Once again, I find myself hoist by a petard with my name on it, in the midst of another year for the fucking history books at only two months in. If you’ve got disposable income, let me once again suggest that you put it towards, for example, eSims for still-embattled Gaza, or if you live in one of a seemingly ever-growing number of states where this might be relevant, a trans support organization. If you’re hellbent on it, though, links to book titles go to our Bookshop unless otherwise noted.

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I suspect this is a British edition, but I liked it better than the other versions.

I led off the month by finishing — in a surprise even to myself — Brandon Sanderson’s Tress of the Emerald Sea, which I read after having it recommended to me at a holiday party. Like King’s Fairy Tale, which I discussed previously, BrandoSando notes in his afterward that this novel was partially borne from a desire for something comforting. Unfortunately, first, he decided to try to riff on The Princess Bride, which is an all-timer, and Sanderson just does not have the chops for that, or at least not to attempt that and then tell people explicitly that that was what he was trying to do, and second, I was somewhat biased against him at the outset: I read Mistborn not too long after its release, and was aggressively unimpressed. But while the latter is a personal problem, the former is a simple case of ambition o’erleaping. As the story, which follows the titular Tress as she joins a pirate crew to try to find her lost beloved, a useless princeling, progressed, I did find it increasingly endearing, and elements of it were a lot of fun. I learned after starting the book that this is one of several ancillary novels that link to Sanderson’s longer works in some way I am not invested enough to examine further, but it was fine, it was fun, and I’ve read worse on purpose, so it passes.

Next up, also in audiobook form, was Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: the Oral History of Emo’s Mainstream Explosion, 1999-2008 by Chris Payne. An audiobook might seem like a poor choice for an oral history that is 95% quotations from interviews, but Graham Halstead and Chris Abell handled it extremely well — I never felt lost — and the book itself was delightful. I was fifteen in 2005, and for this and many other reasons I am squarely in the demographic that went absolutely apeshit for emo, if the fact that it was not a phase weren’t already clear; I was surprised how much I already knew that was outlined in Where Are Your Boys Tonight?, even about things I’m not terribly invested in like the Long Island Hardcore scene of the late ‘90s, but I was equally pleased to encounter explanations of things I never quite understood, like how somehow a bunch of people were into Chevelle. But much as I enjoyed that information, as well as what amounted to inadvertent running gags — no one mentioned Fall Out Boy without noting that Patrick Stump could actually sing, or My Chemical Romance without mentioning how deeply weird Mikey and Gerard Way were — Payne’s abilities as an editor and an interviewer are definitely the stars of the book. Gathering interviews with both stars of the scene, like Gabe Saporta and Bert McCracken, Payne also seeks out fans of the genre. Two I was pleasantly excited to hear from were Hanif Abdurraqib and Ellie Kovach, both of whom have written beautifully and at length on the genre elsewhere. All in all, if you’re at all interested in third-wave emo, Mall emo, or whatever else you’d like to call it, Where Are Your Boys Tonight? is a real treat (but, it probably goes without saying, if you’re not into any of that, go ahead and give it a miss).

Barker’s art really is all that and a bag of chips.

The first of three print books on this round-up is Abarat by Clive Barker, which I reread for the first time since probably my early teens. The novel, written for Barker’s daughter, centers on Candy Quackenbush, a teenage girl growing up in Chickentown, MN, a dreary little town best known for its chicken processing. But when, as part of a school assignment, Candy learns of a mysterious suicide, and finds herself drawn to a ruined structure on the outskirts of town, she is plunged — more or less literally — into the titular Abarat, an archipelago of twenty-five islands inhabited by fantastical beings, capable of wonderful magic and incredible evil. I loved it as a child, both for the story and for Barker’s many phenomenal, painted illustrations. As an adult, unfortunately, I found that while Barker’s prose is as top-notch as ever, the story promises a lot but doesn’t quite deliver on it; there is a sequel, and I now own that too, but I am not sure if the combination of the rather thin story and the awkwardness of the book object (a regular-sized hardback, casebound, with glossy pages throughout, making it very heavy) is enough for me to finally satisfy my curiosity about the followups. That said, I am very excited to foist it on the children of my acquaintance, and I hope to get to know Barker better as a writer in the near future.

The next book I finished — also an audiobook, though this one read by its author — was Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World. Cameron has discussed her work several times, but I am new to her oeuvre. Taking as its basis Klein’s history of being mistaken for Naomi Wolfe, once a respected third-wave feminist, now an anti-vaxx bedfellow of people like Alex Jones and Steve Bannon, Klein explores the idea of the doppelganger and its political and social ramifications in the present moment. From the wellness-to-fascist pipeline, to her self-avowedly-a-bit-petty problem with being mistaken for Naomi Wolfe, to, at its core, an indictment of the way gesture take the place of action on climate change and the ongoing oppression of the Palestinian people by the Israeli state, Klein feels out the edges of her project, skillfully blending personal anecdote with incisive literary and political analysis and insight. I’m very glad to have read it, and very excited to dig deeper into Klein’s oeuvre.

