactly what it promises to be.
Not Forever, But For Now | Chuck Palahniuk | Transgressive?
A strange novel that the author described as a take on cozy mysteries but about secret incest twin Hardy Boy assassins; there are some standout passages but I don’t think anyone who likes cozy mysteries would like this at all.
Time’s Undoing | Cheryl Head | Generational Murder
Outstanding book that uses generational research, the police’s systemic killings of Black Americans, cozy troupes like an amateur sleuth, a community coming together, and romance to tell a unique story.
Killing Me | Michelle Gagnon | Cozy Noir
The tone, character, tempo, and lesbian romance of a cozy but sleazy Vegas set dressing: a con woman, strippers, a serial killer, a super spy trying to stop him, and I loved how it all came together in a satisfying way.
Tom Lake | Ann Patchett | American Family Novel
While there’s no crime, and the mystery is just a mom taking a while to tell a detailed story, and literally no one is calling this a cozy mystery, I think it qualifies with a plot based in mystery, centered around running a rural business, with generational implications on a character-focused domestic setting. I will be pestering the reading public with this hot take soon.
History (of Class Struggle) (18)
History of Class Struggle | Credit: Bing AI
We continue to live in a hellish age because of billionaire wealth inequality. Exactly how this happens is obscured, but books bring clarity and truth. Not all of these books are written from a leftist perspective, but I read them like a Marxist interested in class struggle, history’s engine.
The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine | Rashid Khalid
An exceptional primer on Palestinian history in the 20th century and America’s culpability for Israel’s colonial settlement.
A Spectre, Haunting | China Mieville | Marxism
A history of Marxism from Marx until now and an impassioned plea for all of us to remake the world into something fairer and better.
Correction: Parole, Prison and the Possibility of Change | Ben Austen | Prison Industrial Complex
Considers the parol system in the 20th and 21st centuries and passionately argues for all prisoners to have the chance to plead their case for release; I wrote more here.
Easy Money | Ben McKenzie | Crypto Fraud
The guy from the OC convincingly argues that Bitcoin is the biggest Ponzi scheme in human history with hundreds of examples.
Dumb Money | Ben Mezrich | Meme Stocks
A Reddit RoaringKitty hagiography and the basis for the middling movie.
The Revolution That Wasn’t | Spencer Jakab | “Retail Trading” As Hedgefund Fraud
A much more thorough look at GME, showing how all the hedge funds reported record profits in 2021 because dumb money poured into the market and lost all their savings (wrote about it here).
The Jakarta Method | Vincent Bevins | Regime Change
A carefully researched retelling of American imperialism and regime change throughout the 20th century focused on Jakarta, where the CIA invented ways to persecute (murder) the left.
If We Burn | Vincent Bevins | 2010-2020
Seeks to answer how the 2010s had the largest mass protests in history yet also saw the election of right-wing, reactionary regimes across the world; vital reading, and I wrote more here.
The South | Adolph L. Reed Jr. | Jim Crow/Civil Rights
Personal history explaining how Jim Crow shaped American racism and the legacy still lasts within class relations and who receives opportunities in America.
Internet for the People | Ben Tarnoff | Internet
A primer into Internet history and how the military and capitalists; a little too surface level, rely too much on established easy-to-find secondary citations.
Blackshirts and Reds | Michael Parenti | Communism
Reconsidering World War II as a battle of Fascism vs. Communism, where America made an unstable alliance and then hired all of the Nazi party officials into the American military system with something like Operation Paperclip. A short, but eye-opening reinterpretation of WWII.
Freewaytopia | Paul Haddad | Los Angeles
The history of the Los Angeles freeway system and how Cal-Trans development shaped the development of the city; incredibly researched, discusses almost every exit on the LA freeway system; kudos to this author.
The Ins-N-Outs of In-N-Out Burger | Lynsi Snyder | Company history
The Bad Burger Billionaire’s book is surprisingly good, with interesting company history, revealing anecdotes and strange California circumstances lurking in the background.
The Bill Gates Problem | Tim Schaub | Gates and the NGO Industrial Complex
Describes how the Bill Gates Foundation has allowed one of the world’s richest billionaires unfettered access and control to pharmaceutical research, patents, intellectual property, and then by extension, control of public media coverage, public policy, and pioneering a new way of using a charity to uphold capitalist colonialism.
Doppelgänger | Naomi Klein | Rising Fascism
After getting repeatedly confused with Naomi Wolfe, a reactionary author, the leftist author of The Shock Doctrine, considers how a fascist second self lurks in American politics, media, medicine, and history. I wrote a long review here.
How to Do Nothing | Jenny Odell | Attention Economy
Reconsidering doing nothing as an act of resistance in an economy that demands productivity; inspiring book, yet advocates nothing.
Golden Gulag | Ruth Wilson Gilmore | Prison Industrial Complex
A history of California private prisons that is funded by the state in tandem with labor offshoring, ” The War on Drugs,” and gentrifying urban communities; one of the best non-fiction books I’ve ever read; sadly out of print.
Killers of the Flower Moon | David Grann | Indigenous Americans & the FBI
The basis of the film, the book has exceptional research, weaving together primary sources and tribal oral history to learn the truth; I wrote about this in-depth here.
Species-Scale Science and Fiction (15)
After a friend took me on an enlightening tour of the Museum of Natural Science, I have been considering life development on million-year scales.
Species-Scale Science and Fiction | Credit: Bing AI
Species-Focused Science
Entangled Life | Merlin Sheldrake | Fungi
Fungal life and its history on Earth; I can’t wait to buy the illustrated version.
Being You | Anil Seth | Consciousness
A wide-ranging, scientific study of consciousness, including mammalian and fungal, defines consciousness as finding stasis, trying to be in criteria of temperature, heartbeat, and more activity seen across lifeforms; fascinating, but maybe implying computers or neural networks are alive.
A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching | Rosemary Mosco
A history of the domesticated pigeon, why people raised them, how they migrated across the planet, and how to identify pigeons in your neighborhood; a favorite of the year that gave me a new hobby, pigeon watching.
Your Inner Fish | Neil Shubin | Evolution
The anatomist who discovered the Tiktaalik looks at the geological record and describes the evolution of species from reptile to mammal.
Breath | James Nestor | Breathing
A treatise on breathing claims how humans evolved and how our breathing habits are causing illness.
Species Scaled Fiction
The Cretaceous Past | Cixin Liu | Dinosaurs and Ants Civilization
Ants and Dinosaurs coexist for centuries and develop complex societies until a tragic turn ends the Cretaceous Age, one of Liu’s underrated best.
How to Live Safely in a Science-Fictional Universe | Charles Yu | Time Travel
A meta-fictional novel about the past, memories, science fiction, and a time machine that keeps breaking; surprising and fun.
To Hold Up The Sky | Cixin Liu | Chinese Sci-Fi
A story collection including galactic extermination, a sarcastic ice artist, poems in galaxies, gene editing, a big mirror in the sky, and all kinds of wonders only imaginable by Da Liu.
Expert System’s Champion | Adrian Tchaikovsky | Future tribal society
I liked the first novella better, but this sequel about autonomously managed robot worlds is fascinating, and learning more about the history was interesting.
A.I. Robocops Cyberpunk Style (FEAR THE MACHINES)
All You Need Is Kill | Hiroshi Sakurazaka| Military
A teenage mecha super-soldier gets stuck in a Groundhog Day loop until he kills every alien on the battlefield; the source material for Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow
BadAsstronauts | Grady Hendrix | Citizen Space Expedition
A redneck astronaut sends a homemade rocket to space to get his cousin back in a choppy, but fun, re-edited first novel.
All Systems Red | Martha Wells | A.I.
Reread the first Murderbot book about the security AI that becomes self-aware and starts solving mysteries.
Artificial Condition | Martha Wells | Robot PI
Murderbot is back on a ship, negotiates a labor truce, and proves that Ash from Alien is not representative of all ship AIs.
Rogue Protocol | Martha Wells | Robot PI
Murderbot goes to a planet and discovers an illegal mining operation
Cyberpunk 2077: No Coincidence | Rafał Kosik | Cyberpunk Party Heist
A group of net hackers go after a corporation, and I realized I’m tiring of this universe.
A.I. Robocops Cyberpunk Style (FEAR THE MACHINES) | Credit: Bing AI
Deeply Unhinged Literary Fiction (9)
Strange books by narrators who do not share the same reality as everyone else; my girlfriend said 10 deeply unhinged books is a slightly distressing amount, but I find them cathartic.
