I'm delighted to be posting my annual thread in the new FAWM showcase. :)

Well, it's that time of the year again. And thank goodness for it! I’m already tired of the winter doldrums. It’s so wet, grey, and dreary here in the Netherlands. Or ‘driech’ as they say in Scotland.

What have you guys been reading over the past, strange year (or in the months since the 50-90)? Anything you’d recommend? Or that might inspire you to write a lyric or a song?

I downloaded Peter Wohlleben’s ‘The Secret Network of Nature’ last year. Need to finally read it now. His ‘The Hidden Life of Trees’ – which I’ve raved about in previous years - is superb.

I’m about to embark on Rebecca Wragg Sykes’s ‘Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art’. Ever since a DNA test informed me I’m 2.9% Neanderthal (the highest percentage possible in Caucasians), I’ve had an extra interest in the species. :)

Last month I finished Stephen King’s latest book, ‘Fairy Tale’. Highly recommend it.

I look forward to the titles you folks will throw in here. :)

I've just finished The Romantic by William Boyd. He rarely disappoints.
My favourite read of 2022 was probably Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr, but a few others ran it close:
A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson
To Calais, In Ordinary Time by James Meek

As a songwriting newbie, I’m about to read “How To Write One Song” by Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy to ready myself for next month!

R.F.Kuang - recommend it! Fantasy with alternative history

@donna I didn't know about that other Peter Wohlleben book, thanks! I enjoyed his tree book. This thread reminds me I should read more. I'm wary of buying new physical books these days (my shelves have been groaning for years now) but I haven't made the switch to e-reader yet either,,,

Most of the books I've read for the last year have been part of a monthly book club that I joined. Sadly I only seem to be able to manage one book a month lately, I miss my old brain that could handle a lot more input. My favourite things that I read in 2022 were Anne of Green Gables (which was way further up my street than I expected) and Milkman by Anna Burns, which is a darkly funny story about a young woman growing up in Ireland during the Troubles.

Currently on The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell, another book club pick, based around the King Arthur / Merlin / Mordred story. Don't think I'll have time to finish it before FAWM though.

@datsch, I know what you mean about physical books. But don't be afraid to switch to an e-reader. ;) I made the move to Kindle some time ago, and the only books I buy as 'real' ones now are books of poetry or those related to a hobby of mine (creating jewellery with polymer clay), where I can easily go back to read various details/instructions.

Unfortunately, many e-books are the same price as an actual paperback. Also, I find I need to discipline myself, because those Kindle-book dollars (or euros in my case) suddenly begin to add up.

My current songwriting inspiration book is the Rickie Lee Jones memoir Last Chance Texaco. I love the way she plays with language.

@nicecreamsundae I found the exercise ideas in Tweedy’s book kicked off several new songs for me. Enjoy!

Dar Williams’ How To Write a Song that Matters is also excellent.

Ikea manuals. Again.

Re-reading "Post Office" by Charles Bukowski, one of my favourite writers and my absolute favourite poet.
It's a (slightly) fictionalized account of his twelve years spent working for the post office, and is at turns hilarious and tragic, and Buk's use of language is stellar.

I recently read The Most Fun Thing by Kyle Beachy (a series of essays on skateboarding and marriage) and now I'm reading a ridiculously thick anthology of Mark Helprin stories including A Refiners Tale and A Winters Tale.

School has largely gotten in the way of my ability to read for pleasure, but I have Braiding Sweetgrass and Naming Nature in the queue and I’m interested to see how they compare/contrast to one another—because if you can’t find time to read one book, why not plan to read two in quick succession, right? 😅

The January 6th Select Committee Report. As one of the few people on the planet who read the FEMA report on 9/11 as to what caused the failure of the two towers and the buildings nearby, I figured what the heck -- let's see how bad the insurrection REALLY was!

Just finished "The Splendid and the Vile," Erik Larson's saga of Churchill during the early part of WW2. That lead me to start reading "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" - not sure what got me going down this rabbit-hole but I find the potential parallels with today's world fascinating.

@nicecreamsundae, @newukenewyork Yes, I'd second the thumbs up for Jeff Tweedy's How To Write One Song - I put off reading it for ages as I thought 'but I've already written one song!' - I found it really useful though and have also used some of the exercises for inspiration

Currently reading This Is What It Sounds Like by Susan Rogers (Prince's producer for Purple Rain) - very interesting and easy read about what we hear in music and why different sounds appeal to different listeners. Ever had someone say ' if you like that band you'll definitely like this one' only to find you can't hear any similarities? This explains it all through what she calls Listener Profiles split across seven dimensions (Authenticity, Realism, Novelty, Melody, Lyric, Rhythm & Timbre) - really enjoying it...

Just finished reading the book "Ruf der Rusalka" (Call of the Rusalka) written by an older buddy of mine, Stephan R. Bellem, and am now continuing with the second book of the series, "Maske des Mondes" (Mask of the Moon). We were in school together and Stephan was the game master of our Dungeons & Dragons group. They're supernatural crime stories playing in 1900's London and I think they're pretty awesome. Unfortuantely, both are only available in German.

