2021 rereads
Feb. 3rd, 2022 02:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaAs with 2020, I really meant to post this in batches or at least quarters, or halves; and really did not. I reread 60+ books, so I assumed there was a lot missing from this list—but it turns out that the other rereads were books I'd never reviewed before, so they ended up folded up in my normal reviews. The only exception is: elisions/groupings mentioned below; Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Spell Sword/The Forbidden Tower, because I'm not up to unpacking the whether/how of separating the work from this author; and a lot of toki pona texts that I reread in whole or in part.
The obvious trend in 2021 rereads was comfort reads. Sometimes I reread to see how my reading of a book has changed; these I reread because I already knew I loved them, for their energy or for one specific trope or for their unusually intimate relationship/poly dynamics/queer coding. I wrote about this here:
That was 2021 in a nutshell, and so help me if I don't want to do the same for 2022.
Silently and Very Fast, Catherynne M. Valente
It feels like cheating to pin down my favorite Valente work as novella, and certainly her longer works have greater depth and therefore value. But I love how novella length constrains and condenses Valente's nested/fragmented story structure, I'm an absolute sucker for an AI narrative, and the tension in the aesthetic and themes—mythic(/mythpunk) science fiction, a silicon fairytale—lands just right for me. ...My actual favorite, ever subject to change, is probably the first Fairyland book in view of the cumulative effect of the series & Palimpsest. But! I loved this just as much on reread and even picked out the same favorite quotes; consistently a delight.
Alphabet of Thorn, Patricia A. McKillip
I've been thinking about this book a lot since I first read it because the premise is a literal daydream: foundling working within the ancient library carved into the cliffside beneath the castle obsessively translates an impossible, captivating book with the aid of the handsome student magician and the peaky fellow librarian who put aside their rivalry to love and aid her. But this means that the overarching plot, particularly the neatness of the way it comes together withthe translator at the center of and intended recipient of her text , threatens to detract from that quiet, local fantasy. Thankfully I also enjoy the supporting characters and the interweaving of ancient text and modern events, and the resolution of course cleaves to the exact elements that make the protagonist's life so enviable—it ends well, works as a narrative, but most important to me it retains its appeal. This may not be the best of McKillip (and it also makes me want to read more of her catalog), but it's as dreamy, quiet, and escapist as I love & remember it to be.
The Tea Dragon Society, Kay O'Neill
Just such lovely art—I adore the rich colors and lineless style, the fluid panels and cozy atmosphere. But the plot felt thinner on this reread. "Memories don't just live inside you, Minette. They live in all the people and objects you share your life with," still gets me—it works beautifully with the tea dragons as a conceit; my memory issues aren't magical, but I appreciate the approach. But the other character arcs don't leave an impression, the mediation on dying traditions feels flat. It's pleasant, but it's not as satisfying as that first reading.
Dreadful Skin, Cherie Priest
I found this less memorable the second time around, but I can see why I liked it: the Southern Gothic werewolf is aesthetically unique and thematically interesting. It works best at a smaller scale and I'm a sucker for the tension and physical embodiment of a werewolf chase sequence, and so the middle third is my favorite—it has the most distinctive historical setting and as it goes on the focus tightens claustrophobically.
But the action ultimately overtakes the werewolves. The final third introduces big, weird elements to the werewolf lore, and there's no chance to explore them within an escalating violence and scale which feels routine, cinematic, and forgettable. (Although I did this time enjoy the effect of the abrupt closing paragraphs.) I love werewolves in part for how the trope talks to itself—which elements of the werewolf metaphor morph and which reoccur; how werewolves reappear in different bodies and innumerable settings. I appreciate what this adds to that plethora—but I've also read a plethora more werewolf books since I first read this, and it feels less interesting and distinct as a result.
