Weirdest Books Read In 2016

Your girl MEANT to post this yesterday, but she forgot to because it was HER BIRTHDAY!! That's right, I'm 24 now and loving it. Happy New Year, everybody, here are the ten weirdest books I read during 2016.

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

This is a crazy nonsense adventure that will keep you saying "what the fuck?" the whole way through. It's so much fun to read and it's got a little something for everybody.

A Guide to Being Born by Ramona Ausubel

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

This book just nearly made it onto my top ten best books read in 2016 list. I still feel horrible about not including it. The stories in this collection are bizarre and sometimes creepy, but they are so so human and moving. I cried like a baby. Just beautiful.

Subsidiary by Matias Celedon

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

This was one of the weirder formats that I read during 2016. Each page only has a sentence or so on it. And they were all stamped on. The plot itself is also weird af. So much so that I didn't really know what was going on or why during most of it, and not in a good way.

Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

A best book AND an amazingly weird book. There's a cult, some star stuff, some psychic stuff, some talking to the dead stuff, etc.. Everything you could ever really want, really. I tell people that it's weird like Lost where you have no idea how it will all make sense, except the ending pulls everything together in a beautiful way in this novel.

Songs of a Dead Dreamer by Thomas Ligotti

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

If you're looking for a great collection of creepy, strange, dark horror stories, you have to check out Thomas Ligotti. Songs of a Dead Dreamer has some fantastically scary stories and the weird concepts will make you feel like you're in a dream.

Where We Go When All We Were Was Gone by Sequoia Nagamatsu

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

Japanese folklore and pop culture is really, really out there. So of course a collection of short stories set on these things is going to make this weirdest list. I still think about the long necked demon that traveled through a city head first featured in one of the stories to this day (for better or for worse).

One Hundred Shadows by Hwang Jungeun

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

Oooooh, this novella is unsettling. In this South Korean book, shadows begin to separate from the grounds and their humans: at first for short amounts of time, but later for longer. And it spreads. As far as creepy South Korean novellas go, I liked this a lot better than The Vegetarian. Almost made my top ten best books list.

One Day Soon Time Will Have No Place Left to Hide by Christian Kiefer

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

I'm not sure if I've read a more inventive format than this. The story of an installation artist is told as a written out script for a documentary about him. When you first start reading, it's very startling. But once you're able to get into it, it's super interesting.

Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail by Kelly Luce

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

More stories set in Japan! These aren't creepy like Sequoia Nagamatsu's often were, but they're definitely strange. People grow tails, toasters predict how people die. These are great stories about what it feels like to be an outsider.

The Vegetarian by Han Kang

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

Despite what so many people said, this was not the most disturbing book ever. It wasn't even really close to that. I can't deny, though, that it was a strange read. A Korean woman stops eating meat, which is not the coolest culturally/socially. She then starts to become more and more plant-like. And there's some weird sex stuff. Not my favorite, but tons of people love it.

Best Books Read In 2016

I was so close to being able to call this a "Best Books of 2016" post, but there are 3 from 2015 oops. 2016 honestly wasn't astounding for books and there are definitely amazing books that I didn't get to because of my hardcore reading slump. Here are my top ten best books read in 2016, sort of in order but not really. Stay tuned tomorrow (my birthday) for my top 10 weirdest books read in 2016!

A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

The best collection of short stories I have EVER read. Every story is a masterpiece. I feel so lucky that this book came into my life and I will treasure it forever.

Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

I can't stop recommending this book to people. If you are at all interested in cults and/or Carl Sagan, you're going to get suck a kick out of this novel. Incorrectly categorized as horror in the Goodreads Choice Awards, this weird-ass literary novel will blow your mind in so many ways. All of the seemingly disparate weirdness comes together in the most beautiful way. I want more Samantha Hunt NOW.

Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

My new favorite horror novel! This is especially fun for Shirley Jackson fans and avid watchers of horror movies. Clever, but not ridiculous, and genuinely scary. Horror novels very very rarely scare me.

Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter
MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

This book got me in the fucking heart. A small punch in the gut about a family who loses their mother and the crow that stays with them once she's gone. As someone who lost a parent, Grief is the Thing with Feathers nails what grief feels like. Meeting Max Porter this year was an amazing experience for me.

Children of the New World by Alexander Weinstein

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

This is just the collection of short stories I needed during my reading slump. Very Black Mirror. If you like dark sci-fi-ish short stories that are near future to the point where they feel scary and not ridiculous or hyperbolic, read these. It definitely won't make you feel better about the world, but it's soooooo good.

Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

I'm SO HAPPY I read this. The audiobook was so solid. Great political fantasy a la Game of Thrones with LGBTQ representation. This book is enthralling and Baru is the baddest bitch. I'm so hyped that Seth Dickinson is working on a sequel.

The Red Car by Marcy Dermansky

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

Marcy Dermansky is amazing, please read this. Weird, quirky, raw, funny, real af. And it's super quick to read. So you don't really have an excuse, do you? Perfect for fans of Miranda July.

Version Control by Dexter Palmer

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

This is some amazing literary science fiction. It has it all: online dating, wormholes, memory, loss, big data, difficult marriages, and technology. I love books and movies about time, so this was definitely a book for me. But it is such an immersive and moving novel, even readers who haven't read a lot of genre fiction would love this book. So powerful!

The Long Shadow of Small Ghosts by Laura Tillman

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

Whoa, a nonfiction book made it onto this list!! That's nearly unheard of for me. This was an absolutely beautiful and throat provoking look at a horrific crime, an American city, and the death penalty. Highly recommended.

Tender by Belinda McKeon

MY REVIEW

ADD TO GOODREADS

Beautiful! I had so many feelings! This is a novel I couldn't put down at a time when I was putting down books left and right. Tender captures the insecurity and mania of being in love in your college years. It is bananas. So real, so moving. My heart is breaking just thinking about it.

10 Bookstagrammers To Follow

I'm kind of obsessed with Instagram. Who I follow is pretty much evenly split between book photography and travel photography, with a sprinkling of knitting and "friends" from "real life." I wanted to give a few shout outs to some of my favorite accounts. If you don't follow anybody on #bookstagram, here's where you should start!


1. // Such beautiful photos, I can't even handle it.

A photo posted by Silke Wadskjær Mølgaard (@silkreads) on Feb 11, 2016 at 6:46am PST

2. // Warm, rustic vibes throughout the whole account.

A photo posted by CiCi ▪ Bibliophile ▪ Writer (@therusticwindow) on Mar 23, 2016 at 3:39pm PDT

3. // Viktoria's account IS my aesthetic (minus the spooky). All of the photos are beautiful and woodsy.

A photo posted by Viktoria ༝ New York (@seelieknight) on Dec 29, 2015 at 1:03pm PST

4. // All of her photos are great. ALL OF THEM.

A photo posted by books (@triinbooks) on Mar 25, 2016 at 3:23pm PDT

5. // Interesting books and frequent cameo appearances from a pretty cat.

A photo posted by Steven R. Kraaijeveld (SRK) (@esarkaye) on Mar 31, 2016 at 9:01am PDT

6. // Minimalism. Lovely, lovely minimalism.

A photo posted by @bey.86 on Apr 2, 2016 at 11:05am PDT

7. // Some more minimalism. This bookstagrammer manages to make library books pretty (a constant struggle for me). Plus she likes Rat Queens AND Miranda July. SWOON.

A photo posted by N // SG (@booksmeow) on Apr 3, 2016 at 10:17pm PDT

8. // Soothing and monochromatic.

A photo posted by Camilla (@camalierojas) on Jan 25, 2016 at 2:06pm PST

9. // Her taste is pretty much my taste. If you look through her non-bookish photos, you'll also see that Mallory's a spooky gal like myself.

A photo posted by Mallory O'Meara (@sexoskeleton) on Oct 2, 2015 at 1:05pm PDT

10. // Here's another bookstagrammer who has a lot of taste overlap with myself (HER PROF PIC IS ALEXANDRA KLEEMAN'S BOOK).