No Longer Human | Osamu Dazai | Ennui
The second most popular Japanese novel of all time, and it lives up to the hype; a sad young man drifts through Japan and fails at everything until he disappears.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation | Ottessa Moshfegh | Pilling & Chilling
A New York model decides she hates everything and herself, so she takes a bunch of pills and sleeps for a year until her cells regrow a new one; this book was so mean and hilarious, cannot believe it was so popular!
Eileen | Ottessa Moshfegh | Strange Christmas
Eileen is an old woman who tells the story of one week that set her life off course from her small town into strange places; the movie is good, but the book is amazing with the narrator’s closely observed thoughts.
McGlue | Ottessa Moshfegh | Sailors
They accuse a sailor of getting blackout drunk and murdering his lover/best friend, a strange, angry, homoerotic novel.
Pizza Girl | Jean Kyoung Frazier | Bildungsroman
A Korean girl in K-Town delivers pizza, gets pregnant, falls in love with a single-mother customer, breaks into her house, and gets drunk in her car in a loving portrait of people who make bad choices; really enjoyed this.
Your Driver Is Waiting | Priya Guns | Disgruntled Uber Driver
A second-generation immigrant in LA drives for Uber and becomes Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver; I liked this main character.
Queer | William S. Burroughs | Non-Normative Desire
A strange, hateful, profane book more about assault and child desire than anything resembling queerness in 2023. I must hand it to Burroughs; he confesses to true degeneracy and crime.
My Sister, The Serial Killer | Oyinkan Braithwaite | Serial Killer
A sister is jealous of her serial killer sister; I didn’t like this.
Harold | Steven Wright | Comedic Bildungsroman
A second grader with ADHD goes to school a day in the 1960s; this book is very funny, perfectly read by Steven Wright, and while Harold isn’t unhinged, he sees the world askew.
Poachers & Pirates (9)
Pirates and poachers | Credit: Bing AI
I did not intend to read so much about poachers and pirates, but I ended up reading a lot about this topic, a long-held fascination.
Swamp Story | Dave Barry | Florida Man Comic Caper
Some rednecks say they found a monster in a Florida swamp, but some gangsters buried their money there; this was cool, like Donald Westlake.
Gator Country | Rebecca Renner | Nature Crimes
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Force set up a sting to capture alligator thieves with an undercover agent, just like a typical Fed.
Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods | Lyndsie Bourgon | Tree crimes
A sympathetic look at the poachers and the trees in Northern California and Washington; on the one hand, people are poor, but on the other, Redwood trees are some of the oldest lifeforms on earth.
The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession | Michael Finkel | Art Heists
A guy who lived with his mom in France stole over 300 paintings from European museums and got caught in a tragic, brilliantly told story, a favorite of the year.
The Ransomware Hunting Team | Renee Dudley/Daniel Golden | Ransomware and their amateur sleuth adversaries
Ransomware: what it is, who’s making it, who’s fighting it; and it turns out the only people fighting it are a bunch of random working people, a guy from Bloomington Normal, a guy from Germany, a lady in SF, all cracking malicious encryption and helping people for free.
Fake Money, Blue Smoke | Josh Haven | Heist
A counterfeiter gets a scam to rip off some Arabian princes with fake money on a yacht to pull off an art heist on a train.
The White Darkness | David Grann | Arctic Exploration
A well-told tale about a man so obsessed with Antarctic **exposition **it kills him; this reminded me of Herzog’s Grisly Man
The Wager | David Grann | British Navy Mutiny
The story of a ship’s mutiny, brilliantly told, weaves together all the diaries, memoirs, contemporary accounts, and context about British shipping and sparked my further interest in Naval stories.
The Devil and Sherlock Holmes | David Grann
A breakout year with the success of The Killing of the Flower Moon, this New Yorker essay collection actually has four film adaptations.
Villains of All Nations | Marcus Rediker | Class Conscious Pirates
Can we read pirates as sailors unwilling to accept the feudal hierarchy of the British Imperial Navy and those against colonialism? Yes!
Boxing (8)
Boxing Match | Credit: Bing AI
I’m a fan of boxing and researching the sport for a writing project.
Fat City | Leonard Gardner | Boxing Novel
A depressing story about the end of regional amateur boxing in the late 1960s
Undisputed Truth | Mike Tyson | Boxing Memoir
The funniest boxing memoir, with plenty of gossip, raw, honest self-analysis, and admission to multiple crimes.
The Greatest | Mohammad Ali | Boxing Memoir
Hands down the greatest; an incredible, hilarious, deeply honorable person brilliantly written by the greatest boxer.
Championship Fighting: Explosive Punching and Aggressive Defense | Jack Dempsey | Boxing Technique
A brilliantly written explanation of how to punch and take a punch.
Boxing and the Mob: The Notorious History of the Sweet Science | Jeffrey Sussman | Boxing & Crime
A primer summary of the relationships of boxers and mobsters with generic summaries of each.
The Murder of Sonny Liston | Shaun Assael
Sonny Liston’s death is highly suspicious; he was involved with Las Vegas mafia elements, and the police didn’t investigate correctly; this book details the strangeness.
The Sweet Science | A. J. Liebling | Boxing
Essays about boxing from the 30s, 40s, and 50s by a guy who pines for the Donnybrook heyday of the 1800s; the voice is so perfect in this book.
The Fix Is In | Brian Tuohy | Gambling
An eye-opening book that makes a compelling case for professional sports leagues rigging major games and team dynasties.
Cinema (5)
Cinema | | Credit: Bing AI
Books about movies so I can get better at watching movies, my second favorite thing to do.
Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir | Eddie Muller | Noir
The genre of film noir is broken up into subgenres and laid out onto a mental map of a noir city, a favorite film book.
Chainsaw Confidential | Gunnar Hansen | Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The inside scoop on the production of Texas Chainsaw, like how they filmed on a cannabis farm, they had mafia financiers and the actors didn’t get paid.
Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family | James B. Stewart & Rachel Abrams | Sumner Media Empire
Succession, IRL: the Redstone family-controlled CBS, and passing down the company proved to be very tricky.
The Last Action Heroes | Nick De Semlyen | 80s Action Movies
80s action movies, the rivalry between Stallone and Schwarzenegger, Willis, Norris, the classics, and some obscure ones; a well-told, while not critical, look back at late Cold War propaganda.
Tarantino writes a book that’s part memoir, part cinema criticism, and part linear notes for his films; very entertaining and explains how his strange, singular personage came into being.
Hot Properties (8)
Hot Properties | Credit: Bing AI
Media tie-ins, movie inspiration, and a few odd series I felt compelled to sample.
Elvis & Me | Priscilla Presley | Elvis
Priscilla Presley’s memoir from childhood until Elvis’ death; an avid journal writer, Presley’s telling is crisp, full of detail, and one of the unique stories in the 20th century; the film is also fantastic.
Who Censored Roger Rabbit? | Gary K. Wolf | Cartoon Parody
I always liked the movie, but the book is not as good; it seems like a good idea, but the cartoons on the page, the characters being able to copy themselves, and the lame reveal of the actual culprit made me prefer the movie any day.
Star Wars: Death Troopers | Joe Schreiber | Stormtrooper Zombies
Zombie Storm Troopers are haunting a Death Star until freaking Han Solo and Chewie himself come and save the day; fun!
The Night Stalker (Kolchak 1) | Jeff Rice | Urban Fantasy Mystery (Early)
Kolchak, the reporter, hunts a vampire across Las Vegas even if it ruins his life; this unpublished novel was the basis of the show and is pretty great!
The Night Strangler (Kolchak 2) | Jeff Rice | Urban Fantasy Mystery (Early)
The Kolchak sequel is less good; the Seattle setting is fine, but the monster is vague, and the plot is the same as the first one.
Cold Case RevengeJessica R. Patch | Missing Child Suspense
A little girl gets kidnapped, and her hunky dad has to save her, so he teams up with a National Park cop, and they fall in love; the main character of this had the same name as a guy I know, so I had to read it.
Fantasy (3)
Fantasy | Credit: Bing AI
Not much fantasy this year, although I finally read a classic and started a contemporary trilogy.