The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson
I liked this better when I read it the first time on audio. In that format I was less aware of the YA genre elements, like abrupt scenes and first person present tense, which I find obnoxious; and language is such an important part of the worldbuilding and atmosphere that I benefitted from hearing it read aloud. But this is still a fluid polyamorous love story between a sacrificial king, the boy who loves him, a gifted young artist, and a massive futuristic city built in the wake of the apocalypse—I can't not love that. It's indulgent, magnetic. I love how much diversity is a normalized but not-uncomplicated part of the world; I love that there remains a veil of the oblique and almost metaphorical around Enki and the relationship the characters have with the city; I love "Connecting the city's external weather sensors to her municipal energy production unit, that's where I put my love for you." I'm dropping this down to four stars but it's an enthusiastic four stars—I find it greater than its flaws.
A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick
That I know swathes of this by heart is evidence of 1) a faithful, strong film adaptation and 2) how successfully, hypnotically, it flows between drug-fueled ramblings and broken insights. In the way that a really good parody comes from a place of love because love is what fuels insight and criticism, Dick writes in his afterword that "I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel."—he knows and loves and is these people; know them enough to critique them. This is still a weird pick for one of my favorite books—it's a snapshot of a particular culture and era with which I share zero commonalities—but boy howdy does it get me every time.
Dust, Elizabeth Bear
My opinion has changed rather a lot since I first reviewed this. 1) After reading it three times, it's not the least confusing. I love the fantastic/mythic architecture for hard scifi; it makes the world appropriately strange and surreal, and it elevates the emotional scale such that the quickly-formed loyalties, particularly but not exclusively in the central relationship, are convincing. 2) That style and sense of wonder cemented my love of generation ships as a trope. I think about this book a lot: its massive concept and sense of awe fill me with a longing, for rereads but also for more spec fic of this tone. 3) It's amazing how quickly speculative analogs for nonbinary identities date themselves. That's true in The Left Hand of Darkness and it's true here, but it's complicated by Perceval's asexuality and the general genderbending and rejection of sexual norms—diversity which is more ambiguous and less codified/strictly speculative. I wish that level of nuance existed throughout, but appreciate the intent.
Chill, Elizabeth Bear
It was a mistake to structure this as two simultaneous travelogues; there's some fun setpieces, particularly the high-oxygen descent, but it makes for a lot of structural repetition given the previous book, and the elided return trip undermines the scale and danger of every cross-ship journey. I like the worldbuilding otherwise, more this time than on my first read; developing Leviathan's character and role in the plot, rather than relegating it to mystery-fuel/MacGuffin, could have gone a long way to make this book more distinctive.
Also this is what I'm talking about when I mention Bear's penchant for microexpressions—they're 80% of the interpersonal relationships! It's repetitive but also my jam. I appreciate that putting Perceval offscreen allows her to grieve slowly, but failing to follow up on the emotional investments built in the first book is frustrating & I wonder if the tension of interior feelings betrayed/masked by external affect could have been productively turned on her grief.
Grail, Elizabeth Bear
There's some unfortunate repetition in this series, here in the return of the antagonist, which makes sense in the worldbuilding but is highlighted by the structural repetition in books 1 & 2. Worse, the antagonist and her action plot is a lot less interesting than the more philosophical, overarching clash between New Evolutionist descendants and a rightminded society. The external PoV of Jacob's Ladder and her crew is productively alien; rightminding is terrifying and the text engages that, imperfectly, but sometimes in a productively-flawed way; the culture clash is dynamic and apparently unresolvable. So the ending, which also makes sense in the worldbuilding, is nonetheless a disappointingly abrupt and easy resolution. I'm dropping my rating from five stars to four, but I still enjoy this book & the series entire; it's borderline one of those speculative texts where the concepts are interesting and disconcerting enough to excuse technical issues.
Grass, Sheri S. Tepper
Tepper's approach to social commentary is so annoying—less annoying here than elsewhere (yes this is a Beauty subtweet) but more visible in light of her other books; and it pervades too much of the tone, exaggerated, farcical, not emotionally-rooted in the way that a dark riff of the bond animal trope demands.