@tjeff I've recently finished Larson's Dead Wake about the sinking of the Lusitania and I've got the Churchill one to read. The Devil in the White Castle is one of my favourites. I really enjoy his narrative history style. Ben MacIntyre is very good at that style too.

Just started this the other day: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58784475-tomorrow-and-tomorrow-and-tomorrow

I read Storyteller by Dave Grohl and Falling Cars and Junk Yard Cars by Jay Farrar in the past month or so.

I'm now reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte for class. I will soon be reading a ton of poetry collections for my publishing internship but I have no idea which ones or how many, yet.

I'm currently reading Urban Bigfoot by Deb Stratton. I found out about it on TikTok when the author's daughter asked a girl who does phone pranks to call her Mom and say she was a big fan of her book. It was a blast and a bunch of us bought her book because of it. Just like music, it's good to support the authors and artists out there! There are two parts if you want to watch the prank call. Part 2 really seals the deal!

Part 1: https://www.tiktok.com/@soakinginoatmeal/video/7182065748896992555?lang=en

Part 2: https://www.tiktok.com/@soakinginoatmeal/video/7182200357848747306?lang=en

Falling Upward by Richard Rohr is my current book.

2022 was my year of reading a lot of Wendell Berry. I read several of the Port William series last year. Lovely books to read where there is surprise unintentional poetry lines amongst the prose.

@nicecreamsundae Jeff Tweedy's book is great. He *totally* gets it.

I'm currently reading Ken Scott's "From Abbey Road to Ziggy Stardust" (it's co-written with Bobby Owsinski, whose name you may recognise). At the age of fifteen, Ken wrote to EMI asking for a job in the music business. A week later he started work at Abbey Road and was immediately roped in to do handclaps on a Beatles song. From there, it just snowballed (he produced Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, as well as producing or engineering countless other records by The Stones, Jeff Beck, Mahavishnu Orchestra, The Dixie Dregs, and Stanley Clarke to name a few ).

Recend reads I really enjoyed:

Mark Bowen's "The Telescope In The Ice" is about building a neutrino observatory sunk in a cubic kilometre of ice at the South Pole. Real boy's own adventure stuff, and fascinating science as well.

Repossessed/Head On by Julian Cope. Two volumes of Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll from the former frontman of the Teardrop Explodes, printed back to back. How is he still alive? Or even remotely sane?

Robin Ince's "Bibliomaniac" is about his adventures giving talks at more than 100 independendent bookshops in the UK. It's a beautiful meditation on literature and enthusiasm and the importance of books and I'm not just saying that because I appear on page 52.

Since I quit Goodreads (because Amazon) I've been missing writing reviews of stuff I've read. So this year I decided to start my own page of book reviews. I've got three so far.
http://headfirst.www.idnet.com/books_2023.htm

You all sound so smart and motivated... I'm just going to admit that I am currently reading a romance novel that I've read before because boring myself silly is the quickest way to get to sleep after a long day at the office.

Hey @headfirstonly, I recently saw a used copy of "Bibliomaniac" but passed it by for some reason. I'll have to remember where I saw it.

@fuzzy It is the most joyous book. And there are some hilarious stories in it.

I'm currently reading "A country of ghosts" by Margaret Killjoy. It's an utopian story, set in a fictional world modeled after 19th century Europe, following the adventures of a reluctant war reporter who changes sides in a war of colonial conquest.

I thought I didn't have time anymore to read books until I got in to Japanese light novels. These days I read novels with awesome titles like, "Middle-Aged Businessman, Arise in Another World!" (I just purchased Volume 2.)

Just checked out this one and excited to read: Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia.

I'm also always paging through one of the books from the 33 1/3 series.

@ryuu , ohhh, that sounds good! I'm going to need to go look it up!!

Since I participated in NANOWRIMO, and since I started writing a Holmes based spinoff, I am reading the complete adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

@jamkar It's only finally fully in the public domain in the US. Previously, you needed to avoid any character development that originated in the last few books because the family would send lawyers to demand money.

I just finished the second baru cormorant book, The Monster Baru Cormorant, and im trying so hard not to jump right away into the third. I had Gravity's Rainbow next up on my reading list, but instead im re-reading The Homestuck Epilogues to keep up with a podcast

I just discovered Adrian Tchaikovsky, killer sci fi writer. And he's written like, 7 million books so I'm gradually working my way through them. I might do a song about his book, Children of Time.

Thanks @sailingmagpie, I'll definitely have to check out Ben MacIntyre's work. I do like Larson's storytelling style a lot, the Lusitania book sounds interesting. I did read one other Larson book about 5 years ago - "In the Garden of Beasts" about the U.S. Ambassador to Germany's time in Berlin in the 1930s pre WW2. Very good book.

I'm reading Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. Just started it, and I'm trying to decide if I like it or not. I've read the Expanse Series by James S. A. Corey and finished the 9th and final book a few months ago. I loved the series and was sorry it ended. The Expanse TV show is really good too.
@spikedirection. I've read Children of Time too. It's a great book!

I've been reading No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai & I'm loving its take on Existentialism (sorry, that's the Philosopher in me coming out). Also, I'm still working my way through Carl Jung's Red Book & a bunch of contemporary essays on the philosophy of Freidrich Nietzsche. Light reading, I know 😉

See You In The Shadows…

I just finished The Passenger and Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy and I'm absolutely broken. Such heavy rumination on grief and the nature of reality.