A photo posted by If Books Grew On Trees (@book.berries) on Jan 17, 2016 at 5:51am PST

11. // And if you don't follow me yet, be sure to check out my account!

A photo posted by Julianne :: Outlandish Lit (@_ulianne) on Apr 4, 2016 at 10:11am PDT

Who are your favorite bookstagrammers?

Ten Great Books That Were Out of My Comfort Zone

The Broke and the Bookish runs this business.

Looking back at my reading in the past 365 days or so, I see a lot of changes. I had some mild biases that I ended up completely dropping. I thought I knew somethings about myself that were actually sort of wrong. But, you know, some things are still totally right, but this isn't a ten horrible books that were out of my comfort zone post. So I'll stop that train of thought there. Here are ten books that were surprising to me! Some of them completely changed the course of my reading ~FOREVER~.

The Hunt for Vulcan by Thomas Levenson

I'm really, really impressively bad at reading nonfiction. Memoirs and essays I can do.. But with any other kind of nonfiction, my reading gets noticeably slower and it gets so frustrating for me. I pretty much give up. But I'm really glad I didn't give up on The Hunt for Vulcan. It helped that it was small and short. But anyway, this is about how scientists back in the day found some wobble in the orbits of the planets that they couldn't explain. When they put a hypothetical planet into their equations, the wobble made total sense! So the idea that there was an additional, elusive planet named Vulcan between Mercury and the Sun was born. The only problem? Nobody ever saw it. Because it didn't exist. But the idea persisted until Einstein came along with relativity.

This book is a fascinating look at a strange curiosity in astronomical history. And it totally reminded me that I really like learning things. Who knew?

Ghost World by Daniel Clowes

MY REVIEW

Pre-2015 (my unofficial year of the comic), I wasn't necessarily against comics or graphic novels. I had liked Watchmen and some Batman comics. But I sort of felt like "I don't get it." Then I read Ghost World. And then I read every other graphic novel I could get my hands on. And I really really got it.

The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin

I talk about this book all the time. But that's only because IT'S PERFECT. Fantasy is another genre I thought I "didn't get" despite having some real intense feelings about Lord of the Rings. What I mean by "I don't get it" really is "I haven't read it" I guess. Anybody who is curious about fantasy, might not think it's the genre for them, and might not want to start with some boring white boys and elves shit, HAS to check out N.K. Jemisin's Dreamblood series. It takes a tiny bit to get into, because there is a whole world to get accustomed to. But once you're in (it really doesn't tak that long), you are not going to want to leave.

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Historical fiction! I don't get it! Sound familiar? Ok to be fair there is definitely some historical fiction I don't like. Burial Rites, however, is amazing and beautiful and totally had me. It's about the last woman put to death in Iceland in 1829 after being accused of murder, and the family that is forced to house her until her execution. Kent's writing is so fantastic. You will feel fucking cold when you read her descriptions of Iceland. And there will be tears. Also there's an Icelandic pronunciation guide which gave me the biggest linguistics boner.

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

Poetry is absolutely horrifying to me. I need to be in a class of people with a professor there to explain it to me. It is just so intimidating that I mostly don't want to try. When I heard about Citizen, I knew it was too important for me to miss out on despite my fear. It was so beautiful and so powerful. There are definitely parts I didn't understand at all, but I also angry cried several times so I was able to pick up on most of what was going on. This is a book that warrants rereading.

Iréne by Pierre Lemaitre

Crime fiction hasn't ever particularly interested me, just because it has the stigma of being really formulaic. And, I mean, a lot of it is formulaic. Plus I've never really been into crime shows or anything. And even if I wanted to get into crime fiction, I would have no idea where to be. So I just made an impulse decision after reading Malcolm Avenue Review's post about Iréne and grabbed it on audiobook. I've got to say, it was pretty compelling. I could be into this every once in a while, as long as it's spaced out by things that are very different.