But I love me an evil bond animal, and the mystery around the Hippae, the slow reveals of their physicality, their motives, their origins, their effect is still a lot of fun. The setting is beautiful and alien; despite itself the emotional register almost succeeds—I wish we saw more of the missing girls's interiority, but the protagonist's arc distills the overbearing social commentary into more intimate, if not nuanced, themes.
Would that this were content to do less, because it has a busy plot with hilariously largely consequences, resulting in overly neat reveals that kill some of the intrigue (and make for stupidly anticlimactic scenes where someone comes forth with a hard-won, stunning realization and the rest of the cast responds "oh we all just learned that because events are progressing in such a way that all these secrets are now public & obvious"). The places it actually succeeds are more tropey, less ambitious, and enough fun to justify a reread despite these criticisms.
Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer
The coolness of the protagonist and the weirdness of the book are features, not bugs—unless you're not in the right brain space to connect with them, and I don't think I was on this reread. I don't like the conspiracy throughline in the sequels, so the hypnotism in this book is preemptively uninteresting, which is a not-insignificant drawback. But I really do love the premise, and how fully the book commits to its strangeness, and the Tower, and the ending; I only wish it had gotten me this time the way it did on my first read.
I'd watched the film adaptation a few times in the interim, and I'm impressed by how well the film captures the immersive effect of Area X while otherwise depicting an entirely different (and frankly much more traditional) landscape and narrative. Unfortunately I really love Josie, who mirrors the biologist's relationship with Area X but has a different and more accessible emotional register—which may be why I struggled to connect with the biologist on reread. The book is objectively more interesting! But when my brain is tired, maybe I prefer the film.
Dracula, Bram Stoker
What a phenomenal reread. Genre classics frequently feel stale by dint of their familiarity and/or formative impact on the genre; this is familiar and formative, but so entrenched in the cultural consciousness that: 1) Its familiarity becomes a boon, augmenting the atmosphere and predictability until reading Dracula is like rewatching a favorite Halloween movie for the umpteenth time, and 2) It's fresh—surprisingly fresh. The indulgence of the ambiance and genre is grounded in equally important, frankly really weird social details as lonely old Van Helsing builds a ride-or-die found family with polyamorous vibes which keeps meticulous, concrete records of these most improbable events. Sleepwaking and Dracula's form coalescing from shadow; the Harkers' transcriptions and Mina's knowledge of train time-tables. And more successful for this weirdness: dense, conflicted, thoughtful, provoking. But balanced, indulgent, engaging, just so dang fun to read.
I have a lot of feelings about the problematic role of sex and gender! I have as many feelings about Lucy's many husbands turned Mina's ... children/husbands/caretakers/failed caretakers/equals? This well earns its place in the cultural milieu.
The Vampyre, John Polidori
On this reread I again spent more time reading about the work than reading the work itself. The relationship between text, paratext, and context is fascinating. It's fair to say, right, that Polidori probably didn't write the paratext? Nonetheless it provides a delightful setup: "let me introduce you to the mysterious Lord Byron, who definitely doesn't behave in these specific inflammatory and notorious ways, and is in fact an upstanding guy!; anyway here's a story about a notorious nobleman who's 100% a monster." So: interesting for the drag of Byron, and for how ineffectually it aided poor Polidori; interesting for the genesis of its publication & for how it drew from and exceeded Byron's fragment; interesting for the phenomenon that was those days in June 1816; interesting for its massive impact on genre and pop culture (and for Polidori's sake, little though it helps him, I'm glad that the aristocratic vampire archetype proved as lasting as the anatomy of a vampire presented in the introduction).
And the text itself? Totally fine! The build-up feel pretty routine by now, but Aubrey's madness is compelling. It's a less-linear counterpoint to the reveals of the plot, fuzzy, mesmeric, like Ruthven's touch and voice—"Remember your oath!"—coming as Aubrey watches Ruthven across the room.
