Word Salad: Everything I Read in 2021
The old, the new, and the Herculean task of working through my TBR pile.
Like most people caught in the ideological vice grip of late-stage capitalism, I have a consumption problem. Which is to say, more pointedly, that I own wayyyyy too many books.
Look, while I don’t collect many things—vinyl LPs, bootleg t-shirts for assorted ‘90s film ephemera, tattoo flash art—I do find it obscenely difficult to part with books even after I’ve read them front to back and harbour absolutely zero desire to read them ever again.
In truth, I’ll often find myself gleefully putting through an order for a selection of new books just as my rational brain catches up with the pesky, impulsive lizard brain and politely asks: “What the fuck are doing?” … I don’t know, man. I just love books, okay? Leave me alone.
Anyway, here’s a list of everything I read in 2021 because I like keeping track of this stuff and because spreadsheets look nice with conditional formatting. I also plan on reading double the amount of books this year and I’ll probably let those sit on the shelf for the rest of eternity, too. So, ahhh, deal with it, I guess?
Fiction
Robert McKee – Story (1997)
Okay, well, this isn’t strictly fiction. In fact, it’s actually non-fiction about the art of writing fiction. So, that counts, right? (*waits for the confused nodding of heads*) Cool. Anyway, I like reading books on screenwriting rather than straight narrative fiction, mainly because I feel that these mediums are far more interlinked than people give them credit for. Also, I watch a lot of films and constantly complain about lazy, terrible scripts, so a little research goes a long way when it comes to being the Insufferable Rant King and Uber Movie Buzzkill.
Raymond Chandler – The Big Sleep (1939), Farewell, My Lovely (1940) & The Long Goodbye (1953)
For years now, I’ve wanted to get into noir. You know, just be the ‘noir’ guy for a while. Looks like fun. So, I have an entire hard drive full of classic noir films from the 40s and 50s to sift through but, before that undertaking, I thought I’d go straight to the source and knock out a few classic Chandler novels. The Marlowe stories are his best work and it’s wild to think this guy was writing dialogue this crisp and painfully laugh-out-loud funny nearly a century ago.
Ted Chiang – Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)
I was doing research for some academic work this year (see Mark Fisher’s The Weird and the Eerie below) that involved watching the 2016 film Arrival. While I was doing these multiple re-watches, it occurred to me that I hadn’t read the original short story the film was based on: Chiang’s 1998 novella “Story of Your Life”. So, I rectified that situation immediately and dived into Chiang’s brilliant short story collection. These stories are daring, highly conceptional, and at times reminiscent of Borges’ more playful writing with a noticeable sci-fi bent.
James S.A. Corey – Leviathan Falls (2021)
I’ve been reading the Expanse novels by James S.A. Corey (the collective pen name used by collaborators Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) for almost an entire decade now. Not only are they some of the most acclaimed sci-fi novels of the 20th century, but they also spawned one of the best sci-fi TV series of all time. Endings suck but they’re essential to establishing the legacy of a work of art and how it will be remembered (*cough Star Wars cough Games of Thrones cough*). Leviathan Falls is a strong finish for book #9 and a neat closure to this trilogy of trilogies, acting as the perfect sendoff for the crew of the Rocinante.
Lindsay Ellis – Axiom’s End (2020)
Ellis has long been one of my favourite YouTubers (now ex-YouTubers, I guess), so when I heard that she was writing a book, and a sci-novel to boot, I jumped at the chance to read it. There’s an intriguing alternate history premise here that centres around domestic U.S. politics, surveillance state shenanigans, and the perils of first contact, alongside some creative character choices. Highly enjoyable, and I’m excited to see where the Noumena series goes from here.
Arkady Martine – A Desolation Called Peace (2021)
When I heard that Martine’s debut novel, 2019’s A Memory Called Empire, had won the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novel, I wasn’t surprised in the slightest. It’s a fascinating novel that uses linguistics to interrogate concepts like memory, trauma, and the scale of imperialism. Add to that intricate world-building and exceptional pacing and you’ve got a recipe for one damn good novel. Suffice to say, I went into Martine’s sequel here with some slight trepidation. Thankfully, A Desolation Called Peace mostly lived up to the high standard of the first book.