Lumberjanes by Noelle Stevenson

I pretty much stay away from young adult and middle grade books, just because that's my preference after much trying, do not be mad at me. But after hearing so much raving about new funny, feminist comic Lumberjanes, I went for it. And it was AMAZING. It's entertaining on so many levels. Nimona was also a great read. Noelle Stevenson is perfect and hilarious.

 The Shore by Sara Taylor

MY REVIEW

This didn't actually seem out of my comfort zone at first. When it was talked about, how dark and beautifully written it is was mentioned. And obviously that's pretty much all I'm looking for. But, looking back, this was a multigenerational family/neighborhood saga. This is completely different from so many book bloggers, but when I hear multigenerational family saga, I fucking run the other direction. Nooooo thank you. The Shore was so well done, though.

The Animals by Christian Kiefer

MY REVIEW

The Animals was described as a gritty literary thriller. And at the time I didn't even really understand what that would mean. Reading it was a great decision, because it was beaaaauuuutiful and raw and intense and oh man. So many feelings and there was definitely some adrenaline going on. Now I know.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

It totally isn't fair for me to add this one, because I haven't actually finished it yet. But reading classics is very very out of my comfort zone. Especially classics about English people sitting around in manors feeling stuff and getting sick or whatever. But this book is SO GOOD.

What book have you read in the past year that surprised you? Have any changed how you view a genre?

13 2015 Books I MEANT To Read

The Broke and the Bookish runs this business.

I tried to narrow this down to ten. I really really tried. It just didn't happen. I started at 25 and every tab that I closed was a miniature heartbreak. Other 2015 books, I still want to read you!! And I will!! It just might take me a while. My reading sort of came to a screeching halt at the second half of the year, so I feel like I missed out on a lot of new releases. Thankfully, I own most of these books or I already have them on hold at the library. Get your TBR list ready, because there was a lot going on in 2015.

Hold Still by Sally Mann

"A revealing and beautifully written memoir and family history from acclaimed photographer Sally Mann.

In this groundbreaking book, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her.

Sorting through boxes of family papers and yellowed photographs she finds more than she bargained for: "deceit and scandal, alcohol, domestic abuse, car crashes, bogeymen, clandestine affairs, dearly loved and disputed family land . . . racial complications, vast sums of money made and lost, the return of the prodigal son, and maybe even bloody murder.""

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

"The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia.

To her parents' despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie's descent into madness. As their stable home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts' plight. With John, Marjorie's father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family agrees to be filmed, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend.

Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie's younger sister, Merry. As she recalls those long ago events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast on television begin to surface--and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed, raising vexing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil."

In the Country: Stories by Mia Alvar

"These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere—and, sometimes, turning back again.

A pharmacist living in New York smuggles drugs to his ailing father in Manila, only to discover alarming truths about his family and his past. In Bahrain, a Filipina teacher drawn to a special pupil finds, to her surprise, that she is questioning her own marriage. A college student leans on her brother, a laborer in Saudi Arabia, to support her writing ambitions, without realizing that his is the life truly made for fiction. And in the title story, a journalist and a nurse face an unspeakable trauma amidst the political turmoil of the Philippines in the 1970s and ’80s."

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

"THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT is an epic geopolitical fantasy about one woman's mission to tear down an empire by learning how to rule it.

Tomorrow, on the beach, Baru Cormorant will look up from the sand of her home and see red sails on the horizon.

The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They'll conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She'll swallow her hate, prove her talent, and join the Masquerade. She will learn the secrets of empire. She’ll be exactly what they need. And she'll claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free."

Girl at War by Sara Nović

"Zagreb, summer of 1991. Ten-year-old Ana Jurić is a carefree tomboy who runs the streets of Croatia's capital with her best friend, Luka, takes care of her baby sister, Rahela, and idolizes her father. But as civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, soccer games and school lessons are supplanted by sniper fire and air raid drills. When tragedy suddenly strikes, Ana is lost to a world of guerilla warfare and child soldiers; a daring escape plan to America becomes her only chance for survival.