Ghosts in the House!, Kazuno Kohara
Such cleverly executed linocuts! Magnificent wish-fulfillment: not just to be a witch, but one who handily tackles her problems by turning them into cuddly blankets. I want to live in that final spread so bad. I think four stars is still accurate given the relative complexity, but I was right that this is one of the best Halloweeny picture books because it's a flawless reread.
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
I'm not as in love with this as I used to be. The voice has a fairytale-esque quality that strays into moralizing & blandly stating the themes; I'd say it's because Gaiman is writing for a young audience, but I suspect (from my memories of Gaiman, as I don't really read him anymore) that the audience just exacerbates his predilection for this tone. It gets a little talky for such a slim, strange narrative, and I don't love the effect.
But other elements of the tone work, like the humor, and I still love the package entire. The otherworld/portal/fairytale/gothic/horror vibe is a trip, whimsical and odd and sincerely, delightfully scary. It's hard to pull off that level of excess without sliding straight into camp, but the combined constrained length & tonal leeway of kidlit make it succeed here. Each reread I anticipate that scene with the doughy Other Father. Great fun!—even if I find I nitpick it more now.
Hemlock Grove, Brain McGreevey
Is this good? often no, because it's hammy and contrived (the writing especially) and just riddled with problematic elements. But the TV adaptation is so faithful that the book often feels like fanfic in the sense of that it provides an interior glimpse of favorite characters & scenes, and boy howdy do I love—these characters, these scenes, these themes, this tone and general tableau. Peter is especially interesting in the book because he's even more stand-offish and young, wanting so hard to live without; and of course fails profoundly. And what's better than the tension of saying one thing and intensely feeling something in conflict, especially when the conflict is, you know, homoeroticism, vampires, werewolves, and "God doesn't want you to be happy; He wants you to be strong"?
& as bad as the writing is, in the sense of "needs an editor," I love Christina so much that the weirdness of the voice becomes endearing.
Lives of the Monster Dogs, Kirsten Bakis
Dropping this from 4 stars down to 3, but I still liked it fine. The images in this come first, particularly the monster dogs in their historical attire, regal and ridiculous, but every part down to the inset opera libretto feels equally set-piecey. The narrative and narrator that knit them together is secondary and frankly unconvincing, but the contrast provided by the tone does work. It's quiet, grieving, resisting resolution. This mishmash of competing elements is predominantly Weird, more weird than effective to be honest; but it's also is more reminiscent of Frankenstein than I gave it credit for a decade ago, in a good way.
Red Dragon, Thomas Harris
For once my old review is on the money, but I do want to note how funny I find which scene and language were imported from the books into the NBC adaptation, particularly that even Harris's paratext is fair game. It makes reading some of an Easter egg hunt, which enlivens an otherwise mediocre text. (I also reread Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, and wisely skipped Hannibal Rising, and have nothing of import to say on them.)
Xenogensis series and Fledgling, Octavia Butler
I lack the energy to tease apart my reaction to these as individual books, despite that they are very different books, even those within series. This was my first time rereading Butler, and I just got lost in it. All those strengths of Butler are even better on reread: crazy high-concept worldbuilding that consistently asks the reader's own questions, and then some; and those questions refuse easy answers, such that revisiting provides ever more insight but never resolution.
What really struck me on reread, other than the welcome opportunity to be eaten alive by work I already knew I'd love, is how my view of Butler's limitations has changed with time. I found reading Butler a lot of like reading Le Guin: both are authors whose works and worldviews are continually overlapping and expanding, meeting and breaching their own boundaries. Some of those boundaries feel unbreached in retrospect, sure, but the breach threatens, like the heteronormative assumptions and gender stereotypes that make some elements of the Xenogensis worldbuilding so frustrating but which are continually subverted by subtext and characterization and plot. And the breach comes: Fledgling shares similar relationship dynamics, but now presumed heteronormativity is absent. Finishing up the Hainish cycle, I was impressed by how intentionally Le Guin returned to question her own previous assumptions—not as an exception to but as a culmination of her general trend of growth. And I wished she'd been able to write an endless number more books to continue that path. These rereads made me feel similarly of Butler. I was already invested in Butler's habits and self-assessment, and how it impacted which and how many books we got from her; but now I have even more reason to wish we saw another dozen, another hundred—to see how far she would have taken us.
