The Knife by Richard Adams (2011) in Stories, edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio, Harper Perennial

Like Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart”, this story is told from the point of view of a character who has done something criminal.  It traces the discovery of a murder weapon, and the bullying that pushes the narrator to the reprehensible act.  And the confession to a dear uncle who chooses to keep the secret.

The Last Deadloss Visions by Christopher Priest

This book length essay, available on multiple sites via an Internet search, is about the non-publication of The Last Dangerous Visions, vilifying Harlan Ellison as an Editor who started the project in the 1970s and never managed to get it published before he died in 2018.

His promotion of the anthology became a sad joke within the writing community, especially with writers not getting their manuscripts back when commitments from publishers failed, for whatever reason, to result in publication.  I think it sad that the publishers did not find alternative ways to produce the project, even if it meant producing multiple books for timeliness.  There could have been More Last Dangerous Visions, Last Dangerous Visions Again, etc. (just like the five volumes of the Hitchhiker Trilogy by Douglas Adams).

Personally, I am a huge fan of Ellison’s work.  I don’t include his incomplete projects in this opinion just like I don’t include any other writer/editor’s projects that have not come to fruition.  While I do know the frustration of waiting extraordinarily long times to hear back on whether or not a manuscript has been accepted, it’s simply part of a writer’s life.  For those writers who have been fortunate to hear quickly on their manuscripts, accepted or rejected, congratulations on your wonderful luck.

In July of 2022, Blackstone Publishing announced that Last Dangerous Visions will be released September 1, 2024.

Only time will tell if the ultimate anthology of science fiction will occur before the end of the Earth.

The Peripheral by William Gibson (2014) G.P. Putnam's Sons

A dystopian weave of not exactly time travel as murder mystery.  In which a gamer girl takes over for her marine veteran brother and witnesses a murder in the future.  Only it’s not her future since her act splits her continuum from the future she sees as a peripheral in a manufactured body.  The future continuum wants her to identify the murderer and not get killed by other people in her own continuum hired by someone else in the future.  The book is fascinating.  The series based on the characters is also visually fascinating, though the plot is vastly different.

"Now is the time for all good men [and women] to come to the aid of their country" -Charles E. Weller,  The Early History of the Typewriter, p. 21 (1918) - [words in brackets are mine.]

To paraphrase, now is the time to make sure you and your loved ones, your friends, your neighbors, are properly registered to vote so that by the time polls open for the 2024 contests, you are all ready and prepared to vote.

There are over 250,000,000 voting age adults in the United States.  I would like to see 75% of voters participate in elections so we can be assured that we heard from a true majority when selecting people to hold important public offices.

As we face efforts by political machines to limit supporters of their opponents, real and imagined, just to keep cronies in power, or to place radical members of their parties in positions for no other real reason than to upset the status quo (note candidates who run during each election on a platform of simply opposing whoever is in office).  Such inaction as a platform is of no real use to the public.  

Every U.S. citizen in each State over 18 years of age who is not otherwise restricted legally can vote.  In most cases, felons who are currently serving a sentence cannot vote.  To help those who have been convicted of a crime and do not know their voting rights, see: Guide to State Voting Rules that Apply After a Conviction).

Help your fellow citizens who have a hard time registering.  If you're not sure about the rules for registration, see: Voter Registration. It's the government site that has all the rules and links to the information you need.  You can even look up State and local Election office websites here: https://www.usa.gov/election-office.

Make sure you check the rules even if you've voted before.  You might need a new card, or a change of address, or need to know the exact rules for mail-in or absentee ballots.  Learn the early voting rules for your State and help your family and neighbors get out and vote.

A Gambling Man by David Baldacci (2021) Grand Central Publishing

The second book in the Archer series – in which our hero stops in Reno and saves an old gambler from a couple of toughs.  He also impresses a singer, Liberty Callahan, enough to make her want to go with him to California where she hopes to become a star.  When they come upon the old guy facing more toughs, Archer and Callahan save him again.  Archer agrees to buy his V12 Delahaye (a fabulous looking art deco style car) to help him pay off his debt.  Though it doesn’t really help the guy and the toughs follow Archer and the singer before they get discouraged.  Once in Bay City, California, Archer connects with a private investigator whose name was given to him in the first book.  Then we get into murder mystery.  And it is a classic.  Baldacci at his best.

A Man Called Otto (from A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman) Directed by Marc Forster, starring Tom Hanks, Mariana Treviño and Rachel Keller, 2DUX², Playtone, SF Productions (2023)

Having read the book and watched the original sub-titled Swedish movie, I went to the theater ready to be disappointed in another Anglicized European movie.  Was I ever wrong.

A better director, a better cast with a nuanced performance and this is as good as a remake can get.

