Since it’s not yet even Christmas in the Julian calendar, and time is fake anyway, here’s the tail end of my reading from last year. It was a solid month, all things considered, but I’m very ready to move on into the terrifying future (and maybe Eugene Tooms didn’t die in that escalator, and we’re going to find out the hard way). Regardless, here’s some books. Links go to our Bookshop.

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Here is where, fucking finally, I finished Fredric Jameson’s Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, in which Jameson lays out some angles of approach to the postmodern condition by means of its manifestation in the arts. If that sounds a bit dense, a bit stiff — good, because it is. While Jameson’s clear affection for Philip K. Dick and his occasional dry humor were delightful, I found this one tough going on a stylistic level, in part because, on a conceptual level, Jameson’s argument was pretty cogent: postmodernism is, very distinctly, an outgrowth of Modernism as a philosophical and aesthetic approach, but where Modernism relied on time and context, postmodernism relies on space and decontextualization, taking the alienation addressed and described by Modernism as a given that no longer bears discussion. Which is all well and good, but by the last leg of it — I took breaks here and there — I was skimming pretty hard. I don’t regret it, and I’ll probably return to it piecemeal, but taken all at once it was a lot.

I needed a palate cleanser after all that. I wanted to hold a printed book in my hands and luxuriate in deep margins, and I had acquired just the thing: C. L. Polk’s novella, Even Though I Knew the End. I will note right here that I am a big sucker for a supernatural detective, and Polk, for whom I am also a sucker, offers a delightful one in Helen Brandt, a disgraced magician-turned-PI who agrees to one last big case — and if she succeeds, she and her girlfriend will be free to live happily together. Even Though I Knew the End hits a lot of the same notes as Falling Angel, William Hjortsberg’s 1978 novel (better known for its film adaptation, Angel Heart, than on its own), but personally, I prefer Polk’s breezier style to Hjortsberg’s unconvincing hardboiled act. The magic system Polk posits here is also a lot more fun than Hjortsberg’s relatively straightforward set-up. It’s also a lot gayer, which is always a plus. I waltzed through it in about a day, and I recommend it highly.

Next up, in audiobook form, was Christopher Golden’s Road of Bones, which was the December pick for a Discord-based book club I’m in. We follow Tieg and Prentiss, two TV-industry toilers searching for a hit on the Kolyma Highway, a treacherous stretch of road through Siberia — but a town abandoned by everyone but one little girl prefigures the supernatural thrills that are to follow. Functionally, this is a supernatural spin on a men’s adventure tale (or at least, up to a point). I can get down with one of those here and there, and Golden does it well, sprinkling in just enough weird stuff and haunting imagery to make me still care for the guilt-ridden Tieg and long-suffering Prentiss. It was fun and I enjoyed it — what more can I say?

The cover, which does a little bit of a disservice to the contents.

I next finished The Worm and His Kings by Hailey Piper, also in audiobook form. Piper has been on my radar for a little bit, and — not to brag or anything — she and I are both in this anthology that you can preorder here. As thrilled as I was to see her name in the TOC, I am even more excited now, because The Worm and His Kings is fucking great. Monique, a dispossessed young woman in New York City in the 1990s, is trying to find her girlfriend, who she thinks was taken by a mysterious being that’s been kidnapping other homeless women. Monique is right — but the situation is much weirder, more complicated, and, ultimately, more transcendent than that description suggests. Highly recommended, and I can’t wait to read more of her work.

Next up, we’ve got The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World by Virginia Postrel. In it, Postrel argues — convincingly — that without the technological advances gained from textile creation and manufacture, from selectively breeding flax plants to grow outside their initial habitat to the famed Jacquard loom-computer punch card connection, the world as we know it would not exist. Not necessarily, I think, a controversial opinion, but certainly one that bears repeating. The fact that I’m a huge fucking nerd about fiber arts has come up here and there throughout the blog perhaps also contributes to my general sympathy for Postrel’s project, but Postrel makes it easy: her writing is engaging and brisk without becoming dismissive or too simplistic; her research and sources stand up to at least passing scrutiny. I’ve been hollering at everyone I know who’s even remotely interested in textiles and fiber arts about this one basically since I started it, and now I encourage everyone else to check it out.

I do like the art-nouveau wallpaper look of the cover.

I followed that with A Restless Truth by Freya Marske, the only ebook on this roundup. Long-time readers may recall that I generally enjoyed Marske’s debut, A Marvellous Light; this second installment in the Last Binding trilogy follows the sister of that novel’s protagonist. Attempting to retrieve a powerful artifact, Maud Blyth instead finds herself embroiled in a magical mystery involving murder, a truculent parrot, and burgeoning romance with another woman. Fundamentally, it was fine: it was fun and sexy, with some interesting touches with respect to the magic system, and it was nice to see a little more acknowledgement of class in the setting. I’ll be interested to see how Marske wraps it up whenever the third one comes out.

I next finished, in audiobook form, Flannery O’Connor’s classic short story collection, A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories. I read Wise Blood and the title story of this collection some years ago, but that was the extent of my experience with O’Connor; a friend has been making his way through her oeuvre and urged me to jump in. I’m delighted that I did: O’Connor builds stories with astonishing skill, constructed like ships in bottles, but while her structures are delicate, her prose hits with incredible force, every clause like a blow from a sock full of nickels. Her approaches to race and class attempt — usually successfully, at least in these stories — to tread a path between knowledge of what is right and a lifetime of exposure to the vilest prejudice, while her Catholicism guaranteed her an outsider’s perspective on elements of southern culture. I’m excited to gain more familiarity with her work.

The cover, which gets better on closer inspection.

We close this round-up, and thus the year, with another audiobook: Food of the Gods by Cassandra Khaw, which comprises two novellas, “Rupert Wong: Cannibal Chef” and “Rupert Wong and the Ends of the Earth” (and which is not available on Bookshop, so the link goes to the publisher). Rupert, described by the author as “like Rincewind smooshed together with Constantine,” is thrown up against a panoply of divine beings from religions the world over, emerging by the skin of his teeth as a charmingly goofy narrator. As I’ve remarked elsewhere, Khaw’s prose is often the highlight of their work, and Food of the Gods is no exception: like the visual style of Dorohedoro, Khaw conjures visions of writhing terror, violent comedy, and heart-stopping beauty with intensity and aplomb. It was a great note on which to end the year.

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Edgar's Book Round-Up, December 2022