The obvious trend in 2021 rereads was comfort reads. Sometimes I reread to see how my reading of a book has changed; these I reread because I already knew I loved them, for their energy or for one specific trope or for their unusually intimate relationship/poly dynamics/queer coding. I wrote about this here:
Surprising no one that's ever talked to me, the vast majority of my comfort rereads are "chewy, indulgent, weird interpersonal dynamics, probably with some sort of strong atmosphere." [...] Basically anything that hits the overlap of unusually intimate relationship + favorite is something I've reread or will reread. It's hands down my favorite ... trope? genre? defining characteristic, and id-fic that I've read before has already been vetted for (subjective) quality so I can switch off my analytical brain. It makes for guaranteed absorbing escapism—like a daydream, but better.
That was 2021 in a nutshell, and so help me if I don't want to do the same for 2022.
Silently and Very Fast, Catherynne M. Valente
It feels like cheating to pin down my favorite Valente work as novella, and certainly her longer works have greater depth and therefore value. But I love how novella length constrains and condenses Valente's nested/fragmented story structure, I'm an absolute sucker for an AI narrative, and the tension in the aesthetic and themes—mythic(/mythpunk) science fiction, a silicon fairytale—lands just right for me. ...My actual favorite, ever subject to change, is probably the first Fairyland book in view of the cumulative effect of the series & Palimpsest. But! I loved this just as much on reread and even picked out the same favorite quotes; consistently a delight.
Alphabet of Thorn, Patricia A. McKillip
I've been thinking about this book a lot since I first read it because the premise is a literal daydream: foundling working within the ancient library carved into the cliffside beneath the castle obsessively translates an impossible, captivating book with the aid of the handsome student magician and the peaky fellow librarian who put aside their rivalry to love and aid her. But this means that the overarching plot, particularly the neatness of the way it comes together with
The Tea Dragon Society, Kay O'Neill
Just such lovely art—I adore the rich colors and lineless style, the fluid panels and cozy atmosphere. But the plot felt thinner on this reread. "Memories don't just live inside you, Minette. They live in all the people and objects you share your life with," still gets me—it works beautifully with the tea dragons as a conceit; my memory issues aren't magical, but I appreciate the approach. But the other character arcs don't leave an impression, the mediation on dying traditions feels flat. It's pleasant, but it's not as satisfying as that first reading.
Dreadful Skin, Cherie Priest
I found this less memorable the second time around, but I can see why I liked it: the Southern Gothic werewolf is aesthetically unique and thematically interesting. It works best at a smaller scale and I'm a sucker for the tension and physical embodiment of a werewolf chase sequence, and so the middle third is my favorite—it has the most distinctive historical setting and as it goes on the focus tightens claustrophobically.
But the action ultimately overtakes the werewolves. The final third introduces big, weird elements to the werewolf lore, and there's no chance to explore them within an escalating violence and scale which feels routine, cinematic, and forgettable. (Although I did this time enjoy the effect of the abrupt closing paragraphs.) I love werewolves in part for how the trope talks to itself—which elements of the werewolf metaphor morph and which reoccur; how werewolves reappear in different bodies and innumerable settings. I appreciate what this adds to that plethora—but I've also read a plethora more werewolf books since I first read this, and it feels less interesting and distinct as a result.
The Summer Prince, Alaya Dawn Johnson
I liked this better when I read it the first time on audio. In that format I was less aware of the YA genre elements, like abrupt scenes and first person present tense, which I find obnoxious; and language is such an important part of the worldbuilding and atmosphere that I benefitted from hearing it read aloud. But this is still a fluid polyamorous love story between a sacrificial king, the boy who loves him, a gifted young artist, and a massive futuristic city built in the wake of the apocalypse—I can't not love that. It's indulgent, magnetic. I love how much diversity is a normalized but not-uncomplicated part of the world; I love that there remains a veil of the oblique and almost metaphorical around Enki and the relationship the characters have with the city; I love "Connecting the city's external weather sensors to her municipal energy production unit, that's where I put my love for you." I'm dropping this down to four stars but it's an enthusiastic four stars—I find it greater than its flaws.
