Now that the new year is well and truly underway, it’s finally time to take a look back at 2023 (I loathe the “best of the year” lists that start popping up in October). This year I’ve decided to split my thoughts in two, leading off with books and music this week, with movies, TV, and podcasts coming next week.

BOOKS

Going back through my Goodreads data for the past year I was shocked to see that I only read one “new” book that was actually released in 2023, John Scalzi’s Starter Villain.

It’s about what you’d expect from Scalzi these days, a fun, quick read that succeeds in doing what it sets out to do, which is entertain. The setup involves an everyman who finds out that his deceased uncle was part of a Dr. Evil-style collection of global supervillains and he’s been picked to take his place. There are a lot of hilarious ideas (not just talking cats as you might expect from the cover, but talking dolphins with labor issues) and snappy dialogue, but I kind of wish the main character had been a little more seduced by the “dark side.” He never really has to grapple with whether to be a villain. Nonetheless, recommended if you’re into that kind of thing.

What of older books I read last year? There were several good ones.

The first is kind of a cheat, as I mentioned the film adaptation in my round up last year, The Wonder by Emma Donoghue, from 2016.

Lately I’ve taken to watching a movie or TV series based on a book and then going back and reading to book to see how they compare. I’m of the “books and movies/TV shows are different” camp, without one being better than the other, necessarily. That said, the novel here has some interesting layers, thanks to the point of view, that the movie couldn’t really get into. As someone who, in my day job, sometimes has to meet delusional people on their own ground in order to represent them, the struggle of the rational, scientific main character here to connect with the religiously-minded family she’s inserted into really worked for me.

The other most interesting work of fiction I read last year was R.F. Kuang’s Babel, from 2022:

I wrote a bit about it here. The more distance I’ve had from it the more I liked it, which is always a good sign. Plus, the magic system Kuang uses there informed the one I have in my current WIP, so it was definitely an influence.

As for nonfiction, I had several runs of multiple books on the same topic – World War I, the French Revolution & Napoleonic Wars, the recent history of Israel/Palestine – one of which was the War of 1812, generally considered an “unknown” war here in the United States. My favorite read of that bunch was The Civil War of 1812, by Alan Taylor (from 2010).

Taylor’s thesis is that the United States’ northern border with Canada (still a British colony at that point) was really more of a concept than a reality at the time, with a large population of British loyalists from the US fleeing into Canada after Revolutionary War. As a result, there were families pit against each other, former business partners, etcetera, in what was a really nasty conflict. A different perspective, which is always important for history.

The other non-fiction highlight for me was David Graan’s Killers of the Flower Moon from 2017.

Of course, this was because of the impending release of Martin Scorsese’s film adaptation, which I haven’t been able to see yet. I know the movie’s not organized in the same way as the book and for good reason. For two-thirds of its time Killers is an interesting exploration of murder cases of the Osage and the struggle for oil money. It’s in the last third, however, that we see that the story Graan has told thus far isn’t unique or extraordinary – it was very much business as usual all across Osage territory. It was a slow motion ethnic cleansing and it happened within the lifetimes of many. 

MUSIC

Thankfully, 2023 itself was  little more robust when it comes to music, as there were several excellent releases that caught my attention from the year.

The first of those is the long-awaited new solo album from Mike Keneally, The Thing that Knowledge Can’t Eat.

This is the kind of album Keneally hasn’t done for a while, just a collection of songs that shows off his amazing range as a player, writer, and arranger. I mean, the thing starts out with a song that’s just layered vocals and sparse piano about the beauty of logos. From there it shifts through art pop, metal riffing (with a Steve Vai guest appearance), and even Zappa-esque big band (with an assist from the Metropole Orkest). What’s more, it all works together. It reminds me of the great Gentle Giant albums where each track sounded different from the others but they all sounded like they belonged together. Appropriately enough, the drummer on the last track, “The Carousel of Progress,” is none other than Malcom Mortimore of . . . Gentle Giant.

The other new album that really grabbed me, to my surprise, is Steven Wilson’s The Harmony Codex.

I probably liked his prior effort, The Future Bites, than most people, but it was really uneven. And when individual tracks from The Harmony Codex started coming out they didn’t particularly grab me. I’m glad I still got the album, but this really is an album that needs to be digested in one sitting. Like the Keneally album it covers a lot of stylistic ground, with the electronic elements blended in more successfully than The Future Bites. This was really a pleasant surprise and it pleases me when someone with so much out there, like Wilson, can still surprise me.

As for “new to me” albums, well, I’m a sucker for great band names (likewise, I’m happy to buy a bottle of wine simply because of a cool label), so when I stumbled across The Helicopter of the Holy Ghost on Bandcamp there was no doubt I was going to check them out.

What I found was a sad, but hopeful, backstory. In 2001, musician Billy Reeves was in a car wreck, which resulted in him spending two weeks in a coma. In 2017, Reeves’ brother gave him a pair of mini-discs that had been in the car with demos Reeves had been working on – only now he had no memory of them at all. Bringing in other musicians to help complete the work, those demos became The Helicopter of the Holy Ghost’s album Afters. As you might expect, the music has a melancholy quality that reminds me in some spots of Robert Wyatt’s solo work. Lots of piano and lush vocals push things along. Good with headphones (or earbuds).

My other Bandcamp surprise for the year was another grower, No Past No Future by Spacemoth.

It starts out as a very noisy, buzzy synth-pop/psychedelic record, which is cool in its own right, but goes on to mellow and stretch out a bit in the second half. By the time we reach the title track and the end you’re in a completely different headspace, although the buzzy edge remains. Very cool and another real album that deserves consideration as such.

That’s it for sounds and words. Next up, them newfangled moving pictures!