The Colour of Magic (Discworld 1) | Terry Pratchett | Fantasy Series
I’ve read other Discworlds, but I went back to the beginning to finally read the D&D parody books; I like Rinceworld, he’s an odd nut.
A Deadly Education | Naomi Novik | Evil Harry Potter
What if Malfoy was the main character, Hogwarts was evil, there were no teachers, and instead of
The Last Graduate | Naomi Novik | Evil Harry Potter
Loved the first book; the second felt like a wheel spinning, more of the same Dark Hogwarts story from the first, but thankfully it sets up the third well.
Self-Help (10)
Self-Help | Credit: Bing AI
When I was depressed and needed help quitting my job, self-help books came through. They’re corny, but this section includes some of the most impactful books I read all year.
How To Win Friends And Influence People | Dale Carnegie | Self-Improvement
A moronic book that gives advice that equates to be nice to manipulate others; useless, commonsense knowledge.
Thinking in Bets | Annie Duke | Probabilistic Thinking
A very fun and approachable guide to thinking in probabilities like a gambler, with personal examples and scientific evidence, is an interesting way to consider happiness and your daily choices.
How to Decide | Annie Duke | Decision-Making Strategies
A continuation of ideas in the first book put toward a more concentrated purpose of deciding when multiple options are available.
Quit: The Power of Knowing When To Walk Away | Annie Duke | Quitting
My favorite of the three books explores when to fold them, when not to hold them when to cut your losses, and when quitting is winning.
Atomic Habits | James Clear | Habit Forming
Interesting way to conceptualize productivity and change your own mind.
Wherever You Go, There You Are | Jon Kabat-Zinn
A Zen book about meditating and mindfulness that’s a calming listen.
The Cow in the Parking LotLeonard Scheff and Susan Edmiston
A Buddhist understanding of anger: anger is hitting the hand with a hammer, and if stopped, one will feel better.
Never Get A “Real” Job | Scott Gerber
Reconsiders money making as a series of skills instead of a series of jobs.
Unleash the Power Within | Tony Robbins
I had to know what the fuss was about, and despite his menacing, eerie presence and voice, he made some interesting points about motivation.
Awake the Giant Within | Tony Robins
A recorded seminar explaining the giant within all of us, and Tony used to be a janitor at this very building, but now he passes it every single morning on his helicopter—and you can too.
Writing (13)
Writing | Credit: Bing AI
I added more writing guides to the brain stew, focused on narrative frameworks and inspiration, and considered some specific guides.
Wired for Story | Lisa Cron | Story Framework
Considers neuroscience and reader expectation to explain what consumers expect in a conventional story.
Story Genius | Lisa Cron | Story Framework
A holistic drafting system to create a beat sheet, characters, detailed outline, and general story shape.
Story | Robert McKee | Story Framework
All of McKee’s thoughts on the story, a taste of the other books.
Character | Robert McKee | Character Framework
A detailed and deep method of character creation that applies to any medium.
Dialogue | Robert McKee | Dialogue Framework
A series of revision and generation strategies to improve dialogue and what to look for when cutting and fixing.
Bird by Bird | Anne Lamott | Writing Inspiration
When her little brother was writing a report on birds, her father suggested he take it bird by bird; Lamott suggests similarly to pace oneself and to accept the process.
Write for Life | Julia Cameron | Writing Inspiration
The Artist’s Way for writers, including specifics about what to write in one’s pages and writer’s dates for writers.
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron | Artist Inspiration
A popular book that suggests an artist can find inspiration and direction from daily journaling, weekly intense study, and a spirit open to God’s wisdom, daily journaling is a cathartic, helpful exercise.
Steal Like An Artist Trilogy | Austin Kleon | Writing Inspiration
Ideas, truisms, inspiration, and post-it note-type ideas helped me reboot negative thought loops around writing.
How to Write and Market a Christmas Cozy Mystery | T. Lockhave | Self-Publishing
Ideas and outlines on generating the story and a great tutorial on marketing a niche content ebook around a holiday.
Several Short Sentences About Writing | Verlyn Klinkenborg | Sentences
Klinkenborg’s sentences strive for a short, clear, relatable style, and this book was fun.
Writing Tools | Roy Peter Clark | Grammar Reference
A useful grammar refresher and desk manual; a dull read.
Brainstorming lists and frameworks for blogposts; very helpful.
Stuff I Didn’t Like (8)
Stuff I Didn’t Like, lots of stuff, things, colorful, highly detailed, gaudy, 1970s classic animation, stop motion | Credit: Bing AI
I am not a harsh grader. I liked almost everything I read this year except for a few works. I redacted the names of some folks because I’m not looking for trouble nor grief.
The Silence | Don DeLillo | Mediation
All the world’s cell phones turn off in a quick, mostly boring novella presented as an overproduced audiobook, like a below-average play.
The Last White Man | Mohsin Hamid | Race satire
All the white people wake up black one day, and they hate it and start killing themselves, and the entire world ends. while the page count is very short, it is much, much too long and has kinda “equal opportunity offender” South Park vibes.
Blonde Rattlesnake | Bank robbers
A poorly structured look at a crime from the 1920s that over-reproduces primary sources and doesn’t go deeper than citation.
This hasn’t aged well. The idea that people can somehow spontaneously start “owning” automation technology seems impossible just seven years later, and now sounds like reworded in a Silicon Valley press release; the analysis is not sufficiently critical of billionaires and mostly buys their bullshit, the author embarrassingly praises Elon Musk’s promise for space mining programs, a wacky fantasy; this is not serious analysis.
The Donut Legion | White Separatists
I found all the characters obnoxious.
Maeve Fly | Psycho Lady
American Psycho for Disney women; perhaps I didn’t get it.
REDACTED
An awful “small press” (two guys) produced a writing guide; the people who made this over-rely on secondary sources. I suppose it is useful as a bibliography with blockquote but right on the cusp of plagiarism.
REDACTED
A self-published guide to becoming a Kindleprenuer explaining how she did it, but I have a hunch her unrevealed secret is “Hire ghostwriters.”
In Conclusion:
Thanks to Tech Layoffs 2023, I’ll probably never read this many books in a year again unless I win the lotto. This was a fun, if somewhat mentally exhausting, exercise.
Writing something about every book was practically required to keep all the information straight in my head. The concept of reviewing every book forced new ideas. Some sublists could be expanded posts. Careful readers will see that happen in the coming months.
I also did this as a rough process of practicing data analysis. This is the raw data that makes the analysis possible. Within it was all the real insight, but through the aggregate, change happened. Each data point is built into an interlocking whole.
Merry Christmas! Happy Solstice! Io Saturnaia! While I no longer participate in Catholic mass for Christ, I enjoy Christmas as an idea, a ritual, with all its pomp and bombast.
But I can’t help but notice the darkness within Christmas’ heart. Perhaps you feel a lurking Holiday dread, reader. Fear of large crowds, overstimulation, and rejection from the tribe.
This post is for you. Lean into the dread and let us discuss the horrors of Christmas.
Books
The Christmas Beastery Credit: Illustrator John Kenn Mortensen | Publisher: Fantagraphics
The Christmas Beastery Illustrator John Kenn Mortensen | Writer Benni Bodker Fantagraphics, 2023
This week, I considered the Christmas Beastery, which brilliantly illustrates Christmas horror. A beastery is a collection of monsters, and Christmas has a surprising amount of them. Naughty children, beware: Christmas is a time for PUNISHMENT!
Mortensen’s pen and ink illustrations use shadows to hint at an inescapable void: darkness under the bed where monsters live. Each line is used to etch ancient demons that cannot die, surviving the centuries to terrify children.
Santa Claus has a barely concealed eerieness, watching us sleep, judging the children, and forcing his elven slaves to make toys. That horror is literalized in Krampus, the most popular Christmas monster with his big-budget Hollywood adaptation (sellout). I love how Mortensen represents the many regionalizations of Krampus.
Krampus, Credit: Illustrator John Kenn Mortensen | Publisher: Fantagraphics
But there are more monsters I’ve never heard of, like the Icelandic Grýla, a gigantic troll sorcerous who carries 15 sacks on her tail to carry children’s bodies to her cave. A Christmas feast!
Grýla, Credit: Illustrator John Kenn Mortensen | Publisher: Fantagraphics
Or the French Père Fouettaro: he’s Father Whipper! He hides in the shadows and beats children with a cane. I find this illustration deeply unsettling.
