The Crystal World is an early work from J.G. Ballard, but contains much of what were to become his trademarks: surrealism, the apocalypse, and how environments affect our psychology. With three other books, The Drowned World, The Burning World, and his debut The Wind From Nowhere, it forms a quartet of ‘catastrophe novels’, showcasing natural destruction by the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. It is a heady and poetic cocktail of fantasy and symbolism.
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Stephen King has written an awe-inspiring eleven collections of short stories, many of which are best known by their film adaptations – The Shawshank Redemption, 1408, Stand By Me. Everything’s Eventual is the seventh, published in 2002 after the runaway success of his pioneering work ‘Riding the Bullet’ (the world’s first mass-market ebook, which jammed the servers of the host website from so many people trying to download it at once). It includes fourteen short stories and novellas, including ‘Riding the Bullet’, with introductions and/or postscripts from King detailing the inspirations and processes he went through writing them. It’s a remarkably solid collection, with no bad stories and a number of brilliant ones.
Christina Henry is best known for her dark, adult-orientated versions of well-known children’s books, such as Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland. The Mermaid is on the face of it a similar adaptation of The Little Mermaid, but takes only the basic format of the original, i.e. a mermaid falling in love with a human, as its starting point. Henry uses it to tell her own story of love, grief, and exploitation, mixing in historical fact with the fantasy.
The Lord of the Rings is one of the best-known and best-loved fantasy series of all time. J.R.R. Tolkien's story of a quest to destroy a magic ring was first published in 1954, and has been popular ever since. For inspiration, Tolkien drew on both ancient epics such as Beowulf and his own experiences of WWI. The resulting tale is immense in scope, drawing on thousands of years of fictional history, but also intimate and personal, exploring the friendships between the characters and the heavy toll the quest takes on them.
James M. Cain’s books were the basis of three of the defining works of film noir: The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, and Double Indemnity. Of these, Double Indemnity holds the highest critical acclaim, gaining 7 Academy Award nominations and ranking 38th on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 best American films of all time. The book itself is short, punchy, and taut, a smart, dark tale of an ordinary man driven to extremes by his own selfish decisions.
The Hobbit began as a bedtime story told by J.R.R. Tolkien to his son Christopher, but ended as the prelude to one of the most well-known and best-loved fantasy sagas of all time. It introduced readers to the world of Middle-Earth, and the now-iconic characters of Gandalf, Bilbo Baggins, Gollum, and Smaug the Dragon, among others. While it’s ultimately a simple adventure story, it has enough charm, humour, and warmth to have enchanted generations since its publication in 1937.
If you’ve not heard of the ‘manosphere’, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. The manosphere is a loosely linked number of online communities devoted to hating women. These include incels, pick-up artists, trolls, MGTOWs, and a legion of other types of extreme misogynists. If these sound like gibberish to you, I can recommend Laura Bates’s Men Who Hate Women, a fearless exposé of these online hate communities and the real-life harm they perpetuate.
China Miéville is one of the most interesting writers working today. He is highly imaginative, politically engaged, and possesses a breadth of knowledge on art and literature that he draws on in his work. The Last Days of New Paris is a novella about art, and its power against totalitarianism. It packs a great deal into its short length, and showcases all of what Miéville does best.
2022 was a particularly varied year in reading for me. It ranged from sci-fi to crime to Victorian Gothic, taking in romance, poetry, historical fiction, short stories, and fantasy along the way. I read 80 books in total, surpassing my goal of 75, including 29 authors I’d never read before. There were many books I wanted to include on my top 10 that didn’t make the cut, so here are my honourable mentions: City of Saints and Madmen, The Neverending Story, Children of Dune, The Silence of the Lambs, Sisyphean, Under the Pendulum Sun, Echopraxia, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, The Emperor’s Babe, and Treacle Walker. All of these are as deserving of the top slots as the ones I chose, and only lost out by fine delineation. Without further ado, here – in reverse order – are my top 10 books of 2022 (with my previous reviews linked):
The legend of Achilles and Patroclus has been told countless times throughout the centuries. Where Madeline Miller’s retelling differs is in making it overtly a romance. The two men have been depicted as lovers since ancient times, but there’s been no version that quite makes it the focus like Miller’s novel. Told from the point-of-view of Patroclus, it’s an audacious and compelling novel that beautifully renders the world of the ancient Greeks.
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Atticus Book ReviewsBook reviews and reading recommendations written by volunteers and friends of the shop! |