@audrey I'm in the same boat. I've read _Pattern Recognition_ (and its sequels, _Spook Country_ and _Zero History_, twice each ... and I still can't decide whether I like them. Haven't read his newest couple novels.

For me, I just picked up Jerome K. Jerome's _Three Men in a Boat (Not to Mention the Dog)_. I'm only into Chapter 2 and I'm starting to talk and write like him. Absolutely delightful. If I can find a hook, I believe I'll write a song about them.

Just finished _This Alien Shore_ by C.S. Friedman. Science fiction/crime novel set in a VERY weird world. Picture Gibson's Sprawl set 100 years from now in a universe where humanity has split into dozens of separate species due to mutations caused by interstellar travel.

I’ve been really struggling to finish books since my operation in the summer, but the two I’ve currently got on the go are Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawler, and Unmasking Autism by Devon Price

I've tried to get more into reading, though I've somehow stumbled on a lot of duds lately.

The last book I read that I seriously enjoyed was "My Year Of Rest And Relaxation" by Ottessa Moshfegh. I found it to be very therapeutic and beautiful.

@spikedirection Adrian's great! I am currently waiting for "Lords of Uncreation" to come out. The Final Architecture trilogy is the best thing he's done so far, IMO. Grand space opera done brilliantly.

British SF is going through a bit of a golden age at the moment: Paul McAuley, Paul Cornell, Emma Newman, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Gareth Powell, Ben Aaronovitch and Dave Hutchinson all producing cracking work, to name a few.

I've just finished all the Witcher books by Andrezej Sapkowski. I found a box set that had all eight of them.

@stuarthu Must look into that one. Sounds fascinating! Thanks!

I just read “Legends & Lattes” by Travis Baldree, and it was so good! It’s basically the fantasy equivalent of a cozy mystery. An orc adventurer retires and opens a coffee shop. It’s delightful.

After about 15 years or so, I've been picking up fiction again and LOVING IT!

Had only read a handful before so some of the classics are new to me. The Bell Jar was astonishingly good. And Kurt Vonnegut is very good. Have just started Brave New World

@alyxanderjames I've heard good things about "Legends & Lattes." Do you know the story structure it uses? I'm so tired of the Hero's Journey and other Western story structures derived from Greek three-act plays. There's just too much conflict in it to actually be all that cozy.

I'm all about kishotenketsu these days. Japanese light novels get super cozy, as kishotenketsu doesn't require world-ending conflict (or any conflict). I only wish they were more queer. Though I do feel my chances of casual ace-protagonist representation seems much higher, even if they're framed as straight. That said, even straight romance isn't as forced as it is in Western literature. This makes it much more palatable for me.

@yam655 “Legends & Lattes” has some queerness in it, which made me very happy! There’s conflict, but also a lot of community care around resolving the conflict. (It starts out with the protagonist's last fight, which was only a couple pages but felt a bit jarring; it calms considerably after that.)

Judge me all you want, but I'm reading Prince Harry's book. Mainly because I'm in love with him, but it is a heartbreaking read so far.

Primarily reading and re-reading everything by Brandon Sanderson for myself and to my son. I've also picked back up on my Discworld quest with "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents."

I'm reading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian for the second time. Much easier to comprehend and absorb the second time through, but even more brutal imagery on this pass.

@adforperu I hope you enjoy Brave New World more than I did, haha. There's one particularly long chapter I found torturous.

I've just started rereading Paul La Farge's novels. Starting with Artist of the Missing.

I've been wanting to re-read "Blood Meridian" too, @bootlegend, but I can't find my copy so I must have sold it at some point, which doesn't sound like something I'd do at all. :(

@spikedirection @headfirstonly Adrian is amazing! Incredibly prolific, though thankfully also very varied. The Children of Time series is awesome if you like space opera (and spiders), the Shadows of the Apt are perfect for fans of fantasy (and insects). I've got his Dogs of War on the go on Audible at the moment, and if you want a fun story of a gang of puppet thieves I can recommend Made Things.
(He's also a gent and gave me a cracking blurb for my last book too.)

@ayehahmur @headfirstonly I'm a bit of a philistine when it comes to reading, so I only discovered him because he wrote a Warhammer novel this year. But that was EXCELLENT. From there I've done the three children of time books, and the first Shadows of the Apt, the sheer volume of books he's written made it hard too know where to go next so it's nice to have some recommendations. Xxx

Kevin Wilson: Nothing to see here (Weird but intriguing nonetheless) and Stephen King's: If it Bleeds

Currently: Evening in Paradise by Lucia Berlin and (sporadically) The Collected Poems of Audre Lorde.

The best books I've read in the last year:
The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye
No More Police by Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie
Music, Society, Education by Christopher Small

Very honorable mentions:
Treason to Whiteness is Loyalty to Humanity by Noel Ignatiev
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
The Running Kind: Listening to Merle Haggard by David Cantwell
Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage

Maximum Volume - The life of Beatles Producer George Martin - The early years 1926-1966 by Kenneth Womack.
Lots of good Beatles tidbits, and some recording techniques by George.