Père Fouettaro, Credit: Illustrator John Kenn Mortensen | Publisher: Fantagraphics
The beastery even includes little monsters, like the Kallikantzaroi, little werewolves that come out on Christmas, squeeze through the chimney, and steal all the food.
Kallikantzaroi, Credit: Illustrator John Kenn Mortensen | Publisher: Fantagraphics
Even The Wild Hunt, from Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, has a Christmas connotation, where undead riders on black horses with red hot eyes storm the town, eat the food, and torture the children. Sounds like a Davos Conference!
The Wild Hunt, Credit: Illustrator John Kenn Mortensen | Publisher: Fantagraphics
This book is amazing. If you like Krampus, folklore, pen and ink illustration, or if you are a TRPG dungeon master writing a Christmas campaign, this book is for you. I read it from the library on Hoopla, but I will buy a copy.
All I Want For Christmas is Utahraptor By Lola Faust 2023, Independently Published
All I Want For Christmas Is Utahraptor, Credit: Lola Faust
Shifting gears into Mormon Raptor Romance. I saw this pitch-perfect Harlequin cover parody and had to read it. I stayed reading about the strange world where humans and dinosaurs live in harmony and sometimes mate together, an anti-Jurassic Park. As you’d expect, the steamy descriptions are very amusing or likely very erotic to some readers.
Consider this Christmas Kiss,
A passage from All I Want For Christmas Is Utahraptor, Lola Faust
Of course, most of humanity rejects Raptor Romance. They cannot admit the truth: love is love. But Holly Hottie and Rocky Raptor prove the bigots wrong.
Lola Faust has published a dozen more dino-romances in case you try this one and find out it’s you need more. A perfect XXXmas read with an 8.5/10 heat level fireplace.
Film
A scene from Eyes Wide Shut, Credit: Warner Brothers, Flim.ai
Eyes Wide Shut | Dir. Stanley Kubrick | Warner Brothers
My favorite holiday movie is Eyes Wide Shut, wrongly read as a Christmas movie. The rituals therein predate Christ. Eyes Wide Shut is a Saturnalia movie, just as Christmas is the Christianisation of Saturnalia, Rome’s feast to Saturn, the God of Agriculture.
Every twelfth month in Rome, “slaves [had] license to revile their lords.” In the film, consider Bill is the slave, and when he sees the orgy, he’s reviling his lords. In 217 BC, the Phoenicians conquered the Romans at the Battle of Lake Trasimene, and the Romans adopted Greek rituals into the holiday, particularly cult sacrifices to Baal. That’s what the cloak people are doing in their Long Island mansion. We sublimate brutal Pagan holidays in Christ, just as our Puritanical overlords kept what the patricians do secret from us plebs. An Eyes Wide Shut party is a modern invocation of the leader’s urge to meet under candlelight, wear cloaks, and do sex-magik-murder.
Some allege Kubrick got killed for making this movie. Maybe so. Yet a quarter-century after release, billionaire sex cults are common. Multiple presidents and Congressmen were probably at that orgy party in the movie. The Epstein case opened all our eyes wide shut: we know the truth, but there’s nothing we can do about it.
I enjoyed Hot Star’s recent analysis of Eyes Wide Shut, where he speculates which lines were overdubbed by the studio and why (spoiler: Prince Andrew).
Pile of the Week: The Boxes in My Parents’ Basement
In my parents’ basement are boxes of books I like well enough to keep but not display in my piled-pilled apartment. Piles of Vertigo comics, alt-lit, David Foster Wallace, book-noted literary classics that are indisputably good, but why would I display a $0.99 copy of Candide covered in highlighter? Why do I keep them? To see how my brain develops over time is what I tell myself each week as I write and consider my reading piles.
As the year winds down, and the darkness reaches its peak, I search for strange reading. This week we consider a human art project, an art thief, Sigmund Freud’s cigars.
A friend pointed me toward Andrew W.K.’s weird vision journal. Remember Andrew W.K.? The 2000s pop-rock act about partying? I loved him as a teenager. He just married Kat Dennings. Congrats, you two!
Andrew W.K. and Kat Dennings — Credit: Instagram
Andrew is also allegedly an Illuminati clone, music industry plant, and Satanic magician. Who alleges this? Andrew, allegedly.
Reading between the lines here, Andrew W.K. created a persona named Steev Mike to add mystique and magical ritual to his music. Steev Mike is Andrew, but the side of him that networked into the music industry shaped the music into accessible pop-hits and got a Cartoon Network reality show, Destroy Build Destroy! A career as a motivational speaker. Steev Mike is a David Lynchian characterlike the Mystery Man from Lost Highway.
Robert Blake as The Mystery Man from David Lynch’s Lost Highway — Credit: Ciby 2000, Flim.ai
To promote his 2021 album, God Is Partying, the one with Satanic overtones, Andrew self-published his mission journal. And I found it fascinating, like looking directly into an artist’s brain.
Let’s take a look at a few pages. Here’s Andrew willing himself to create a mythos larger than the music.
A page from Andrew W.K.’s Vision Journal — Credit: Andrew W.K. Music
Here, we see Andrew considering the idea of manufacturing a life crisis, pivoting to life coaching, and hiring bodydoubles to impersonate himself.
A page from Andrew W.K.’s Vision Journal — Credit: Andrew W.K. Music
He explains what he envisions for the ultimate Andrew W.K. experience.
A page from Andrew W.K.’s Vision Journal — Credit: Andrew W.K. Music
If D.L. = David Lynch, and M.D. = Mulholland Drive, then basically thinking about Andrew W.K. is meant to evoke the uncanny, Lynch-esque feeling of weirdness, that something deep, dark, and demented is going on below the surface.
Is this journal genuine? Maybe, but probably not. Certain pages are. I think other pages were written to unite the artist’s career into one cohesive statement. Like, is he a mastermind that planned this epic, behind the scenes story from the beginning? Or is he a performer able to incorporate the world into his art? Or a magician? Is this notebook all one big ritual, a blueprint sent to himself in the past? Perhaps.
It might even be a eulogy to the idea of Andrew W.K. The tracklist of W.K.’s 2021 album hints that the act is complete. He created it; he destroyed it. I’m excited to see whatever he builds with the ashes.
A screencap of the final tracks on God Is Partying (2021) — Credit: Spotify
Books
The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession | By Michael Finkel | Knopf | 2023
I ask myself, what is the purpose of art? What is its value? Stéphane Breitwieser tried to answer this by stealing three hundred European art pieces. He would walk into museums, unscrew frames off the wall, use a razor blade to cut canvasses from their frames or pickpocket priceless heirlooms. He loved Renaissance art, copper, silver, ivory, and oil paintings. Truly cultured taste! He kept all the art in his attic, never selling any of it, trouncing across the contingent with his lovers like Bonnie and Clyde. Then, it all comes to a tragic end. I don’t want to spoil exactly how sad this story gets, but I found this portrait of a thief to be a sublime biography.
“The single most valuable work of art he stole was Sybille, Princess of Cleves by Lucas Cranach the Elder from a castle in Baden-Baden in 1995. In 2003 The Guardian estimated that its value at auction would be more than £5 million (£8.7 million or €10 million adjusted for inflation in 2023).” — Credit: Wikipedia
Comics
Through Clouds of Smoke: Freud’s Final Days | Words By Suzanne Leclair | Illustrations by William Roy | Humanoids | 2023
Sigmund Freud, Illustrated by William Roy — Credit: Humanoids
This graphic biography considers Freud narrowly through his love of cigars. I love this premise. As Freud famously said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” But don’t you want to know what was up with the doctor’s cigars?
Briefly, it’s mentioned that the doctor saw smoking as a substitute for masturbation; smoking cigars kept him productive. Yet it’s also what killed him. The doctor seemed to know that the tobacco was giving him cancer. The illustrations show his near-torturous commitment to smoking.
Freud’s Oral Surgeries, Illustrated by William Roy — Credit: Humanoids
Freud’s cancer got worse as he fled Austria and Nazi persecution; the cancer in his mouth contrasts with the cancer in Europe. I found this biographical comic to be fascinatingly told and perfectly illustrated. There are even endnotes and a bibliography for a rigorously researched comic. If you’re interested in Freud or philosophy, you’ll enjoy this short read. One can always expect a quality from Humanoids.