A Scanner Darkly, Philip K. Dick
That I know swathes of this by heart is evidence of 1) a faithful, strong film adaptation and 2) how successfully, hypnotically, it flows between drug-fueled ramblings and broken insights. In the way that a really good parody comes from a place of love because love is what fuels insight and criticism, Dick writes in his afterword that "I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel."—he knows and loves and is these people; know them enough to critique them. This is still a weird pick for one of my favorite books—it's a snapshot of a particular culture and era with which I share zero commonalities—but boy howdy does it get me every time.
Dust, Elizabeth Bear
My opinion has changed rather a lot since I first reviewed this. 1) After reading it three times, it's not the least confusing. I love the fantastic/mythic architecture for hard scifi; it makes the world appropriately strange and surreal, and it elevates the emotional scale such that the quickly-formed loyalties, particularly but not exclusively in the central relationship, are convincing. 2) That style and sense of wonder cemented my love of generation ships as a trope. I think about this book a lot: its massive concept and sense of awe fill me with a longing, for rereads but also for more spec fic of this tone. 3) It's amazing how quickly speculative analogs for nonbinary identities date themselves. That's true in The Left Hand of Darkness and it's true here, but it's complicated by Perceval's asexuality and the general genderbending and rejection of sexual norms—diversity which is more ambiguous and less codified/strictly speculative. I wish that level of nuance existed throughout, but appreciate the intent.
Chill, Elizabeth Bear
It was a mistake to structure this as two simultaneous travelogues; there's some fun setpieces, particularly the high-oxygen descent, but it makes for a lot of structural repetition given the previous book, and the elided return trip undermines the scale and danger of every cross-ship journey. I like the worldbuilding otherwise, more this time than on my first read; developing Leviathan's character and role in the plot, rather than relegating it to mystery-fuel/MacGuffin, could have gone a long way to make this book more distinctive.
Also this is what I'm talking about when I mention Bear's penchant for microexpressions—they're 80% of the interpersonal relationships! It's repetitive but also my jam. I appreciate that putting Perceval offscreen allows her to grieve slowly, but failing to follow up on the emotional investments built in the first book is frustrating & I wonder if the tension of interior feelings betrayed/masked by external affect could have been productively turned on her grief.
Grail, Elizabeth Bear
There's some unfortunate repetition in this series, here in the return of the antagonist, which makes sense in the worldbuilding but is highlighted by the structural repetition in books 1 & 2. Worse, the antagonist and her action plot is a lot less interesting than the more philosophical, overarching clash between New Evolutionist descendants and a rightminded society. The external PoV of Jacob's Ladder and her crew is productively alien; rightminding is terrifying and the text engages that, imperfectly, but sometimes in a productively-flawed way; the culture clash is dynamic and apparently unresolvable. So the ending, which also makes sense in the worldbuilding, is nonetheless a disappointingly abrupt and easy resolution. I'm dropping my rating from five stars to four, but I still enjoy this book & the series entire; it's borderline one of those speculative texts where the concepts are interesting and disconcerting enough to excuse technical issues.
Grass, Sheri S. Tepper
Tepper's approach to social commentary is so annoying—less annoying here than elsewhere (yes this is a Beauty subtweet) but more visible in light of her other books; and it pervades too much of the tone, exaggerated, farcical, not emotionally-rooted in the way that a dark riff of the bond animal trope demands.
But I love me an evil bond animal, and the mystery around the Hippae, the slow reveals of their physicality, their motives, their origins, their effect is still a lot of fun. The setting is beautiful and alien; despite itself the emotional register almost succeeds—I wish we saw more of the missing girls's interiority, but the protagonist's arc distills the overbearing social commentary into more intimate, if not nuanced, themes.
