All That Jazz

by popular demand! (i count six people commenting on my post as popular demand). remember to try to find these digitally at your local library, or maybe ORDER THEM FROM YOUR LOCAL INDIE? they’re coming on hard times my friends. i suggest indiebound if you dont wanna look up what your local indie book store is. let’s try not to give amazon anymore money, yeah?

so you’re living during an pandemic. do you want to read…

BOOKS ABOUT PAN/EPIDEMICS? yes you do, here’s my rec list for that

wanderers - chuck wendig. don’t follow this dude on twitter he’s so fucking annoying but he’s a good writer. this follows a group of people whose family members/friends have been struck by a fast-spreading sleepwalking disease that causes them to all move towards the same mysterious location. it’s a big book at around 800 pages but it’s good as hell

wilder girls - rory power. a young adult book that’s like annihilation meets lord of the flies, where a disease called the TOX has ravaged what could be the world, but all we know is the isolated maine island where an all girls boarding school once stood. wildly grotesque, creepy, and gay as fuck. had a good time with it!

the southern reach trilogy (annihilation, authority, acceptance) - jeff vandermeer. don’t watch the movie it fucking SUCKS. this maybe pushes the term pandemic/epidemic, but the series broadly follows a group of scientists trying to figure out why there’s a spot in the world called area x is transforming nature, and it is creeping forward, ready to swallow the earth whole. 

a people’s history of the vampire uprising - raymond a. villareal. what it says in the title! told in an oral history format, through interview transcripts, newspaper articles, radio interviews, etc. has been compared to world war z but for vampires, but i’ve never read that so you know, do with that what you will. 

SO YOU DON’T WANNA READ ABOUT DISEASES? FINE THEN. 

SCIFI

the vanished birds - simon jimenez. this book made me WEEEEEP. whew. talk about the power of chosen families. it’s hard to summarize, but generally the book is about a boy, with a power that is connected through music. and it’s about a woman, who takes him in and raises him and loves him. and it’s about another woman, brilliant and callous and terrible, whose love for another woman saves her in the end. 

the luminous dead - caitlin starling. creepy and fun! it follows a woman named gyre who is hired to explore a cave. of course, all is not what it seems, and the only person she has to help her is em, the woman in her ear guiding her through each level of the cave. it’s gay, it’s scary, it’s weird! 

this is how you lose the time war - max gladstone and amal el-mohtar. a thrilling and beautiful novella that takes place during a strange scifi world where red and blue, two enemy combatants, fight and fall in love through letters. 

bonds of brass - emily skrutskie. this is that finnpoe book people on twitter were freaking out about. it comes out in april, and it is escapist fun nonsense. i read it in two days and my roommate read it on our first quarantine day and thoroughly enjoyed it. it is about a hotshot pilot whose in love with a prince, and a scrappy slip of a girl who latches onto them both.

red rising series - pierce brown - now ive only read two, but i did enjoy them! it’s very epic scifi that has to do with how being from a different planet is dependent on your class system and those from mars are all fucked. and our intrepid hero is from mars and they decide to use him as a weapon to destroy the entire class system. it’s fun!

FANTASY

the starless sea - erin morgenstern. i have talked this up a lot on here. so quick summary, a book about books! a book about stories and libraries and a boy who falls into the lush, imaginative world of stories within stories, and who falls in love with a beautiful, broody storyteller.

silver in the wood - emily tesh. an extremely short novella about the wild man of the woods and the beautiful folkorist named silver who falls for him, and the creature of the woods who threatens to tear them apart.

lost boy: the true story of captain hook - christina henry. what if captain hook was peter pan’s first lost boy? that’s the premise of this wonderfully grotesque book, where peter pan is more like a god than a playful child, cruel and compelling at the same time.

gods of jade and shadow - silva moreno garcia. when a young woman accidentally wakes up the mayan god of death, she binds them together (also accidentally) and must accompany him to take back the throne from his twin brother

robbergirl - s.t. gibson - based off of…a fairytale i do not know, but it’s a super charming f/f novel about the princess of the robbers and a charming girl-witch she tries to rob, but then gets drawn into helping her find her missing brother

the girl who drank the moon - kelly barnhill. this book still makes me just feel so WARM when i think about it. it is such a lovely piece of fiction about magic and family and love. there is a witch in the woods, so everyone says, and once a year a baby is sacrificed to her so that the town does not fall into bad luck. but all is not what it seems, and we get to see one of the sacrificed babies grow up, and the real truth about the witch in the woods and the town behind the wall.

the devourers - indra das. gay werewolves in kolkata. a woman getting revenge on her rapist. earthy, gorgeous writing that makes you feel like you can smell everything that’s happening. what’s not to love?

