This Girl's Wish List - 2016

The self-inflicted multi-layered assemble I donned on the school outdoor field trip yesterday had little effect on combatting an encroaching sinus infection. Every Canadian knows if the sun shines brilliantly on a December day, it be cold outside. 

Winter's harsh beauty has materialized in southern Ontario, leaving many scrambling for adequate toques, parkas and excuses to stay home. My entire life has been snow-themed, be it Nova Scotian towering heaps of shovelled snow, -40 Yukon nights lit up by the northern lights, to prairie blizzards that tried to steal not only your breath but your soul. There is little I find not thrilling about this time of year especially with December representing winter's golden moment. The month is a little ball of cold happiness amongst the long stretch of frozen roads, future potholes and a deep longing for the green of regrowth.

Nestled within my little snow globe of happiness are my books. Past years have hallmarked some incredible novels, all arriving under the tree, thanks to Santa. And as I look out onto a city buzzing with Thursday activity, immune to the frigid snap in the breeze, I wonder what little gems will be wrapped up this year. 2016 will not be recorded in the annals of this girl's reading history as wondrous. The passing of my dear Dad left me quite beyond the ability to concentrate. Thankfully the whodunnits saw me through, bringing glimpse of joy during great moments of sadness. Laughing as my husband and I try to unsuccessfully straighten our Christmas tree, I take heart knowing I am doing exactly what Dad hoped, being me.

Of course, to be me, a list is in order. 

Unwilling to scourge the internet for 'best of' recommendations that inevitability reflect commercial sales I went to the Mothership, Megan at From Couch to Moon. My source for all things SF worthy, I take note, when this lady likes a book, going as far as sourcing most of my 2015's This Girl's Reading Wish List from her blog. 

Megan is the SF boss lady we all need in our lives, thus I humbly link you to her post, The Best SF I Read This Year. This is the sweet nectar of heaven, a gift of gifts, which frankly has left me gleeful with reading anticipation. What with this list, and Babylon's Ashes, James S. A. Corey's new installment to The Expanse series, reading life is looking snowstorm rosy.

The Novel to Gift: A Review of The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin

The after-school playground hour is one of mindless observations intermixed with moments of delightful correspondence. While many a conversation trips over the trappings of parenthood some wind down the science fiction path to life. Although the majority of my friends have little proclivity to explore the genre, there are a few like-minded space odyssey aficionados at my kid's school. Okay, there are two.

Recent months, an updated version of the chain mail has been circulating through social media: send a book to a stranger, in return receive a plethora of new titles in the mail. Smitten, my SF friend (one of the two) was discussing the merits of joining, questioning what book to gift. Intrigued, speculations rose: a novel could not be too popular, nor too polarizing, somewhat enlightening, and most definitely captivating. Making my way home, my wee one in tow, my head swam with book gifting possibilities.

A book snob who rarely branches beyond my personal havens of science fiction, and mysteries, the probability of me participating in a book exchange is zero. Further hindering the issue is my two year library-only policy that has curbed all notions of ownership. While I would love to read 50 new titles, the thrill of them arriving by mail is slightly daunting. Simply unable to release reading control to a group of strangers, I began to formulate a list of books that any SF geek would be jubilant in receiving, whittling down the list to one.

Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness is acclaimed as one of the best science fiction novels written, and while it may seem slightly antiquated under the microscope of 2016 with its androgynous, feminist perspective, in 1970 it was a landmark release. 

Genly Ai, an envoy of Ekumen, a loose confederacy of planets has been sent to Gethem (Winter) to negotiate a peaceful allegiance. Accustomed to the utopian 'Gene Roddenbary' vision of planet federations, Winter's fractioned nations with varying degrees of governmental representations, surprisingly feels modern in its accurateness. Seeped in ethnocentricity's, the social consciences is brutally unaware of their small role in the universe. Genly Ai struggles to lobby his way to a seemingly random King's ear to discover after a year of hardship that not only is his mission but his life is in jeopardy. A fugitive, lost on a planet whose entire cultural identity opposes his very sense of self, Genly Ai must negotiate his way through a myriad of physical and social adversities, relying upon someone he most certainly should not trust.   

The Left Hand of Darkness is an extraneous reading experience. Woven from two opposing perspectives, the reader's complete emersion is necessary. Thankfully, Ursula K. Le Guin is one of a few writers whose creative control concurrently questions social norms while offering an engaging page turner. This is a dense book, deep with layered world-building, taking on a legendary status within the science fiction literary world. The Left Hand of Darkness  is science fiction at it's very best.  

Friends: A Review of All The Birds In The Sky, Charlie Jane Anders

Operatic singing meanders down the staircase from my child's room as he negotiates his world through lego, all while the hubby smugly slumbers. As the house dances with the rhythms of Tuesday morning, my thoughts slip to friendship. My particular slant to friend bonding is a response to the giggles; if you can follow my joke, and even better, best it, I am yours. While I accumulate new peeps, and meander out of the lives of others, only a few have ever been like-minded readers. Not that someone I adore must shine their geek light as brightly as I, but it is rather odd that my overarching passion for SF books has always been a solo pursuit. 

Always is so defiant in it's absoluteness that as I finish All The Birds In The Sky by Charlie Jane Anders, I realize that my proclivity to fantastical tales is thanks in large part to a teacher friend. The life of an ELS instructor is an odd bag of crazy; the love affair with the place fluctuates from intensely hateful to achingly glorious. Self-perceived as the outsider, colleagues become fast friends, even family within weeks of meeting. Hence my clandestine friendship with a punk-ass girl from Portland, who brought the fun to a small, Japanese rice-village but a wide appreciation for American surrealistic lit. 

Remarkably there was a time that I had not read Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, John Kennedy Toole's posthumous delight,  A Confederacy of Dunces, or the poetic compactness of Lewis Nordan's, Lightening Song. Transecting my life for less than a year, this friend directed me down a path of reading that honed my appreciation of novels like All The Birds In The Sky.

Informed she is a witch at a young age, Patricia progresses through the humiliations of teenage-hood despairing in her inability to unlock her full potential. Was that night she was lost in the woods talking to the birds real, or was it her imagination trying to escape her tragic childhood? Lawrence in the meantime lives a life of constant degradation, the classic nerd, he is bullied relentlessly, eventually creating a portable time machine that pushes him into the future by 2 seconds. The small victory of avoiding the moment the egg was too spatter provides his only respite. Reluctant friends, Patricia and Lawrence move through their high school days trying to salvage some dignity from the vitriol that is slung their way. 

The harbinger of the apocalypse, All The Birds In The Sky masquerades as a coming of age story. Patricia and Lawrence shall bring forth the end of days and so they most die. Charlie Jane Anders has the talented ability to weave words into a tapestry of images. This novel ensnarled me, reluctantly unfolding, inspiring my imagination, even questioning my perceptions, all the while firmly entertaining me. It should be rightly shelved with all the fantastically mundane American lit that I have come to love. There is something quite satisfying reading a novel that puts the reader slightly on edge, slightly unhinged as the story begins to reveal itself. All The Birds In The Sky dystopian message is akin to Margaret Atwood's deeply disturbing MaddAddam trilogy, simply offered in a softer package.