We’re almost done with this, um, interesting year. That in itself is cause to celebrate. We’ve weathered wild fires, more named hurricanes than ever, floods, the virus, quarantines, murder hornets. The list is endless. You name it, it has happened in 2020. Even though there’s one dark month ahead, we’ve got some books that would be good to give to friends and family. Strange things happen in books of speculative fiction. Strange things are happening in 2020. Forewarned is forearmed. And didn’t someone just find a monolith in Utah?
Amanda Baldeneaux recommends Fantastic Women: 18 Tales of the Surreal and the Sublime from Tin House
Elevator Pitch: If reality is a little too much these days, take a hiatus into fantastical stories that range in weirdness from life-like-dream-that-takes-odd-turn to straight bonkers.
Great Gift for: The reader in your life who says “I should read more women” but perhaps needs a nudge to do so. The reader in your life who fantasizes about wandering off in the woods to find a cottage by a brook with smoke coming out of a chimney, a cottage that may or may not be bigger on the inside and/or made of edible walls. The reader in your life who appreciates angering ancient elf kings and drinking them under the table. Running or swimming naked by moonlight optional.
Good paired with: spiced gingerbread, foraged mushrooms, and a mug of tea that may or may not have been gifted by a ghost.
Price: $18.95 paperback
Thickness rating: It’s a short story collection, so like a room that is round on the outside but has corners on the inside, it’s as long or as short as you like at any given moment.
Corey Dahl recommends Barbara Comyns’ Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead
Elevator pitch: This book starts with a deadly flood, then there’s a suicide, then there’s a town-wide plague caused by tainted bread. You’ll like it. It’s funny.
Great gift for: Anyone who can find humor in disaster, a.k.a. your British relatives.
Good paired with: A slice of that non-tainted sourdough you’ve been baking all year.
Price: $16 from Dorothy
Thickness rating: 200 pages, so like three episodes of Queen’s Gambit
Lisa Mahoney: Recommends Infinite Stars edited by David Weber
Elevator Pitch: Do you need to find another great space opera but aren’t sure you want to invest the time reading entire first books of a series you may not like? This book, edited by David Weber, collects short stories and novellas from authors well known for their popular military sci-fi and space opera series. These are additional adventures, not excerpts from the books in the series. Also included are past masterpieces by authors whose works defined the genre, including a Miles Vorkosigan adventure by Lois McMaster Bujold, a story from the author of the Dragonriders of Pern, and a rare tale co-authored by the screenwriter for The Empire Strikes Back. Nebula and Hugo Award winners, New York Times bestsellers, and Science Fiction Grand Masters—these authors take us to the farthest regions of space.
Great Gift for: those short on time but high in determination to get lost in a great new series, also great for your teenager who needs more exposure.
Good paired with: a flight of diverse wines to match the diverse writing voices
Price: $24.95 in hardcover from Penguin Random House
Thickness rating: nearly 500 pages of action-packed adventure!
Danyelle Overbo recommends Bringing Down the Duke by Evie Dunmore
Elevator Pitch: I was going to go with something more thematically appropriate like The Power by Naomi Alderman (which I’ve recommended for summer reading before), but let’s face it, we all deserve a little levity these days. Bringing Down the Duke is a well-written romantic historical fiction about a down on her luck heroine who gets unwillingly swept into the rise of the suffragist movement in England. It’s sweet, swoon-worthy, and delightful. Do your book-loving friends a favor and get them something with a, ahem, happy ending.
Great Gift for: Those who love novels like Pride and Prejudice (who doesn’t??)
Good paired with: A box of chocolates or (if you want a gold medal in gift-giving) its sequel A Rogue of One’s Own, which is also delightful and an even better fit for our times, politically speaking.
Price: $15.00
Thickness rating: Low to medium, fast read
C.S. Peterson recommends The Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
Elevator Pitch: Time travel exists in the near future. Oxford historians use it to study the past, but there is a structure to time that prevents paradox and sometimes you don’t land exactly where you hope. We follow two protagonists. The first is Kivrin Engle, who plans to travel back to 1328 Oxford, just before the black death ripped through the community. Her costume and cover story are perfect, and she is fully vaccinated, just in case. But the structure of time “slips” a bit. She lands in 1348, just as the Black Death begins to sweep through England.
The second protagonist is Kivrin’s supervisor, Professor James Dunworthy. In the future Britain of the 21st century a viral pandemic begins to sweep through the country. Dunworthy tries to locate the actual time when Kivrin has landed, while Brits quarantine to slow the spread. Hospitals and front line medical workers are overwhelmed.
Ms. Willis won both the Hugo and the Nebula for this work in 1992. This year it reads as both prescient and practical.
Great Gift for: Anyone who needs a break from Doom scrolling, but can’t stop thinking about COVID.
Good paired with: An evening (or several evenings) in. Start with a nice dinner of steak and kidney pie. Afterwards, cuddle up your feet in warm woolen socks. Prop up your piggies in front of a log fire, or watch one on your computer. Drink some hot, mulled wine and sink into the pages of Willis’s masterwork.
Price: $9.00 (Splurge and get the real, physical, book. Crack the spine. Bend the pages)
Thickness rating: 50 pages a night will get you through the twelve darkest days of Yuletide this year.
Photo credit: Jessie Eastland
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We’re almost done with this, um, interesting year. That in itself is cause to celebrate. (photo credit:Patrick A. Mackie)