My fav books since last FAWM:
Quichotte by Salman Rushdie
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Killing Commendatore by Haruki Murakami
Wild Seed by Octavia Butler
Enders Game by Orson Scott Card
Space Opera by Catherynne Valente
Regular People by Sally Rooney
Dune by Frank Herbert (despite the rampant misogyny and intense fatphobia. The dude writes four kinds of women - old hag, sexy sex spy, awkwardly-sexualized girl on the cusp of her womanhood, and a single scary witch girl)

Currently reading and I'm sure it will be among those favorites:
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov

Least favorites:
Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov (he doesn't seem to understand that women are... people?)
Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert (it felt like that meme where Dune was the half of the horse that was drawn almost photo-realistically and Dune Messiah was that half that was drawn by a child, but instead of using crayon they used double-concentrated misogyny paste)

Currently re-reading "The Lies of Locke Lamora" by Scott Lynch. I went looking for something I thought might inspire some songs and that's where I landed. 😀

That's a good one, @philkmills.
The sequels are just as good.

Is that true or. did you hear it on the BBC

@fuzzy Yes, I like them too...though sailing and piracy don't do a lot for me (book 2). I've seen that he has more planned and I keep hoping. 😀

My used bookshop haul yesterday: an instructional titled Chess Doctor—Surefire Cures for What Ails Your Game, a nice little hardcover of The Elements of Style, and Sex, Drugs, & Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman. Plus some Nat Geos for collages, not bad for <$20.

I read "The Great Automatic Grammatizator" by Ronald Dahl recently, a short story about a mechanical machine that produces fully formed novels from a few inputs and puts authors out of business. Interesting, I grew up on his more famous young adult novels, I was laughing out loud reading a cynical Dahl’s satire on machine generated creativity (from the 1950’s!).

@fuzzy Post Office was my intro to Bukowski. I came across it as a teenager in a book shop and nearly finished it before I left; I couldn’t stop. Big fan of his writing. Ham on Rye might be my favorite but I love Post Office.

@elliottneversleeps - I adored My Year of Rest and Relaxation, it was kind of a therapeutic read for someone who's totally felt that desire to just leave the world for a while. And @headfirstonly - thanks for the recommendations for SF, I've been reading fantasy for a good while and I need to switch it up soon!

I'm currently on book 12 of Robert Jordan's (and Brandon Sanderson's, for the last 3) Wheel of Time series. I've been reading those books for the whole of 2022, so I guess they are my favourites AND least favourites... I've also got The Witcher on my list as I was bought the box-set last Christmas, but I'm gonna need a break from epic fantasy after WoT!

@guitargabe I trust you mean Normal People by Sally Rooney - easy mistake to make 😀 It's an excellent book and the BBC adaptation was pretty good too.

Is anyone else on the StoryGraph app? It's a book logging/reviewing site like Goodreads but it's independently run by people who actually like books and they implement needed updates regularly. I'm on there as @kathrynhoss and would love some new friends.

I've been listening to Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer very slowly over the last year, and prepare for it to be my whole personality this FAWM 😆

For fiction I'm reading The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk. It's science fiction set in the near future (written in 1993) set in a witch enclave in San Francisco surrounded by dystopic Handmaid's Tale-esque fundamentalist Christian government who are manufacturing epidemics. Very interesting for these times.

I rarely buy books anymore. Instead I borrow audiobooks and ebooks for FREE through the Libby app which goes through your local library. All you need is a library card. It's amazing.

@donna congrats on your neanderthal DNA! Those books all sound super interesting.

@newukenewyork ooh I love Dar Williams. I gotta read that

@carleybaer you gotta read Braiding Sweetgrass. It's a life changer

Started The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories by Joy Williams. The collected stories will be rereads, but it has been many years.

When I've finished something and I'm not sure what I want to read next, I've been reading pieces from Blocks of Consciousness and the Unbroken Continuum, edited by Brian Marley and Mark Wastell.

Two more from the last year worth mentioning: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, and Disnaeland by D.D. Johnston.

@alyxanderjames I've also heard good things about Legends and Lattes! It's on my TBR. I'm excited to hear it involves themes of queerness and community care. I pretty much only want to read things with those elements now lol

@yam655 I'm with you on being slightly over the Hero's Journey story structure. It gets formulaic after a while

@scarletswalk I don't judge you for reading Prince Harry's book. I have the audiobook on hold but it's gonna be a while before I get it! I find the drama of the royal family fascinating and I really feel for Harry as someone who has also dealt with toxic family structures. I'm curious to know how you feel about the situation as a Londoner.

This was not my most literary year, as parenthood to an increasingly active infant, then toddler has taken its toll on my energy for anything other than work, childcare and sleep, BUT I did manage to read some good 'uns.
I just finished "Jazz" by Toni Morrison (one of my favorite authors) and just started "The Humans" by Matt Haig, which I'm enjoying greatly so far. It's been a lot of enjoyable light fantasy for me last year, in fact, with a couple of heavy nonfiction works. In the former category, I finished the "Earthsea" books (Ursula K. Le Guin) with "Tales from Earthsea" and "The Other Wind." I also read "Howl's Moving Castle" (Diana Wynne Jones) and "Startdust" (Neil Gaiman.) Very much enjoyed all of them. I also read "Klara and the Sun" by Kazuo Ishiguro, which I loved -- he's definitely becoming a favorite author. I read "Red Mars," too, by Kim Stanley Robinson, which I liked okay, but had hoped to be more engrossed by (I really enjoyed "Ministry of the Future" which I finished at the end of 2021.) In the latter category, I read "Caste" (Isabel Wilkerson) and "Eichmann in Jerusalem" (Hannah Arendt) last year, as well.

