May wasn’t the doozy I thought it would be, but it was full of wonderfully written novels by huge-name authors. It also gave me insight into what types of stories I enjoy 🤔. Let’s see where we are at:
That should read 39/52 books at 75% of my yearly goal, but it’s undoubtedly lower. Obviously, well ahead of schedule (18 books ahead according to Goodreads, to be exact), so there’s no doubt I’m going to overachieve in this regard. I guess next year I’ll have to not play it safe.
I’m behind schedule in the 52 Book Club: 2026 Challenge, but I’m not terribly concerned. I have over half the year left, and most of the books left on my reading wheel (I’ll have to make a post about how I choose the books I read for this to make sense) pertain to this challenge. In fact, three are going to be finished at the beginning of June, so we’ll start knocking this down quickly.
Without further ado, let’s see what we read in May:
One wild trip in the Vurt.
I found out about Vurt online while looking for more cyberpunk stories. The post and following comments alluded to it being a love-it/hate-it novel, so take the recommendation with a huge grain of salt. After reading it, I somewhat agree. This is a furiously written novel that can only be described as Trainspotting meets A Clockwork Orange mixed with… Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? A group of friends looking for the next high helps their friend, Scribble, track down his sister, who was lost inside the Vurt, this story’s psychedelic version of virtual reality that you can only reach by sucking on manufactured feathers. Yeah, it’s a trip. Jeff Noon writes with a frantic punk rock grace that instantly put him on my radar, and the rest of his work in my headlights. It’s also what turns off so many readers. Vurt is definitely worth a read, and maybe a spot on your shelf. The Final Fantasy-esque story of how the novel was made is worth a read as well.
A slow-burning Arthurian coming-of-age story.
This novel isn’t for me. Robin Hobb, who has one of the coolest names in writing, is an excellent writer. Beyond excellent. Her prose has a flow and an elegance that help drive this slow-burning fantasy to its much-earned conclusion. That said, I found myself drifting away while reading the novel. I didn’t find the meat-and-potatoes of the story hooked me strongly enough. Listening to it on audiobook both helped and hurt me: I feel that if I had read the physical book, I would have been able to concentrate more on the story, but if I hadn’t been listening to it on the way to/from work, I might have DNFed it. The characters are fantastic, every one written with great care and detail. The world is fleshed out in its best Arthurian garb. The story, in fact, immediately reminded me of another novel people rave about, but I couldn’t get into: The Once and Future King. Go into it with the correct mindset, and you’ll have yourself a ball.
A frightening, heartbreaking tale of being pushed too far.
Stephen King’s first novel is a powerhouse! It deals with a lot of themes, including maturation, bullying, cycles of abuse, and religious fanaticism, among others. What surprised me was how well it handles all of them simultaneously. King writes with a maturity and vision that surprised me, being a male author writing a female character. I know from reading On Writing that he felt reluctant because of this, and even threw the original draft in the trash. Luckily, his wife fished it out and told him to continue. The novel is dark. The buildup is phenomenal and heartbreaking. At every turn, Carrie cries for help but gets no relief. The one moment she finally gets any positive momentum in her life is at the Prom… and we know how that turns out. King also has a flair for blending the fantastical with reality. It makes everything so much more believable, heartbreaking, and much more frightening.
A great resource to help you edit your own work.
Self-help books such as these are usually cut-and-dry. Sometimes, they are just dry. Regardless, they all hold at least a monochrome of knowledge that will help you be better at whatever the title claims. This novel will help you edit your fiction material. A lot of the material is ingrained in everyone’s subconscious now, thanks to being reiterated on the web: show, don’t tell; choose the correct point of view, and keep it consistent; keep your story’s proportion balanced; etc. However, it’s nice to have it all in one place, and Browne & King go into more detail here to help you understand what they mean, rather than just giving you short headline snippets. It won’t give you a ton of in-depth education on all forms of editing, but it’s a very good overall primer on the process.
A dark and violent journey about love and redemption.
There is no doubt that Pat Conroy’s novel is a masterclass in novel writing. It breaks all the rules of modern writing with its overtly flowery prose, telling rather than showing, boatloads of similes, and its head-on tackling of themes of prejudice that many today shy away from or water down to the point of becoming vapid. It can do this, however, because we are seeing the world through the eyes of the main character, Tom Wingo. A southerner with strong convictions who has come to New York to help his sister’s psychiatrist, Dr. Lowenstein, understand why she has tried to take her life multiple times. This leads him to recount their troubled family history and the maelstrom of emotions that accompany it. It’s a violent, dark, and deeply traumatic story buoyed by a huge personality and an expert author’s hand.
Broken and flawed.
Half His Age feels like it wants to be a Lolita for the modern age, but it reads like any other smut-filled fantasy. It’s a quick read, and there are some poignant character realizations, but they are all superficial and lead nowhere. This is sometimes a telling flaw for our main character, but most of the time is just a writer out of her depth. McCurdy writes vivid sex scenes with the voracity of a modern action writer, but she fails to tap into anything deeper, making it all feel hollow. Again, character or author flaw? Upon conclusion, we aren’t left with revelations or even tying of threads, just emptiness.
Ultra-violence.
It’s so hard to review comics, even one-shots, because they presume you have knowledge of a character or situation before going in. It makes sense. Why would you buy a one-shot otherwise? I did not have that knowledge, so I was a little out of my league while reading Poetry of Madness. I got all the bullet points while going through this massively violent tale. Our hero can’t die for some reason. In this story, he’s pledged himself to a king, so when a group of Lovecraftian religious fanatics starts some crazy stuff, he has to jump into action to stop them. What follows is gratuitously violent, absurdly grandiose, and straight-up bonkers. Sadly, there wasn’t much for storytelling in this story. I really enjoyed his sidekick, although she felt like a character out of time, and it makes me sad to know we’ll most likely never see her again, ever. Regardless, a good story of ultra-violence.