Keiran’s Reads of 2021

You may have heard through the grapevine that I’ve spent more time this year reading. To some, that is like finding out there is a breeze outside their window, it leaves them nonplussed about the whole affair. I’ve already done the article (I assume) on setting an objective and hitting it. However, I wanted to also talk more specifically about the books that I either plodded through like the mud or bounded through like fire was tearing at the pages. Some were fun, fantastic, and worthwhile. Others were purposefully left unfinished.

While I might not include everything, for example, Orwell’s All Art is Propaganda, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, or a few others, that’s because there isn’t much productive to say about them as of yet. The point is that I want to talk about books getting me through the year and ones that had been finished that are worth talking about at least. I’ve tried to put them in some sort of timeline that stands to reason, but keep in mind that some of these might cross over in strange ways. Some books I read leisurely over months, others I’ve leaped through. Either way, let’s get to the first book.

Ok, that was a lucky guess that the first book would have been Doctor Who-related in some way. Though I’d only started reading about a chapter or two last December, I wasn’t too keen on Trevor Baxendale’s Prisoner of the Daleks. If I had to place it, it sits somewhere in that period of losing Donna and turning back into an English bloke, the Time-Lord Victorious thing that landed about as well as Tom Baker did in “Logopolis.” I wouldn’t say there was anything particularly bad about it. I wasn’t jumping for joy to finish it either.

Instead, I read through it in about three days around New Year’s day because I wanted to move on in terms of the physical books I was reading. Particularly, A Promised Land; Which was probably for the best when it came to finding a reason to finish Prisoner of the Daleks. Mostly it involves dancing on the line of Tennant prancing around your mind being angry with the dark themes, death, and slavery, as commandant Thay cartoonishly commands violent interrogations and typical space Nazis. If it were a recent episode of Doctor Who, I’d have been lapping it up for all its wonder, but otherwise, it was fine.

I don’t know where to place this one because I honestly don’t know when I started, or anything about it. Nonetheless, I’ve not finished the Thirteen Doctors: 13 Stories anthology, and I don’t think I’m going to any time soon. In essence, it is a series of short stories with all the numbered Doctors written by guest writers taking up the reins. The authors include Eoin Colfer, Alex Scarrow, Derek Landy, Neil Gaiman, Holly Black, and most importantly, Malorie Blackman. This is Doctor Who at its peak, different writers taking different viewpoints and making something either catastrophically terrible or magnificently beautiful.

There is no consistency, and while that is disagreeable to some, that’s what I think makes Doctor Who special. When I started, I did not like Eoin Colfer’s writing, and I know he wrote Artemis Fowl (books, not the crap film), but I just wasn’t enjoying the way he wrote. That’s not to say his story of the First Doctor being Peter Pan against the space pirates is bad. I enjoyed that bit, it was just the ink on paper that wasn’t clicking. Meanwhile, Michael Scott’s (no, not that one) story made me want to put the book down or even skip the Second Doctor’s fable entirely. It is a strange book and one that isn’t to be taken too seriously while it plays action hero with old men.

Let’s discuss another that I’ve not finished, but one I have more reason to than others. Barack Obama’s A Promised Land is a book I’ve joked many times about. Specifically that it is something I could drop from a great height and kill someone. It is one of the longer ones I set out to read this year, and while I have no intentions of bounding right through it during my break this Christmas and New Years, it is one that I’ve been slowly plodding my way through and I’m enjoying. Outside of fiction, it was one of the books that fell right in the wheelhouse of interests: Politics and biographies.

Is it the most fascinating book? No, neither is it what I’d recommend to anyone when it comes to humanizing a politician of any kind. Despite stories that might otherwise not be spoken about at great length, the front half is loaded with stories of growing up, family, activism, college, Michelle, the kids, and leads into the campaign. That is the point where if you are easily bored by political detail, you’ll be hiring someone to drop the book on your head from a great height. It takes a special kind of boring person to sit there and enjoy hearing about the fallout from the 2007-2008 financial crisis, and I am lucky in that regard that I am that boring.

