2014 list

• How to Be Happy by Eleanor Davis
• Frontier #6: Emily Carroll
• Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi
• Excavation by Wendy Ortiz
• Frontier #5: Sam Alden
• Megahex by Simon Hanselmann
• We Are All COmpletely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
• Luv Sucker #1 & #2 by Charles Forsman
• The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
• Mega by B.L. Holmes
• Over Easy by Mimi Pond
• Through the Woods by Emily Carroll
• Legs Get Led Astray by Chloe Caldwell
• Before You She Was a Pit Bull by Elizabeth Ellen
• Get Over It by Corrine Mucha
• Tampa by Alissa Nutting
• š! #17 'Sweet Romance'
• Conditions on the Ground 1-8 by Kevin Hooyman
• š! #16 'Villages'
• Doomsday Book by Connie Willis
• QU33R, edited by Rob Kirby
• The Sleep of Reason, edited by C. Spike Trotman
• Boy, Bird, Snow by Helen Oyeyemi
• A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski
• Bad Houses by Sara Ryan
• A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar
• The Chicken Queen by Sam Alden
• The Color Master by Aimee Bender
• The Haunted Dolls' House by M.R. James
• This is Between Us by Kevin Sampsell
• The Shining Girls By Lauren Beukes
• Troll's Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales, edited by Ellen Datlow

magic perfume

"In 12 Dates of Christmas, the protagonist has to go on a date with Zack Morris every day for 12 days because she is sprayed by a magical perfume, which I’m assuming is how Ayuhuasca works. She repeats every day, Groundhog Day-style, thinking that if she just finds out what she is doing wrong, the time loop will stop. It takes her about ten days to realize the only reason she became obsessed with marrying her ex-boyfriend is because her mom died. At this point, yes, I cried. I, a 29-year-old man, watching a holiday movie with magical perfume, cried. Because this happened to me, and because it caused me paralyzing anxiety in real life, because grief makes you do things you normally wouldn’t, because grief makes you weird."

How Made-for-TV Movies Help Me Survive the Holidays by Daniel Zomparelli is funny and good and made me feel better today. I greatly dislike Christmas and Christmas media which is why the descriptions of those movies added a particular tension to the reading. My thing is watching British police procedurals, granting the characters/actors nicknames and getting real weird about it.

I miss my dad.

memberships

Before I was a member of the Dead Dad Club, I opened a one-woman chapter of the Dead Brother Club in the city where he is always supposed to love you back. Now I got membership cards spilling from my pockets, tripping me up and buffering my falls.

"The Club has burdens. You can’t bring it up, if you’re young; people get far too uncomfortable and sad for you. If circumstances force you to tell someone about the death, you must immediately be reassuring about just how fine and over it you are. You must act like the death wasn’t tragic. You must act like your relationship with your father was healthy and conventional. You must not be visibly annoyed when people cry and complain and mourn the loss of their grandparents or great-grandparents or their fucking dogs and cats. You must not speak of the Dead Dad Club to a non-member. You must not bring someone into the Club if they are not ready. You must not let membership to the Club visibly taint your relationships, lest you become a girl with D-word Issues. That is the worst fate of all."

Eventually, We All Become Members of the Dead Dad Club by Erika Price with beautiful illustration by  Kara Y. Frame.

YES YES YES.