Another year of reading has come and gone; this year has felt so long that I can hardly believe some of the books I read in the spring and summer were part of the same year as this fall. Well, I guess that’s why I started keeping track–so I could remember and keep my thoughts sorted. For the most part, my fiction reading ran toward the pulpier and bloodier, while my non-fiction choices were all over the map. As always, I’m only including books and graphic novels I read from cover to cover, so individual issues of comics, magazine articles, and other short reading are not included.

January

The Ninja, Eric Van Lustbader

Wicked Wichita, Joe Stumpe

Wichita Jazz and Vice Between the World Wars, Joshua L. Yearout

February

Hot Summer, Cold Murder, Gaylord Dold

I never met Gaylord Dold, but I occasionally shared space with him in the pages of the Wichita Eagle when I was reviewing the Wichita Symphony and he was reviewing books. His series of detective novels starring private eye Mitch Roberts (of which Hot Summer, Cold Murder is the first) caught my attention because they are set in Wichita in the 1950s; following up two non-fiction examinations of my adopted hometown’s history with Dold’s fictional treatment seemed natural. I was amused to discover that Roberts lived across the street from Lawrence-Dumont Stadium on Sycamore Street, almost exactly where my friend Bill grew up and still lived when I met him in college. Dold passed away in 2018, and Lawrence-Dumont also saw its last season of baseball before being torn down that year. Thus do fixtures of the present recede into the past before our eyes; Century II, Wichita’s downtown performing arts center (and home of the aforementioned Symphony) is probably next on the chopping block. Sigh.

The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture, Glen Weldon

Marshal Law, Pat Mills, Kevin O’Neill, et al

The Tomb, F. Paul Wilson

March

The Touch, F. Paul Wilson

Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations, Georgina Howell

Reborn, F. Paul Wilson

Reprisal, F. Paul Wilson

April

Nightworld, F. Paul Wilson

I read Wilson’s The Keep last year; this year I followed up with the rest of the author’s Adversary Cycle. It’s clear that The Keep, The Tomb, and The Touch were written independently, but Reborn, Reprisal, and Nightworld do a decent job of bringing their settings and characters together. Nightworld, the conclusion to this epic multi-generational fantasy, is so bizarre that I wonder how it would strike a reader picking it up for the first time without having read the preceding installments. It is Wilson’s take on the apocalyptic theme several genre authors toyed with in the mid-’80s, like Stephen King’s The Stand or (I gather) Robert McCammon’s Swan Song, and the earth plunging into an eternal night, against all known astronomical laws, is just the beginning.

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, John Carreyrou

Mister Miracle, Tom King, Mitch Gerads, et al

Super Mario Bros. 2, Jon Irwin

Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Who is Scorpio?, Jim Steranko et al

Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal, Jeffrey J. Kripal

May

The Best Short Stories of J. G. Ballard

Cutie Honey a Go Go!, Shimpei Itoh

I watched the live-action Cutie Honey movie last year and included it in my New Discoveries column, but before that I wasn’t familiar with the character or the manga she starred in at all; this book isn’t the original manga by series creator Go Nagai, but an adaptation of that same live-action film. However, it barely resembles the movie, veering off into a subplot about a sinister girls’ boarding school before returning to the main thread in the last few pages and ending on a cliffhanger. I’ve read plenty of adaptations that depart from the film, either because they were based on an earlier version of the screenplay or because the author seeks to flesh things out in a more novelistic way, but this is something else entirely. In an apologetic afterword, Itoh explains that he had hoped to add elements from the original manga to his adaptation as a tribute to Nagai, but when the serialized strip was canceled he ran out of space and time. “I suck,” he writes. Frankly, I’ve never seen anything like it.

Doctor Sax, Jack Kerouac

Speaking of adaptations, I first became acquainted with this work in an audio adaptation including the voices of Jim Carroll, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and other emeriti of the Beat movement, but I had never read the original book. A digressive, fantastic exploration of Kerouac’s childhood populated by ghosts, vampires, and the enigmatic title character, part Jean Shepherd and part Weird Tales, it’s a reminder that the Beats had roots in pulpier sensibilities.

Die Kitty Die: Heaven and Hell, Dan Parent and Fernando Ruiz

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, Michelle McNamara

June

The Shepherd of the Hills, Harold Bell Wright

Lady into Fox, David Garnett

The Complete Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume Three: Century, Alan Moore, Kevin O’Neill, et al

July

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, Alan Moore, Kevin O’Neill, et al

Lovecraft Country, Matt Ruff

The Gunslinger, Stephen King

Earlier this year I found almost the entire Dark Tower series at a thrift store, missing only one volume (which I later found at the very same store), allowing me to buy the whole series for less than ten dollars. Having polished off F. Paul Wilson’s Adversary Cycle (see above), I figured it was time to tackle another monumental epic of dark fantasy. I doubt I would have made this attempt even a few years ago, but as I mentioned at Halloween, my opinion of King has done a neat 180 over the years, and I’m not one to turn down a find when it comes packaged so conveniently.

August

The Drawing of the Three, Stephen King

September

The Waste Lands, Stephen King

Original Fake, Kirstin Cronn-Mills, art by E. Eero Johnson

Shoot: A Valentino Mystery, Loren D. Estleman

October

The Monk, Matthew G. Lewis

November

Nightmare Abbey, Thomas Love Peacock

Crotchet Castle, Thomas Love Peacock

December

The Druids, Stuart Piggott

As for what’s next: well, after a break I returned to The Dark Tower and am partway through the fourth volume, Wizard and Glass, but I don’t expect to finish that by the end of the year. Beyond that series, I have plenty of books to choose from; as usual, I’ll let my ever-shifting interests guide me in the new year. Happy reading!