Ada Palmer – Perhaps The Stars (2021)
I came to Palmer’s Terra Ignota series in 2018 and absolutely devoured the first three entries: Too Like the Lightning (2016), Seven Surrenders (2017), and The Will to Battle (2017). There’s just something about the universe she builds—at once baroque and anachronistic while also being deeply technical, far-flung, and adventurous—that captivated my inner philosophy nerd and simply would not let go. After an agonising three year wait, we finally arrive at the series conclusion with Perhaps The Stars. Was it everything I thought it would be? Yes and no. I’m still parsing the implications of the text and I can see myself re-reading the series many times over to fully come to grips with Palmer’s genius.
Adrian Tchaikovsky – Children of Ruin (2019)
Okay, so as I’m sure you can tell by the banner above, I’ve been doing a lot of catch-up work on Tchaikovsky lately. He’s one of contemporary sci-fi’s most consistent and hard-working writers. This sequel to Childen of Time (2015) takes his idea of animals lifted into the realm of sentience through failed human terraforming efforts and extends it from far-future arachnid society to an ocean planet populated by violent, higher-intelligence cephalopods. It’s brilliant.
Adrian Tchaikovsky – The Doors of Eden (2020)
This standalone novel centres around the discovery of portals (or windows; gateways perhaps) between alternate reality Earth’s, and the implications this discovery has for the novel’s protagonist—a lonely and confused cryptid hunter—and human civilization in general. While the main story is a welcome ride in of itself, the real joy comes from the novel’s alternate chapters, where Tchaikovsky takes the voice of one of his academic characters and writes a chronicle on each alternate Earth through various geological epochs, describing the fanciful sentient creatures that dwell there. Breathtaking stuff and sci-fi at its very best.
Adrian Tchaikovsky – Shards of Earth (2021)
Moving into space opera territory, this novel is the beginning of a new series for Tchaikovsky that feels like it’s stepping into Becky Chambers territory. The contours here are certainly familiar: a rag-tag crew of misfits and rebels from different extraterrestrial species, hustling and bartering their way through a hazardous galaxy, ultimately finding family and kinship in the process. While it’s a tried and true formula, Tchaikovsky sets this universe apart by immediately raising the stakes and putting characters in danger from the jump.
Adrian Tchaikovsky – The Expert System’s Brother (2018) & The Expert System’s Champion (2021)
In this collection of novellas, Tchaikovsky starts out with the bones of a boiler-plate fantasy saga before gradually revealing the fate of a fallen colony and the society that emerges from the ruins of civilisation, as humanity’s remnants struggle to adjust and adapt to an ever-changing alien world. Digestible and inventive, The Expert’s System universe is a well-needed throwback to the days of landmark sci-fi pulp.
Non-fiction
Noam Chomsky & Edward Herman – Manufacturing Consent (1988)
This has long been the gold standard of media literacy, ideological criticism, and a withering excoriation of deliberate political maleficence. Also, if you want further proof that we’re living in an entrenched neoliberal hellscape, consider that Chomsky & Herman published this masterwork in 1988 (also, coincidentally, the year of my birth) and it could just as easily apply to our dumpster fire world of 2022. Love that for us. Hooray for lost futures.
Noam Chomsky & Marv Waterstone – Consequences of Capitalism (2021)
This was a great companion to Manufacturing Consent, mainly because I wanted to see how Chomsky’s thoughts on the role of media and the changing political landscape given our increasing focus on transformative digital technology. Unsurprisingly, the main takeaway here is a bleak one, with the only ray of sunshine being that Gen Z and others will (hopefully) embrace the power of radical action, political dissent, and mass civil disobedience.
