Finally hit my target of 50 books this year. Reading is part of my job as a writer, and I aim to do so every evening. I’m not fast and wouldn’t want to be. I savour what I read (when it’s good), study it (when there’s a lesson to learn), and take inspiration.
I’m not sure why, but I always get creative ideas while reading, even if (especially if) the book is completely unrelated to what I am writing. I’ll write those ideas down in the margins, straight away, so I don’t lose them. Sometimes it will be a single phrase, other times a whole scene, scrawled over several pages of some innocent book. Perhaps being exposed to the imagination of another fires up a creative sub-routine in my brain, even when the subject matter is entirely different. I’ll pile up the recently-read books on my desk, and periodically spend a writing session transcribing all the notes written in the margins of those books.
I’m not sure if this titbit from my craft is particularly interesting or not, but I’m always fascinated by the process of other writers, even if dramatically different from my own. Other than writing and reading as much as possible, there’s no blueprint for how the novel gets made.
I managed to hit my reading target of 50 by largely giving up streaming and movies. When you become a writer, work-life balance is replaced by a work-work balance. That is, between the day job and the writing. Plus I have two young kids, so that balance becomes work-work-work. Something has to give, especially if you want to occasionally exercise and sleep. For me, screen time, big and small, fell away. But I did have a handful of favourites.
The Menu (a searing critique of class, the affectations of the rich, the commodification of a daily act of love), Dungeons and Dragons (genuinely hilarious) and Oppenheimer were all excellent. I also enjoyed watching Lego Masters (Season 3) with my kids, which was wholesome fun and surprisingly entertaining. Oppenheimer was my favourite viewing of the year, and in my opinion, a masterpiece. Cillian Murphy’s performance is the finest I have seen in some time – he truly inhabited the role. The moral complexity around the race to build the Bomb was done justice here by Nolan.
I also finally got around to playing Cyberpunk 2077, which, as a hardboiled cyberpunk author, everyone expects me to have played. I did and yes, I thought
it was excellent. Apparently I came to the game after all the glitches had been fixed. Certainly has the aesthetic down (the cityscapes are gorgeous), and I found the characters engaging.
I had a goal to read more Japanese and Australian works this year, which I largely succeeded in achieving. I’m writing a novel that incorporates both cultures, and so wanted to get my mind on the correct world-building setting.
Anyway, enough preamble. In rough order, my top ten reads of 2023:
1) Watership Down (1972), by Richard Adams (British) 5 Stars
My book of the year. Been on my shelf for decades. I assumed I’d read it, but I think I had conflated the novel with the disturbing animated film. Just excellent. Great characters, dark and rich themes. Moving. Christ – when Bigwig calls Hazel his Chief Rabbit. My heart.
Extraordinary world-building, as well, developing a full rabbit mythology and sense of the universe. A deserved classic.
2) God Human Animal Machine (2021), by Meghan O’Gieblyn (American) 5 stars
Compelling, full of many profound ideas. Megan O’Gieblyn grew up in a strict Christian household, and for a very long time she was a true believer. She lost her faith as a young woman – in part, it seems, because she has a mind relentlessly questioning and full of doubt.
She has turned her impressive intellect to artificial intelligence and advanced technology. The parallels between the magical thinking and grandiosity of the tech industry, on the one hand, and the historical assertions of religion on the other, are quite remarkable and ubiquitous. Did you know the word ‘transhuman’ was coined by Dante, in his Divine Comedy, to describe angels? Whether simulation theory, mind uploads, ‘black box’ neural networks, and more, God Human Animal Machine finds startling similarities to religion.
3) The Riders (1994), by Tim Winton (Australian) 5 stars
Decent, down-to-earth, working class Australian man treated appallingly by the universe. You can never know the heart of another, not truly. I think perhaps that’s the core theme of this novel, rendered beautifully and relentlessly. The other main character is Scully’s daughter, who is by turns brave, and intelligent, and utterly terrified at what has happened to her parents (and therefore her entire world).
Unlike most of Tim Winton’s work, this is set in Ireland, Greece, and France. He depicts them all vividly, from a uniquely Australian perspective. His only novel shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and I can see why.
4) The Tree of Ecstasy and Unbearable Sadness, by Matt Ottley (2022) (Australian) 5 stars
I judged this for the Aurealis Awards (Graphic Novel category) last year, but couldn’t talk about it until the award ceremony this year. It was the stand-out winner. A moving, bizarre, alien journey through the world of mental illness. More than anything, beautiful. A work of art.
5) Piranesi (2020), by Susanna Clarke (British) 5 Stars
This was the first book I read this year, and even though I remember very little, I know that after an initial dislike (I think I even set the book aside, not intending to finish), I fell into the mystery.
6) Bad Debts (1996), by Peter Temple (Australian) 5 stars
Peter Temple passed away a few years ago, widely considered one of the greats of Australian crime fiction.
