A Year of Actually Reading Books
By: Sean Mott
Tags: Lovecraft, Elmore Leonard, Books, Cormac Mccarthy, Novel

Damn, I miss movie theatres. The sunken-in seats, the sticky floors, the one guy who always sits right next to you even though there are three empty rows. Really, what’s not to love?

Unfortunately, in 2020 theatres (along with every enclosed space) turned into quasi-charnel houses where only the most fool-hardy would dare venture. It says a lot about how COVID-19 decimated movie theatres when Sonic the Hedgehog is one of the highest grossing films of the year.

I’d usually fill this space with a top and bottom 10 ranking of this year’s movies, but since I barely saw any, that just wouldn’t feel right. Instead, I wanted to talk about books. You know, those thick bricks filled with paper that we let collect dust on our dressers?

I used to love reading. It was legitimately one of my top hobbies. I would pride myself on always finishing a book, no matter how terrible, which is a stupid way to live (seriously, if a book is bad, drop it; life’s too short). It’s a hobby I’ve let fall to the side for the last few years. At the end of 2019, I made a last-minute New Year’s resolution (always a good start): I’d read one book every month.

In 2020, I didn’t work out more, I didn’t try that many new recipes, and I certainly didn’t get into Breaking Bad, but I did read. As everything turned to ash in our mouths this year, books were a nice constant, something reliable and familiar as borders closed and stores shut their doors.

I wanted to go over the last 12 months of reading and highlight the books I read, good, bad, and indifferent. Maybe you’ll see something that sparks your curiosity or maybe you’ll disagree with my take. There’s not a unifying theme or underlining message; we’re just talking ‘bout books.

Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow

Well, this was a heavy book to start the year. Ronan Farrow, I think, doesn’t need much introduction. The reporter who helped expose the rotten underbelly of Hollywood depravity recounts the arduous, painful steps he took to cracking the story in this memoir/true crime book. Farrow has a strong voice as a writer, almost to a fault as he sometimes threatens to make himself the sole star of the proceedings. While the facts of case have been out in the public for years, Farrow’s lifting of the curtain to show how the sausage got made (now there’s a mixed metaphor) gives his book an importance that makes a return to these harrowing tales of abuse enlightening.

Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman

This is one dense book. I felt like I was back in college desperately re-reading every paragraph to make sure I felt comfortable and certain enough to turn a page. Chomsky and Herman’s indictment of mass media’s inability to inform and guide the public is long, academic, and mind-expanding. Their reference base might be dated (it was written in the 80s), but the core of the argument is still sound and it’s a must-read for anyone in the media business. Just remember to take notes.

Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard

Justified is one of the greatest television shows of the last decade and it draws its inspiration from Elmore Leonard. He’s a good author to reference since his dialogue is crisp and sharp and his plots are smooth and twisty. Get Shorty is probably best known as the John Travolta movie, but the book also deserves a look. It’s not very memorable, but it’s enjoyable and fun while you’re reading it. The perfect airport book (y’know, if we could still go on flights).

The Butcher by Philip Carlo

I’m not quite sure how this book wound up in my library since a childhood spent watching American Justice reruns has completely turned me off true crime, particularly regarding serial killers. It feels as if the medium has exhausted its well of worn-out cliches and tropes to describe the grisly killings that mark American history. The saturation of true crime podcasts only heightens my weariness with the genre. So this book, which follows infamous serial killer and mafioso Tommy Pitera, had an uphill climb with me and Philip Carlo’s lifeless prose didn’t help things. One of Carlo’s biggest problems is describing one thing three times, as in takes a single concept and explains it thrice, such as stating a fact as a trio. It gets old by page 10. There are some neat details about 1980s New York, but not much else.

Road Dogs by Elmore Leonard

Get Shorty was so good I had to take a double dip with Elmore Leonard this year. Road Dogs is actually a sequel to three Leonard books I haven’t read yet, but he does a good job of catching you up. There’s a looser, more improvisational feel with this one compared to Get Shorty, almost as if the plot is being made up on the fly. As a result, it’s not as immediately engaging as that one, but it really picks up at the end and only leaves you wanting more Leonard.

The Trudeau Formula by Martin Lukacs

As a Canadian with a gnawing sense that I know more about American politics than my own country’s, I grabbed this polemic. The author wears his distrust and disdain for Prime Minister Justine Trudeau on his sleeve, charting the politician’s ascent to the highest office in the country through social media savvy and earnest appeals to young people and the middle-class. Lukacs, the author, then outlines every perceived failure and broke promise for Trudeau from oil to weapons deals to Native rights to the environment. It’s certainly a biased tome, but an almost necessary one considering how, until his blackface scandal, Trudeau received near-constant fawning praise from major media outlets.

Bastards and Boneheads by Will Ferguson

Another Canadian political screed, this time from the 1990s, making it feel hilariously out of date, especially when author Will Ferguson talks about how we’ve “reached the end of history” and how liberal democracy is the only viable option left in the world. The book is divided into two chunks: One, a faintly amusing if overly-familiar retelling of Canadian history, the other a catty, scathing evaluation of every Prime Minister from John A. MacDonald to the recent (at the time) Jean Chretien. Ferguson saves his venom (and funniest lines) for professional dolt John Diefenbaker and Brian Mulroney. The first half is just okay, but the second half is genuinely hilarious.

The Trial by Franz Kafka

And you thought the DMV was bad!