Michelle’s Becoming is arguably the more accessible and human of the two, and I say this, loving every second of her book. From cover to cover, it was a warm hug by someone friendly and joyous. Michelle Obama has made it clear she has and never had any notion of joining politics, and though the background leading to the book is that of politics, there is a clear line between that and a majority of Becoming. Though I finished it early this year, it was what distracted me from everything at the tail end of 2020 and January this past year.

It is a truly beautiful book by a person trying to maneuver through a world that isn’t accepting of a woman of color, a woman with a powerful voice, a woman who is trying to raise kids in the eye of the social media storm, and so much more. Disagree with Michelle or her husband, I do on several things, but in spite of that, it is an honest, sometimes warm, sometimes sad look into the life behind the person reported on by tabloids and the press of Washington. If you need something to remind you there is good in the world, that people care, and that someone can have an unwavering spirit, pick up Becoming.

This one I’ve actually done a full review on already, and the TV adaptation of it too. Paul Cornell’s Human Nature with the Seventh Doctor (not the Tenth) a non-TV companion (not Martha) and a different kind of monster that didn’t make it to TV fully intact as well. It is the reverse of the Target Novels in some ways. There is more detail, but this was the one to come first and it fits the medium well. Of course, for the TV adaptation, Russell T Davies did what a showrunner does and pulled some strings to tighten up the fantastic story for a total runtime of 90-minutes.

Of course, I finished this one early in the year too. By this point, I was looking to find other books I wanted to read. By all means, I went back to Doctor Who, more than once in book-form throughout the year. However, I have hundreds of them in backlog and I wanted to start making headway elsewhere. This one didn’t take too long by my standards, but it was longer than you’d hope for when you are looking to read twelve books in twelve months. If I was going to go for something longer, I wanted to make sure it was something I’d like.

Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is fantastic, and the script to the David Fincher thriller (penned by Flynn herself) is just as brilliant a read in itself. That said, this year wasn’t my first running stab at the book, as I attempted to grit my teeth and get through the audiobook before. I never could get through that, and I hold it as one of the examples of why specific readers can be distracting. Amy will always be Rosemund Pike, and Nick will always be Ben Affleck. I guess that’s the trouble with watching the movie first. You invert the typical “it’s not like the book” stance everyone has about adaptations.

The thing is, what is different about the book? Well, that’s heavy in spoiler-land, but generally, it is the lengthy details of later portions. Four specific points if you are looking to narrow it down: The trailer park, Neil Patrick Haris, the shower scene (and after), and Nick’s legal troubles. Otherwise, it is as close to 1:1 as you’ll get, and it made getting through Gone Girl as easy as possible. It was almost as if it was a 20-ish hour cut of the film in your head. Maybe it was not the most explosive or groundbreaking story, but there is something about the strings being pulled by Flynn that keep Punch and Judy swinging.

So America is run by the Nazis and the Japanese, and no, I’m not talking about your uncle’s weird opinions on the political state of the world. I’m talking about Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, an alt-history telling of the fallout from World War II where the US (and the world) fell to Japan and Nazi Germany. It has an interesting concept, but to some it might not fit the hand-holding nature of storytelling you expect from something else. The ending (in particular) isn’t something that is definitive, and that’s on purpose. Once again, it isn’t the most explosive and action-filled book on the planet, it is something made to have you think.

If you watch the Amazon show, you’ll experience a whole different adventure. Of course, like most now who may not follow older writers by their heels, that was my first experience of this world. That said, there is enough in the book to show how time has moved on. It is a product of the 60s after all, and while Philip K Dick wasn’t looking to spark animosity with his phrasing, some of it is outdated and uncomfortable to read as a 20-something now. Overall, it is great if you can slowly plod through it, but understand it is something you have to ponder.

I told you I’d be returning to Doctor Who, and I did with the Adventures in Lockdown. It is another anthology piece with proper writers of the show, Neil Gaiman, Russell T Davies, Steven Moffat, Paul Cornell, Chris Chibnall (technically a “proper writer”), and so on. This one was actually a little bit of a cheat on my twelve books in twelve months thing, as it is about 100 pages, just a series of short stories, and is entirely aimed at being a very swift read. I won’t spend too much time on it, but this was a fun little read in the middle of the year with a handful of stories and Jodie’s Doctor having one or two fine tales.

