Mid-Year Freakout Tag
Aug. 18th, 2024 06:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amado11) The best book you've read so far in 2024
2) The best sequel you've read so far in 2024
Odysseus in America, the sequel to Jonathan Shay's Achilles in Vietnam. Both books examine Homer's classics through the lens of PTSD, supplemented with anecdotes from Shay's patients. While "Achilles" focuses on how PTSD is formed and what it looks like, "Odysseus" shifts toward homecoming and aftermath.
3) New releases you haven't read yet but want to
I think I'd like to read Henry Henry by Allen Bratton, a queer retelling of Shakespeare's Henriad featuring incest/sexual abuse. I don't really have a long list of books like this, because usually if I want to read something I just buy it and read it right away, especially if it's a new release. If it's an older release, then chances are I've known about it for a few years and have an "I'll get to it when it feels right," attitude.
4) Most anticipated release for the second half of the year
On Freedom by Timothy Snyder. I read "On Tyranny" last year and loved it. Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst is a queer novel about a half-Burmese boy who wins a scholarship to a wealthy school in the 60s,and whose life intersects with that of a rich white scion who will someday become a right-wing politician.
5) Biggest disappointment
I can't say I've had any disappointments, but I'll put A Little Life here. I strongly suspected that I would dislike it based on passages I'd seen quoted here and there, but I thought the worst I was in for was some purple prose...
6) Biggest surprise
The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle, which I've written about here before! I'm used to Big New Names in horror who turn out to be hacks, or whose writing is so clumsy and amateurish that I can't take their big ideas/messages seriously -- Grady Hendrix, Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu. LaValle roped me in with an easy, breezy, competent story and then completely sucked me under with his empathy, compassion, aversion to dogma or black-and-white characters, and message. Lots of authors feature working-class heroes (well, they used to ... now when I read contemporary books, it seems like everyone is a rich asshole living in NYC or LA). But usually the working-class hero is different than others, more sensitive, an avid reader who dreams of escaping. That's not the case for either LaValle or O'Nan. They write characters that remind me of my dad and uncles, factory workers and mechanics who hate reading. But they write about them without contempt, and with respect.
7) Favorite new author
Not a new author by any means, and not someone I can read more of ... but I read Berlin Garden of Erotic Delights by Granand, a collection of queer short stories set in the Weimar Republic, and I fell in love. The stories are all slice-of-life: a shy man who gets robbed by a prostitute and forces himself to attend the local queer balls to try and find him; a wealthy gay man who's attracted to the guy trying to burgle him; a sexual encounter with an American on the train, working past the language barrier. I think Granand's only other book is a straight interpretation of fairy tales that made no particular waves when it was published, whereas these stories were censored and hard to come by for decades after the war.
8) Newest fictional crush
Tough... it's a toss-up between Herbert West from the H.P. Lovecraft stories or Johnny from Stephen King's The Dead Zone, both of which are old now and not exactly relevant to a 2024 tag XD But I did read them for the first time this year, so...
9) Newest favorite character
I haven't been absolutely gripped by any new characters I read about this year ... not yet! It feels like cheating to even mention Herbert and Johnny again, because I fell in love with them from the movies first. But I've read two historical fiction novels with real-life "characters" that I adored, both IRL and in the books, where the writing was fantastic. So: James Whale from Christopher Bram's Gods and Monsters and T.E. Lawrence from Mary Doria Russell's Dreamers of the Day.
10) Book that made you cry
October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard by Leslea Newman. Not the best poems ever written, but I cried like 17 times reading this.
11) Book that made you happy
Any book that's well-written makes me super happy but I feel like the most appropriate answer here is Beautiful on the Outside by Adam Rippon. He's fucking hilarious. I had to stop every few paragraphs to read aloud to my roommate because I was cracking up.
12) Most beautiful book you've bought or received
Toss-ups. Chartwell Manor by Glenn Head; the T.E. Lawrence manga; Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio. All graphic novels or manga, because for fiction, I tend to go for busted-up used paperbacks. These manga all have a common thread: Chartwell and the Lawrence manga both involve rape and its aftermath, while Heart of Thomas features queer love at a boarding school (Chartwell is also set at a boarding school) and a tragic suicide.
13) What books do you really need to read by the end of this year?
I want to read Blackouts by Justin Torres and Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. I was so excited for Blackouts that I preordered it, but right as it arrived, I got the inspiration for my Babylon novel and spent the month writing that instead of reading anything. Death in Venice, I think I've read before, years ago, but I've been itching to read it again because I only remember the basic plot and nothing about the writing. I also need to see the movie, still!
I'll also add Ed Wood's Killer in Drag, Roger Peyrefitte's A Special Friendship, The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage, Leslie Feinberg's Transgender Warriors, and ... Dorian by Will Self. Also Casa Valentina by Harvey Fierstein. We'll see which of these I actually get to :P
I think I'm gonna give it to Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O'Nan. I love O'Nan's work; I read A Prayer for the Dying years ago and still think about it constantly, and Lobster is the same way. It follows the manager of a Red Lobster franchise on the last night before Corporate shuts it down. It's a very wistful, aching working-class story. Throughout the night, the manager keeps waiting for something to happen to clarify or justify his years spent here -- a moment of real connection with his employees or with customers, a revelation in his love life, a winning lottery ticket. Anything. But there is no justification for the lives working-class people live under capitalism, and that prize at the end of his career stays just out of reach. Despite this, it's not a bleak book. It's filled with love and respect for the characters and their internal lives.