Pile of the Week
Lately, I’ve been experimenting with TRPGs as writing prompts. Hope to show you some soon on NickyWebsite.com
Pile of the Week 12/17 – Credit: author
Thanks for reading! Here’s the newsletter archive for all your reading needs.
It’s buying season. A perfect thing to buy a lover is a book. They don’t need to read it to enjoy it; they can put it in a pile and look at it, and by sheer proximity, they will absorb its wisdom.
Novels
Alice Knott by Blake Butler — Credit: Riverhead Books, Penguin
Alice Knott By Blake Butler 2020, Riverhead Books
Alice Knottis about burning priceless works of art. Remember those videos where extremists destroy art?Alice Knott wonders what would happen if masses of people started destroying priceless art. She films it, slashes paintings, bakes them in pizza ovens, and blows them up with fireworks. At the beginning of the book, Alice Knott is dissociative, angry about the vandalism, claiming to be a victim. But we learn that in a dissociative fugue, she remembers who torched all the paintings. She did! And doing this untethers her from herself and reality.
The vandalism inspires copycats to go into museums and stab paintings or smash statues. Liberatory burning commences among the masses. Paintings are an asset for rich families to transfer wealth generationally. Museums codify values, aesthetics, and ideals by displaying the empire’s plundered wealth. When the priceless works burn and shatter, systems shock, states lose control, and people start having new ideas untethered from the past and creating something new. Intentional destruction is a form of creation.
Blake Butler, the author, has previously considered this idea of how burning art imbues new meaning with his novel Scorch Atlas. This book encouraged readers to burn after reading and even had a launch where readers could buy pre-destroyed, burned copies, just a bag of ash. The book, too, is about finding a crumbling book in an apocalyptic world. (source: this great video about Ergodic Literature).
In AliceKnott, we get glimpses of the future world without art. The narrator describes a commercial for a dementia drug, where a spider basks in pharmaceutical goo absorbed through its skin. The world lacks storytelling technologies and vocabularies to make sense of their existence. It seems like the only art left is Alice’s videos. But the narrator doesn’t report societal collapse, mass agony, or even loss of electricity.
The author claims inspiration from The Crying of Lot 49, a favorite novel of mine. I see the similarity. Imagine Odepia won the auction at the end of the last chapter, and inside the lot was a collection of priceless paintings; this is her late-life crisis. Yet despite his fixation on flames and burning earth, Butler has more optimism for the future than Mr. Pynchon. The book is not anti-fire; it’s not a warning against fire; I read it as welcoming the oncoming fires. There’s optimism about starting anew.
From what I can tell, the only way to read Alice Knott is in hardcover, which I feel adds to its mystique and impermanence. It has no e-book, paperback, or purchasable audiobook — although I got the audio version from the library. A strange, thought-provoking novel for fans of fires, art, and transcending one’s self.
The Night Stalker (The Kolchak Novel) by Jeff Rice 1974, Moonstone
A journalist teams up with the Los Vegas police to fight a vampire, and the book inspires a TV show that spawns a genre (X-Files, Buffy, Monster of the Week). I watched the show years ago and always meant to check out the Kolchak novel. Unpublished until the show came out and was long out of print until Moonstone Publishing brought it back (and kept it easily readable with an ebook and audio version). The novel is surprisingly good. As an urban fantasy novel, it’s an early example that hits all the troupes. It offers a detailed portrait of Vegas, an interesting vampire, and mythological and historical researcher, culminating in an action-packed investigation with a tragic twist.
The way Jeff Rice, the author, metafictionally inserts himself into the manuscript, claiming Kolchak is a real guy who actually sent him this authentic diary about vampires, is a fun nod to Dracula, a novel that’s a fake diary claiming to be real. Kolchak is also a deeply 1970s character, a paranoid detective drawing paranormal conclusions, a grownup Scooby Doo. Consider the context of a fictional character investigating a “Night Stalker” when Richard Ramerez, the real media dubbed Night Stalker, was actually killing people, and the “Serial Killer” narrative was on the news and in the theaters with slasher movies at the theaters and less than a decade after the Manson murders. In this fictional story, the private investigator teams up with cops and wonders if these serial killers are all monsters and demons. Kolchak teams up with the local police department to reveal the vampire, but they burn him. He gets fired and has to leave Vegas with a hitman on his tail. The police totally burn him. I wonder when Kolchak will inevitably get rebooted and probably investigate Bigfoot school shooters and Mothman terrorist cells.
Regarding comic books, I have one golden rule: the pictures better look really good. Nature’s Labyrinth succeeds. Its story is troupe-y; a bunch of people have to kill each other on a murder island, like the Hunger Games, Battle Royal, The Most Dangerous Game, or …And Then There Were None.
A two page spread from Nature’s Labyrinth — Credit: Bayleigh Underwood illustrator, Mad Cave Studios
The setup offers strange, action-packed stuff to happen. Lady twin martial artists attack our hero, and then a few pages later, they blow up for some reason. Our hero immediately concludes, “Who cares?”
A page from from Nature’s Labyrinth — Credit: Bayleigh Underwood, illustrator, Mad Cave Studios
A page from from Nature’s Labyrinth — Credit: Bayleigh Underwood illustrator, Mad Cave Studios
The art sells the over-the-top zaniness and graphic gore. Consider how this page plays with a nine-panel grid to show a hero falling into a bottomless pit, submersing the bottom three panels in darkness.
Amazing art on top of pure pulp. Comics live! This is the first book I’ve checked out by Mad Cave Studios, but it won’t be the last. The trade paperback comes out on December 19th. Thank you, Mad Cave Studios and NetGalley, for the ARC copy.
Pile of the Week
Year end pile compiling and a sneak peek at my Favorite Books of the Year post coming out this week.
A pile of some favorite reads from 2023 — Credit: the author
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The days grow colder, and the piles grow larger. This week, the piles bring mass protests, big dinosaurs, God mascots, and the debut of a new pile: movies!
Books
Protest Flag in Hong Kong from which the book takes its title — Image Credit: Ill Will Press
If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution By Vincent Bevins Public Affairs, 2023
Between 2010 and 2020, history saw “the biggest protests” on the scale of attendees. These demonstrations brought more people into the streets than ever before, and the mass demonstrations were streamed online. Yet afterward, something strange happened: repressive, right-wing governments came to power. Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump in America, and Johnson in Britain are just three. How could both these things happen in sequence? Citizens rejected their governments and elected even worse, more repressive governments.
Bevins’ new book seeks the answer. He considers mass protests in the decade and interviews the people who planned and participated in them. While the US and Britain are mentioned, most of the analysis is on countries in the “Global South.” Bevins was a reporter in Brazil, so the story is centered around Brazil, considering the red tide, the election of Lula, and the subsequent rejection and election of Bolsonaro.
The book’s analysis considers the “Arab Spring” protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Libya and the vastly different protest outcomes in these countries. The 2018 Hong Kong protests and its cooptation by the Trump State Department to sew anti-Chinese sentiment. Ukraine’s history leads to a critical view of the current conflict; after the fall of the U.S.S.R., right-wing military groups co-opted protest energy and won governmental power. For Ukrainian nationalists, armed conflict against Russia has always been the goal. The limits of representational democracy are also considered with Boric and Chile. Bevins’ first book, The Jakarta Method (2020), considers coups throughout the 20th century; If We Burn considers evidence of US State Department intervention in Libya, Syria, and Bahrain.
Considering these examples, Bevins draws conclusions for more effective political actions (ch.20). Power does not exist in a vacuum; when one system is displaced, another system finds its place. Organization is the key to winning power. The rightwing groups in Ukraine were already organized, meaning they had systems for electing leaders, a defined message, and they identified local leaders. This allowed them to win state elections. The book proscribes justice activists to organize into democratic structures. One might call this Leninism (but Marx said to do this too). He even suggests in a vague, general sense that the 2010s were protests against our phones, protests against the violence we saw captured on digital video. Who showed us those videos?
This is essential reading for international politics, political activism, and history. It’s out of the book’s scope, but I felt the analysis has made society fully reckoned with the role of billionaires in this decade, specifically in these mass protests. The narrative alludes to oligarchs who take advantage of the crisis and get richer, lurking in the background like vampires. Last month, I wrote about The Bill Gates Problem (2023) and how Gates uses international “aid” foundations to influence foreign and domestic policy for African countries. Surely, he could benefit from capitalizing on discontent. The Chaos Machine (2022) considers the technical role that social media, particularly Facebook, played in some of these mass protests. My point: billionaire capitalism might imply billionaires hold more influence than entire state governments. I’m sure we’ll continue to see the wealthy feud and consolidate wealth throughout the 2020s.