Ten years later Ana is a college student in New York. She's been hiding her past from her boyfriend, her friends, and most especially herself. Haunted by the events that forever changed her family, she returns alone to Croatia, where she must rediscover the place that was once her home and search for the ghosts of those she's lost."

Falling in Love with Hominids by Nalo Hopkinson

"Nalo Hopkinson (Brown Girl in the Ring, Skin Folk) has been widely hailed as a highly significant voice in Caribbean and American fiction. She has been dubbed “one of our most important writers,” (Junot Diaz), with “an imagination that most of us would kill for” (Los Angeles Times), and her work has been called “stunning,” (New York Times) “rich in voice, humor, and dazzling imagery” (Kirkus), and “simply triumphant” (Dorothy Allison).

Falling in Love with Hominids presents over a dozen years of Hopkinson’s new, uncollected fiction, much of which has been unavailable in print. Her singular, vivid tales, which mix the modern with Afro-Carribean folklore, are occupied by creatures unpredictable and strange: chickens that breathe fire, adults who eat children, and spirits that haunt shopping malls."

Haints Stay by Colin Winnette

"An imaginative, acid western from a rising star in the indie lit world.

Brooke and Sugar are killers. Bird is the boy who mysteriously woke beside them while between towns. For miles, there is only desert and wilderness, and along the fringes, people.

The story follows the middling bounty hunters after they've been chased from town, and Bird, each in pursuit of their own sense of belonging and justice. It features gunfights, cannibalism, barroom piano, a transgender birth, a wagon train, a stampede, and the tenuous rise of the West's first one-armed gunslinger."

Speak by Louisa Hall

"In a narrative that spans geography and time, from the Atlantic Ocean in the seventeenth century, to a correctional institute in Texas in the near future, and told from the perspectives of five very different characters, Speak considers what it means to be human, and what it means to be less than fully alive.

A young Puritan woman travels to the New World with her unwanted new husband. Alan Turing, the renowned mathematician and code breaker, writes letters to his best friend's mother. A Jewish refugee and professor of computer science struggles to reconnect with his increasingly detached wife. An isolated and traumatized young girl exchanges messages with an intelligent software program. A former Silicon Valley Wunderkind is imprisoned for creating illegal lifelike dolls.

Each of these characters is attempting to communicate across gaps — to estranged spouses, lost friends, future readers, or a computer program that may or may not understand them. In dazzling and electrifying prose, Louisa Hall explores how the chasm between computer and human — shrinking rapidly with today's technological advances — echoes the gaps that exist between ordinary people. Though each speaks from a distinct place and moment in time, all five characters share the need to express themselves while simultaneously wondering if they will ever be heard, or understood."

Not on Fire, but Burning by Greg Hrbek

"Twenty-year-old Skyler saw the incident out her window: Some sort of metalic object hovering over the Golden Gate Bridge just before it collapsed and a mushroom cloud lifted above the city. Like everyone, she ran, but she couldn't outrun the radiation, with her last thoughts being of her beloved baby brother, Dorian, safe in her distant family home.

Flash forward to a post-incident America, where the country has been broken up into territories and Muslims have been herded onto the old Indian reservations in the west, even though no one has determined who set off the explosion that destroyed San Francisco. Twelve-year old Dorian dreams about killing Muslims and about his sister—even though Dorian's parents insist Skyler never existed. Are they still shell-shocked, trying to put the past behind them . . . or is something more sinister going on?

Meanwhile, across the street, Dorian's neighbor adopts a Muslim orphan from the territories. It will set off a series of increasingly terrifying incidents that will lead to either tragedy or redemption for Dorian, as he struggles to prove that his sister existed—and was killed by a terrorist attack."

Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh

"The Christmas season offers little cheer for Eileen Dunlop, an unassuming yet disturbed young woman trapped between her role as her alcoholic father’s caretaker in a home whose squalor is the talk of the neighborhood and a day job as a secretary at the boys’ prison, filled with its own quotidian horrors. Consumed by resentment and self-loathing, Eileen tempers her dreary days with perverse fantasies and dreams of escaping to the big city. In the meantime, she fills her nights and weekends with shoplifting, stalking a buff prison guard named Randy, and cleaning up her increasingly deranged father’s messes. When the bright, beautiful, and cheery Rebecca Saint John arrives on the scene as the new counselor at Moorehead, Eileen is enchanted and proves unable to resist what appears at first to be a miraculously budding friendship. In a Hitchcockian twist, her affection for Rebecca ultimately pulls her into complicity in a crime that surpasses her wildest imaginings.

Played out against the snowy landscape of coastal New England in the days leading up to Christmas, young Eileen’s story is told from the gimlet-eyed perspective of the now much older narrator. Creepy, mesmerizing, and sublimely funny, in the tradition of Shirley Jackson and early Vladimir Nabokov, this powerful debut novel enthralls and shocks, and introduces one of the most original new voices in contemporary literature."

The Dead Ladies Project by Jessa Crispin

"When Jessa Crispin was thirty, she burned her settled Chicago life to the ground and took off for Berlin with a pair of suitcases and no plan beyond leaving. Half a decade later, she’s still on the road, in search not so much of a home as of understanding, a way of being in the world that demands neither constant struggle nor complete surrender.

The Dead Ladies Project is an account of that journey—but it’s also much, much more. Fascinated by exile, Crispin travels an itinerary of key locations in its literary map, of places that have drawn writers who needed to break free from their origins and start afresh. As she reflects on William James struggling through despair in Berlin, Nora Barnacle dependant on and dependable for James Joyce in Trieste, Maud Gonne fomenting revolution and fostering myth in Dublin, or Igor Stravinsky starting over from nothing in Switzerland, Crispin interweaves biography, incisive literary analysis, and personal experience into a rich meditation on the complicated interactions of place, personality, and society that can make escape and reinvention such an attractive, even intoxicating proposition."

Counternarratives by John Keene

"Conjuring slavery and witchcraft, and with bewitching powers all its own, Counternarratives continually spins history—and storytelling—on its head

Ranging from the 17th century to the present and crossing multiple continents, Counternarrative’s novellas and stories draw upon memoirs, newspaper accounts, detective stories, interrogation transcripts, and speculative fiction to create new and strange perspectives on our past and present. In “Rivers,” a free Jim meets up decades later with his former raftmate Huckleberry Finn; “An Outtake” chronicles an escaped slave’s fate in the American Revolution; “On Brazil, or Dénouement” burrows deep into slavery and sorcery in early colonial South America; and in “Blues” the great poets Langston Hughes and Xavier Villaurrutia meet in Depression-era New York and share more than secrets."

The Boys by Toni Sala

"In the once-bucolic village of Vidreres, already decimated by a harsh recession, two young men have just died in a horrible car crash. As the town attends the funeral, a banker named Ernest heads to the tree where the boys died to try and make sense of what happened. There he meets a brutish trucker who has taken a liking to Iona, the fiancée of one of the dead boys. But Iona is already, only the day after the accident, being pursued by a failed, perhaps psychotic, artist. These four characters, their lives and voices intertwined, grapple with their own guilt over the unfathomable loss of the boys, and perhaps their whole town.

Long known as one of Spain’s most powerful Catalan authors, Toni Sala is at his mischievous best in The Boys, delivering a sinister, fast-moving tale laced with intricate meditations on everything from Internet hookups to Spain’s economic collapse to the incomprehensibility of death. Sala offers us a startlingly honest vision of how alone we are in an age of unparalleled connectivity."

Have you read any of these books already? What books did you mean to read in 2015?

Ten Bookish Resolutions for 2016

The Broke and the Bookish runs this business.

I'm typically not one to make resolutions, but at the same time I obsessively reflect on each year via an extensive question answering session and kind of evaluate what changes I want to make. And looking at my 2015 reading stats, it's hard not to think of some goals I'd like to set for myself.