2) The best sequel you've read so far in 2024
Odysseus in America, the sequel to Jonathan Shay's Achilles in Vietnam. Both books examine Homer's classics through the lens of PTSD, supplemented with anecdotes from Shay's patients. While "Achilles" focuses on how PTSD is formed and what it looks like, "Odysseus" shifts toward homecoming and aftermath.
3) New releases you haven't read yet but want to
I think I'd like to read Henry Henry by Allen Bratton, a queer retelling of Shakespeare's Henriad featuring incest/sexual abuse. I don't really have a long list of books like this, because usually if I want to read something I just buy it and read it right away, especially if it's a new release. If it's an older release, then chances are I've known about it for a few years and have an "I'll get to it when it feels right," attitude.
4) Most anticipated release for the second half of the year
On Freedom by Timothy Snyder. I read "On Tyranny" last year and loved it. Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst is a queer novel about a half-Burmese boy who wins a scholarship to a wealthy school in the 60s,and whose life intersects with that of a rich white scion who will someday become a right-wing politician.
5) Biggest disappointment
I can't say I've had any disappointments, but I'll put A Little Life here. I strongly suspected that I would dislike it based on passages I'd seen quoted here and there, but I thought the worst I was in for was some purple prose...
6) Biggest surprise
The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle, which I've written about here before! I'm used to Big New Names in horror who turn out to be hacks, or whose writing is so clumsy and amateurish that I can't take their big ideas/messages seriously -- Grady Hendrix, Stephen Graham Jones, Alma Katsu. LaValle roped me in with an easy, breezy, competent story and then completely sucked me under with his empathy, compassion, aversion to dogma or black-and-white characters, and message. Lots of authors feature working-class heroes (well, they used to ... now when I read contemporary books, it seems like everyone is a rich asshole living in NYC or LA). But usually the working-class hero is different than others, more sensitive, an avid reader who dreams of escaping. That's not the case for either LaValle or O'Nan. They write characters that remind me of my dad and uncles, factory workers and mechanics who hate reading. But they write about them without contempt, and with respect.
7) Favorite new author
Not a new author by any means, and not someone I can read more of ... but I read Berlin Garden of Erotic Delights by Granand, a collection of queer short stories set in the Weimar Republic, and I fell in love. The stories are all slice-of-life: a shy man who gets robbed by a prostitute and forces himself to attend the local queer balls to try and find him; a wealthy gay man who's attracted to the guy trying to burgle him; a sexual encounter with an American on the train, working past the language barrier. I think Granand's only other book is a straight interpretation of fairy tales that made no particular waves when it was published, whereas these stories were censored and hard to come by for decades after the war.
8) Newest fictional crush
Tough... it's a toss-up between Herbert West from the H.P. Lovecraft stories or Johnny from Stephen King's The Dead Zone, both of which are old now and not exactly relevant to a 2024 tag XD But I did read them for the first time this year, so...
9) Newest favorite character
I haven't been absolutely gripped by any new characters I read about this year ... not yet! It feels like cheating to even mention Herbert and Johnny again, because I fell in love with them from the movies first. But I've read two historical fiction novels with real-life "characters" that I adored, both IRL and in the books, where the writing was fantastic. So: James Whale from Christopher Bram's Gods and Monsters and T.E. Lawrence from Mary Doria Russell's Dreamers of the Day.
10) Book that made you cry
October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard by Leslea Newman. Not the best poems ever written, but I cried like 17 times reading this.
11) Book that made you happy
Any book that's well-written makes me super happy but I feel like the most appropriate answer here is Beautiful on the Outside by Adam Rippon. He's fucking hilarious. I had to stop every few paragraphs to read aloud to my roommate because I was cracking up.
12) Most beautiful book you've bought or received
Toss-ups. Chartwell Manor by Glenn Head; the T.E. Lawrence manga; Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio. All graphic novels or manga, because for fiction, I tend to go for busted-up used paperbacks. These manga all have a common thread: Chartwell and the Lawrence manga both involve rape and its aftermath, while Heart of Thomas features queer love at a boarding school (Chartwell is also set at a boarding school) and a tragic suicide.
13) What books do you really need to read by the end of this year?
I want to read Blackouts by Justin Torres and Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. I was so excited for Blackouts that I preordered it, but right as it arrived, I got the inspiration for my Babylon novel and spent the month writing that instead of reading anything. Death in Venice, I think I've read before, years ago, but I've been itching to read it again because I only remember the basic plot and nothing about the writing. I also need to see the movie, still!
I'll also add Ed Wood's Killer in Drag, Roger Peyrefitte's A Special Friendship, The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage, Leslie Feinberg's Transgender Warriors, and ... Dorian by Will Self. Also Casa Valentina by Harvey Fierstein. We'll see which of these I actually get to :P
no subject
Date: 2024-08-19 12:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-19 01:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-19 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-19 04:08 pm (UTC)*Freaks out that it's mid year already*
*Realises it's technically a month and a half past mid year*
*Freaks out more*
Am I doing the freakout tag correctly?
no subject
Date: 2024-08-21 04:00 am (UTC)