If We Burn is on my shortlist for favorite books of 2023.
More Better Deals By Joe R. Lansdale Mullholand Books, 2020
A smoldering tale of love, murder, and racial passing set in 1960s Texas. Ed Edwards is a used car salesman. He’s White passing, in a racist town, and breaks local law when he sells cars to Black people. His life is bleak until he goes to repossess a Cadillac owned by Nancy, the sultry drive-in theater owner. Well, really, her husband owns it, and he’s a deadbeat, so they hatch a scheme to kill him and cash in the life insurance policy! There’s gore, a ransom, jealousy, passion, and an unhappy ending. A treat for fans Joe R. and James M.
Comics
Panel from Of Thunder & Lightning by Kimberly Wang — Credit: Silver Sprocket Press
Of Thunder & Lightning By Kimberly Wang Silver Sprocket, 2023
A debut comic about battling God mascots with incredible artwork. A fight between the Kabbahlah’s Sefirot tree versus the Norse Yggdrasil.
Page from Of Thunder & Lightning by Kimberly Wang — Credit: Silver Sprocket Press
Wang’s fight choreography reminds me of Astro Boy, FLCL, Akira, and Dragon Ball Z, with dynamic paneling and page layouts and the use of white space that makes the scale seem bigger.
Page from Of Thunder & Lightning by Kimberly Wang — Credit: Silver Sprocket Press
The characters remind me of Disney’s Pinocchio (1940), cute, emotive and elastic. And the colors! Two-toned fans rejoice because the red deepens the landscape and heightens the characters’ emotions.
Page from Of Thunder & Lightning by Kimberly Wang — Credit: Silver Sprocket Press
Admittedly, the plot is confusing, so I appreciated it when the characters turn chibi and explain what’s happening. Perfect for rereading. Here’s a link to buy it!
Page from Of Thunder & Lightning by Kimberly Wang — Credit: Silver Sprocket Press
Movies
Godzilla chases a boat in Godzilla Minus One (2023) — Credit Toho Studios
Godzilla Minus Zero (2023) is a remake of Godzilla (1954) that directly confronts Japan’s fate after World War II. A kamikaze pilot fights Godzilla. This is the perfect premise for a Godzilla remake, and it’s fully realized. The empathic portrait of our cowardly hero and the firebombed rubble of Tokyo build into the perfect motivation to kill Godzilla. And my favorite character, Godzilla, looks incredible. She’s present for the entire movie with highly detailed rendered models that harken back to the 50s and 60s designs. Glorious!
So, what does Godzilla really mean in this context? In the 1954 film, she seems to be an ancient consequence of using nuclear weapons. Her “atomic breath” is the literalization of dropping an atomic bomb, and Godzilla destroys Japan in the same way the Allies did. Yet in Godzilla Minus One, the monster is awake before the dropping of the atomic bomb. Perhaps the tests seen in Oppenheimer (2023) woke her up? A soldier claims Odo natives knew of Godzilla for centuries. Its presence kills deep-water fish. Of course, Japan does present itself as a victim of WWII when the historical truth is the country was an aggressor that tried to colonize China. Is Godzilla a reaction to colonialism? Does he come out of the ocean and eat colonizers? I hope so. One of the best Godzilla movies ever and a personal favorite of 2023.
Pile of the Week
This week’s pile goes to the books I got at Bart’s Books in Ojai, CA. Definitely my favorite outside bookstore. Some Wall Street mafia connections, 80s cyberpunk shorts, the next volume of a manga I’m reading, and a strange book about a criminal’s corpse that I intend to write about.
Io Saturnalia to you and yours!
My latest book pile from Bart’s Books in Ojai, CA — Credit: the author
On Wednesday, November 22nd, 2023, it will be sixty years since they shot Jack K! Kennedy is one of my reading obsessions, and I surround myself with many piles of books on the topic.
My haters claim this is proof of my insanity.
Yet more than half a century later, many people have no idea what happened on 11/22/1963 or why an American president was assassinated. This post doesn’t discuss who killed him. Instead, it asks why was he killed?
The JFK assassination is talked of in hushed tones, like God or the universe. The truth is that historians understand the general shape of the event. It’s not that complicated.
Six decades later, all will be revealedin this (long) blog post
The Classics
Here are three non-fiction books that explain why John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the consequences for American foreign policy. All three are well-sourced and conclude that JFK’s assassination wasn’t an accident.
JFK and the Unspeakable by James W. Douglass Touchstone, 2010
The author lays out his argument on the first page in the simplest possible terms:
On [America’s] behalf, at the height of the Cold War, John F. Kennedy risked committing the greatest crime in history, starting a nuclear war.
Before we knew it, he turned toward peace with the enemy who almost committed that crime with him [the USSR].
For turning to peace with [Russia], Kennedy was murdered by a power we cannot easily describe. Its unspeakable reality can be traced, suggested, recognized, and pondered… (ix).
Or even simpler. Why was Kennedy killed? He didn’t want to escalate tension with Russia, but industry and military leaders wanted him to do so. JFK got in their way.
Here’s a timeline sketching some specifics:
April 1961 — The “Bay of Pigs,” a botched invasion of Cuba, almost started a nuclear war against Russia. This event is satirized in Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb.
1961–1963 — Kennedy realized this could have killed millions of people. CIA director Allen Duelles planned the invasion, so JFK fired Duelles. JFK advocated a measured approach to intervening in “3rd world countries,” meaning countries that weren’t decidedly capitalist or communist.
1961-1963 — At the same time, a group of rich and powerful people, including Allen Dulles and the CIA, J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, oil drillers, capitalist industrialists, mafia cartels, and corrupt union leadership like the Teamsters’ Jimmy Hoffa, all independently had reasons to dislike Kennedy. How they conspired together (evidence shows they did) is debatable. The military and oil industry realized Kennedy would not govern in their interests to protect American trade hegemony. He would not “fight Communism” and sabotage the USSR or countries with socialist governments. He got in the way.
11/22/1963 — This group conspired to assassinate John Kennedy. Then, they assassinated his brother, Robert Kennedy. After numerous failed attempts, they finally capped JFK on 11/22/1963 and RFK on 6/5/1968.
See, it’s not that complicated. Much of the bunk analysis on the Kennedy assassination seeks to litigate who killed him and how they specifically did it, with or without Oswald. What’s more consequential and more straightforward to prove is the numerous reasons why Kennedy was killed.
The book’s title refers to the concept of “The Unspeakable.” The violence states commit to maintaining economic control.
Douglass further explains the Unspeakable in the context of the Cold War,
In our Cold War history, the Unspeakable was the void in our government’s covert-action doctrine of “plausible deniability,” sanctioned by the June 18, 1948, National Security Council directive NSC 10/2. Under the green light to assassinate national leaders, overthrow governments, and lie to cover up any trace of accountability — all for the sake of promoting U.S. interests and maintaining our nuclear-backed dominance over the Soviet Union and other nations.
JFK’s assassination could be understood as anti-democratic aggression coming home. JFK didn’t listen to key leaders in the military-industrial complex, so they decided he needed to die.
JFK’s assassination could be understood as America’s anti-democratic aggression coming home.
The book sources over 2000 footnotes to make this argument, ranging from public archives, FOIA’d FBI archives, interviews, the Warren Commission, and more.
Touchstone, a division of Simon and Schuster, published it. The author is a respected Catholic peace activist.
My point is that any writer arguing the idea Lee Harvey Oswald “acted alone” is arguing irrationally, ignoring well-documented evidence to the contrary, and selling a false narrative for a specific reason. We’ll see this in action when surveying contemporary releases.
This book is affordable and available on Hoopla and Amazon Audible Plus, and you can borrow a copy from the free library on Archive.org.
Dallas ’63 By Peter Dale Scott Open Road Media (Reprint), 2015
Since the 2016 Trump Election, the idea of “The Deep State” has been relegated to right-wing discourse. But the concept was invented by a far-left, pacifist poet and historian, Peter Dale Scott, to explain the Kennedy assassination. In his book Dallas ’63, he argues why the assassination can be understood as a structural deep event, a framework for other significant events in 20th-century history. He writes,
By “structural deep events” I mean events that are never fully understood, arise out of ongoing covert processes, have political consequences that enlarge covert government, and are subsequently covered up by demonstrable omissions and falsifications in historic records. Here the assassination in Dallas can be compared to later structural deep events, notably Watergate and 9/11.
