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Hi, it's Maija here with my favorite reads of 2018. I'm gonna start with the
things that I gave five stars or 4.5 stars to. I'm pretty strict with my
5 stars, so I only gave two things 5 stars in 2018. The first five star thing that
I read was The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and this is a
classic horror short story about a woman who is prescribed the rest-cure. She
basically I think has postpartum depression, and the doctor and her
husband prescribe this rest-cure for her. So she basically can just sit or lie
down in this one room with yellow wallpaper and she isn't allowed to do
anything: like, it's too much if she writes something. And the author herself had
experience with this rest-cure, and that is why she wrote this story. I especially
liked the very strong claustrophobic atmosphere that the book has, and the
five stars is just for the title story. There's two other stories in this small
booklet that I have: The Rocking Chair and Old Water, and those didn't get five
stars, but the Yellow Wall-Paper, definite five stars from me. The other five star
read was a comic, and that was Beneath the Dead Oak Tree by Emily Carroll. This
is a short, again, horror, short comic about these fox creatures at this ball, and
the man is trying to get the woman to meet him beneath the dead oak tree. And I
just love this, it strikes all my buttons, it has this fairy tale-ish feel but
also darkness and this gothic lusciousness and horror. In true Emily
Carroll fashion it has striking, beautiful colors - I don't know if they
show up that well on camera - but the art is just striking, the colors are
beautiful, and like Emily Carrol often does, it is written in verse. Emily
Carroll has a new comic coming out this year and I'm really looking forward to it.
Now let's move on to my 4.5 stars, and the first of those is Phantom Pains by
Mishell Baker, which is my current favorite urban fantasy series, it's very
fast paced, highly readable, I really like it. This is
the second book, the first book is called Borderline, and the series is called The
Arcadia Project. And this continues the story of Millie, who has borderline
personality disorder - the author also has the same disorder. And in the first book
Millie was recruited into this organization that
governs the travel between our world and Faerie, and this particular branch of the
organization is set in Los Angeles, so there's a lot of, like, entertainment
industry stuff. It has a lot of magic, fairies, and a very interesting
protagonist, and this book was even better than the first. There was this
story element that I really liked that was revealed in this book having to do with
the magic of the world, and that will have major repercussions and I can't
wait to pick up the third book. The second 4.5 star read is quite unusual
for me, it's a non-fiction book, and that is The Black Count: Glory, Revolution,
Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo by Tom Reiss. And this is the story
of the author Alexandre Dumas' father, Alex Dumas, who was a black man, an
aristocratic black man who rose in the ranks in the military and commanded
armies around the time of the French Revolution. It's also about race in that
time in France and how of course France had slaves in the colonies, but they liked
to title themselves the land of the free on French soil. So it's a great look into
this one particular man, but also into the French Revolution and race in
historical France. This is also very readable, the author has taken all the,
do you call them citations? Like the footnotes, out of the text, so instead all the
references are at the back in the Notes section. It does have the references, so
it goes chapter by chapter at the end and says the page and where that
particular thing comes from from research, but it isn't peppered throughout the
text, so it's very easy to read. The last of my 4.5 star reads is Homunculus by Joe
Sparrow, which is a science fiction comic. It's about this AI, the main character is
the AI who is this box, and it is from their point of- from its point of view.
It starts with the AI waking up and seeing the scientist that created it,
so the whole comic is from the AI's point of view. It is so emotional, it has
all the feels, which I wasn't expecting from a little science fiction comic. What
is especially well done in this is the passage of time: it's just so beautifully
and impactfully done. Now I'm moving on to
my favorites out of the four star books that I read, and the first of those is
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter by Theodora Goss.
This book was so relevant to my interests! It's like how many classic gothic horror
characters can you include or reference in one novel. I did read, I remember I read
about a hundred pages of this in one go, which is very rare for me. This tells
about a group of young women, there's Mary Jekyll and Diana Hyde, the daughters
of Jekyll and Hyde, there's Beatrice Rappaccini from Rappaccini's
daughter, Catherine Moreau from The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Justine
Frankenstein from Frankenstein, but there are also numerous side characters and
references to other literary figures. So together these girls form a group and
they are sort of solving murders, but the plot wasn't the most important part of
this for me, it was the stories of the girls themselves and I liked that there
was a strong focus on their stories. So whenever a new character, a new person was
introduced into this group, we got a chapter on their backstory, and those
were really interesting to me, they were like my favorite part of it.
I also liked how it was obvious that the characters themselves were writing the
book: like Mary Jekyll was the main author and then the other girls would
interrupt her and go like "this isn't how it went",
give their own interjections or write their own parts. At first, when this
happened for the first time, I didn't know what to think of it, but I quickly
grew to like it a lot. John Watson and Sherlock Holmes are also quite big side
characters in this book, and pretty much the only thing that I didn't like about
this was that I really don't like when Sherlock Holmes is used as a romantic
interest. But yeah, otherwise this was great and I really need to get the
second book. Next I want to talk about Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine by
T. Kingfisher aka Ursula Vernon. This is a high fantasy adventure duology called
The Clocktaur War. This tells about a group of criminals who are sent on this
mission to a neighboring city-state in order to find out how these clockwork
soldiers, these unstoppable monsters, are made. They don't really have a choice in
this, they are apprehended criminals. So this city-state is using these clocktaur
creations in war and they just rampage through the countries and are
unstoppable. This has all the wit and charisma of Ursula Vernon's other writing,
I pretty much pick up everything that she writes, at least under the name T.
