Stuff I Read in 2018

#bookreviews #reading #2018readinglist #sorryimlate #writing #author #thegirlwithallthegifts #mikecarey #readyplayerone #ernestcline #noir #christophermoore #spadeandarcher #joegores #theexpats #chrispavone #dorothymustdie #daniellepaige

For the last few years, I’ve been a part of the GoodReads Reading challenge, where you set a number of books you’d like to read in a year, then you read that many. I usually shoot for a book a month, so that’s 12 books per year. Sometimes I get there, sometimes I don’t, but I post my reviews here, like you’ve seen over the past four years. Additionally, at the beginning of every year, I do a quick rundown of all the books I read the previous year.

Life was weird throughout 2018. I was involved in a sort-of-long distance relationship, worked like a madman, and didn’t have as much time to read as I would have liked. Plus, there was this one book that it took me several months to realize I didn’t like enough to finish. Suffice it to say, I didn’t make it to 12 books. And at the end of 2018, I moved and never got around to putting up my annual review round-up.

My bad.

As they say, better late than never. So, without further making of excuses, here’s the short list of stuff I read in 2018.

The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey

A good way to begin the year, and easily the best book I read in 2018. Here’s what I said about it then:

“I am always impressed by a story that attempts several narrative goals or blends several genres and pulls them off effectively. M.R. Carey’s 2014 novel The Girl With All The Gifts is a sci-fi novel, a zombie apocalypse story, a road survival novel, and a story about a child’s crush on a favorite teacher. That is an impressive amount to take on, and it does all of these things without a hitch and at a high level.

The Girl With All The Gifts is not your average zombie novel, nor is it your average road novel, or even your average childhood love story. It’s all of these things at a very high level and goes beyond average to exceptional.”

Pros: Does several things well, strong characters with believable arcs.

Cons: Minor pacing issue about 1/3 of the way in.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

“There is plenty to love about Ready Player One, especially if you are or were a gamer, or happened to be alive during the 1980’s. The nostalgia button is mashed hard, and there are references aplenty for 80’s goodies like the Atari 2600 or the film works of John Hughes and Robert Zemeckis.

Overall, Ready Player One is an enjoyable read and is charming and compelling enough to suck you into its world. Despite the slow start and the cardboard cutout villain, you’ll want to follow Wade’s journey to find Halliday’s egg from its initial Joust to the center of the maze at the end of the game.”

Pros: Smart plotting, likable hero, 80’s nostalgia.

Cons: Slow start. Cliched villain.

Rating: 4/5 stars.

Noir by Christopher Moore

“Noir is a send-up of many tropes of pulp fiction, set in an era when the heroes were hard-boiled, returned soldiers with PTSD and drinking problems; when women were dames and a man’s downfall, and when the good guys and bad guys all had colorful names.

Minor issues aside, Noir is a book I can comfortably recommend as an introduction to the madness of Moore. While it’s not his best work (that honor goes to Lamb), it’s a solid enough read to get a sense of what kind of author he is without wading through the less interesting early work.”

Pros: Funny, engaging, bizarre love story

Cons: Twist didn’t fit

Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Spade & Archer by Joe Gores

“Four separate attempts in … eight months and I couldn’t get past the first 100 pages.

That’s not to say it was a poorly written book. By all accounts, Joe Gores did a fantastic job aping Dashiell Hammett’s style, and still, he somehow managed to take the hardest edge off a 1920’s man’s man in an incredibly chauvinistic era. He had the full backing of Hammett’s estate in writing this book, which is no small feat. His version of San Francisco seems thoroughly researched, and the city does seem to have a liveliness about it. I believe that part of my problem with connecting to the material is that I never read the source novel, and my only point of reference to The Maltese Falcon is a broad-strokes memory of watching the 1941 movie starring Humphrey Bogart.

Spade & Archer has its fans—dozens of positive reviews on Goodreads and Amazon shower Joe Gores with praise—I’m just not one of them. It wasn’t for lack of trying, however.”

Rating: DNF

The Expats by Chris Pavone

The Expats is an impressive debut, full of twists and turns and lots of suspense. The story is compelling, especially considering that there isn’t as much action as his two follow-ups. It forces you to examine every character’s actions and challenges you to figure out what’s going on before the end. Pavone cranks up the tension gradually, especially in the smaller and more intimate moments when Kate is distrustful of her husband. And when you add this tension to the secondary narrative of a retired professional suddenly tasked with stay-home parenting and feeling unfulfilled (which, based on the commentary I hear from friends in that situation, can be accurate), you have a deep and surprisingly relatable story featuring a central character who wants things to go back to the way they were before. However, the story falls apart for me in the last 35-40 pages. Due to the story’s structure, which tells most of the story in flashback and weaves in present-day, present-tense narrative (and does so very well, I might add), the final act is mostly exposition—literally four characters at dinner talking about what happened and why. It’s not a critical error, and it doesn’t sink the entire experience, but it is a touch anti-climactic

Pavone’s debut novel was a tightly plotted and well-written thriller, and while a large swath of expositional conversation was problematic, it’s still a solid, fun story, and I’m genuinely excited for the next story in this saga.

Pros: Well plotted, strong narrative, memorable characters, fun story.

Cons: Heavy expositional conversation on the back end of the story

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige

A teenage girl from Kansas and her pet are swept up in a tornado and deposited in a magical land where, along with a band of misfits, she’s tasked with saving the world from an all-encompassing evil. That’s the story we’ve all heard for almost a century, complete with several retellings and iconic music pieces. But what happened afterward to the land over the rainbow? Dorothy Must Die turns the story of Oz on its ear by showing what happened to the magical land of emerald cities and yellow bricks after it was saved by the girl in the gingham dress.

Amy Gumm is a solid and capable lead as she represents the reader’s confusion and wonder with this unrecognizable Land of Oz, even in—possibly because of—its ruined state.

The downside is that Amy is 15 years old. She hasn’t mastered control of her emotions, despite her insistence that she has; she’s in denial of her insecurities, though they are numerous; and she spends far more time trying to decide how she feels about the “cute boy” than I was personally interested in. Additionally, it’s frustrating to be in the head (via first-person) of a character who makes bad decisions at inopportune times for no good reason. She had several chances during the middle and tail end of the book to accomplish her titular mission but fails to execute, and it’s not as if a concrete reason is given. Lastly, the steps needed for her to actually do what she set out to do—kill Dorothy—aren’t revealed to her until the end. While this makes a great cliffhanger and sets up the next book in the series, it makes it harder to enjoy the book on its own merits.

Pros: Wonderful interpretation and inversion of classic Oz characters; well-paced story and intricately detailed setting; strong female lead

Cons: YA tropes abound (world rests on teenager’s shoulders, attraction to the brooding and mysterious opposite sex character, etc.); lousy decision making of lead character

Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars.

So that was 2018, folks. Tune in tomorrow for my round-up of 2019’s reviews!