Let’s break down this definition: what is a Structural Deep Event?
“Events that are never fully understood” — An event that is impossible to understand fully is essential to a “deep event.”
“Arise out of ongoing covert processes” — The agencies and businesses that did this still exist, and it is still in their interest to obscure the actual reasons behind this event.
“have political consequences that enlarge covert government,” — There are many consequences. An overarching consequence of post-1945 deep events is that the American military-industrial complex allocated more resources and got a bigger yearly budget.
“ …and are subsequently covered up by demonstrable omissions and falsifications in historic records” — 60 years after the event, the assassination is “covered up” by hyper-focus on Lee Harvey Oswald and the day of the murder. It omits CIA and FBI involvement and the reasons why rich businessmen wanted Kennedy dead.
“Here the assassination in Dallas can be compared to later structural deep events, notably Watergate and 9/11.” — Some of the same people involved with the JFK assassination were involved with the Watergate break-in and the response to the 9/11 attacks. This is why understanding the JFK assassination is vital if a reader wants to understand history after 1945.
Structural deep events affect how states govern and how resources get distributed. It takes nuance to understand the reasons for JFK’s assassination, and that nuance reveals how global society has operated under American hegemony since 1945.
The historical blindness to JFK would obscure countless other historical events, like the downfall of the USSR and the destabilization of Africa and South America.
This book is excellent. It’s $3 on Kindle from the Forbidden Bookshelf series, and you can borrow a copy for free from the free library on Archive.org.
Albarelli takes the argument a step further and claims the JFK assassination was a coup. Rightwing elements in America overthrew a popular, democratically elected leader who favored liberalism, government oversight, international restraint, and democracy. Here’s the introduction explaining the book’s thesis:
“Esteemed historians have argued that November 22 was a “systemic adjustment” more than a coup. Albarelli makes the case that the assassination was indeed a coup d’état by demonstrating that among the planners and perpetrators were mutinous elements within US intelligence, military ranks, and industry who held immense power and influence sufficient to overturn the democratic election of John F. Kennedy and get away with it. He presents persuasive evidence — much of it ignored or misunderstood previously — to prove that the assassination cabal, including holdovers from Hitler’s Third Reich and Texasbased powers, passed deadly judgment on Kennedy’s platform, which at its core was a commitment to full democracy on a global scale.” (xiii, Roadmap)
Astute readers will see similarities between 11/22/1963 and a right-wing American coup attempt on 01/06/2021.
Or was January 6th a structural deep event? Can it be both?
This gets to the larger truths of these events. The forces that assassinated Kennedy didn’t go away; in fact, they only became more powerful. Structural deep events increased in frequency in the 21st century.
Albarelli goes for the throat and convincingly argues that assassinating JFK was a right-wing coup. America’s military killed the president and set the country on a course toward global fascism.
This book is new, so consider buying it or the audiobook and demand your librarian get a copy.
In Libra, DeLillo says the CIA did it. This is reductive, and the author probably wouldn’t put it that way, but if you read it, the novel blames the CIA. Is this novel disinformation? Yeah, probably. It treats fact like fiction and vice versa, adding more confusion and obfuscation to an already misunderstood yet deadly serious historical event.
But once we get over objecting to its very existence, there’s much to admire about the novel. Scholars write how it employs “historicity” to make sense of a complex event through fiction. It’s using the power of narrative to bring closure to the restless brain. It weaves in historical characters like Oswald and offers an empathetic portrait detailing all his strange proclivities and brush-ups with intelligence agencies.
But what’s left out?
Interestingly, while the CIA seems culpable, the novel doesn’t direct blame on Allan Dulles, the former Director of Central Intelligence. The man planned the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy fired him, he held a grudge about it, and Dulles arguably had the means, motive, and opportunity to kill the president. Few men have that, but more men held that grudge against JFK than all the other presidents except Lincoln, Garfield, or McKinnley (the other assassinated presidents).
The book mentions Dulles once, “The DCI, Allen Dulles, was spending the weekend in Puerto Rico, delivering a speech to a civic group on the subject ‘The Communist Businessman Abroad.’” That does sound like something he’d do.
The DCI is an acronym for the Director of Central Intelligence. The DCI is mentioned three times. Most significantly, the narrator considers the Director’s relationship to foreknowledge of extra-legal operations.
Knowledge was a danger, ignorance a cherished asset. In many cases, the DCI, the Director of Central Intelligence, was not to know important things. The less he knew, the more decisively he could function. It would impair his ability to tell the truth at an inquiry or a hearing, or in an Oval Office chat with the President…
Do we think the novel’s narrator is credible? I find it hard to believe a director of a top-down agency wouldn’t know about an assassination attempt on the president of his own country.
Notice specifically the three CIA agents are made up, or pseudonyms, probably composite characters. Is fictionalization a clever way to avoid a libel lawsuit? When one Googles the names, it’s honestly hard to distinguish that these are fake characters, made-up guys. Are these three characters written into the historical record, or does Google just suck?
Also, notice the 1988 publishing date. DeLillo knew a lot before the JFK Act and Oliver Stone’s film. Interesting… One could waste a lot of time trying to unravel what he made up.
American Tabloid By James Ellroy 1995, Alfred A. Knopf
The mass market edition of James Ellroy’s American Tabloid — Credit: Knopf, and Ebay
This is one of my all-time favorite novels. Is it disinformation? Yeah, probably, but it gets closer to the heart of the truth than DeLillo, even if it blows smoke on some false fires.
The novel says the FBI did it. Kinda. The author also employs three composite characters to show the players how the assassination came to be, interspersed with real characters like J. Edgar Hoover leading the FBI. Those characters include a hardened criminal and hired hand of Howard Hughes, a quiet but calculating FBI agent, and an FBI agent on Kennedy’s security detail (remember that now).
All three of these characters are obsessed with compartmentalization. Hiding what you know and how you know it from everybody, including yourself. This seems like how powerful people can justify their actions.
Did you know somebody tried to kill JFK in Chicago weeks before he got killed in Dallas?
It sure wasn’t Lee Harvey Oswald. This lends significant validity to the idea that it wasn’t just “one guy” who wanted the American president to die. A whole network of guys planned JFK’s assassination, and Dallas was the attempt that worked.
11/22/1963 By Stephen King 2011, Scribner
The mass market cover of Stephen King’s 11/22/63 — Credit: Scribner
Even Stephen King gets in on the fun with 11/22/1963. The prolific author has written over 65 novels, and this one is easily one of his worst. The Time Traveler’s Wife’s Husband sorta solves JFK’s murder, gets distracted, and falls in love. This novel is pure schmaltz. I suppose it’s significant because it proves “JFK fiction” is a subgenre, a trend, that sells books and offers more smoke to cover up the real fires.
“60th Anniversary” Books
With the above context, I survey some of the new books released for the anniversary.
The only new book I finished. The Enchanters is about the Enchantress, Marilyn Monroe, History’s Greatest Bait Girl. The second Freddy Otash novel, an existing historical person, a scumbag paparazzi private-eye blackmailer who spied on the stars and JFK, apparently, throughout the 1960s. This book investigates the relationship between Monroe and Kennedy and probably goes into whatever was in Otash’s archives that he always threatened to publish up until his death. Otash was a known liar, but he also loved photographic evidence. The conclusion is funny, climatic, and probably not true. It’s Ellroy’s best novel in a while, uniting all his strange passions, but I’m not sure it brings the reader any closer to the truth on the JFK assassination like American Tabloid. Still fun!
In my search for new releases, this one is the best bet. Poulgrain focuses on Dulles’ intervention in Indonesia and includes a timeline that dates back to the 1850s oil industry. Looks good.
The jury’s out on this new book about Jack Ruby. From the blurbs, I think the book will say Ruby was crazy, but it does grapple with his mafia and police ties. I’ll check this one out eventually.
The Final Witness is getting the most buzz. It’s by the bodyguard next to Kennedy on his detail. I suspect it will contain the least relevant information of any book on this list and has the highest likelihood of being disinformation. In the intro, Landis confesses he read nothing on the topic until 2013, picking up The Kennedy Detail, another account by secret service agents that doesn’t seriously consider the geopolitical context of the event. This is rehearsed and probably approved by the agency. The author claims he wrote the book to discredit the Zapruder film. Ah… I didn’t read the rest.