READING RESOLUTIONS

1. // Take notes as I read. I created a new little book notebook for myself this year and I'm super psyched to use it. When I review books I sometimes forget the very important thoughts I had about them so like... why not write them down as I have them?

2. // Try to read 1 nonfiction book a month. I normally avoid nonfiction (excluding memoirs) like the plague, because I'm so slow at reading them and worse at finishing them. But in December I read The Hunt for Vulcan and remembered that I love learning stuff.

3. // Only buy 4 books a month! If you saw my 2015 stats, you learned that I acquired an appalling 187 books last year. Granted, I only bought 74 of them, but that is still FAR too many. I hardly read any of them! It's going to be hard not to buy books considering I work at a bookstore, but I think I can control myself if I'm actively thinking about it.

4. // Only put 3 books on hold a month. I read a shit ton of library books in 2015, but I also had a shit ton of library due date anxiety. I still have 20-something library books that I'm trying to work through. I just need to be less of a holds monster.

5. // DNF more books. Because I get really salty when I'm hate reading.

6. // Read comics the week I get them. The stack of unread single issue comics I have right now is pretty impressive. But it needs to go.

7. // KEEP IT WEIRD. So often I force myself into reading books that aren't super thrilling to me just because they're critically acclaimed. I love literary fiction, I love humans doing human stuff, I love beautiful writing just for the sake of beautiful writing. But I love that WITH some dark, bizarre shit thrown in. Need to stay true to myself and keep it weird. Because those are the kinds of books that get me out of slumps.

BLOGGING RESOLUTIONS

8. // Get back into a commenting habit. My schedule being different every week has really thrown off the schedule I used to have for myself with blog reading and commenting. It even threw off commenting on my own posts. I'm working on it!

9. // Write posts a week before posting them. This may be shocking, but I often write posts the night before I post them!! Hence any weird non-links or typos. But that stresses me out, so it's going to have to change.

10. // GO TO BEA! It's in Chicago, so I'll be there this year. Tell me if I'll see you there!

What are your bookish resolutions for 2016?

Top Ten Books I Want for Christmas

The Broke and the Bookish runs this business.

Because I'm a difficult person, I give my family a very specific list of books that I will accept as gifts during the holiday/birthday season. I just don't trust like that, you know?

Also, this year I'm implementing the Icelandic "Christmas book flood" tradition and exchanging books on Christmas Eve. Then we'll spend the entire day/night reading! Except for when we're watching Blair Witch Project. Can't break that tradition. Anyway. Here are the books that I'll allow my loved ones to buy for me this year!!

Side note: Be on the look out for a few "best of" posts coming out from me soon! Best books of 2015 will be posted Christmas Eve. GET HYPED.

Moonshot by Hope Nicholson

MOONSHOT brings together dozens of creators from across North America to contribute comic book stories showcasing the rich heritage and identity of indigenous storytelling.

From traditional stories to exciting new visions of the future, this collection presents some of the finest comic book and graphic novel work in North America. The traditional stories presented in the book are with the permission from the elders in their respective communities, making this a truly genuine, never-before-seen publication. MOONSHOT is an incredible collection that is sure to amaze, intrigue and entertain!"

The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector

"The recent publication by New Directions of five Lispector novels revealed to legions of new readers her darkness and dazzle.

Now, for the first time in English, are all the stories that made her a Brazilian legend: from teenagers coming into awareness of their sexual and artistic powers to humdrum housewives whose lives are shattered by unexpected epiphanies to old people who don’t know what to do with themselves. Lispector’s stories take us through their lives—and ours. From one of the greatest modern writers, these stories, gathered from the nine collections published during her lifetime, follow an unbroken time line of success as a writer, from her adolescence to her death bed."

Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor

"In a far future, post-nuclear-holocaust Africa, genocide plagues one region. The aggressors, the Nuru, have decided to follow the Great Book and exterminate the Okeke. But when the only surviving member of a slain Okeke village is brutally raped, she manages to escape, wandering farther into the desert. She gives birth to a baby girl with hair and skin the color of sand and instinctively knows that her daughter is different. She names her daughter Onyesonwu, which means "Who Fears Death?" in an ancient African tongue.