Despite being short and easy to read, I want to remind you of something. Novellas and other short-form examples on books like this: They are still valid, no matter what others say. You do not need to read 1000-page books back-to-back to feel validated in your reading proficiency. As long as you are reading and enjoying it, it does not matter.

If Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle was viewed as sometimes hard to read, with phrasing such as, “a young Japanese” instead of ending that with man, woman, or person. Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness was always going to be like trying to swim through a river of sewage. Set in Africa and employing a word that begins with N a lot, it ends up being a critique of imperialism and racism of the 19th-century. This is one that might be marred (once again) by being a product of its late 19th-century and early 20th-century publication. Between the ambiguity and constant horror that is depicted, it wouldn’t surprise me to see it labeled as outright racist in viewpoint.

However, for its time, there was very little like it and since then, specifically the mid-20th-century, there have been growing voices similar and extrapolating on it. Most notable is probably Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, though more recently, Spec Ops: The Line also takes that critical view. Some might say I am being dramatic or missing the point, but The Heart of Darkness, much like Spec Ops: The Line, is a horror. There may not be an alien, a mythological creature, or a psycho with a knife, but at its core, the point of The Heart of Darkness is to display the horrors of humanity.

If you thought that was putting me in a cheery mood, I had followed that up with reading The Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. How do I best describe this one? PTSD: The anti-war book. Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service does this thing where the villain doesn’t like gore, so when people’s heads start popping like party poppers on your birthday, it is a tongue-in-cheek dark comedy bit. Vonnegut does something similar with a simple phrase, killing off characters with: “So it goes.”

Do you know if any of it is true, or if any of that matters? No, the point is to follow the life of Billy Pilgrim and his many different turns into insanity, so it goes. To some, it would be too dark, too comedic, too sci-fi, and too anti-war. If you ask me, it was another that wears its age on its sleeve. It is an old man of a book, depicting sex and other taboos of the 60s in foolish light with some questionable phrasing about gay men as well. If you are a fan of weird historical sci-fi, you’ll find a home here, though it might be an uncomfortable stay.

Do we count this one as Doctor Who-adjacent? I love Christopher Eccleston, and I think for all that pressure he puts on himself as a person and as an actor, he’ll never accept just how important he is for who he is. If that sounds odd, that’s because I love the Bones of You is a deeply personal look behind the actor from Salford. This is mostly a look at his relationships with his dad, and his dad’s dementia that led to his death in 2012, but all the same, it is a look into Christopher’s mental health. If you’ve ever thought the big-eared alien from the North was infallible, this is the book to break every one of those notions.

With the space I’ve restricted myself to, there are not enough words to express how much Christopher Eccleston means to me (or others). Having him pull the curtain back, revealing his childhood, his love of not only people but acting and life. It is something I couldn’t recommend more if you are even moderately interested in the man, his work, or simply some of his stories on life. At times it is heart-warming and soul-affirming, but also gut-wrenching as you discover the pain suffered in silence behind a bounty of world-class performances on stage and on-screen, big and small.

Another that I reviewed earlier this year, Bill Clinton and James Patterson’s political thriller, The President is Missing, pulled me out of what was a slow period. For long enough, I’ve seen Patterson’s books line the shelves of my dad and gran’s libraries. As a result, I had some idea of who he was, but nothing next to that of Stephen King. As I’ve said already today, politics falls within my interests at least a little, so a political thriller with a touch of a president playing Jack Bauer and David Palmer was very much in my wheelhouse.

As I said at the time, it is one that seems to be toeing the line and sitting on the fence between ideological stances within the American political battleground. With some none-too-subtle nods to the issues of police brutality, the threat of Russian hacking, and in the final address closing the book with a state of the union address, trying so desperately to play both sides. It never lets President Duncan be prescribed as one way or the other on anything when it comes to policy, only slightly hinting at political allegiances with opposing characters. While characters were round enough to turn the metaphorical wheels of the story, with some of them, you could feel the tread of the tire as it were.