Tom Hanks, as Otto, plays a perfect, curmudgeon whose efforts to join his late wife are frustrated at every turn.  Rachel Keller plays the beautiful, kind wife, Sonya, in flashbacks seen as Otto's memories flashing before his eyes.  Mariana Treviño plays the neighbor Marisol (played here as Mexican with degrees from Universidad de los Andes and the University of California - perhaps since this version of the movie places the scene in the U.S. instead of Sweden).  She is instrumental in changing Otto, bringing him back to life in small pushes.  And there is the most laid-back cat (played by Smeagol, an American Longhair). 

Fundamentally, the story hasn't changed that much from the original, which is good.  Though there were scenes I wish they'd kept, like those with Otto's father, and coverage of Otto's years before he met Sonya.

It could be a contender for Oscar considerations.

News of the World by Paulette Jiles (2016) William Morrow

A very well written novel - it's a western only in that it takes place in Texas in the 1870's.  It's really straight mainstream because it examines the human condition in the guise of a 72 year-old man and a ten year old girl raised by the Kiowa and trying to cope with having her life turned upside down for a second time.  If you see the ad for the movie, you'll hear Tom Hank's voice as Captain Kidd.  The cadence is perfect as are the characterizations and the changes that shape so many.  You'll chuckle in some spots, laugh outright in others, and shed tears for the best of reasons.  This is one of my favorite books and will definitely be on my list of best books to read.

Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch by Kelly Barnhill (2014) Tor.com

A fun, quick read of fantasy by a master in the genre.  Mrs. Sorenson has been widowed and is free to have her animal friends again.  No one has seen a sasquatch since she was married 30 years ago.  But now, one seems to be following her around.

OCDaniel by Wesley King (2017) Simon & Schuster

Daniel has a problem that affects him every day.  He goes through the routine before he can cry himself to sleep, and that can take hours.  In his waking hours, life can still present panic in the form of zaps.  He avoids stepping on cracks, avoids numbers that are bad, and hates being on the football team as a backup kicker.  He has a crush on the most popular girl at school, though he could never tell her.  And the girl everyone calls psycho talks to him when she won’t talk to anyone else.  Somehow, he’s agreed to solve a murder.  And he’s writing a novel.  Just an everyday kid who is hiding his own problems while wishing he was normal.
It's a good read, a complicated plot, with a good twist ending.

Murder on Cold Street by Sherry Thomas (2020) Penguin Publishing Group

In which our heroine, Charlotte Holmes, appearing in her fifth book of the series, continues to work as the confidant of a non-existent brother, Sherlock Holmes, who is supposedly bedridden with sickness.  This time it is Inspector Treadles who is in trouble, and it is up to Holmes and her close associates to prove he is innocent of a double murder.  Charlotte ups the game on her attraction to Lord Ingram, whom she has known since they were very young.  Still romance is mostly promises and no permanent situation presents itself in this book.

Like it's predecessors, the writing keeps you glued to the page trying to outdo Ms. Holmes in deducing the real culprits while keeping herself and her associates safe and sound.

Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler (1998) Seven Stories Press

The sequel to The Parable of the Sower, our Heroine, Lauren Ova Olamina, has collected her verses into The Book of Life, about Earthseed, created a community called Acorn and gathered people to teach and help in a near-post apocalyptic U.S. – but her tests in life are about to get so much worse.  ‘Crusaders’ reminiscent of the KKK, enforced slavery in the name of Christianity, separation of children from the parents, a megalomaniac who promises to ‘Make America Great Again’ (the book was written in the 1990s).  This volume is told from her diaries and from her daughter’s perspective, having been abducted as a baby and raised in a home affiliated with the same church as the Crusaders.  Yet in the end, life goes on and Earthseed reaches for its goals.

A prophetic warning for our times.

The Night Window by Dean Koontz (2019) Random House Books

The final book in the Jane Hawk series.  She is still trying to find the leader of the Arcadians and failing that, find a way to bring their crimes and agenda to the attention of the world.  Two of the Arcadians’ top assassins are coming close to catching her.  A thief stumbles upon the house where her son is being kept safe by an old man and a very large man with issues and two German shepherds – he knows the boy could be worth a fortune to the Arcadians as leverage to get to Jane.  The ultimate leader of the Arcadians indulges himself with destroying a small-time Hollywood producer and for shock value makes a beautiful young woman kill herself in front of them.  The thrills come in every chapter.  Will Jane be killed, or will she save her son and the rest of humanity?

Me and Sam-Sam Handle the Apocalypse by Susan Vaught (2019) Simon & Schuster

A Best Juvenile Edgar winning book about a girl, Jesse (with an 'e'), with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) who wants to save her father from going to jail over money stolen from his desk at school.  Sam-Sam is her dog who provides emotional support.  Like many kids with ASD, she is shunned, bullied and generally treated badly by other students and even some of the adults at school.  Her mother is away in Iraq for the Army and has another dog who can sniff out bombs.  Jesse tries to train Sam-Sam to find treats hidden in plastic containers, but that ongoing project hasn't gone very far.  She gains a new friend, who is also picked-on because he won't hit.  Between the two of them, they start their own detective agency.  How will they deal with the local bullies and adults with other problems?  Will they solve the mystery of the theft in time to keep Jesse's father from going to jail?  And how will they deal with the apocalypse of a tornado?