Currently on loan from the library:
“The Big Lie” Jonathan Lemire
“The Big Truth” Major Garrett/David Becker
“No Gods, No Monsters” Cadwell Turnbull

Also reading “The Complete Maus” Art Spiegelman

I’m a biography guy, so currently reading Bob Odenkirk’s memoir, “Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama.”

For sheer fun-the Thursday Murder Club series. Also just started The McCartney Legacy-Vol. 1. I have Stardust waiting for me on the shelf-I light to mix it up!

@miltz - Lincoln in the Bardo! Heck, yeah.

@jeustan - I reread Sex, Drugs, & Cocoa Puffs early on in the pandemic. Still funny, but not nearly as funny as it was when it came out. Sometimes I wish humor had ore staying power, but usually I'm glad it adapts and changes.

@guitargabe I have no idea why people continue to be such fans of Dune. It wasn't Frank Herbert's best work, nor was it his work that most relates to the present day. Personally, I'd love to see an adaptation of his "The White Plague" -- which is about a geneticist who saw his wife and daughters die during an act of terrorism and decides to take vengeance in to his own hands. More than just being an interesting idea, there's actually room in the story for a modern adaptation to include interesting queer characters. (It has been years since I read it, but IIRC, even it had more interesting female characters than Dune.)

It's certainly not a perfect book. Every author is a product of their time, after all. That said, some works are easier to correct and fix in later adaptations. Dune doesn't have a lot of space for whole new characters until it is past the first four books or so. The best that can probably be done is explicitly gender-flipping a few of the guys in it. The White Plague, though... There's a lot of potential wiggle room there.

Isaac Asimov was self-aware enough to know he couldn't write women well, but not self-aware enough to realize why he couldn't write women well. Admittedly, he was writing before the advice of "think of an interesting male character and then just make them female" was a thing. I think he's most interesting for his volume of work... but, really if we had decent copyright limits his stuff would be in the public domain... which would make it easy to find modernized versions of his work... In general, his stuff would be pretty easy to gender-flip.

Prelude to Foundation was written decades after the original Foundation trilogy. It was one of the few with a female character... and as you saw, he never actually succeeded in figuring it out.

Mostly some older things that have since been released on movies or television. I like to see the director's choices on what to expand on or omit entirely. Funny enough, I recently saw Where the Crawdad's Sing and forgot that I had read the book about a year prior, but had this burning idea that I had somehow seen this brand new movie before.

Currently I am reading Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, because I heard there was a section on The Beatles and figured I'd give it a shot.

@bradbrubaker Saunders is very good. The story collections are fantastic.

I think Dune hit home when it did because of the ecological issues that it covers (this was right at the beginning of the sixties, remember). It was written when environmental concerns first started to surface. IIRC the central themes fell out of conversations Herbert had had with the planetary scientist Farouk el-Baz at NASA, who was known as "King" by the Apollo astronauts, and who has a shuttlecraft named after him in Star Trek:TNG. El-Baz was an authority on desert ecology—Liet Kynes is based on him. The Harkonnens are The Man; the Fremen are prototypical activists. Herbert also lifted a lot (and I mean a LOT) from Lesley Blanch's "The Sabres of Paradise". But neither his gender politics nor the "white messiah" role that he uses to frame Paul's journey were exceptions. Much (I'm tempted to say most) of the writing from that time was like that. The world was very different back then (I was only a kid, but even I can see how things have moved on since). Things that are unacceptable now were common practice back then.

I recently reread some of Heinlein's so-called 'best' work and good grief, it's unsettlingly skeevy (probably deliberately so, he seems to have loved playing the wiseacre curmudgeon). I suspect the main reason Larry Niven's 'Ringworld' has never made it to the screen is because of his horrendously dodgy sexual politics. And Arthur C Clarke, rated as one of SF's greatest grand masters, couldn't write warm, emotional human characters of *any* gender to save his life and his late work with Stephen Baxter has some very disturbing sexual undercurrents.

@miltz - Going to give Lincoln in the Bardo another attempt soon. I put it down for more than a week and realized I needed to sit down and give it more than an occasional pickup but the first 100 pages were still so fresh I decided to shelf it for a while. It’s really incredible.

Saunders was a panelist on Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me a couple weeks ago and sounded surprisingly very down to earth.

@bradbrubaker Yeah, that Klosterman book is going on 20 years and yet it feels like 5 years ago I was hearing the buzz and meant to check it out. Anyways, it was a couple bucks off the clearance shelf, should be an interesting look at how much or little has changed.

@oddbod totally right! I even had the thought when posting that I should maybe look it up, but I didn't feel like spending any longer on the post than I did.