Reared under the tutelage of a mysterious and traditional shaman, Onyesonwu discovers her magical destiny--to end the genocide of her people. The journey to fulfill her destiny will force her to grapple with nature, tradition, history, true love, the spiritual mysteries of her culture-and eventually death itself."

Women in Clothes by Sheila Heti

Women in Clothes is a book unlike any other. It is essentially a conversation among hundreds of women of all nationalities—famous, anonymous, religious, secular, married, single, young, old—on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives.

Even our most basic clothing choices can give us confidence, show the connection between our appearance and our habits of mind, express our values and our politics, bond us with our friends, or function as armor or disguise. They are the tools we use to reinvent ourselves and to transform how others see us. Women in Clothes embraces the complexity of women’s style decisions, revealing the sometimes funny, sometimes strange, always thoughtful impulses that influence our daily ritual of getting dressed."

A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar

"Jevick, the pepper merchant's son, has been raised on stories of Olondria, a distant land where books are as common as they are rare in his home. When his father dies and Jevick takes his place on the yearly selling trip to Olondria, Jevick's life is as close to perfect as he can imagine. But just as he revels in Olondria's Rabelaisian Feast of Birds, he is pulled drastically off course and becomes haunted by the ghost of an illiterate young girl.

In desperation, Jevick seeks the aid of Olondrian priests and quickly becomes a pawn in the struggle between the empire's two most powerful cults. Yet even as the country shimmers on the cusp of war, he must face his ghost and learn her story before he has any chance of becoming free by setting her free: an ordeal that challenges his understanding of art and life, home and exile, and the limits of that seductive necromancy, reading."

The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane

"Ruth is widowed, her sons are grown, and she lives in an isolated beach house outside of town. Her routines are few and small. One day a stranger arrives at her door, looking as if she has been blown in from the sea. This woman—Frida—claims to be a care worker sent by the government. Ruth lets her in.

Now that Frida is in her house, is Ruth right to fear the tiger she hears on the prowl at night, far from its jungle habitat? Why do memories of childhood in Fiji press upon her with increasing urgency? How far can she trust this mysterious woman, Frida, who seems to carry with her her own troubled past? And how far can Ruth trust herself?"

North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud

"Nathan Ballingrud's Shirley Jackson Award winning debut collection is a shattering and luminous experience not to be missed by those who love to explore the darker parts of the human psyche. Monsters, real and imagined, external and internal, are the subject. They are us and we are them and Ballingrud's intense focus makes these stories incredibly intense and irresistible.

These are love stories. And also monster stories. Sometimes these are monsters in their traditional guises, sometimes they wear the faces of parents, lovers, or ourselves. The often working-class people in these stories are driven to extremes by love. Sometimes, they are ruined; sometimes redeemed. All are faced with the loneliest corners of themselves and strive to find an escape."

Justine by Lawrence Durrell

"The time is the eve of the World War II. The place is Alexandria, an Egyptian city that once housed the world's greatest library and whose inhabitants are dedicated to knowledge. But for the obsessed characters in this mesmerizing novel, their pursuits lead only to bedrooms in which each seeks to know—and possess—the other. Since its publication in 1957, Justine has inspired an almost religious devotion among readers and critics alike."

Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail by Kelly Luce

"Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail is a debut collection of stories from Kelly Luce. Hana Sasaki will introduce you to many things—among them, an oracular toaster, a woman who grows a tail, and an extraordinary sex-change operation. Set in Japan, these stories tip into the fantastical, plumb the power of memory, and measure the human capacity to love."

A Field Guide to the Aliens of Star Trek The Next Generation: Season 2 by Joshua Chapman

"A new project from Joshua Chapman, 8th grader. He really doesn't like Counselor Troi, humans who get too cocky, bullies, or living with his mom. "

What books are you hoping you find under the tree?