My Year in Books

Favorite historical novels: Naivo, Beyond the Rice Fields; Mirandi Riwoe, Stone Sky Gold Mountain; Julie Janson, Benevolence; Stevie Davies, Awakening; Rose Tremain, Lily: A Tale of Revenge.

Favorite genre anthologies: Jess Walter, ed., The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2022; Mark Morris, ed., Close to Midnight.

Favorite single-author short story genre collection: Lisa Tuttle, The Dead Hours of Night.

Favorite genre deconstructions: John Darnielle, Devil House (true crime); J. W. Ocker, Twelve Nights at Rotter House (haunted house).

Favorite horror novel: Alison Rumfitt, Tell Me I'm Worthless. 

Author whose willingness to make himself look terrible in fiction never ceases to amaze: Anthony Horowitz's Hawthorne series.

Guaranteed to be the least-interesting villain in any neo-Victorian novel: Jack the Ripper.

Series detective with the most unconvincing ongoing career: Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus.

Somewhat puzzling genre development: multiple haunted-house novels that were just not...scary? (Not even in a "protagonist forced to plumb the depths of their misbegotten psyche" way.)

Biography with the most overblown title: John Lock and W. T. Dixon, A Man of Sorrow: The Life, Letters, and Times of the Reverend Patrick Bronte,  1777-1861.

Favorite biography: Michael Ledger-Lomas, Queen Victoria: This Thorny Crown.

After owning this monograph for nearly three decades, I finally have a reason to cite it: Gananath Obeyesekere, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook.

Favorite book reread for class: Henry James, The Turn of the Screw.

Most antiquarian book purchase: a Religious Tract Society sammelband, featuring tracts published between 1785-90.