@yam655 maybe it was just the place I was at in my life while reading it, just finishing my conversion to Judaism, but I found the Fremen culture and the bits of their language we get absolutely fascinating. Everything about them feels so deeply Semitic (if not directly Jewish), and it really drew me in. I also got a big kick out of the Bene Gesserit and how much I saw that the Companions from Firefly (which I love dearly) seemed to come directly from them. I think that was why I disliked Dune Messiah so much. The Fremen had been so wildly reversed in such an unbelievably short amount of time in a way that was unbelievable for me, and the Bene Gesserit, despite all Dune's talk of them being this ancient order that has and can again start over entirely, went from being this omnipresent power to being almost completely toothless. It had almost all the things I disliked from Dune, but almost none of the things I liked from it.

@loveonamixtape Klara and the Sun was sooooo good! He's so good at giving exactly the right amount of info to the reader through his narrators, enough to guess horrible things that might be outside the narrator's understanding but not enough to *know*, and both that and Never Let Me Go are absolute masterworks in that particular, sickening kind of suspense.

Got Crossroads by Franzen for Christmas, it helped me get through my other "present" - COVID-19!

Also read Techno Rebels by Dan Sicko, a great book on the history of techno and the music scene in Detroit when I was growing up there (not that I knew about it).

Found that book as a reference in Last Night A DJ Saved My Life, which I read a year or two ago, and is a must read for anyone interested in the history of playing recorded music for entertainment.

Probably going to tear into the copy of Beastie Boys Book my brother loaned me recently after FAWM's over.

@looprication - Cannot wait for Franzen's second in the series!

And the Beastie Boys book was a 5 out of 5 read for me.

@bradbrubaker oh wow didn't know it was going to be a series! Yeah that was a page-turner, once my eyes could focus I read it pretty much nonstop. Was about the only thing I felt like I accomplished on my vacation but worth the time. Was actually about to start Freedom before I got that from my wife.

And yes, I've heard rave reviews about the B-Boys book from my brother, looking forward to it!

@jeustan It's definitely worth going back to. And I really can't recommend his story collections highly enough, if you haven't read those.

@guitargabe Dune is ultimately an example of a series that the author ended up trying desperately to be done with, but the fans and the publisher just kept wanting more.

It sort of feels like Frank Herbert kept going "if this was why you liked the series, this isn't in the series anymore, so you can move on."

I mean, there's a reason why the vast majority of the Dune novels in the last 20+ years have been prequels to Frank Herbert's work...

@kathrynhoss I really like the kishotenketsu structure as an alternative to the hero's journey. The best thing about it is that it is so fundamentally different than the hero's journey that it can be used almost anywhere. It came from four-line poetry. It exists in four-panel comics. It is found in nonfiction and newspaper articles in Japan. It's found in all manner of narrative entertainment. And... it is super easy to map to songs.

The Hero's Journey can't even be used for short stories.

Just finished Brave New World. I have it a 3/5, I wasn't mad about it. The first and last few chapters were great, but found a huge chunk of the middle a drag and actually really annoying.

"There used to be mums and dads?? What??? Lololol" - yeah alright Aldous, we get the point

Onto Metamorphosis next...

I'm reading "The Music Lesson, A Spiritual Search for Growth Through Music" by Victor L. Wooten............when I have time............

Janet Malcolm's book on psychoanalysis, and CP Lee's one about Bob Dylan in Manchester, "Like the Night"

What a great question!! I just finished reading "Legends and Lattes" by Travis Baldree, and I can confirm it is extremely wholesome!

@kathrynhoss I sense public opinion here is very much divided, but I'm definitely a supporter of Harry. I'm not a royalist, so the royal family doesn't mean anything to me personally. But it does to a lot of others, and I (sort of) understand their anger. But, you can't deny human beings the simple right of a healthy mind, and doing whatever they can to ensure their mental health survives. He is absolutely scathing in the book towards the British press, he does not let up about them at all. His hatred just steams out of the pages. So it's quite an eye-opening read. I'm about halfway through at the moment, during his army days. Overall, he comes across as a boy lost in a wilderness trying to find a path to somewhere he can call home. I wholeheartedly feel for him.

Ah, @tamsnumber4, that Victor Wooten book is really great!

I am currently reading "Oathbringer" from the Starlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson. If anyone likes high fantasy, it's a good read.

I am deep into this book by a Swedish buddist munk, Bjorn Natthiko Lindeberg. He died a year ago but left this wonderful book called "I might be wrong". Great perspective stuff even though you can't really go wrong here at FAWM.

My favorite read of 2022 was "The Myth of Normal" by Gabor Maté and his son Daniel (who also happens to be a composer and lyricist!). I am delving into his work more. Just started "Scattered" and have "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts" on hold at my library. His work is special--we need more like him in the "self-help" world!!

@scarletswalk His righteous anger definitely comes out in interviews too. I was interested in your opinion since most Brit takes I've seen so far blast Harry and Meghan for supposedly destroying the royal family (even tho, you know, they were just trying to live). But I know there's a big antiroyalist sentiment growing as well. I guess much like in America we're living in very divided times.

@katestantonsings; Gabor Mate is fabulous.
Last year (I think) I wrote a FAWM song called In The Realm Of Hungry Ghosts, named after that book.