I was actually excited for Ernest Cline’s Ready Player Two after just finishing the pulp fiction that was its predecessor in audiobook form around the time it was announced. I never got around to it last year, though I can’t say I did to any great degree this year either. I’m talking about it for one simple reason: I purposefully Did-Not-Finish (DNF) it. I didn’t get a great deal in either, but I felt it was the better choice because ultimately it amounts to little more than a series of pop-culture references missing the mark in a story circling the drain.

Some might even say that is similar to the first book, and while it is true the book and the half-hearted movie are trudging through a series of otherwise disconnected IPs, the former had a spark of charm. This is the metaphorical second dance of the night, when the balloons have become half-deflated, tables are lined with half-empty glasses, the DJ is out for a smoke, and most of the people have gone home after your racist uncle exposed himself. As you can guess by that description, it isn’t as enjoyable. While I have started other books this year that I won’t finish by the of 23:59 on December the 31st, this is the one I purposefully didn’t finish. I don’t know when or if I’ll attempt to pick it back up.

A Doctor Who double bill now, starting with Rose, based on “Rose,” or maybe it is the other way around. This is the thing about the Target Novelizations written by the actual write of the episode themselves, some of it might have been scenes or superfluous segments taken out in the run-up to the 2005 return. Will we ever know which bits were added-in years later and which bits festered in Russell’s head since the early 2000s when he got the call? Probably not, and quite frankly, I don’t care because this was a fantastic read as not only a fan of the alien from the North, but also the gobby little blonde and her mother.

I don’t quite remember what I said in the review of either the episode or the book of Rose, but this is why I fell in love with the blue box, the alien, the companion, and everything Doctor Who. This is why nearly 17-years later, come Chibnall and Clara or shine, I’m sat in my office surrounded by books of Doctor Who, a TARDIS to my left, and a folder on my PC filled with scripts and book ideas half-cobbled together. That’s what Doctor Who has done, that is what this story in its original public format has done, pressed me into creating and dreaming of that mysterious person in a blue box.

The show was only back for several years, and somehow Steven Moffat found himself having to write a movie to celebrate 50-years. There are plenty of critics to Moffat, and I am sure whenever this goes out, there is at least one bitter review of the Capaldi-era I’ve written. However, the madman found a way to write a sometimes silly, humorous, nostalgic, somewhat dramatic, and just quite heart-wrenching of a specific kind of episode to tie it all up. From heartfelt character moments and grumpy old John Hurt playing the straight-man moments, it was Doctor Who’s brilliance wrapped up into one celebration.

Then, somehow in another twist of fate that came about years later, he had to write it again. This time pulling in the Eighth and War Doctor’s end and beginning respectively into the main story, perfectly capturing the voice of each character. This was something that had to be done with great deftness given his decision to be Flowchart-Moffat when writing. Though he can sometimes be endlessly infuriating by being a bit convoluted/clever, he always had character at the forefront of his writing. Who only knows why I am giving this such high praise, who only knows when I’ve written this.

I don’t know if it’s the beard, the long brown hair, brown eyes, an appetite for coffee that borders on the unhealthy, being a multi-instrumentalist, or if it was because I was standing at a microphone with a guitar around my neck at the time. However, I’ve always had some weird liking for Dave Grohl, even before I was told I looked even slightly like him for a moment (from a distance). With that said, I don’t think there is a Foo Fighters, Nirvana, music, or plain Dave Grohl fan who hasn’t picked up Dave’s autobiography Storyteller, as it’s interesting for a countless number of reasons. Apparently, one of mine is being compared to him.

I don’t think there are many faults to be said in an entertaining, heart-warming, and all-around wonderful book about a storyteller retelling his strange and extraordinary life. Nevertheless, I want to grab editor Carrie Thornton and shake her a little, or whoever edited the digital version, because that digital edition has a few issues. Otherwise, it is a fantastic book of a life millions could only dream of and one which a young Dave Grohl did in his bedroom in suburban Virginia. From the brief stint with Kurt Cobain being all-encompassing, to stepping in front of that drum kit and becoming a great frontman himself, a great storyteller finally tells his story.

