Books for the Holidays
With the holiday season upon us, I’m obligated as a writer to post a reminder that books make great presents. In addition to attempting to flog my own books, I thought I’d write a bit about some of my favorite reads from the last year and look forward to 2025.
Last year I had a new book come out. Messing With Mr. In Between is a collection of short stories, some previously published, some new including the novelette Family Business. Most of these stories are noir or at least noirish, mixed in with some horror, urban fantasy, and science fiction. Many of these stories were originally fleshing out ideas for my novel Union Station, and some of the same characters and a lot of the same world appears throughout.
Below are some recommendations based on my favorite reads of the last year. Some were written this year, others I just got around to reading. Maybe some of them will sound like the right gift for the reader in your life.
Non Fiction:
Eminence: Cardinal Richelieu and the Rise of France. This is well written. Like many of my favorite histories I laughed out loud several times reading about the machinations of the Cardinal and his enemies. If comedy is tragedy plus history, sometimes I think entertaining history is the comedy of human wickedness.
Quanta and Fields: The Biggest Ideas in the Universe. The second book in Sean Carroll’s Biggest Ideas in the Universe series. I enjoyed reading this more than the first. Both were interesting, but I feel like this one delves more in depth into a branch of physics that hasn’t been covered as extensively as mechanics and relativity was great to read.
The Allure of the Multiverse by Paul Halpern. This is a great mix of theoretical physics told by someone with a clear appreciation for many of the same science fiction media that I’ve enjoyed the most over the recent years.
The Elusive Shift. Another great book by Jon Peterson about the history of gaming and the history of how people played Dungeons and Dragons before it became more closely standardized. This was particularly interesting to me as he used home-brew zines as his primary sources, and I was reading another book at the same time about people home brewing computer games and using zines as their source from the same era.
Fiction:
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. This book is so good I gave it its own blog post. It’s a mystery novel in a fantasy setting. But the fantasy setting isn’t an amalgam of medieval tropes, but instead it’s closer to Rome and China, a long standing empire with all the inherent difficulties that come as empires last. This book also introduces the character Ana who in a single book has joined the pantheon of my all time favorite characters.
How Long Until Black Future Month. This is NK Jemisin’s short story collection. Jemisin is clearly one of the best active writers. I’d already read her novels, I wanted to see what her short stories are like and I wasn’t disappointed. So many great ideas in short story form allowing the reader to enjoy many worlds and characters without the time consumption of a novel.
Indy Authors:
Delta Desperadoes is Tony Peak’s Imposters Gambit series. This is a space western series that I think nicely fills a void in missing Firefly, but also has some solid cyberpunk elements as well.
Iconic by Peter J Aldin and A.J. Gordon is the start of an excellent military sci-fi/space opera series penned by the pair. I got definite Aliens vibes from the way the characters carried themselves, a book series with gallows humor and good action galore. My only qualm with this series is the covers, but writers sadly rarely get to pick their cover art.
You’re Not Alone in the Dark edited by Eugene Johnson and Eric Guignard is non fiction, but it’s a collection of essays by fiction writers about trauma and pain and how they cope often through making art. Something that I think we may all benefit from reading as the uncertainty and chaos of another Trump administration looms ahead.
Games and Comic Books:
Flee Mortals! is MCDM’s monster book, and it makes playing Dungeons and Dragons ten times more fun. Also one of the things I think is greatest about RPG books is flipping through the pages, looking at the art and imagining what stories might take place in those worlds. Flee Mortals! has plenty of great art in it. This and their boss battle book Where Evil Lives can help any gamers you know pass the time while they await Draw Steel, the upcoming new game from MCDM.
If you haven’t already read The Wrong Earth by Tom Peyer, I highly recommend it. It tells the story of two versions of the same superhero. In one world the hero fights campy villains a la the 1960s Batman with even campier gadgets. The the other world he’s a gritty avenger. The two heroes switch worlds and zaniness ensues. There are now multiple collections of this series expanding its universe and madness.