The two reads that have inspired some song ideas for me have been Linthead Stomp: The Creation of Country Music in the Piedmont Region and The Complete Cosmicomics

One of my favourite reads of the last 12 months was XX by Rian Hughes. Absolutely recommend for anyone looking for something a little weird.

Currently enjoying Ted Chiang and Philip K Dick. And would love some more sci fi recommendations if anyone has any.

Just finished Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - fabulous book - thought provoking other worldly fantasy by a very clever writer.

@sollis if you haven’t read Ian M Banks his culture novels are amazing (in fact if you have read them they are still amazing!)

@sollis, have you read any of Ursula Le Guin's work? She's a master.
I think I've read and loved everything she wrote, but the book I've read repeatedly is 'The Left Hand of Darkness'. Le Guin was really ahead of her time.

At the moment, I'm reading 'The Latecomer' by Jean Hanff Korelitz. Unputdownable. ;) Wonderful writing, skilfully drawn characters, excellent dialogue, skewering and often hilarious observations. I loved her literary thriller 'The Plot' as well.

I second @rshakesp's recommendation of Iain M. Banks.
Maybe start with Matter or Look To Windward.
And yeah, Left Hand Of Darkness is an absolute classic!

@kathrynhoss I wholeheartedly support any attempts to overthrow the rich and powerful 😂

Right now I'm reading mostly student essays on the Kalam cosmological argument, but also The Holy Reich : Nazi conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945, by Steigmann-Gall, Richard

@scarletswalk saaame

@kathrynhoss @scarletswalk feels like that sentiment is building. Hope I get to see it happen. 💯

@rshakesp @fuzzy Thanks for the tip, I'll add some Banks to my reading list. Would you say it's best to start with Consider Phlebas in the culture novels or will I find my way ok if I go for something like Matter?

@donna I haven't read anything by Le Guin yet but I do hear great things. I might dive in with The Lathe of Heaven - it sounds right up my street.

@toms @scarletswalk the people have the numbers 🙂 I feel like significant change will happen in my lifetime, but I don't know if it will be good or bad for me 😬

@sollis no need to read in sequence- I did and it may help a little with the development of some of the concepts - but they all stand alone - I remember matter and the algebraist being really good

I finished Julia Armfield - Our Wives Under the Sea ths weekend - loved it! It's a bit of a slow-burn book, but I found it really gripping. It's eerie and beautiful in equal measure.

@adforperu you should write a song about it

😉

I recently read two comics I loved: Calexit by Matteo Pizzolo and Amancay Nahuelpan, about a near-future in which California has seceded from the US, and My Pretty Vampire by Katie Skelly, an homage to 70s sexploitation-horror films.

I'm just rereading Robert Silverberg's, Lord Valentine's Castle. I loved it as a teenager. But that was thirty five years ago and I haven't read it again during that time. All I remember is that it was fabulous and it starred a juggling troupe on a massive planet. Now that I'm rereading it, I find that it has not aged with time and it still has it's magic.

I also just bought Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm, the Penguin edition. I've read both of them before. I'm not planning to reread them soon. Its just that I loved them both and its good to have a copy of both. And their covers are fab. Its in revolutionary red, as Orwell was a bit of a revolutionary even if he waxed idullic about sleepy English pubs. It's what made me buy them.

FICTION: 'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood. Tried reading it previously during the pandemic and for some reason found it too depressing even though I read a lot of dystopian fiction so it was nothing new in that sense. Trying again now and enjoying it this time.

NON-FICTION: 'Late Capitalist Fascism' by Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen. I like it but won't comment further on it since we try to not get political here on FAWM, at least not outside of our songs.

COMICS: Just finished rereading 'The Invisibles' by Grant Morrison and now slowly working through Alan Moore's 'Promethea.' If you like esoteric, psychedelic, mind-bending fiction with a political bite (think Philip K. Dick) then you'll like these.

So many excellent suggestions here for me to follow up on later. 😊

Meanwhile, I've finished the fantastic 'The Latecomer' by Jean Hanff Korelitz, and have just started Peter Godfrey Smith's 'Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life'.

I'm already captivated.

How have I missed this thread until now?
I've been enjoying some mid-20th century classics so far this year, currently The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford.
All of my FAWM songs this year are inspired by books, but I'm not sure yet if that one is going to inspire another one. Either way, I'm enjoying it a lot.

I'm reading the satires by Juvenal - was intending to steal loads of stuff from it for my songs but haven't taken a single line from it.

I'm currently 40% through Giles Tremlett's
"The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War"

I had always admired those who rushed to help the Spanish Republic defend itself against Franco's Fascist takeover. But I now admire them ten times more after delving into this book. The book is a well researched history, but Tremlett includes so many accounts drawn from people who wrote about the conflict at the time and after, that it often reads like a great historical novel.

He does not shy away from the negative side of being a Brigader, above and beyond the fact of being at war. He details the politics, the organisational problems, being used as shock troops and being sent on often impossible missions, etc. But that has been key to the boost in my admiration for those volunteers who were essentially the first casualties of the Second World War (which would break out only a few months after Franco declared victory).

Any modern history buffs would be fascinated by this huge tome, I am sure.