Another audiobook, and another banger: An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon has been on my radar more or less since release, but to my shame, I hadn’t followed up on any of the good press and strong personal recommendations of it until recently, spurred by how much I enjoyed Sorrowland. This novel follows Aster, who lives in the oppressed lower decks of a generation ship, the society of which essentially recreates the antebellum south. The novel is ill-served by plot summary, especially because the plot is not its strongest suit; Solomon brings a singular vision to the setting and their protagonist, not least by virtue of their liquid, opalescent prose. Their handling of being the intersections of misogyny, racism, homophobia and disability is open-hearted, especially with respect to Aster’s beloved friend Giselle, whose specific flavor of neurodivergence could have been treated with cruelty even by a well-intended writer. I realize I’m late to saying this, but Solomon is truly a gift to speculative fiction, and I’m very excited to read more of their work.

I really liked the cover design on this one, so props to Cemetery Gates for that, too!

Next up, in print, we have L. P. Hernandez’s In the Valley of Headless Men, which I received as an ARC from Cemetery Gates Media when they offered them via Instagram. The novella follows Joseph as he, his brother Oscar, and Joseph’s ex-partner Gillian set out for Nahanni National Park, following the thread of a cache of letters from Joseph’s absent father. As the valley throws up increasingly unsettling obstacles, warping the characters’ very grip on reality, all three must contend with a variety of intermingled griefs — assuming, of course, that the titular valley doesn’t kill them first. In addition to his other publications, Hernandez has had a number of stories features on the NoSleep Podcast, and while the r/nosleep influence is very clear, it’s used with aplomb. Hernandez blends the inexplicable, sublime, and, occasionally, outright gross to great effect, spinning out an unspoiled landscape that is by turns edenic and deeply creepy. The characters occasionally felt a little one-note, but given the nature of their travails, that doesn’t necessarily detract from the story. I’ll be digging into more of Hernandez’s work, for sure.

The next book I finished was K. J. Charles’ Slippery Creatures, the first of her Will Darling romance adventures. I’ll discuss it at a later date, when I’ve finished the other two. So the next book under consideration — again, returning to audio — was Francis Spufford’s Cahokia Jazz. In it, Spufford conjures an alternate vision of 1920s America, and specifically a Cahokia that is a major city, filled with industry and the center of a sprawling, majority-Native American semi-independent state. The story, however, centers on Joe Barrow, a police detective relatively new to the city though himself of Native American descent, as he investigates a grisly and politically-inflammatory murder. Regular readers are doubtless aware of Cameron’s and my impatience with everything ending up being about cops, and I was initially skeptical of the novel because of that. Ultimately, however, Spufford won me over: his prose is elegant and his setting well-built. For whatever it’s worth, I also felt that his depiction of Barrow’s uncertain status within Cahokia, and his shifting relationships with the mechanisms of power, rang very true. Also, unusually in my experience, Spufford describes music beautifully. I’ve recommended it to many people in my life already, and now recommend it to more; I’ll probably be digging into Spufford’s back catalog.

Pretty sure I got this one for a dollar at the Dusty Bookshelf in Lawrence, KS, probably about ten years ago.

The third and final print book in this round up is E. V. Rieu’s prose translation of Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica, titled for the Penguin Classics series The Voyage of the Argo (link goes to Penguin, because I cannot seem to find it on Bookshop). As mentioned elsewhere, I am broadly skeptical of prose translations, for no real reason, but Rieu does an excellent job of capturing the epic-in-miniature that Argonautica presents. The story, of course, follows Jason and Argonauts as they voyage to capture the golden fleece — a story already well-known in Apollonius’ day, not least for Euripides’ famed Medea, with which Apollonius cannot but have been in conversation. Rieu’s translation ably brings across the bizarreries of the tale: Apollonius makes asides to the reader, goes on tangents into the provenance of magical items, and treats the sometimes tense, sometimes goofy escapades of the Argonauts in clear, compact verse, and Rieu captures that quality well. He also managed to keep Jason’s somewhat nominal status as an epic hero well in balance, displaying him as the romantic, rhetoric-powered leader of the expedition he cannot help but be (especially when Heracles and not one but two guys who can fly are on the team). It’s a good translation, a classic for a reason, and more importantly, it was on hand when I needed to brush up on the story for a class.

We close this round-up with the audiobook of Patrick Bringley’s All the Beauty in the World: the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me. Technically, I finished it on 1 March, but I know the guy who makes the rules and he’s a dingus (he’s me). Read by the author, the book is a memoir of his time as a guard the Met, a job he undertook after the untimely death of his brother, and at which he remained for ten years. As longtime readers may recall, I also work at a museum, and so a spirit of professional curiosity and obligation drove me to pick it up. Fortunately, Bringley is a capable writer treating an interesting subject — one that would, admittedly, probably have been more interesting if I weren’t comparing notes at all times. (Also did you know the Met has a tailor, or had one when Bringley was there?) It could have been a slog, and fortunately, Bringley avoided getting too bogged down in any one aspect of the book, juggling ekphrasis, grief, and the nitty-gritty details of day-to-day museum operations. I was, frankly, impressed at Bringley’s ability to remain awed by the artworks around him, something I know from personal experience takes some doing, just as I was amused by the Proud Museum Person vibe of it. To his credit, Bringley doesn’t fully cover for the Met, reflecting on the troubled provenance (to put it mildly) of, for example, items in the collection from America prior to the Civil War. It was good, it was brief, and now I’ve read it, so that’s nice.

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That’s all I’ve got for now. Follow me and Cameron on Bluesky if you want, or our FB page, or our Tumblr (by far the superior Blue Hellsite right now, I’m sorry to say).

Edgar's Book Round-Up, February 2024