Another arbitrary chunk of time to which we’ve collectively decided to assign meaning has passed! Therefore I’m looking back on the books I’ve read since the last time we bought new calendars and picking some favorites.
If you read these three books, I’m sure you’ll notice a pattern—climate change loomed large for me this year. And every year, let’s be honest. I read a lot of books this year that made me smile or swept me away, but nothing engaged my mind, kept me thinking, or led me to recommend them unprompted the way these four did.
Best nonfiction:
The Treeline by Ben Rawlence
Blurb:
For the last fifty years, the trees of the boreal forest have been moving north. Ben Rawlence’s The Treeline takes us along this critical frontier of our warming planet from Norway to Siberia, Alaska to Greenland, to meet the scientists, residents and trees confronting huge geological changes. Only the hardest species survive at these latitudes including the ice-loving Dahurian larch of Siberia, the antiseptic Spruce that purifies our atmosphere, the Downy birch conquering Scandinavia, the healing Balsam poplar that Native Americans use as a cure-all and the noble Scots Pine that lives longer when surrounded by its family.
It is a journey of wonder and awe at the incredible creativity and resilience of these species and the mysterious workings of the forest upon which we rely for the air we breathe. Blending reportage with the latest science, The Treeline is a story of what might soon be the last forest left and what that means for the future of all life on earth.
My review:
Trees and humans enjoy the same climate niche. Our opposable thumbs are a constant reminder that we evolved, and thrived, in trees. We will always be creatures of the forest.
I already take climate change very seriously, but this book made me even more afraid. It forces you as the reader to confront the ways our world is already changing—radically—and the people most affected by these changes. It’s chilling, and heartbreaking, and terrifying. But even as it is all of these things, it’s also beautiful and fascinating, sharing details about tree species I have never seen and remote places I have never been, and the people who have made their homes in these places for millennia. It respects modern science and indigenous knowledge together and shows how much we as humans almost know, but don’t quite grasp.
This book might depress you or scare you. You might want to look away. But you should still read it, because understanding what we’re doing to our planet—and seeing how much we have already done—is the least we can do.
Best novel:
Firebreak by Nicole Kornher-Stace
Blurb:
Like everyone else she knows, Mallory is an orphan of the corporate war. As a child, she lost her parents, her home, and her entire building in an airstrike. As an adult, she lives in a cramped hotel room with eight other people, all of them working multiple jobs to try to afford water and make ends meet. And the job she’s best at is streaming a popular VR war game. The best part of the game isn’t killing enemy combatants, though—it’s catching in-game glimpses of SpecOps operatives, celebrity supersoldiers grown and owned by Stellaxis, the corporation that runs the America she lives in.
Until a chance encounter with a SpecOps operative in the game leads Mal to a horrifying discovery: the real-life operatives weren’t created by Stellaxis. They were kids, just like her, who lost everything in the war, and were stolen and augmented and tortured into becoming supersoldiers. The world worships them, but the world believes a lie.
The company controls every part of their lives, and defying them puts everything at risk—her water ration, her livelihood, her connectivity, her friends, her life—but she can’t just sit on the knowledge. She has to do something—even if doing something will bring the wrath of the most powerful company in the world down upon her.
My review:
I am just a sucker for doomed revolutions.
Not that the revolution in Firebreak is entirely doomed! It’s hopeful and unfinished and tragic and just on the edge of possible, and the whole time I was reading, I knew that the ending would not be neat and tidy, but something much better.
This is a book about the future. It’s also a book about our world today.
Climate change and capitalism have run roughshod over America and water is rationed in a newly built city, caught between two corporations at war. The protagonist and her friends barely scrape by. Their lives are hard, but–honestly–no harder than many people’s lives already are, and I think we are supposed to notice this. It’s a dystopia, but it feels all too real.
Then a mysterious benefactor and a chance encounter with a concocted hero shoves the protagonist on a collision course with the all-powerful company that controls her city, and her life. She’s reluctant but determined, making the morally right choices over and over again even when they seem impossible.
There were so many things I loved. A spontaneous protest before the planned one can happen, spilling out into the rain, when water is so expensive but also falls from the sky.
Mal and 22, drinking buddies! Sobbing.
I didn’t think I would like this as much as I did, since I’m like whatever the opposite of a gamer is. I just have no interest in any video game, ever. While the in-game scenes were not my favorite, I got through them without being bored or confused. And everything else shone so bright that I didn’t care.
A must read for our current almost-dystopia.
Best novella:
A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers
Blurb:
Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.
Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of “what do people need?” is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. In a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?
My review:
Novellas are weird, and most of the time I either love them with my whole heart or they leave me unsatisfied. Sometimes they feel like they should’ve been short stories and other times like they should’ve been full novels. This book, though, was exactly what it needed to be.
The writing wrapped me up and dumped me in this weird little world so unlike our own but with utterly familiar people. The plot unfurled so gradually I barely noticed it. The ideas this story played with left me unsure, contemplative, and comforted. In short, the full effect was to convince me I have to go read everything Chambers has ever written.
This was so good I can’t even explain. And to be honest, I’m not sure why I loved it so much—it’s slow and meditative and bizarre but compelling and beautiful and moving. It won’t be for everyone, but it’s definitely for me.
Best classic:
The Dispossessed by Ursula K LeGuin
Blurb:
Shevek, a brilliant physicist, decides to take action. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have isolated his planet of anarchists from the rest of the civilized universe. To do this dangerous task will mean giving up his family and possibly his life—Shevek must make the unprecedented journey to the utopian mother planet, Urras, to challenge the complex structures of life and living, and ignite the fires of change.
My review:
Everyone should read this book.
Somehow I spent a large part of this book almost bored, and yet by the end it had changed to be the best book I’ve read all year. If you find it slow or if it doesn’t grab you, I encourage you to keep reading, in little bits if you need to, because the overall effect is so grand, subtle, and worth it.
Reading this took more concentration than many things I’ve read lately because it considers heavier ideas, and it handles them incredibly well. The contemplation of what freedom means, and how we can find it in our lives, was exactly what I needed, and exactly what I think a lot of people need. It’s important to be reminded that concepts like how a society or family should be—or even can be—formed are actually still being developed, every day, and that things don’t have to be the way they are.
And beyond all of that, it is a great piece of science fiction. The world-building is masterful and rich, the history and descriptions gentle and thorough, and the characterization and character growth very well done. Even though the book is primarily about ideas, nothing ever feels heavy-handed. I admire this book very much.