Even more excellent suggestions! Thanks, everyone! 😊 I've recently been captivated by the post-apocalyptic African novel 'Who Fears Death' by the Nigerian-American writer Nnedi Okorafor. It has roots in a few genres, but is probably best described as fantasy and science fiction. The author also hones in on the current strongly contended social issue involving FGM.

Only a few pages into The Passenger, by Cormac McCarthy. Mind-bogglingly extraordinary writing. Every sentence is a marvel. Read the reviews.

To @sollis, if you haven’t already, Adrian Tchaikovsky is absolutely worth a try for wildly imaginative space opera and world-building type sci-fi.

Deep River by Karl Marlantes

The Philosophy of Modern Song - Bobby Dylan - Here is one songwriting tidbit - "people are more interested in a story song if they think it's true"

Vitalism and Multiplicity

Anyone else on goodreads??? - https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/27376621-slade

Feel free to add or whatever it is we do on there.

One of my favs so far this year was Rick Rubin's "The Creative Act".

Highly recommend. It helped me through a few tough ones this fawm.

Geoff Dyer's "ZONA: On Andrei Tarkovsky's 'Stalker'."
So good, not least for the suggestion that the film can be read as a grim, Soviet version of the classic BBC sitcom, "Last of the Summer Wine."

4 chapters into Dilla Time by Dan Charnas (https://dillati.me/). So well written, and what a historically important biography! Also just started Ted Gioia’s History of Jazz (NPR review/interview here: https://www.npr.org/2021/07/15/1016020385/re-revising-the-history-of-jazz). Both solid music reads so far!

Pauline Oliveros's "Deep Listening: A Composer's Sound Practice." Stuffed full of interesting exercises and thought-provoking questions about the nature of sound, the difference between hearing and listening, and suggestions for approaching composition differently.

Just finished Jane Eyre and am starting The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. As mentioned before I've read at least 14 unpublished poetry collections so far but that number is likely to increase by a lot the closer we get to the submission deadline.

I loved reading Lord Valentines Castle by Robert Silverberg as a young teenager. It's a faboulously colourful science fiction novel and I'm rereading it now and its still fabulous. It really calls out for a big Hollywood treatment.

@jeff9, thanks for mention of Cormac McCarthy. I didn't know he had a new book out. My last read of his was 'The Road' (which inspired one of my songs a few FAWMs ago). The movie was also excellent.

Carbon by Andrew Vachss . the last book written before he died, Carbon is a ridiculous mishmash of detective story, science fiction, and dystopian cyber-degeneracy.. the first half makes no sense and is badly written, but i plod on because i have been reading Vachss for 25 years and it is like a visit from an old friend.or more like hearing a favorite singer sing a terrible song. you enjoy it even knowing hos bad it is. but halfway through, the novel changes. When the protagonist finally saves the little girl who has been a prisoner of sex slavers and child murderers, the purpose of the novel surfaces. Vachss devoted jo life as a lawyer to the prosecution of child abusers, and i can only imagine the horrific interviews he has conducted in the prosecution of these cases. He puts a lot of that information into the dialogues between the little girl and her savior into the second half of the book. and it is as illuminating as it is heartbreaking. Many of the passages had me in tears. Vachhss and his wife were warriors who fought against the sex criminals who destroy the lives of so many people, and his books were written to educate the readers of cheap fiction to the realities of the criminal degeneracy lurking in the gutters of our society. He was a hero to me in many ways, and I treasure his books, even the worst of them,, because he always had a noble purpose behind the writing of them.

Thanks, @billwhite51. I have just about every Vachss book on my shelves, but somehow I missed this one and will have to hunt it down. His outlaw hero, Burke, is one of the most interesting characters in fiction. I hope maybe there's a real one out there somewhere to help carry on their legacy.

@jeff9 Vachss' wife, Alice, was a sex crimes prosecutor, and she later became Chief of the Special Victims Bureau in Queens, New York. She is the author of the nonfiction book Sex Crimes: Ten Years on the Front Lines Prosecuting Rapists and Confronting Their Collaborators, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.
This new character, Carbon White, is no Burke. I dont think we shall ever see a fictional character like him again. I dont know anything about the writing of this book. It could well be a rough draft that he never completed. But it is worth reading, especially for the second half. I did meet Vachss once, and he was exactly as I imagined him to be.

I'm in the middle of reading "Dark Banquet" by Bill Schutt.
It's a nonfiction book about animals that live exclusively on the blood of other animals. Right now he's explaining the natural history of and misconceptions about vampire bats.
Later chapters deal with bedbugs, leeches, mosquitoes, etc.
Really fascinating.

A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume

@billwhite51 and @jeff9, I've just bought a three-book (Kindle) bundle of Vachss's books ('Flood', 'Strega', 'Blue Belle'). Had never heard of him, but am eager to meet the fictional character Burke.

@donna Strega was the first book of his I read.

@jeff9 Thanks for the Tchaikovsky recommendation. I've got 'Children of Time' loosely on my radar, but if you think there's a better starting point with his books do let me know!

I've recently been reading Claxton by Mark Cocker, good book! It's a nature field book diary compiled over the years, in order of month and day (not year) interesting to read over the seasons, and I enjoy his writing style lots, something to smile at!