What's a book you'd like to see more people reading, and why?
Fiction-wise, why literally everyone is not talking about Middlegame by Seanan McGuire is baffling to me. Seanan’s always been a solid author, she has a gift, but this is more than that. Middlegame shows both her range and depth as a writer, those things that give writing a soul, and her finely-honed technical abilities. The former is on display in just about everything she touches. The second has never been fully unleashed until now. She pulls off an incredible high-wire act, balancing a zigzag narrative pace, a convoluted plot, and multiple planes of meaning with a gripping and utterly original story that is as compelling as it is bizarre. You can look up a synopsis, I’m not going to try to do that here. I’m just going to say that I went in with high expectations and was absolutely blown away. I’m not exaggerating when I say I have never read anything like it, it is the best and most technically proficient piece of writing I have read in I don’t even know how long. Writing a short story with this many tiny gears and moving parts is hard enough. A novel? Unbelievable. It will go down as a classic. I mean a real classic, one that people will still be pointing to in 40 years as an example of what the genre can do when in the hands of someone that capable. You should all read it. Buy it and read it. Or, if the absolutely buckwild and nigh-indescribable premise doesn’t appeal to you, investigate one of her other series, or her work in comics. I guarantee that she does something that you will like. Urban fantasy? The October Daye series. Action/adventure with monsters and cryptids? The InCryptid series. Fairy tales gone wrong with wild twists and turns? Indexing and its sequel. YA portal fantasy with a gloriously diverse cast of relatable weirdos and even weirder worlds? The Wayward Children series. Ghosts? Sparrow Hill Road, or maybe Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day. Murderous mermaids? Rolling in the Deep and Into the Drowning Deep. Short stories? Laughter at the Academy, or just kick in to her Patreon. Her body of work is huge. Go. Shoo.
At the very least, if you know a Weird Kid, especially a queer kid, get them in on the Wayward Children series. I truly believe those books will save some lives, and make others more bearable. Also, sales feed her cats, and Thomas is immense.
Nonfiction-wise, The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine by Lindsey Fitzharris is a riveting nonfiction book about the life of Joseph Lister, an awesome dude, and about the state of medicine in the Victorian era, which was frankly horrible. It gave me a lot of perspective on just how far we’ve come so quickly, and just how filthy Victorian living conditions actually were. I wrote a thank you letter to my surgeon after reading it. REALLY good, and it doesn’t require a lot of knowledge going in for it to be enjoyable, if harrowing. I think, culturally, we need to have more respect for science and more awareness of just how quickly we made the advances we now take for granted, and how they are there for a reason (and that reason is like 85% so we don’t die of erysipelas and scarlet fever). And we need to respect Lister’s legacy by WASHING OUR FUCKING HANDS. I read the book over a year ago, and I still think about it often. Just about daily now, actually. I don’t admire many dead white guys, but I make an exception for Lister. Dude was on a whole ‘nother level of having his shit together.
