Books 2020

I fully attempted to read more last year, but other than a few long spurts, I really did a poor job of reading.  I blame it all on the ready allure of Netflix and Prime, sucking me in to more shows and mediocre movies when I really should be curled up with a book.  I've got three books waiting for my eyeballs right now, so hopefully I'll get to work on one of those soon.  If you have some suggestions for good books to check out, let me know - I'd love recommendations.

1. The Beastie Boys Book.  One of the coolest things I have read in forever.  Does a fantastic job of mingling first-person storytelling from the band members, with outsider memories, with other interesting forms of media.  Really digs back into how they formed, but also cool shit like discussions of how to make a perfect mixtape in the 80's.  If you are at all a fan of the band, can't recommend this enough.  I've thought about it ever since I read it.
2. Stephen King - The Institute.  Glad to see King going back to some of his more supernatural freaky things - this one has kids with telekinesis or telepathy - who get snagged out of their homes and brought to a secret facility.  Very quick read - and I enjoyed having the majority of it come from the perspective of kids - King always does a good job with those teenager details.  Good book.
3. Where the Crawdads Sing - Delia Owens.  Freaking great book.  At first, I had a little trouble getting in to the story, solely because I was trying to read a book set in the sweaty swamps of North Carolina while I was literally freezing in a tent at negative 11 degrees, but it is beautifully written - ridiculously descriptive of all of the natural beauty in the swamps - and a solid narrative story of a wild little girl who has to make her way on her own in the swamps, and a little murder mystery thrown in for good measure.  Very well done.
4. Junkyard Cats - Faith Hunter.  Terrible book.  I'm 98% sure that "Faith Hunter" does not exist, and this was some sort of ghostwritten thing that took the actual author 2 hours to slap together before he handed it over to an AI bot and said "Siri, make up a bunch of weird words that sound like they could be future technology."  A story about a future woman/nanobot hybrid person/thing who lives in a junkyard that hides alien tech and US military tech and uses that tech and a bunch of brain-connected cats to fight off intruders.  This is not right.
5. Perdido Street Station - China Mieville.  I forget where I came across this one - some sort of list of people who do great Sci Fi writing or something - but it is by no means a new book.  Starts off mysteriously, you have no clue what the initial character is on about in the first chapter, but then you meet the real protagonists and it gets more interesting.  The story itself is a good one - flawed characters trying to get by in a trashed world and then having to step up to fight some nasty monsters - but the prose is some of the most difficult I can recall.  Well, not only the wording, it is also the excruciating detail that he uses to set the stage for things.  He must have named 300 different neighborhoods in the main city, and each time he names one, he pauses the action to spend half a page providing detail about how it used to be the central fishing district but 38 bad things happened over the decades and now the neighborhood is just full of destitute bird people from an island across nineteen seas.  Seriously felt like if Star Wars had paused the action each time a new planet was introduced and a three page Wikipedia page was then put on the screen to read for a silent 10 minutes.  I actually enjoyed the book, this is making it sound like it sucks, but there were definitely a lot of details provided to my brain that made absolutely no impact on my understanding of the story itself.
6. If It Bleeds - Stephen King.  A collection of four short stories.  I love when he does these books, he's done a bunch of them now, where he goes far longer than a "short" story and makes it more like a little novella.  That is especially true on the title story, where he continues a thread off of the tales found in Mr. Mercedes/Finders Keepers/End of Watch and The Outsider.  That is the best one in here (although it now made me realize I missed one of that Bill Hodges trilogy). The final story - Rat - has a dark fairy tale aspect to it that doesn't seem especially original.  The opening story is a good one from the days when iPhones were freshly released and a big deal, that I really liked.  The other one is just plain weird - a story told in three parts, going back in time with each story - that never really explains all of the tangents it creates.  Still, a quick, solid read for the whole book.
7. Full Throttle - Joe Hill.  Stephen King's kid, and while a few of these are written jointly with King, they all have a very similar taste and smell.  I finished this one while on vacation in Colorado, and several of the stories (this is a book of short stories) have stuck in my craw ever since.  The opening one, kind of a Sons of Anarchy meets Maximum Overdrive thing, keeps popping back into my brain, as does one involving vengeful carousel animals.  There are a few that seem to try to hard, like the one that is written in the shape of stairs as it talks about a staircase to hell, or the tweeting one, but overall I thought these were really good stories.  And they're not all horror either - there is a great one about a time travelling book van, and a cool Narnia-esque one as well.  Nice thing about this one is that you don't have to immerse yourself into a 400 page book, because it is a bunch of smaller bites that all satisfy.  Liked it.
8. American Dirt.  Man, I feel like my wife really enjoys difficult books.  Like, mine might have some weird supernatural scary stuff, or a monster who feeds off of fear, but hers will be emotionally draining.  We listened to this one while on our way up and back to vacation, and while it is definitely emotionally draining, I'd also agree that it is great.  Some books will affect your mind as you are reading them, and this one, I swear, made me nervous around strangers (even though I was very much not trying to ride the rails through Mexico to escape an omnipresent drug cartel who wanted me dead.  But I seriously got out at a filling station and had some nervous tics as I spotted other people there and felt threatened by their totally innocuous actions.  Weird.  But yes, this book deserves the accolades.  In part because it is well-written and a good story, but it also did a good job of humanizing someone who is marginalized in my mind.
9. The Roxy Letters - Mary Lowry.  I went to high school with Mary, so I wanted to support her and buy the book.  It's an entertaining read, especially for someone from Austin who has some of the same feelings about the loss of old Austin in favor of chain stores.  Kind of a Sex in the City for the less-well-off?  A lot of discussion of the clitoris.  But also a good number of moments where I actually laughed out loud.
10. Finders Keepers - Stephen King.  Really dug into the King this year.  These two books - I did that because If It Bleeds made me realize that I had missed two whole books in the Bill Hodges series - they're good.  Definitely some supernatural stuff in here, but also just some classically good story-telling and character building.  The main character is just such an odd bird, but you love her for it.
11. End of Watch - Stephen King.  The last of the three Hodges novels, more of the supernatural business - a character who can control other people with a crappy iPad knockoff is very creepy - with a satisfying conclusion to the series.  I've heard that the Mr. Mercedes show sucks, which is too bad, because I liked these characters and their arc.

I think that is it - the main lull was the second half of the year.  I think the stress of the world around us kept me from reading - hard to drink heavily after doomscrolling Twitter and then sit down to a book.  Way easier to turn on the boob tube.  Anyway, hope one of these piques your interest!