You can ram your Spare and other pointless stories from people who don’t need to be in the public consciousness. As someone who makes a point of reading for enjoyment first and foremost, as well as just delving so deep into my extensive library, I didn’t start 2023 with excitement for anything. The Brothers Hawthorne wouldn’t release until August, Pete McTighe’s “Kerblam” and Keith Temple’s “Planet of the Ood” Target novelizations wouldn’t be released until July, and as happy as I am to continue Tricia Levenseller’s Daughter of the Pirate King/Queen series, I was never going to catch up to Vengeance of the Pirate Queen in time.

So it was into my comprehensive TBR of smut, sci-fi (sometimes both in the same book), autobiographies, war-time, zombie, romance, and generally, whatever stories took my fancy I went. I’m like that: A lot of people describe their tastes as eclectic but I’ve yet to find someone who’ll go from listening to System Of A Down to Dolly Parton, reading hardcore smut to depressing war stories, Taylor Swift to Drowning Pool and back to Frank Sinatra, rounding with Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. As you can probably guess, now three years into writing these articles, my taste in books is similarly disjointed.

Philip K Dick – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Late last year and early this year, I had gone back into the world of CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077. A game much maligned for obvious reasons upon launch but also for some of its less-than-apt understanding or ability to acknowledge the world it is supposed to be. There are several cultural touchstones that Dick is connected with, from film, TV, and of course books. Whether it is 1968, 1982, or 2017, the post-apocalyptic dystopian sci-fi tale of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or Blade Runner is easily one of the driving influences of cyberpunk as a genre.

Lacking that true point of a cyberpunk experience in place of a standard video game story, I went into the world of R Deckard. Not only a struggle with status in a world where the definition of human is blurred by androids but also the ability to survive following post-nuclear annihilation. It might be hard to believe (not for some), but I’m an idiot, so I’m never going to give you a great new insight into what could be called a modern classic. It may not be the best read of my year, but certainly in the fallout of Silverhand’s torment and Arasaka’s corpo-espionage, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a deeper experience like most of Dick’s books.

George Orwell – Animal Farm

I had a new routine early this year. I’d sit down with fresh coffee for an hour before starting my PC, dedicating that time strictly to reading one chapter (or more). For a lot of us, it is difficult to find that time in the day: Either overactive stimulants or tiredness makes reading something of a challenge. Orwell’s Animal Farm was an easy choice to start this off. It was short, having only 10 chapters, and is a story that is fairly well recognized the world over. Even idiots like me can understand the political satire of some animals trying to kickstart the revolution and becoming the monsters they once hated.

I’ll never provide a great new insight into the allegory for an ill-fated political system proven to fail in a fashion not too dissimilar to the tale of comrade Napoleon. Instead, I think it is necessary to point out that this hour a day to read made the tale of Boxer, Snowball, Benjamin, Old Major, and the rest effortless to digest. It also helps that Animal Farm is one of the most exquisitely written books in history, and I don’t say that as someone who had to write about it for a school project. I say it because I went out of my way to read it, which is an important difference sometimes to your enjoyment.

James Scott Bell – How To Write Dazzling Dialogue

What dazzles me is that blithe observations get you the same results as a majority of these how-to books, especially from moderately successful writers of thrillers. Bell’s book has some simple and effective ways to improve your dialogue, which if you’re looking to write could be useful but ultimately you should know it from watching TV and film, playing games, or reading books. He also has some rather ridiculous/time-wasting suggestions on how to improve your dialogue, such as random number generators and taking a line from another book or simply taking reasonably fine dialogue and swapping it out to make your characters “interesting,” i.e. very bipolar.

How To Write Dazzling Dialogue isn’t a poorly written or bad book. My issues stem from the fact that people have and will look to the How-To genre for ALL the answers. People who take these “lessons” as gospel and never think to learn their own mistakes or deviate from these “rules” set out by people who you’ve hardly or never heard of before. Blissfully very short, I’m starting to despise those who believe that they and their anecdotes are the answer to life’s problems alone. The tricks may be new and work for some, but laborious chin-wagging about pointless exercises or simple observations don’t make up for that.

Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Comedy writing and dyslexia never really go hand-in-hand, as you can create your jokes out of a simple misreading. Though as Adams himself notes, I’d rather be happy than right any day. When I said the phrase “modern classic” earlier you most likely thought of something highly emotional and snooty that you are often assigned to read in a classroom: The Great Gatsby or more aptly Catch-22, for example. The truth is to be a classic in this sense you don’t have to be erudite. You just have to break the public consciousness to become THE book people think of at just a phrase muttered. Mostly said by those smug doors.

At the end of the day, for a lot of people, it is twice as difficult to write comedy as it is to read it. Not only is the enjoyment entirely subjective and thus the premise of the entire genre teeters on the edge of a very nimble pin, but you are trusting the audience to understand it on their own terms. You’d have to be a psychopath or a genius to reach the top of that genre of comedic fiction, or in the case of Adams, both. Never going to be described as high-brow, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is without a doubt the top of the pile if you want to be entertained. Ultimately that’s the point of this frivolous evocation to tattoo dead trees or code in Star Trek pads, to be entertained.

Craig Ferguson – American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot

Alcoholism, drugs, Bing Hitler, a future Doctor as a punk-rock bandmate, a late-night host, and the most American Scot you’ll find. Maybe I romanticize Craig too much, also being an outsider sometimes and with an accent that confuses as much as it annoys or heaven forfend defuses or charms.

I’ve listened to the stories of other late-night hosts, ok maybe three others: Trevor Noah’s fantastic Born a Crime, and Chris Smith’s The Daily Show (The Book) partly about Jon Stewart and the show he shot into orbit after Kilborn quit to start some failed experiment in a basement called The Late Late Show. The third was I Am America (And So Can You!) by Colbert before I put it down again.

From moments of sectarian hatred that are/were still prevalent when I was young, fragrant alcoholism country-wide with cheap “wine” (poison), and that “work is love” mentality. Though I’ve hardly read Irvine Welsh’s hit or very many other Scottish authors, none seem to hit that honest sense of needing to escape. Craig’s American on Purpose isn’t fiction or at least he notes the lies have been told enough times that the fiction has become true, and with every tale of a young man destined to collide with self-destruction I completely understand it. The sense of knowing you are “other” but not entirely knowing where that might take you; for him, it was to revolutionize late-night with humor.

Ludwig Wittgenstein – Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Well then, this one has gone a bit highbrow all of a sudden. German philosophy on the use of language and the dangers of it being employed to manipulate and subjugate. Something not too dissimilar to the scenes found in Orwell’s 1984. Then again, paying the slightest amount of attention right now, you’ll catch little phrases here or statements there that do that exact thing. Contradictions in language that attempt to communicate absolute meaning while truthfully being exceptionally hollow in the first place.

No, not an easy/light read in the slightest, particularly for a dyslexic. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus isn’t something I’d recommend. You have to/want to read it in the first place, which is difficult in itself because a majority of reading is on light topics and not philosophy in language. If you are the type that thinks Kathy Reichs’ Temperance Brennan shows a little too much emotion, both in print and on screen, then you’ll love the writing of Wittgenstein. Otherwise, maybe find something a little lighter in tone.

Erich Maria Remarque – All Quiet On The Western Front

Inadvertently I’d entangled Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front with Petroglyph’s The Great War: Western Front, starting out reading, then moved to the audiobook so that it is easier to exercise. Ok, walking a couple of miles in the morning isn’t all that much exercise for some, but it is enough to help march through such a book. Though Remarque’s writing is beautiful in its sometimes bleakest tones of anti-war descriptions, it isn’t easy now for modern eyes to glaze over some of the “dated” writing. Of course, nothing is as dry as the classics Paul himself is bored of, but indeed the 100-year-old writing is there.

It is another 20th-century anti-war book that uses some questionable language. Truthfully, it uses downright slurs and descriptions that are uncomfortable now. It is only a small section, though it stands out when so much of Remarque’s writing shows empathy only to label Black soldiers as less than, stupid, and there seems to be real hatred in the words Paul uses.

This was of course the point of that entanglement: to get a better understanding of the ground mentality from the German side. Similar to Peter Jackson’s brilliant They Shall Not Grow Old, Remarque’s novel grounds the dying days of “polite” conflict into a human aspect instead of historical statistics.

Max Brooks – World War Z

Looking back at the outbreak of pandemics as only stats and figures without the human story is what disconnects us: The point of Max Brooks’ introduction. If only I’d read Brooks’ zombie outbreak story long ago, I wouldn’t have wasted my time writing epistolary manuscripts many years ago. A criticism I’ll have soon, chapter lengths are often a problem for me as I like using that as my natural breakpoint, but these few pages of individual perspectives counter that issue. This goes a long way to make me enjoy a book more, though the interview formatting can get a little messy.