This is a wonderful read, teaching about kids with ASD and how they see and handle the world in all its weirdness.  It's also going to hit my best of the year list.

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang (2018) Harper Voyager

A war orphan makes her way into a military academy and learns military and arcane arts to serve her empress.  War comes, interrupting her studies and forces the harsh realities of inhumanity into her experiences.  Will she survive?  Will she make a difference?
The writing varies from sophomoric romantic wishes to clear vengeance.  I’ll read the rest of the series because what it does best is leave you wondering what happens next.

Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile by Bernard Waber (1965) Houghton Mifflin

The second book about Lyle the Crocodile.  It completes the storyline in the movie of the same name.  Only here, Mr. Grump lives a couple of doors done from the Prims (not in the same building).  Mr. Grump really does find a way to get Lyle sent to the zoo.  But the resolution is different, yet still satisfying.

Best Books I Read in 2022:

This year I read 89 books.  These are what I consider the best of the list (in the order I read the books).

1.      The House on the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune (2020) Tor Books

This was the first book I read in 2022 and it still hits my best of the year.  It's a book about how prejudice and hatemongering affect the most innocent of lives.  In a world where there are magical beings, a government branch is responsible for the orphanages where magical children are kept – ostensibly to keep them safe from the world and the world safe from them.  An inspector, who has closed some orphanages because they abused the children, is sent to the most secret of these on an island.  There, he encounters beings like he never has before.  These are considered the most dangerous of magical beings.  But they are all children and they’re just doing what children do; they dream of a better life.

2.      Britt-Marie was Here by Fredrik Backman (2016) Simon & Schuster

Two months went by before I found a book worthy enough of hitting this list.  It's about a woman who was cheated on and insists on making a new life elsewhere and finds it hard to change, and then finds herself changed anyway, by life, by people, by understanding more about herself.

Britt Marie has let life pass her by, watching her father, then her mother, give-up over time since the death of their other daughter, spending her time raising her husband’s children, and taking care of him  Then he had a heart attack and the other woman called her.  Britt-Marie saw that he was on the mend, then went home, packed a bag and left.  Now she’s in Borg, a small town that has been shutting down, working as the caretaker of the Recreation Center.  She’s inherited a soccer team, actually just a group of local kids.  She likes things to be neat and tidy.  So, she changes Borg, and it changes her.

3.      The Magician's Lie by Greer Macallister (2015) Sourcebooks Landmark

An interesting take on magic and illusion.  A woman who performs illusions runs from the scene where a man who is assumed to be her husband has been killed with the tools of sawing the man in half.  But is she a murderess, or the victim of domestic violence who has been pursued by a man who is not her husband?  This kept me on the edge of my seat throughout the book.

4.      A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (2016) Viking

Half-way through the year I found another gem, one I had avoided.  At first glance, this book seemed off-putting in that the subject appeared to be rather boring.  It is anything but boring.  We follow the life of a Russian Count after the Bolsheviks have come to power.  If not for a poem attributed to him, they would have summarily shot the aristocrat.  Instead, they exile him to the Metropol hotel for life.  Instead of going crazy in his confinement, he makes friends.  He dines with a man from the KGB.  He lets a little girl drag him all over the hotel.  She grows up and has a child, which he must raise after the mother follows her exiled husband to Siberia.  He waits tables in the hotel's restaurant.  All through the narrative, his observations, his wit, his charm is evident.  Mr. Towles has done such a superb job with characterization, that it takes but a sentence to know who is speaking or thinking.  Easily the best book I've read in the past year, this should have gone up for a Pulitzer.

5.      The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo (2009) Candlewick

Two more months went by before I read this book.  DiCamillo is a wonderful writer.  There is a distinct plot, there is a full cast of characters who are important to the story and who you come to care about, including the elephant, a dog, an orphan, a boy, a policeman and his wife, even an old soldier and a beggar, and of course, a magician.  Every promise in the book is fulfilled, even those you do not realize are promises until they are fulfilled.

6.      The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams (2022) Random House

There are few books that I label as important - this is one of them.  The story follows Esme, the daughter of a worker on the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.  As a child, she sits below her father’s desk and looks at the word slips the fall from the tables.  At one point she is sent to a boarding school with disastrous effect on her life.  She notices over time that the words not included in the printed work are about women.  She becomes friends with a brother and sister in the suffrage movement.  With him, she bears a child, who is adopted by friends who move to Australia.  She starts collecting these lost words and eventually they become a book titled Women’s Words and their Meanings.  At the same time as this immense project takes place, the world changes.  War comes and with it is the loss of many of the workers on the dictionary, including a compositor with whom she fell in love.  You will laugh at parts, be angry at others, and cry tears.  But you will read a very well written book and find it a satisfying read.