The Jack Irish novels are perhaps not quite as dark or ‘literary’ as his classic, The Broken Shore (which won the most prestigious Australian literary award, the Miles Franklin), but Bad Debts showcases a writer with complete mastery of his craft. As with all the best authors, it seems effortless – the introduction of the characters, the plot, the setting, the twists. Very Australian, top quality crime fiction.
7) Hyperion (1989), Dan Simmons (American) 4.5 stars
Like Watership Down, one of the classics I’ve never read, that has yet been sitting on the bookshelf for a very long time. I find myself reluctant to read some of the overhyped older works, often
because the prose is poor or the themes fail to resonate.
But the storytelling here is really top-notch. Told from seven different perspectives, each one a compelling character, each one with a secret. In fact I was on track to give this book 5 stars, and thought it might well be my book of the year, until we got to the ending. Which sucks. From an author who clearly knows how to earn revelation in the text, I just could not understand the decision making behind the ending. If I accosted Simmons at the bar at a convention about it, I’m convinced he would reply: “Look I was tired, okay?”
8) Runaway Horses (1973), by Yukio Mishima (Japanese) 4 Stars
I’d been meaning to read Mishima for some time, and so when I saw this on the shelves of my local second-hand bookstore, snapped it up immediately. It’s hard to read his work, untainted, if you know about the author’s life, and unfortunately I did know about the author’s life. Mishima was a far-right nationalist who committed seppuku at the age of 45. Bloody hell.
But he was also more complex than that, I have subsequently learned. His nationalism was non-violent (against others, anyway), and his ideals included the rejection of materialism, and the re-creation, in his mind, of a lost Japanese spirituality. A queer, prolific artist, who inveighed against modernity, capitalism, and what he saw was the loss of cultural distinctiveness in a
homogenising, globalising world.
All of which means I’ve spend more time talking about his past than I have about the novel. So let me try. It’s always hard to judge a work in translation, but that caveat aside, I found this fascinating. Firstly, Mishima knows how to tell a story. This one is, mainly, about a group of young men who wish to see a return to traditional Japanese values – both spiritual and martial – untainted by foreign cultures. They are gobsmackingly naïve and idealistic, to the point where I 
would laugh out loud over some of the internal thoughts of the leader of the rebels, Isao.
He’s melodramatic, obsessed with manliness and manly virtue, to the extent that it feels like satire. Much like when I read Starship Troopers, by Heinlein, I couldn’t quite believe that the author believed any of the nonsense the characters were spouting (the beliefs of an author should never be conflated with their characters – god, please don’t do that to me – but in the case of Heinlein and Mishima, I think this is sometimes warranted).
Runaway Horses is very good book about pre-war Japan, how it was influenced by the past, corrupted by the modern world, and perhaps even how it succumbed to militaristic, imperialist nationalism.
9) Gideon the Ninth (2019), by Tamsin Muir (New Zealander) 4 stars
This book bothered me initially, in part because the world-building is poor. We have a far-future, gothic necromancer civilisation, who yet use contemporary phraseology and refer to foods like pizza, foods which simultaneously don’t seem to exist in this universe. Some of the conversations read very much like Americans in their early 20s talking. The functioning structure of the planet we begin on doesn’t make much sense, either.
However, it’s still a good book, and once the main storyline starts, very engaging. I ended up liking the protagonist, Gideon, quite a lot, and the ending is excellent.
I don’t include it in my top reads, as it is a re-read, but The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934), by James M. Cain, is a hardboiled masterpiece. 5 Stars.
I looked back on what I wrote for my Ten Best Books for 2022, and was reminded that I’d given myself some goals. They were to 1) read 50 books (done), 2) have a new novel out (done – Aliens: Bishop), 3) plus a couple of short stories (done – ‘A Marked Man’ at Grimdark Magazine, and ‘Highway Requiem’ at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction). All goals achieved, which is
nice, though I suspect at the time of writing that I knew the proposed publication date for the Aliens novel (but, still – I also would have been writing it at the time, so I finished the bloody thing, which is something).
I also jokingly said I’d hope to win awards for 36 Streets. But in the joke of course nested a seed of hope. Hopes sprouted, if I may continue this insipid metaphor, and bloomed. I won the prestigious Australian Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (juried), and then the Ditmar for Best Novel (popular vote). Cool.
I’m looking forward to having two major works out next year. Ghost of the Neon God (a novella) and The Escher Man (novel). Not really a goal, as such. I’ll try to have a couple more short stories published, perhaps; and to finish the first draft of my current work-in-progress.
So. All the best to you and yours. Good health, and happiness where you can find it, for 2024. Buy books, and read books, and buy some more, too many, and be forced to make towers of them (like me) on your coffee table. Support artists, talk about stories, reject the soulless AI golems, expand the mind and the soul. And buy more books.