LITERARY FICTION

home fire - kamila shamsie. a modern retelling of antigone that takes place in great britain during the height of islamophobic hate. i love retellings of greek shit but i dont actually know the source stuff very well, so if you’re like me you’ll probably love it! if you are very into the source material, you might like it less!

less - andrew sean greer. a middle-aged gay writer living post AIDS crisis has no idea how to get old, since all the older gay people he ever knew died. when his ex invites him to his wedding, he’s basically like, fuck THIS, and cashes in on all the invitations he has ever received to travel away long enough that he misses the wedding. i found this book just really beautiful and achy and stunning. 

the house of broken angels - luis alberto urrea. this follows the dying patriarch of a mexican-american family who wants to celebrate one last birthday before he goes. really really loved this book.

melmoth - sarah perry. probably more gothic than literary but i dont read much gothic so it’s going in here. it follows a creature who roams the globe, haunting those who have been complicit in tragedies big and small. it chronicles four stories, the main one being in prague. unsettling and wonderful.

the water cure - sophie mackintosh. fragmented, non-linear, and horrifying, this chronicles the story of three sisters raised in isolation with their cruel father, and complicit mother. one day their father disappears, and men wash up on their shore, and these sisters find their presence both disturbing and thrilling. it’s a fucked up look at abuse in the hands of men and the women complicit in it.

naamah - sarah blake. the untold story of noah’s (of the biblical ark and the floods) wife. follow her journey in isolation, her strange relationship with an angel who may or may not be real, her struggle to keep a level head for her family, and her fragmented feelings about god. super weird but i loved it.

on earth we’re briefly gorgeous - ocean vuong. a poet’s debut novel, definitely semi autobiographical, but it tells the story of a boy we just know as little dog. it is told through letters to his mother, his mother who cannot read. it talks fraught familial relationships, budding sexuality, and that good old immigrant trauma

bunny - mona awad. this literally defies genre so i’m putting it here. it’s like if stephen king and donna tartt had a baby, and that baby smoked crack and wrote this. it follows a girl getting her mfa in creative writing, and how she falls into this group who calls themselves the bunnies. that’s like….all i can say lol it is fucking WILD

MEMOIR/NONFICTION

crux: a cross border memoir - jean guerrero. follows a journalist as she tries to figure out why her dad is the way he is, and how to find him. it took me a long time to read this but i found it extremely compelling.

the undocumented americans - karla cornejo villavicencio. out 3/24! this is about the undocumented immigrants nobody talks about. not the dreamers, not the model minorities, but the regular people. the construction workers, the delivery people, the hair stylists. it talks about the undocumented people who were on the front lines helping at 9/11, during hurricane sandy, in flint, michigan. definitely a book to read

in the dream house - carmen maria machado. heavy trigger warnings here bc it is about domestic emotional abuse. it chronicles machado’s relationship, and her first one with a girl, and the severe emotional abuse she experienced during her time with her. it’s written in experimentally and i loved all of it.

SHORT STORY

sabrina & corina - kali fajardo-anstine. stories that all center chicana indigenous women in colorado, written by a chicana indigenous woman herself. not a bad story in here

lot - bryan washington. somewhat interconnected stories that all take place in houston and center around afro-latino men dealing with poverty, gentrification, machismo, and sexuality.

HISTORICAL FICTION

the mercies - kiran millwood hargrave. a tale based on the true story of a town where every single able-bodied man died during a freak ocean storm while fishing, and the women learned to care for themselves. they sent a man to the town, a god-fearing man to save these women from the devil, which leads to a horrific time of witch trials and burnings, and one of the town girls and the man’s wife fall in love. just. really stunningly written

cantoras - carolina de robertis. i have shoved this into so many people’s hands at this point. READ IT. it centers five uruguayan women who call themselves cantoras (which was slang for queer woman). they come together to buy a beach house on an isolated island where they can be themselves, and the book follows their lives as they get older, always coming to that beach cottage as a touchpoint. IT’S SO GOOD.