7.      Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford (2009) Ballentine Books

A marvelously intriguing book.  This is the story of a Chinese American boy in Seattle who befriended a Japanese American girl in 1942.  It follows the journey of the boy whose father is viciously anti-Japanese since they took over his native China.  Parallel to this is the same boy grown into a man who has lost his Chinese wife and discovers that the Panama Hotel has artifacts in its basement that were left by Japanese families when they were ‘evacuated’ during the war.  A jazz saxophone player provides a connecting role between the two time periods.  The writing is rich with poetic similes and observations of the human condition between generations and with young and old love.

8.      The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn (2022) William Morrow

Ms. Quinn becomes better with each book.  Her blend of accurate historical fact with fiction teaches us about lesser known, but important people in history and makes their stories memorable.  In this book we learn about a heroic woman who wanted to be a historian but would not let the invasion of her country go unanswered.  She responded by becoming one of World War II’s best snipers.  Read her story as she became Lady Death to the Nazi’s and did everything she could, even when not carrying a gun, to help defeat the worst megalomaniac in the twentieth century.

9.      Fairy Tale by Stephen King (2022) Scribner

Stephen King wrote a masterful tale, reminiscent of his collaboration with Peter Straub,  that involves a boy, a dog, other worlds, and something out of H.P. Lovecraft.  The hero is a seventeen-year-old boy who saves an old man’s life and finds his own life changed.  There are secrets and more dangerous secrets.  There are worlds of discovery, and more people who need the hero’s help.  A coming-of-age story that shapes a boy into a man.  This gripping tale kept me awake late into the night wanting to know what happens next through more than 600 pages.

10.   The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna (2022) Berkley

In the last month of the year I found this book and liked the title.  I liked the book even better. The witches only meet on the third Thursday of every third month.  And they never meet in the same place twice.  This is very inconvenient, but very safe, or so the leader, Primrose, tells them.  Witches should live alone and stay away from entanglements.  Which is all very good, except their youngest member, Mika Moon, has been asked to tutor a set of three young witches who have been hidden by a very powerful witch.  This can change everything, for the three girls, for Mika, for Primrose, and all the other witches.  A good read, it combines urban fantasy and romance.

 As you can see in this list, I read current books as well as books published in earlier years.  I don't finish a book I don't like, so winnowing the list down to the best requires extraordinary writing.  If I were to add a non-fiction book to the list, it would be the audio version of Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft - it includes after words by his sons and is a delight to hear.

My reading list will keep me busy for the next decade and will grow as good books become available.  

The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna (2022) Berkely

The witches only meet on the third Thursday of every third month.  And they never meet in the same place twice.  This is very inconvenient, but very safe, or so the leader, Primrose, tells them.  Witches should live alone and stay away from entanglements.  Which is all very good, except their youngest member, Mika Moon, has been asked to tutor a set of three young witches who have been hidden by a very powerful witch.  This can change everything, for the three girls, for Mika, for Primrose, and all the other witches.  A fun read, it combines urban fantasy and romance.

The House on East 88^th Street (Lyle Crocodile) by Bernard Waber (1962) Houghton Mifflin

This is the story of a performer and a crocodile that can do what other crocodiles don’t do.  The movie followed the book closely, plus embellishments to fill-out the time and give the main character a fuller story.  The family that moves into the apartment on East 88^th street is the same, and Lyle’s lovability is the same.  But the story in the book is much shorter.  Still, it makes me want to read the other books in the series.

Murder Past Due by Miranda James (2010) Berkley

The first of the Cat in the Stacks cozy mystery series.  The amateur sleuth is a widowed library archivist at a Mississippi college.  He has a Main Coon cat that is very people friendly and boarder who is going to college.  Then there is the guy no one liked in high school or college or since who has gone on to be a famous best-selling thriller writer who is the biological father of the boarder, the boarder’s mother, a half-brother that very few people knew about, the chief librarian, whose ex-wife married the writer, the chief librarian’s assistant also known has the gossip clearing house for the town, and someone who has a big secret related to the writer.  There is also the archivist’s housekeeper and her daughter who is the interim chief of detectives in the sheriff’s office who wants to find the murderer – of the writer.

Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree (2022) Cryptid Press

A very entertaining first novel.  An orc who doesn’t want to go adventuring or fighting anymore, opens a coffee shop, hires a succubus as a barista, gets help converting a livery to her store and faces the local protection racketeer.  Her former crew is a mixed blessing of help and danger.  But the lesson here is one we can all use.  I hope to see more from Mr. Baldree.