Matt Colquhoun – Egress: Mourning, Melancholy and Mark Fisher (2020)
A moving tribute to the late Mark Fisher from one of his former grad students at Goldsmiths. Touching, insightful, and messy in all the ways that good philosophy should be. Plus the chapter on Westworld rules.
Mark Fisher – Postcapitalist Desire (2021)
This is a posthumous collection of Fisher’s final lectures in the weeks leading up to his death, taken from course transcripts and edited by Matt Colquhoun, including a full outline for the work Fisher’s grad students would have covered in rounding out the course. The book offers a fascinating glimpse into the thought space and real-world discussions with Fisher ‘the man’ rather than just Fisher ‘the philosopher’ and public intellectual. It’s also a real shame then that we’ll never get to read Acid Communism in full, but there are still hints of creative greatness here scattered among Fisher’s final weeks.
Grafton Tanner – The Hours Have Lost Their Clock: The Politics of Nostalgia (2021)
Nostalgia is big business when it comes to popular entertainment and it is inarguably the pervasive cultural attitude of our time. (See my review of The Matrix Resurrections for exactly why that is and why it sucks.) Grafton Tanner does a beautiful job here laying out the historical context and nuances surrounding nostalgia as an ideological concept, a former medical affliction, and an integral function of humanity’s latent socio-political impulses.
Richard D. Wolff – Understanding Socialism (2021)
Everyone always talks shit about socialism but I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that no one actually knows what it is, where it came from, and why it’s so often demonised and vilified. So, at the risk of falling into the trap of ignorance myself, I sought out American Marxian economist Richard D. Wolff’s explainer on the subject. It’s a meticulous, well-researched, and powerful argument for the need for socialist thinking and action in the 21st century.
Dan Ozzi – Sellout: The Major-Label Feeding Frenzy That Swept Punk, Emo, and Hardcore (2021)
I was hanging out to read this book all year and it did not disappoint. Ozzi is one of my favourite writers and one of our generation’s foremost scene historians. This book is a real treasure for anyone with even a passing interest in punk, emo, and hardcore lore. Read my full review of Sellout here.
Re-reads
Kim Stanley Robinson – Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993) & Blue Mars (1996)
We’re rapidly approaching the twentieth anniversary of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars, which essentially set the standard for expansive and intricate hard sci-fi worldbuilding. So, I spent much of last year revisiting the Mars Trilogy (Red, Green and Blue Mars) and its loose thematic sequel, 2312. If you enjoy stories about terraforming, socialism, and human potential, this is for you.
Kim Stanley Robinson – 2312 (2012)
While the Mars Trilogy has the red planet as its primary focus (with a brief detour to a drowned and wounded Earth), 2312 takes Robinson’s future timeline and stretches it across the entire solar system through a human diaspora that’s colonised nearly every planet, moon and asteroid in the Sol neighbourhood. Oh, and it has fleshy quantum AI androids and space orgies too, so that’s cool.
Mark Fisher – The Weird and the Eerie (2016)
This was a necessary re-read, mainly because I was asked to deliver two lectures for a Gothic Fiction course at UQ with The Weird and the Eerie as focus. The text was Fisher’s final work before his death in late 2016 and it stands as a fascinating entry in his oeuvre. Fisher interrogates the traditional modes of the Gothic (horror and terror) before arguing for the recognition of new operative modes (the weird and the eerie) in contemporary literature, television, and film.
Cormac McCarthy – Blood Meridian; or The Evening Redness in the West (1985)
Here it is. The novel to end all novels. This is my favourite book of all time and I’ve read it at least once a year for almost a decade. I also spent a good ten months of my life reading and re-reading Blood Meridian for my Honours thesis in 2019 (along with the rest of McCarthy’s corpus) and I now own three different copies of the text, all of varying sentimental value.
I love this book dearly and if you ask anyone close to me, they’d likely tell you that I just won’t shut up about it. And, look, I make no apologies for this fact. I am a McCarthy simp through and through. As Judge Holden makes all too clear:
“The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.”