Facets of Fiction 2025 - the 5 Stars
Presented in chronological order as read throughout the year.
The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story. Olga Tokarczuk. So many vibes. Kind of slow and inexorable, which is perfect for horror when I have a patience.
My Heart is a Chainsaw - Stephen Graham Jones. Lots of name dropping slasher lore that went over my head, but the way the main character Jade obsessively uses story tropes to shield herself from the world made me sympathize with her. Also, hole full of rotten elk meat and viscera, anyone? The water and swimming in this were way freaky. The ending felt abrupt, but fitting. I'm so curious about the next book given the (massive) death toll in this one. It was all a dream, trope? (And then I messed up and read a completely different book, thinking it was the second in the trilogy, d'oh).
I Was a Teenage Slasher - Stephen Graham Jones. The oops this wasn't part of the trilogy book. It was still a good book, but I kept wondering when they would get to Indian Lake and hook back into Jade's story. It just made me realize how obsessed with slashers Stephen Graham Jones is, and c'mon, surely I should have known that after My Heart is a Chainsaw.
They Call Me Sam - Drew Daywalt. Best kid's book graphic novel I listened to in audiobook form. The perspective of the ornery pug Sam who does not believe he is a dog is fantastic.
Skeletown: Si. No. - Rhode Montijo. I love the illustration style of this kids book, and the extremely limited vocabulary reminds me that there is an element of being a poet that comes from good writing for very young children.
Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror. Jordan Peele. Of course there were some that didn't hit, but the majority of the stories piqued my curiosity and had that delicious morsel quality that comes from good use of the medium.
Plain Bad Heroines - emily m. danforth. Given the podcast I actually listened to and read this Sapphic horror with a magnifying glass, and probably at least 3 times from beginning to end.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson.
Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson.
Mister Magic - Kiersten White. I felt like this deserved a closer read than I gave it, so I wanted to reread it as soon as I finished it.
Bury Your Gays - actually my favorite of Chuck Tingle's books that was published by the "straight" bookworld. A deconstruction of creativity, with a fun kind of opposite Toon Town quality, and AI as a villain.
Margo's Got Money Troubles - Rufi Thorpe. Normally literary fiction bores me to tears, it's usually full of straight people, inexorable tragedy and boring (to me) people being introspective, which is boring (to me). Margo is a naive young woman with no one to teach her about the world, and bad things keep piling on. Margo has fractured relationships with her parents, with the married junior college professor she has an affair with, with her roommates. But this book explores those things in such an odd way, and follows a bizarre path that felt very real. Margo gets pregnant from her affair and decides to keep the baby, not considering all (or any!) of the potential downsides. Life goes to shit, because being a single mom is hard and not having access to childcare makes like well nigh impossible. Then her absentee father, an ex pro-wrestler comes into the picture to help with childcare. (He will be played by Nick Offerman in the soon-to-be Apple TV series). Margo and her nerdy LARPer roommate team up to run an OnlyFans account, pushing Margo's nascent feminist thinking in new directions as she starts to see some of the bigger picture and systemic ways her gender and gender role have pushed her life into a corner. The obstacles feel very real, while Margo responds to them with a rich internal world. Sure, her naivete is awful and you're yelling at her to not go into the house, but the house is society. Things get weirder and weirder with the OnlyFans, but the essential "friends we made along the way" vibe and room for reconciliation with bad people makes for an interesting, morally ambiguous ending. The very last few paragraphs were a little too grandiose, but the rest of the book was fast paced, messy, silly, chaotic and very fun to read. Very unlike most literary fiction.
The First Bad Man - Miranda July. I love Miranda July for her ability to write inside the head of someone who can be so unlike me (anxious, obsessive, zero vocabulary for their own desire) but nonetheless compel me to want to know what happens in their life. I love the unrepentantly weird mental spaces she write about. Bizarre passion, and glimpses of the strange, intimate interior world full of people I wouldn't want to meet, but I do want to watch. Also, is there a superlative form of "disaster bisexual"? Her books always seem to have that character.
A Man Named Doll. The Wheel of Doll. Karma Doll. - Jonathan Ames. I love this. Gritty noir with a loveable hero who just keeps getting into situations where he is punched in the face. Each one of these books is an action-packed novella, short and sweet, with time spent with a compelling (anti) hero). A little thoughtfulness, a lot of actiony plot points that aren't really the point of the story, the point is our poor antihero Happy Doll, as he tries to be a good Buddhist, while trapped in the flow of sansara like all of us poor souls. The fight scenes are so good, the book doesn't sit and wallow, and Ames manages to let things slow down at the right moments, so you can spend time with Happy, which is why you're here.
The Buffalo Hunter, Hunter - Stephen Graham Jones. We should know more about the history of the United States. Maybe a morbid monster is our way into that history of indigenous genocide and terrifying Montana winter.
Interior Chinatown - Charles Yu. Apparently this has also been made into a television series, which is maybe too on the nose. The book is laid out like a screenplay, tugging at the threads of cheap tropes and stereotypes of Asians in entertainment. You can be Kung Fu Guy, or Generic Asian, there are very few options. The structure of the book is what I found so compelling, rather than plot or character elements.
Soft Core - Brittany Newell. Maybe I just really like reading about young women engaging in sex work and how much insight it gives them into being a human being. This book plays with obsession, love, putting on masks.
Honorable mention: You Weren't Meant to Be Human - Andrew Joseph White. All the trigger warnings. Suicide, child abuse, sexual abuse, transphobia, monster worms, cults, religious abuse. If you want to wade in after all those warnings I just have to add that the end of this book left me physically affected, appalled, and I listened to the last 20 minutes with my jaw dropped. Yikes and yikes and yikes and probably don't read this in the dead of winter when the world is on fire and the dystopian future doesn't feel like an accurate portrayal of what lies ahead?
Off to reading more books in 2026!
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