Dark Money by Jane Mayer

Now this was just disheartening. Jane Mayer, with the cold precision of a surgeon, details how the Koch brothers and similar moneyed interests have, for the last 50 years, steadily moved the political conversation further and further to the right, leaving out anyone who can’t afford to buy a golf club. Mayer’s book is extensive and almost overwhelming in its scope, but the sheer depth of her research and the quality of her writing makes the book a compulsive read, even if it’s not a cheery one.

Child of God by Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is the kind of author who makes you wonder why you spend your time reading anyone else. McCarthy’s style is at once terse and verbose, fragmented yet cohesive, horrifying yet beautiful. This novel concerns the gradually degradation of a hillbilly into an almost mythic terror roaming the countryside, ultimately reduced to something less than an animal. If it sounds bleak, it absolutely is, but it’s also utterly engrossing.

The Life and Political Times of Tommy Douglas by Walter Stewart

Tommy Douglas occupies an odd space in Canadian history, as he’s simultaneously idolized as the father of universal healthcare and virtually unknown beyond that fact. I tried to fill in my blanks on the man with this biography and by the time I was done, I felt I was no closer to getting the full picture. Author Walter Stewart was clearly close to Douglas, too close to dig past the positive image of the man and find the complicated person underneath. Stewart also makes a lot of assumptions about the reader’s knowledge of Canadian political history from the 1940s-1960s, leaving large sections fairly confusing. I’m sure there’s a great Douglas biography out there, but this isn’t it.

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

It’s all a metaphor about cleaning your room, I think.

Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

I was a big fan of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl (even more so with the film adaptation), so I went into Sharp Objects with high expectations. By and large, those expectations were met, but never surpassed. Flynn gets a lot of mileage out her drunken, self-destructive protagonist, often to the point where the main murder mystery gets pushed to the background (which is kind of the point). Flynn’s writing is as sharp (pun) as ever, but this outing doesn’t have the same staying power of Gone Girl.

Year 501 by Noam Chomsky

Professor Chomsky is back to deconstruct centuries of American myth-making. That’s a tall order for any book, and while I feel Chomsky is more than up for the task, this work isn’t his strongest. The thesis feels a little broad, especially for such a detail-oriented writer. There are probably five or six topics in here that could make for their own books. It’s still a solid read, particularly if you’ve never checked out Chomsky until now.

Radicalized by Cory Doctorow

CBC Reads recommended this…thing to me, so I will never trust them again. Okay, that’s hyperbole, but not by much. Radicalized is a collection of short stories in the proud tradition of overly ambitious science fiction that completely botches its message. The worst offender here is one concerning a Superman parody stopping a police beating, getting woke on Black Lives Matter, then getting lectured by activists about how he’s still an oppressor, and ultimately moving to the mid-West because the government threatens to murder his girlfriend if he keeps trying to stop the American imperial system. Seriously. It’s a dumb idea executed poorly. The only really enjoyable entry is about a group of morons locking themselves in a compound during a pandemic outbreak and gradually losing their minds. It works best due to its simplicity and limited scope, something the other stories lack. This collection isn’t terrible, it’s just very frustrating.

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Stories by H.P. Lovecraft

Just a no-frills, straightforward collection of early H.P. Lovecraft stories, warts, tentacles, uncomfortable racism, and all. There are some great highlights here like the title story, The Rats in the Walls, and the underrated Re-Animator, but if you’ve already dabbled in Lovecraft, this book is pretty inessential. It doesn’t contextualize any of the stories or provide deeper insight into the Cthulhu mythos. The cover is also laughably lame.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Hands down the best book I read this year. McCarthy has a masterful way of making the most depraved, disturbing scenes totally compelling and weirdly beautiful. He maps a group of mercenaries in 1800s America gradually descending from bounty hunting for territorial expansion to nihilistic murder of habit. It’s a tough read, but McCarthy rewards you with one gorgeously constructed sentence after the next. Recommended for anyone with eyes.

1984 by George Orwell

It holds up. If you resent the book after you were forced to read it in high school, give it another chance. Or don’t. I’m not your boss. Make up your own mind.

A Clergyman’s Daughter by George Orwell

That’s right, George Orwell wrote other books beside 1984 and Animal Farm. I was shocked to learn that myself. This one isn’t nearly as good as those two, but it’s a solid, if overly bleak, piece of social realism from the 1930s. A clergyman’s daughter suffers a bout of amnesia and winds up as a beggar, a teacher, and an apple picker. She’s miserable the whole time, everyone she meets is awful, greedy, or just plain stupid, and it has an even more depressing ending than 1984. Definitely a lesser Orwell novel, but if you want to dig deeper into the man’s catalogue, this wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell

Everything I said about the previous entry applies here, although I do think Aspidistra is superiour due to its better main character and a welcome note of optimism despite the dreary setting. It gets bonus points for teaching me what an aspidistra is.

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

I’ve had this novel on my shelf for over four years now. I finally finished it and felt nothing once I got to the last page. Faulkner’s style is hard to follow at times and often left me feeling cold and detached from the characters. I know that makes me a philistine, but it’s a problem I couldn’t overcome. There are some good turns of phrase here and I’d never deny the book its place in the literary canon, but it just didn’t work for me. Maybe if I read it again in 20 years it’ll make more sense.

The Greatest Story Ever Sold by Frank Rich

Damn, that Bush was quite a rascal.

And there we go. All in all, I’d say this experiment was a success, although I’m tempted to spend the next year just ploughing through video games to balance the scales.