Paragraph #4: Too long with a lot of flip-flop between the author’s stance on digital format and the need for physical. Be confident here and focus on the important part by eliminating the caveats and the “need to cover all the bases”. Once that’s done, this will be a powerful, concise message.
I like where you’re going with this and heartily agree!
A very Hungry Caterpillar, by Eric Carle. It was in the top of a shelf and it fell on my head while trying to reach for something else. It really did surprised me.
The Invisible Life of Addie Larue - VE Schwab. It was sad and poetic horror story, but I was surprised by the poetic nature of its story.
The Lesser Dead - Christopher Buehlman. To tell you how it surprised me would give away far too much, but if you like untraditional horror stories, give this one a try. You may find it as satisfying as I did.
Piranesi – after Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell being a thousand page masterpiece, Clark comes out with this short thing decades later that is simultaneously completely different but also amazing in its own way. As a fan of her first book, I was initially put off due to the lack of length, assuming that meant lack of depth.
The Library at Mount Char. I wasn’t sure what was going on/where it was going for much of it like a good Cohen Brothers movie. And there were definitely a few things that I didn’t expect to happen.
For non fiction I’d probably say Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom by Stephen R. Platt.
A history of the taiping rebellion, it takes a very close eye to some of the more prominent people of the conflict and examines the whole thing in much more detail than you can usually get from English language sources.
For fiction I’m split between The Free People’s Village by Sim Kern. A tragedy focusing on a fictional protest encampment in an alternate present where Al gore won in 2000 rather than bush, and instead of declaring war of terror declared war on climate change. ‘Green tech’ and carbon credits stand ascendent yet the oil refineries are still going strong, and the real cost being put on those least capable of handling it.
I forgot to mention what I was split with and that’s probably Light Bringer by Pierce Brown, the 6th book in the red rising series. A quintessential space opera with all the grand scale and melodrama that brings with it, while also defying many of the cliches of that genera with less one dimensional villains and more moral grey area, (and a heaping helping of edge). Not for everyone but I thoroughly enjoy it.
I put down The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco and lazily enjoyed Charles Stross’ The Atrocity Archives.
According to wikipedia it mixes the genres of; Lovecraftian horror, spy thriller, science fiction, and workplace humour, which is quite accurate for a starter IMO.
even though it’s functionally a true crime book,[^1] White Hot Hate: A True Story of Domestic Terrorism in America’s Heartland is probably the book that sucked me in the most this year. the ultimate story being told here is effectively copaganda—almost definitionally it has to be, since it revolves around the FBI successfully navigating an infamous domestic terror plot from the past few years. but in between that story this book also really goes intimate into how such plots manifest and take form. you get a real sense of the sort of person who would follow through with white supremacist terrorism—and, perhaps indirectly, how many of these people are pushed to act (or hasten how willing they are to act) with the cajoling of the FBI. i’m not sure a book has ever felt like a peek behind the curtain for me without just actively being a political tract in the way this one was
[^1]: and i very much dislike true crime as a genre—looking at you I’ll Be Gone In The Dark
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