American Confidential: Uncovering the Bizarre Story of Lee Harvey Oswald By Deanne Stillman 2023, Melville House
The author studies Lee Harvey Oswald through his mother and sides with the Warren Commission. I don’t find this contribution useful at all. The argument pathologies historical figures to draw contemporary conclusions instead of considering populations, institutions, resources, or power.
Overemphasizing Oswald and his mother suggests that society should know a killer’s motive from his psychiatry, that the inner thoughts of a crazy person are paramount knowledge for us readers. Nope. Crazy’s crazy. And hey, Oswald’s mother didn’t commit a crime. Sure, she’s dead, and yeah, she probably was a bad parent, but why subject her life to intense scrutiny?
The author does this to argue that Lee Harvey Oswald was a toxic white male mass shooter. Conveniently ignoring, he only shot one guy who happened to be the dang president! The introduction directly compares LHO to a mass shooter. Stillman shoehorns the past to serve a contemporary argument. Even if we assume LHO “acted alone” and killed Kennedy, political assassinations have political contexts! Personal contexts are irrelevant. Oh, was Oswald’s mom sad that her crazy son went crazy? I’m sure she was! Investigating his mom is the same trauma porn impulse of Dr. Phil. This argument flattens the world into the same canned story: one lone wolf killer must be identical to another. Pay no attention to that hungry pack of wolves watching and manipulating the crazy wolf. I won’t be reading more of this.
Book Pile of the Week: Strangest Kennedy Crossovers
Let us end on something silly! I’ve found three very strange JFK Fan Fiction on Archive.org. I haven’t read any of them, and I am unlikely to do so, but they all look hilarious, and you can find them on Archive.org.
Sherlock Shoots JFK, From AIComicFactory.com
Sherlock Holmes, the Master Detective himself, finds out who did it! Or, did he do it? I have no idea. You’ll have to read to find out.
If anybody’s gonna find out who killed JFK, it’s LAPD Lieutenant Columbo! The LAPD is definitely not implicated in any Kennedy assassination plots; don’t even ask!
Welcome back to Piles. How are my homies in the northern hemisphere adjusting to the 5pm sunset? Cold days and long nights are better when you have piles of books to read.
Immerse yourself in piles.
Books
Considering two new releases this week, both are out on Tuesday, November 14th.One is critical of business, and the other is critical of the state.
The Bill Gates Problem by Tim Schwab — Credit: Metropolitan Books, Macmillian
The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire, By Tim Schwab Metropolitan Books (owned by Macmillian), 2023
An eye-opening read about the Gates Foundation. The world’s biggest charity functions nothing like a charity but a private equity investor or wealth management fund. Tim Schwab builds on his reporting for The Nation to make a compelling argument against the public relationships narrative spun by the Gates Foundation. In the 1990s, Gates branded himself as a technology whiz kid. Then, in the 2000s, he was pushed out of Microsoft and sued for monopolizing the tech industry. Schwab argues that Gates brought that same monopoly impulse to pharmaceuticals, charity, and international relations. He cites the peculiar statistic that since Gates started “giving his money away,” he’s only gotten richer. And yes, the book details Gates’ close, personal friendship with Jeffery Epstein! I felt this book incisively proves billionaires should not exist. This book has incredible research and reporting and directly challenges one of the world’s most influential people. I highly recommend it if you’re interested in politics and power.
Gator Country by Rebecca Renner — Credit: Macmillian
In 2017, a multiyear Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission investigation into egg poaching exposed alligator farm turf wars over the coveted eggs that feed the hide fashion industry. State undercover operatives opened an alligator farm in DeSoto County to hunt down poachers and wildlife law violators roiling an aquaculture industry dependent on annually re-stocking its pens from eggs.
So the FWC put on a sting operation not so different from the DEA, FBI, or any other state government police agency!
Renner’s book details the operation and the context of poaching in Florida. She’s from the region, understands the landscape, and sympathizes with the people who have no jobs and need to forge to survive. She interviews sting victims and presents their perspectives and perspectives of the agents who conducted the sting.
You’ll like this book if you like rural true crime that isn’t simple or moralistic. It reminds me of last year’s Tree Thieves by Lyndsie Bourgon, which examined how impoverished Californians poach Redwoods and the state’s response. Perhaps I’ll write something longer about this…
Pile of the Week
And finally, the coveted Pile of the Week Award goes to…
Spotify has given some users 15 hours of free audiobook content every week. I’m writing a list of recommendations for you now. You get a free Audible credit if you have the right Spotify plan. Check! It’s clutch!
Thank you, Metropolitan Books, Macmillian, Image Comics, and NetGalley, for this week’s Advanced Reader Copies.
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A review of Parasocial, a graphic novel that’s Stephen King’s Misery for the TikTok era
In Parasocial, a fan kidnaps her idol, and in the process, we consider the exploitative, transactional nature of fandom.
Writer Alex De Campi created some great exploitation comics in her Dark Horse series, GRINDHOUSE. And she previously collaborated with Erica Henderson on their Blaxploitation-homage, DRACULA MOTHERF**KER! I loved that book, too, with its moody pastel pallet.
A panel from Dracula Motherfu**er! by Alex De Campi and Erica Henderson — Credit: Image Comics
The pair developed a working rhythm because Parasocial is a standout work for both creators.
Now, I can tell you with words why this comic book has deep themes and thought-provoking content.But this is comics! Parasocial has impressive illustrations. The story is told visually, combining words and images in ways only comics can.
Consider this four-page car crash:
Two Pages from Parasocial — Credit: Image ComicsTwo More Pages from Parasocial — Credit: Image Comics
Incredible! The layout utilizes dynamic fonts and onomatopoeia, so sounds jump off the page, and you can hear that 18-wheeler’s horn. The headlights on the truck and car illuminate the scene in a halogen glow. As our driver loses consciousness, the panels snap away from the grid, and moments start overlapping, moments and slow, drowsy repetitions. This action is much more visceral than contemporary superhero junk.
Henderson’s style reinvents itself on every page. At one point, I checked to see if there were multiple artist credits. So many styles are represented, but when the characters embrace, and it’s rendered like a 90s Shojo manga, I knew this must be one of the year’s best comics.
Three Panels from Parasocial — Credit: Image Comics
Unlike its celebrity protagonist, Parasocial is not all just surface-level good looks. The work wonders a provocative question: why might a fan deserve revenge on her idol? The introduction uses a montage to show all the people at the fan convention and the scope of the event. For a moment, the focus is on one crying person offering a deeply revealing confession.
One Panel from Parasocial — Credit: Image Comics
Fandom is a pay-to-play. You belong to the community as long as you can afford to belong to the community. You can’t be a fan if you can’t afford the new thing. Fan conventions and costumes, merch, signings, and photographs cost money. This background character is getting into five figures of credit card debt so she can see her friends and pretend to be a cat.
You belong to the community as long as you can afford to belong to the community.
Something disconcerting is going on here. When our celebrity protagonist, Luke Indiana, is tied to a chair in his #1 fan’s kitchen, he asks why he should remember her. She points to her bulletin board.
Two Panels from Parasocial — Credit: Image Comics
I count five pictures of Luke and Lizzie together, so they met five times. He even hugged her. Each time, she probably paid $100 to get those photographs. That’s $500 for five minutes of his time.
And he still doesn’t even know she exists. That’s cold. Despite this, the fans persist.
They dream of getting with their celebrity crush. Parasocial bluntly points out that the only way that is actually going to happen is your crush is kidnapped and hogtied.
Is it any surprise Lizzy’s filled with rage? Celebrities treat their fans like servants yet rely on them for financial support. Like all good exploitation stories, Parasocial blurs exactly who’s exploiting who.
A Page from Parasocial — Credit: Image Comics
The work is short, yet every panel counts. I loved this book and immediately reread it.
MaybeI should kidnap the creators and tell them how much I loved their new graphic novel?!?!
It’s out now, so get it from your comic shop or an online retailer.
Thank you, NetGalley and Image Comics, for providing an advanced review copy in exchange for an honest review.
Parasocial by Alex De Campi (writer) and Erica Henderson (artist) Image Comics, 2023
