The Pleasures of
Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2017
by Brit Mandelo
As we’d all likely agree,
this has been a difficult year politically and personally. I’ve found myself
focusing half of my attention on “feel-good” media and the other half on “work”
media, the texts I’m consuming for specifically critical purposes—like the
books I’ve reviewed for Tor.com throughout 2017.
Of those, a handful
stand out when I scroll through the list of reviews published under my byline
in the past twelve months. All the Crooked Saints by Maggie
Stiefvater is the most recent, a lyrical magic-realist departure from the
author’s sprawling and recently-completed Raven Cycle. I was also struck by
several others, in retrospect, ranging in scope from young adult novels to
small-press short story collections to novellas. Autonomous
by Annalee Newitz chews on complex issues of embodiment, gender, and
ownership while In
Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan tackles the portal fantasy genre with a
nontypical queer male protagonist. Telling
the Map by Christopher Rowe took me to near-future versions of my own home
state, Kentucky, over a series of handsome short stories. Both Amatka
by Karin Tidbeck and Agents
of Dreamland by Caitlín R. Kiernan are short and immensely
thought-provoking works of high yield, unnerving fiction that left strong
impressions with me artistically and personally. Lastly, I’d be remiss not to
mention The
Black Tides of Heaven & The
Red Threads of Fortune by JY Yang, a pair of stylistically quite different
novellas set in a lush and handsomely realized second world that also feature
queer and nonbinary protagonists.
When it comes to the
media I consumed without the express intention of a critical approach, though,
genre diversifies. Richard Siken’s two collections of poetry, War of the Foxes and Crush, utterly devastated me. Siken’s
approach to a particular kind of desperate and seeking queer male being is almost too much to handle but
also, sometimes, fits like a glove. I actually just finished Meredith Russo’s If I Was Your Girl last week, so it’s
fresh in my mind, but it was an interestingly explicit take on the tropes of
trans YA narratives from the perspective of a girl living in the Appalachian
South. I also finally—I know, this will come as a surprise to a lot of
people—read The Secret History by
Donna Tartt. I did it in two sittings and spent the entire process making quiet
sounds of distress, but damn, what a book.
The two new albums that
I’ve spent the latter half of the year listening to on repeat are Tyler, The
Creator’s Scum Fuck Flower Boy and
Brand New’s Science Fiction. As you
might imagine, music is a site of debate for me in terms of creator versus art
versus my own ethics. I’ve had to do a lot of self-examination about Brand New
and the band’s role in my life, as well as the room I need to give for other
humans to grow and change over time, to make up for even abysmally cruel
actions in their past. It’s no coincidence that both of these albums approach a
flawed and queer masculinity that understands itself in terms of fracture and
growth; it’s also worth thinking about how that narrative might force me to
reflect on my own flaws. It’s something I’m working on.
I didn’t watch much
television, though I did binge watch Boku
no Hero Academia and rewatch Yuri on
Ice. Sometimes I just need something that feels good, y’know? Thor: Ragnarok also gave me a big gay
thrill, and I finally watched What We Do
In the Shadows as well and adored it. Baby
Driver spoke to my love of meta, visual narrative, and cars. I hope I’ll
get around to more visual media in 2018, but we’ll see.
Overall, it’s been a
rough one, but I’m hoping in 2018 we’ll all keep moving toward the progress in
our world that I see in the fiction and media I’ve been consuming. Kudos to us
for surviving, and let’s try again.
Brit Mandelo is a writer, critic, and editor. They have published two books, Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction (Lethe Press, 2012) and We Wuz Pushed: On Joanna Russ and Radical Truth-Telling (in Aqueduct's Conversation Pieces series). Brit has been a nominee for various awards in the past, including the Nebula, Lambda, and Hugo; their work has been published in magazines such as Clarkesworld, Tor.com, Stone Telling, Apex, and Ideomancer.
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