Quite literally written as a transcript of interviews, the short bursts of story and exposition make everything seem natural. It is also matched by the uncanny valley of how a pandemic happens between our lives and on paper. The “problem” more or less is that unlike a transcript there isn’t a name in the margin, there isn’t a “’[…]’, said James Bumbleton, husband of Wichita,” denoting who said what for every paragraph. The fungal encephalitis or whatever caused this feral fictional land of zombies is well-written and enjoyable, if just a little oddly formatted.

Andrzej Sapkowski – Blood of Elves

There was no way I was reading high fantasy on my own, so I employed Peter Kenny because I am not suicidal enough to do that. However, it did tell me one thing I didn’t know: Ciri has a weird fake, almost Edinburgh accent that sets me back every time I hear it. We’re all familiar with Jo Wyatt and Freya Allen as Ciri or even Doug Cockle and Henry Cavill as Geralt, though from only watching the show and playing the third game, “reading” the story from the beginning (I know about the prequels) is a shock to the system with those differences.

A great expansion on the crumbs of knowledge that I had before, I think that’s the biggest thing I take away from Blood of Elves. Before now everything felt in medias res: I knew who people were, I knew there was conflict, and I even picked up some of the nuances that the game did so much better than Netflix. However, I didn’t have the metaphorical foundations to keep the house up, as it were. It is also interesting being plunged back into the world at an earlier point, but still being able to picture everything correctly, something I always have trouble with in fantasy.

Robert Shearman – Dalek

This is the third iteration of this story that I’ve liked. Although this time it is just an expansion on the TV script, Robert Shearman is someone I’d like more Doctor Who from. Originally a playwright, Shearman’s vivid imagery and simple story tricks make even the easiest of scenes a full motion picture of emotion and grounded absurdity. Shearman’s greatest gift is to, while painting this fantastical picture of the Van Statten compound, make even the most vile and villainous things seem human, insecure, driven, full of desire and hope, and even pitiful. Years before Musk became a common swear, Van Statten had Elon’s dream, to own the internet.

Under the names “Jubilee” and “Dalek,” Shearman has created to me – and many fans who can no longer call themselves younger – the seminal story of the upturned pepperpots of hatred. Every story after (and quite a few before) has had diminishing returns when it comes to these threatening brass cans of death. Colorful, mustache twirlingly camp, and blessedly short, I keep coming back to Shearman’s three iterations for a reason. There aren’t very many better or darker character pieces on The Doctor without disappearing up themselves.

Kathy Reichs – Déjá Dead

I hate the show with Emily Deschanel, mostly on the fact that the lead lacks enough human character for me to care about her. Reichs’ books are the basis of the series, and for several years my dad has proselytized both Reichs and Patrica Cornwell; I chose the first book from Reichs. Heavy on needing French translations, Déjá Dead gives “Tempe” a lot of character and very humanistic traits that make her far more interesting this go-around. This alongside some base science about anthropology including discovery, identification, and cause of death, overall makes it interesting.

A touch grimmer than some other reads of the year, Déjá Dead focuses on the altered details of Reichs’ real-life case about a Canadian (“Quebecois” if you’re pretentious in French) serial killer that was dubbed Le Psychopathe. A chocolate bourbon for you if you can figure that one out. A touch longer than some other reads I’ve featured, this was a slower one I read throughout the year at a steadier pace. Enjoyable, more so than the show from FOX, but quite dense if this is your first foray into Reichs, or aren’t partial to many crime novels.

Guenther Steiner – Surviving To Drive

“I woke up to the news that Russia has now invaded Ukraine;” as Steiner himself notes throughout his biographic novel on the 2022 season. It could only be Haas that would have had a Russian driver with a Russian sponsor, at the outbreak of a war by Russia. The most honest man in F1, Guenther Steiner is about the only person I want to read their daily thoughts of how a season goes. Consequently, he’s also a man close to my own heart, who uses enough expletives to fund a company-wide cruise. Though those are only the elevator pitch sentences.

