Favorite Books & Stories - March 2023

 Here are some stories I've been reading and enjoying in the last two years since I've last posted about my reading habits on here. They are in no particular order. Enjoy!

1. Richard III by William Shakespeare

Of all of the Shakespeare plays I read for my college Shakespeare course, this had by far the most memorable character for me (aside from the ubiquitous Prince Hamlet). Richard is such a fantastic two-faced snake of a villain, you both want to see what he's gonna do and want him to be stopped as soon as possible. We had a good amount of choice in my class as to what we did our big projects on, and I think I did all of mine on this because it's just so good and deep in terms of subtext.

Aside from the main character's reign of terror, there are a whole slew of great female roles who almost all utilize curses in their damning of other characters. There are tons of excellent insults here, aside from the actual curses as well.

While it's not the most historically accurate (reportedly), it's one of Shakespeare's best that I've read and it's hardly ever mentioned.

2. The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare

Now, The Winter's Tale is another sleeper hit in my book with Shakespeare that was actually my favorite from that class. It has some of the most complex tonal shifts of any piece of fiction I've ever read and I think the best ending in all of Shakespeare's work that I've read. At first, I thought it was a simplistic happy ending, but it has a ton of stuff to read into if you really dissect it and its implications.

3. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut might turn out to be one of my favorite authors, and I say this even though I've only read two of his novels-- this, and the legendary Slaughterhouse-Five. While Slaughterhouse-Five has more of a timeless, classic quality, Cat's Cradle is a wacky and bizarre tragic comedy about the end of the world. Slaughterhouse has its funny moments, but overall it's a much more dark piece of science fiction. Cat's Cradle is just ridiculous, and I love it for that. There are many points where I laughed out loud when reading, especially towards the end once the dominos start falling.

Vonnegut also impresses in this novel by creating an entire fictional religion-- Bokononism-- and an entire fictional history of an island nation and its inhabitants-- San Lorenzo. All of this he connects with a fictional character who dumbfoundingly and almost by accident came up with the components needed for the atom bomb. Brilliant stuff.

4. "If the Martians Have Magic" by P. Djeli Clark

This short story, a fantasy sci-fi saga of first contact with aliens and the developments thereafter, was one that I was not expecting to like. I usually want nothing to do with this type of stor-- and I'm not even sure why-- but this story absolutely floored me with how well it was written and how creative its ideas were and how well those ideas were integrated together into an incredibly cohesive world.

5. "Understand" by Ted Chiang

Another sci-fi short story-- this one plays out like a more fleshed out an heady version of the movie Scanners by David Cronenberg. It's about someone who gains amazing intellectual ability through an experimental procedure and what happens when that procedure is given to multiple other people across the US (I believe it was the US-- Maybe Canada). The way it plays out is brilliant and has to be read to be believed. Check this one out in Chiang's famous collection Stories of Your Life and Others.

6. "Biology" by Kevin Wilson

I've never been so emotionally destroyed by a short story. This one's a masterfully crafted story about a high school misfit and his connection with an understanding teacher. It's got some twisted parts, but the core of this story feels totally from the heart and extremely tearjerking at that.

7. Sula by Toni Morrison

This was my first Morrison novel and it makes me want to read everything she's ever written. It details the friendship and toils of a couple of black girls in a fictional town in the Midwest in the early 20th century. There are some amazing unexpected turns and the ending made me so suddenly realize how much I cared for the characters that I cried. Possibly the best ending to a novel I've ever read in that way.

8. Ubik by Philip K. Dick

Wow. This novel by the sci-fi legend Philip K. Dick has a rough start but once it gets halfway through it grabs you and doesn't let you go until it ends, and still it has your hooks in you as you ponder what was real and what was not. It's brilliantly plotted and despite it's sometimes obnoxious character descriptions it has one of the most fascinatingly developed fictional worlds I've ever gotten to experience. Essentially, it's set in a future where people can be placed in "half-life", where they can still communicate with the living after death, and the main character works for a company that hires people with psychic abilities to do corporate espionage on other companies. There are parts of this book that are absolutely terrifying, with how well they describe some of the torments the characters have to face towards the end.

9. Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow

Ragtime is probably the most complete and well thought out portrait of a real time and place I've had the pleasure reading about. It's set in New York City at the turn of the century, tracking the exploits of a plethora of real people-- Harry Houdini, Emma Goldberg, Henry Ford, among others, and mixes in a fictional story around their lives. Not only all this complexity of plotting, but also some really fun and pulse-pounding crime stuff in there too!

10. The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman

I took an entire class on this graphic novel/memoir. It is quite literally the most important book I've read and it is almost limitless in its depth and visual brilliance. It's about the author's father's experience in the Holocaust. Thinking about parts of it make me shiver and get goosebumps at just how effective and terrifying and sad it all is. The ending is absolutely heartbreaking-- even though the father does survive the Shoah, the last scene with him is just... yeah. Very intense.