Would that this were content to do less, because it has a busy plot with hilariously largely consequences, resulting in overly neat reveals that kill some of the intrigue (and make for stupidly anticlimactic scenes where someone comes forth with a hard-won, stunning realization and the rest of the cast responds "oh we all just learned that because events are progressing in such a way that all these secrets are now public & obvious"). The places it actually succeeds are more tropey, less ambitious, and enough fun to justify a reread despite these criticisms.
Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer
The coolness of the protagonist and the weirdness of the book are features, not bugs—unless you're not in the right brain space to connect with them, and I don't think I was on this reread. I don't like the conspiracy throughline in the sequels, so the hypnotism in this book is preemptively uninteresting, which is a not-insignificant drawback. But I really do love the premise, and how fully the book commits to its strangeness, and the Tower, and the ending; I only wish it had gotten me this time the way it did on my first read.
I'd watched the film adaptation a few times in the interim, and I'm impressed by how well the film captures the immersive effect of Area X while otherwise depicting an entirely different (and frankly much more traditional) landscape and narrative. Unfortunately I really love Josie, who mirrors the biologist's relationship with Area X but has a different and more accessible emotional register—which may be why I struggled to connect with the biologist on reread. The book is objectively more interesting! But when my brain is tired, maybe I prefer the film.
Dracula, Bram Stoker
What a phenomenal reread. Genre classics frequently feel stale by dint of their familiarity and/or formative impact on the genre; this is familiar and formative, but so entrenched in the cultural consciousness that: 1) Its familiarity becomes a boon, augmenting the atmosphere and predictability until reading Dracula is like rewatching a favorite Halloween movie for the umpteenth time, and 2) It's fresh—surprisingly fresh. The indulgence of the ambiance and genre is grounded in equally important, frankly really weird social details as lonely old Van Helsing builds a ride-or-die found family with polyamorous vibes which keeps meticulous, concrete records of these most improbable events. Sleepwaking and Dracula's form coalescing from shadow; the Harkers' transcriptions and Mina's knowledge of train time-tables. And more successful for this weirdness: dense, conflicted, thoughtful, provoking. But balanced, indulgent, engaging, just so dang fun to read.
I have a lot of feelings about the problematic role of sex and gender! I have as many feelings about Lucy's many husbands turned Mina's ... children/husbands/caretakers/failed caretakers/equals? This well earns its place in the cultural milieu.
The Vampyre, John Polidori
On this reread I again spent more time reading about the work than reading the work itself. The relationship between text, paratext, and context is fascinating. It's fair to say, right, that Polidori probably didn't write the paratext? Nonetheless it provides a delightful setup: "let me introduce you to the mysterious Lord Byron, who definitely doesn't behave in these specific inflammatory and notorious ways, and is in fact an upstanding guy!; anyway here's a story about a notorious nobleman who's 100% a monster." So: interesting for the drag of Byron, and for how ineffectually it aided poor Polidori; interesting for the genesis of its publication & for how it drew from and exceeded Byron's fragment; interesting for the phenomenon that was those days in June 1816; interesting for its massive impact on genre and pop culture (and for Polidori's sake, little though it helps him, I'm glad that the aristocratic vampire archetype proved as lasting as the anatomy of a vampire presented in the introduction).
And the text itself? Totally fine! The build-up feel pretty routine by now, but Aubrey's madness is compelling. It's a less-linear counterpoint to the reveals of the plot, fuzzy, mesmeric, like Ruthven's touch and voice—"Remember your oath!"—coming as Aubrey watches Ruthven across the room.
Ghosts in the House!, Kazuno Kohara
Such cleverly executed linocuts! Magnificent wish-fulfillment: not just to be a witch, but one who handily tackles her problems by turning them into cuddly blankets. I want to live in that final spread so bad. I think four stars is still accurate given the relative complexity, but I was right that this is one of the best Halloweeny picture books because it's a flawless reread.