Initially, I thought I was going to despise Jennifer Lynn Barnes’ The Inheritance Games: Aimed at teenage women and a little sluggish, to begin with, I wasn’t enthralled from page 1. It took about 13-14 chapters to really connect with just the game we’re playing, full-blown fictional in a similar world. Going in knowing nothing more than it being a young adult book, I was expecting nothing but a flowery fantasy of some guy taking Avery by the hand and whatever Twilight is actually about. While there is a bit of dreamy teen power-hunk, it is all done with a mystery pulling the reader through a dizzying teen drama.

Personally, I think The Inheritance Games became one of my favorite books I finished this year, in spite of Avery’s romances being a tangled mess. While The Man in the High Castle is fantastic, Becoming is beautiful, and I Love the Bones of You is endlessly endearing to an already loveable man, Jennifer Lynn Barnes made YA-fiction click for me as comfort books. Are they the most thought-provoking and always well-told? No. However, they let you slip into a world you love, knotted in its complications, and make you feel comfortable in those characters.

That comfort, that ability to plunge into that world you can’t get enough of, that’s why I lept straight back in with Barnes’ second book in the series, The Hawthorne Legacy. I won’t say that anything, in particular, was undone or that love of reading about this world and Avery was lost, but I didn’t love the sequel so much. Wrapped in the exquisiteness of being wanted as a teenage woman and ensnared in the trap of love triangles, the little bit of mystery left to solve fell to the side. A mystery that was solvable one and a half books prior to the reveal, the ending of The Hawthorne Legacy wasn’t one that left a bad taste.

However, something about The Hawthorne Legacy wasn’t as satisfying as I’d hoped it would be by the end. It was more of a taste you’ve had a thousand times and are a little tired of it, like unseasoned chicken. It’s not going to kill you, but you probably want something else. I’m trying not to spoil either book because the first one is great, and this second one tootles along fine. I guess part of me was hoping for the same level of mystery while the point was to delve a little further into the relationships. Either way, I’m excited to see where book 3 takes us as I can only assume it will end in Avery’s full inheritance becoming legal.

Another that falls in that “Book-tok made me buy” and one that falls in that partial dalliances of a “young” woman’s romantic life sometimes, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a strange one to explain. A bit fantasy and sci-fi tangled up in one strange story, it follows the life of Adeline LaRue, a 17th-century French woman who finds herself wishing for several things. These things include the peace of death in her desire for adventures, ultimately taking her to New York in 2014. I think like quite a few of us late-comers to V. E. Schwab’s standalone fantasy, we’re still delving through it until we get time off for Christmas and New Year, to which point we’ll devour it.

So no, this isn’t one that was finished before the editorial was formatted and edited, but I am hoping with two weeks off to not write three novels worth of articles a month, I’ll get to see Addie’s entire story. Some of the period/fantasy ladened sections are difficult to plod through as I recoil from them with my usual weirdness, but I can’t fault Schwab for dragging me along in the adventure. Even if it is sometimes begrudgingly. Trying to avoid divulging spoilers is just as difficult as enjoying some of those sections, so I’ll say that you should 100% be reading The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

To some, maybe that’s not a lot of reading to tout about in 2021. However, I don’t care and I’ve left out some things (as I said at the top) simply because I don’t think it is worth talking about them or I don’t have enough to excitedly write about them. It goes without saying, but I’ll do so anyway: This year has been very different for me in terms of books, not only because I’ve actually read more and I’ve gone past my goal by one better, but because I’ve enjoyed it. As I’ve said somewhere (I’ve written a lot), dyslexia made reading a test of endurance and tried my mental health all my life. Quite frankly, reading will always test my mental health because of that.

This is why I thought I’d never enjoy reading at all, and if I am honest, writing so much would have been a chore too, many years ago. It has taken a while and a lot of endurance to fight every “up this, I’m going to kill a large number of people in a game instead.” Not every book I’ve spoken about is everyone’s cup of tea, I’ve got weird tastes and don’t care. My point here was to promote reading and some good books. As I said in my most recent article on Dyslexia: It doesn’t matter what you read, it can be gay smut or blokes with stabby sticks fighting dragons, as long as you are reading no one has the right to complain.