ladybusiness | (Reply)

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Reading this year has been simply amazing. I've read 77 (items?) so far, mostly novels with some novellas, stories, graphic novels and non-fiction thrown in. I gave four of those five stars (a possible record, as I hardly ever five-star a book): three to favourite volumes of the Vorkosigan saga, which I read in its (almost) entirety for the first time this year and a 5-star rating also felt earned by Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal, a memoir about being an adopted child and a lesbian raised by very religious working class parents, and about struggling with mental health and belonging, by Jeanette Winterson, whose explorations of gender and desire were so influential for me when I was learning about those things in myself.

In addition, I read several new authors for the first time whose work made a huge impression on me. I loved Carmen Machado's "Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order SVU" which is sort of between a loving ff exploration of the show and a piece of (post?)postmodern fiction, I was swept by the amazing storytelling and even better character work in Yoon Ha Lee's The Machineries of Empire series, I was pleasantly creeped out by Jeff Vandermeer's Southern Reach #1, Annihilation, which I read in Polish translation - which comes with great illustrations.

I also loved A Taste of Honey and liked A Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson, was really quite impressed by the beauty and awfulness of the world written by Sebastian Barry in Days Without End.

And I really enjoyed Tessa Dare's humourous romances I read this year, particularly Do You Want to Start a Scandal.

I could probably go on, but this comment is long enough as it is...