As the head of the only American team on the F1 grid, the sweary Italian gives a brutally honest (with minor PR lines) look behind the curtain of F1 and under the engine cover of the VF-22. As well as a bit of his history and the team’s origins. Without getting too heavily into the technical side and not being bogged down by pretension of who he is or what he’s talking about, Guenther’s excited and perfectly honest writing makes Surviving To Drive a quick and enjoyable read from start to finish for almost any F1 fan, new and longstanding.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman – The Yellow Wallpaper

Published in 1892, it must be said Gilman’s early American feminist work about mental and physical health is a little dated linguistically. In the use of language yes, but in the very real horror of its subject matter, The Yellow Wallpaper is still very relevant 130 years later. Be it the medical advice of the time, the overbearingness of a domestic partner, or frustration at one’s mental state and the desire to be considered better enough to continue what you do for enjoyment. Very short on purpose, it might not entirely be a delight to read, but it will be a quick one nonetheless.

A short story published in The New England Magazine, it pulls from Gilman’s own experience with postnatal depression and the medical advice of the time. It is a multi-layered takedown of the establishment of the time, the complete misunderstanding of mental health particularly in women, and the medical practice of “rest cure” as a cure-all. The Yellow Wallpaper is punchy though suffers from the aforementioned use of language dating much like the medical advice. A fantastic piece of writing that genuinely hits home to those who either have or know those who do have depression.

Ursula K. Le Guin – The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

As part of my research for “Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach,” I wanted to go back to Le Guin’s short story about a small town in Oregon. A dark and uncomfortable story that is practically photocopied for the episode of the Majalan strife, Le Guin doesn’t have the constraints of expectation on her shoulders that the episode did. With that, she reframes Dostoevsky’s writing with a religious influence or James’ philosophical question into a story about a thing that happened. The short story doesn’t ask you to solve a problem, the omnipotent narrator only describes what happens, you are simply given the events and left to ask yourself the questions.

The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas succeeds where “Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach” stumbles because of the medium it is being told in: Le Guin doesn’t put anyone in her story that would have a savior complex. The trouble with Star Trek and such a story asking the audience to make up their mind on such a dark story is that the personality type for Starfleet is the hero. They are unable to sit by while injustice happens. 

John Scalzi – The Kaiju Preservation Society

As Scalzi’s first novel I’ve read, despite owning Redshirts and the Old Man’s War series, it was surprising to see just how big the sledgehammer of exposition and references would be. He’d fit in with the late-night show/young adult comedy writers of American TV, with a hint of Buffy to his writing. That is said with all the criticism it sounds like. The dialog and the action, most of his style is very straight to the point and if you look at stories with even a hint of criticism, you’ll see what every device is doing and its purpose. That doesn’t mean The Kaiju Preservation Society is bad.

Written for a mix of 80s/90s kids and late teens now in mind, Scalzi’s Jurassic Park-like adventure is a pop song for surface-level nerd-dom. Part of me wants to liken Scalzi’s writing here in The Kaiju Preservation Society to The Big Bang Theory, though it could be taken more as an insult than anything else. If it weren’t for the interesting twist on the Crichton-influenced plot, Scalzi’s 2022 novel would oddly be akin to a bland takeaway. It did the job, you enjoyed it enough but it otherwise isn’t memorable to what else you’ve eaten that week.

Cara Hunter – Murder in the Family

If you were to go into Barnes and Noble or Waterstones, Murder in the Family would be in that “BookTok/Bookstagram made me buy it” section. Advertised to me in that fashion, it is a murder mystery with a bit of a twist. An editor’s nightmare, Murder in the Family changes up the format almost from page to page as it follows a hit Netflix-style true crime show re-investigating the murder of a step-dad to the Howards. The interesting part is that you are following it along through these different styles such as press releases, CVs, transcribed texts and voice mails, news clippings, and TV scripts.

Broken into 8 episodes, each episode’s production and airing is your chapter. That means sometimes you have those hour+ long chapters that would normally annoy me in a conventional book, here, however, I couldn’t put Cara Hunter’s Murder in the Family down. When I had to from time to time, it was far easier to pick up where I left off because scripts are formatted well for that type of quick scanning to find your place. Maybe not the greatest writing in history, but certainly engaging, fun, and constantly progressing; a delightful highlight of my year that I wholeheartedly suggest reading through.

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

Also, if you’d like to join the Phenixx Gaming team, check out our recruitment article for details on working with us.

Phenixx Gaming is proud to be a Humble Partner! Purchases made through our affiliate links support our writers and charity!