The Best Things I Read This Year
I’m always telling you guys to read my books. Let’s all take a break, and enjoy me telling you to read THESE books instead.
FLAVOR GIRLS by Loïc Locatelli-Kournwsky with Eros De Santiago
In thinking about this post I’m struck by how many of my favourite things I’ve read this year have been cases where I’ve gone in blind, with no expectations whatsovever. In this case, this comic was an impulse purchase on a (rare these days) visit to an Actual Comic Shop, just based on being really struck by the cover. The art style is so engaging, so appealing - a bright, clear fusion of Japanese and European sensibilities, and it just looks like a fun weird cool time. And that is, it turns out, exactly what is contained inside. It’s a story about a bunch of magical girls with special powers protecting the Earth from an alien invasion (I think?) - which in itself could be a description of about a thousand comics, sure. But it’s all in the execution with these things, and the execution here is so much stranger, darker, more immersive and evocative and emotional, than that one-paragraph description would perhaps lead you to expect.
TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW by Gabrielle Zevin
This year, exhausted and somewhat burnt-out, we got to go away on the kind of holiday one daydreams about but never actually gets to have, the ‘just sit by a swimming pool in the sun with a good book and a nice cold drink’ holiday. The myth, the dream. And this book was THE book. Really the only problem was that it was SO good that I burnt through it in a single day. I can’t remember when I’ve had the chance to just completely lose myself in a story so completely. Another straight-up impulse purchase - I think in this case I just saw the cover somewhere and thought it looked SHINY and COOL - and as it turns out another case of my impulses being actually pretty sound apparently, because this is an absolute stormer of a novel. It’s about games development, and friendship, and love, and different *kinds* of love, and it’s just funny and intense and heartbreaking and brilliant. Honestly, that day I got to spend doing literally nothing but read this book? That was the BEST DAY.
PARIS by Andi Watson and Simon Gane
Just a completely joyful and exhilarating use of the comics medium. I’m not going to have anything to say here that could be nearly as powerful or eloquent as just looking at some of the pages from this thing for yourself, so I would strongly advise you to seek out the creators online - Andi Watson, Simon Gane - and do just that.
GOD HUMAN ANIMAL MACHINE by Meghan O’Gieblyn
A couple of times this year I’ve found myself doing something unusual for me in adult life, which is: reading a book, and then going back and reading it again with a pen and a pad beside me, taking copious notes. I think I sought this out originally after reading an extract in the Guardian, on the author’s experiences test-owning an Aibo robot dog. And there’s a lot in here about robots, and our relationship to them, which of course I am somewhat interested in, in my professional capacity. But it goes so much wider than that, exploring arguments about AI, consciousness, the self, the philosophy of language and the structure of thought. Maybe what struck me most was how unashamed it is to be very personal, honest and autobiographical even while talking about that biggest-of-big-picture stuff; dealing with the author’s own history with mental health issues, substance use and experiences with religion, and tying them together to give an incredibly personal force to her analysis of how some of the oldest and biggest questions we’ve always grappled with as human beings have been reinterpreted and reframed by the last few decades’ breakneck advances in technology. It’s a completely fascinating and engaging book and, for what it’s worth, fed hugely into my thinking as I set about writing the final volume of my fun children’s comic about robots who have lasers.
LDN by RAMZEE
A book-length collection of stories - all written by Ramzee, illustrated by Ramzee himself and a range of collaborators including Lizzie Houdlsworth, Wei Li Wonka and Ilke Misirlioglu - set in different parts of London and using a range of tones, art styles and narrative techniques to present a kaleidoscopic view of life in the city, this is an incredibly ambitious and imaginative use of both the comics medium and the anthology format. The sheer range of approaches here means that probably some of the stories are going to connect more for different readers than others - I think my personal favourites are the slice-of-life / observational comedy saga Generation Skint and the Revenge-Tragedy-On-A-Bus Traps, but you have to admire the sheer versatility on display and the boldness of vision of the thing as a whole.
THE PREMONITIONS BUREAU by Sam Knight
This is the other ‘copious amounts of notes’ book from this year for me. It’s a great piece of journalism, telling a strange and completely fascinating true story I was completely unaware of. In fact, in case you were similarly unaware, let me just share the synopsis from the inside front cover with you here:
What if you had a vision that something very particular and very terrible was going to happen?
A train crash, a department store fire, an assassination. What if you could share your vision, and prevent a disaster?
In 1966, John Barker, a psychiatrist working in an outdated British mental hospital, established the Premonitions Bureau to investigate this very idea. He would find a network of hundreds of correspondents, from bank clerks to ballet teachers. Among them were two highly gifted ‘percipients’. Together, the pair predicted calamities and international incidents with uncanny accuracy. And then, they gave Barker their most disturbing warning: that he was about to die.
…as I say, a terrific story, which Knight tells in a clear and compelling way. But it’s so much more than that, too. The connections Knight makes around the facts here, the wider points about the relationships between thought and reality, are fascinating and honestly haunting. I know I have a tendency to hyperbole, but this book really joined a lot of dots for me, and has kind of changed my thinking about… everything?
THE PHOENIX by Various
I hate to sound predictable, or like a stuck record, or like a company man, or whatever. But it’s ten years in now and this weekly comic for kids continues to be an absolute miracle, honestly. Some recent highlights for me included Adam and Lisa Murphy’s On The Clock - a story based on the winner of this year’s Star In A Comic competition, and as funny, exciting, and delightful a comic as you could hope to read in any given year - Sam Davies’ magical, dark, beautiful and hilarious Tooth and Claw Academy of Magical Creatures, and Jamie Smart’s Bunny VS Monkey. Me recommending Bunny VS Monkey seems maybe slightly redundant at this point, I realise, as in book form it’s tearing up the bestseller lists and consolidating its place as a Genuine Phenomenon in the hearts and minds of children across the country. But it was SO good this year. To be ten years into making a strip, and to be as bold and imaginative and funny and mind-blowing as Jamie was on BVM this year, is genuinely wild to me. Honestly I don’t think the man gets anywhere near enough credit for this thing, and we can talk about whether that’s because our culture has its prejudices about comics, or about children’s books, or about funny books, or whatever it is. But this is a funny comic for children, about talking animals being silly, and it is one of the best things you’re ever going to read.