Coraline, Neil Gaiman
I'm not as in love with this as I used to be. The voice has a fairytale-esque quality that strays into moralizing & blandly stating the themes; I'd say it's because Gaiman is writing for a young audience, but I suspect (from my memories of Gaiman, as I don't really read him anymore) that the audience just exacerbates his predilection for this tone. It gets a little talky for such a slim, strange narrative, and I don't love the effect.
But other elements of the tone work, like the humor, and I still love the package entire. The otherworld/portal/fairytale/gothic/horror vibe is a trip, whimsical and odd and sincerely, delightfully scary. It's hard to pull off that level of excess without sliding straight into camp, but the combined constrained length & tonal leeway of kidlit make it succeed here. Each reread I anticipate that scene with the doughy Other Father. Great fun!—even if I find I nitpick it more now.
Hemlock Grove, Brain McGreevey
Is this good? often no, because it's hammy and contrived (the writing especially) and just riddled with problematic elements. But the TV adaptation is so faithful that the book often feels like fanfic in the sense of that it provides an interior glimpse of favorite characters & scenes, and boy howdy do I love—these characters, these scenes, these themes, this tone and general tableau. Peter is especially interesting in the book because he's even more stand-offish and young, wanting so hard to live without; and of course fails profoundly. And what's better than the tension of saying one thing and intensely feeling something in conflict, especially when the conflict is, you know, homoeroticism, vampires, werewolves, and "God doesn't want you to be happy; He wants you to be strong"?
& as bad as the writing is, in the sense of "needs an editor," I love Christina so much that the weirdness of the voice becomes endearing.
Lives of the Monster Dogs, Kirsten Bakis
Dropping this from 4 stars down to 3, but I still liked it fine. The images in this come first, particularly the monster dogs in their historical attire, regal and ridiculous, but every part down to the inset opera libretto feels equally set-piecey. The narrative and narrator that knit them together is secondary and frankly unconvincing, but the contrast provided by the tone does work. It's quiet, grieving, resisting resolution. This mishmash of competing elements is predominantly Weird, more weird than effective to be honest; but it's also is more reminiscent of Frankenstein than I gave it credit for a decade ago, in a good way.
Red Dragon, Thomas Harris
For once my old review is on the money, but I do want to note how funny I find which scene and language were imported from the books into the NBC adaptation, particularly that even Harris's paratext is fair game. It makes reading some of an Easter egg hunt, which enlivens an otherwise mediocre text. (I also reread Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, and wisely skipped Hannibal Rising, and have nothing of import to say on them.)
Xenogensis series and Fledgling, Octavia Butler
I lack the energy to tease apart my reaction to these as individual books, despite that they are very different books, even those within series. This was my first time rereading Butler, and I just got lost in it. All those strengths of Butler are even better on reread: crazy high-concept worldbuilding that consistently asks the reader's own questions, and then some; and those questions refuse easy answers, such that revisiting provides ever more insight but never resolution.
What really struck me on reread, other than the welcome opportunity to be eaten alive by work I already knew I'd love, is how my view of Butler's limitations has changed with time. I found reading Butler a lot of like reading Le Guin: both are authors whose works and worldviews are continually overlapping and expanding, meeting and breaching their own boundaries. Some of those boundaries feel unbreached in retrospect, sure, but the breach threatens, like the heteronormative assumptions and gender stereotypes that make some elements of the Xenogensis worldbuilding so frustrating but which are continually subverted by subtext and characterization and plot. And the breach comes: Fledgling shares similar relationship dynamics, but now presumed heteronormativity is absent. Finishing up the Hainish cycle, I was impressed by how intentionally Le Guin returned to question her own previous assumptions—not as an exception to but as a culmination of her general trend of growth. And I wished she'd been able to write an endless number more books to continue that path. These rereads made me feel similarly of Butler. I was already invested in Butler's habits and self-assessment, and how it impacted which and how many books we got from her; but now I have even more reason to wish we saw another dozen, another hundred—to see how far she would have taken us.