Kingfisher, which is her writing for adults. I just love her work. The main
characters are this forger called Slade and a former paladin who went on a
murderous rampage called Caliban, and they are the point-of-view characters,
there's also an assassin called Brenner - these are the criminals. They are joined
by a scholar called Learned Edmund, who is sent with them basically so that he
can make sense out of the notes of the creators of the clockwork creatures, and
there's also this badger-like creature called a gnole who joins the
group. While this is this traditional fantasy adventure quest sort of story, it
has this fresh feel and it's really fun, and also the take on the characters is
really fun, there's a lot of banter in this. There was one very random chapter
right at the end of this first book that I didn't really care for, but
that was pretty much all of my gripes. Oh, although I didn't like Learned Edmund
at the start, because he comes from this very misogynistic brotherhood. He was
insufferable at the beginning. All in all, I loved the characters, I loved the banter,
it was always witty and always fun, but it had a great plot, also. Then my biggest
surprise of the year, biggest surprise on this list, was Annihilation by Jeff
VanderMeer, which is this new weird science fiction novel that I really
didn't think that I would like this much. It's about a group of scientists who go
on this twelfth expedition to this Area X, which is this cut out area that nature
has taken over. Weird stuff happens there, basically. I'm sure that the writing
style of this won't work for everyone, but it absolutely captured me and
kept me in its atmosphere, in its grip, and I would have liked to read this book
like in one sitting, in one go, if I had had the time. As it went, I did read half
of the book in one go when I started. Everything is very mysterious and very
weird, and I liked that not like answers are given to everything, and this also
works perfectly as a standalone, which I enjoyed. And by the way, the movie is very
different. Next on my favorite list are two science-fiction novellas, and those
are All Systems Red and Artificial Condition by Martha Wells. These
are the first and second book in the Murderbot Diaries novella series. I did
also read the third book, Rogue Protocol, in 2018, but these two were my favorites.
Murderbot is such a great character - it's this self-aware security unit
android who just really would like to be left alone and watch, basically watch TV,
watch its shows in peace and not be bothered, but it is accompanying this
group of human scientists on their mission. The character of Murderbot is
where these novellas shine, but I also really liked the relationship between
Murderbot and the spaceship it calls ART in the second novella. I don't
actually care about any of the human characters in these novellas that much,
but I'm all for following the adventures of this antisocial, socially anxious,
sarcastic bot who might actually care more for people than it likes to think.
I'd also like to mention Robin Hobb's The Dragon keeper which is the first book in
the Rain Wild Chronicles, even though I think I will like the rest of the books
better than this first one, because this was very much an introduction book. And I,
as always, really like the character work that Robin Hobb does, her characters
are always so good. This is about this group of dragons in the Rain Wilds. They have
been too short a time in their cocoons, so when they are born they have
difficulties, for example they can't fly, and these people who live near them have
given a promise to this dragon that they will essentially feed them, but they are
a huge strain on the people, and the dragons decide that they are gonna go on an
expedition, they're gonna go and try to find this historical/mythical city that
they have ancestral memories of. They want to set on this expedition, but they
also want some dragon keepers to come with them, sort of feed them, groom them,
everything like that. This book was basically just getting everyone to come
and join the expedition. My favourite characters in this were Alise and Sedric,
and there's also a dragon character, a dragon keeper character, who are point-
of-view characters, and there was also a ship captain, but I really liked Alise and
Sedric and these two are my favorite characters. Especially Sedric, because I
can see him being the character who - in true Robin Hobb fashion - makes some
pretty bad decisions, and I want to see how that goes for him. I also continue to
enjoy the fantasy comic series Monstress, I just love seeing the relationship
develop between the main character, who is this girl called Maika Halfwolf, and
the monster god who is living inside her. So this series just keeps getting better,
the history and the world keep getting bigger, the cool female characters keep
getting more and more numerous and more and more cool, the art is beautiful in
this gothic steampunk manga sort of mix way. What can I say, I just really enjoy
these. And then I'd also like to mention two manga series that I finished in 2018.
I gave both of these four stars, all of the volumes got between three and five
stars from me. First I'm gonna mention Princess Jellyfish by Akiko Higashimura,
I read these in the two-in-one omnibuses. Like I said, these volumes got
between three and five stars, and the one that got five stars was Volume 5. And
this is about this group of geek women living in this one house, and in order to
save their house, they start a fashion line. But what I really like about it is
the relationship between the geek women, I love them all, and I also really like
the relationship between the two brothers in this series: there are few
and far between scenes between the two of them, but they are so good when the
scenes are there. Then the other series was Hiromu Arakawa's Fullmetal Alchemist,
these were also between three and five stars. I gave Vol. 11 five stars, that was
the one that made me cry. Almost made me cry on a bus! But I noticed that this was
getting to a really emotional place, so I stopped reading it on the bus,
and read it at home, and yeah, it was really emotional. It was the one where Ed goes
visit home and learns some new truths about some old baggage. But this is
a fantasy manga where the magic is alchemy. It tells about these two brothers,
Edward and Alphonse Elric, who are... they are basically trying to get Al's body
back, because they did something when they were kids,
and now Al's soul is living in this suit of armor, an empty suit of armor. But
there's a lot of characters and a lot of stuff going on here, so I'm not gonna go
all into that. I didn't really like the, or I wasn't into the final volumes
as much as I was into the journey to there. And finally I'd like to give out
some brief awards, like special mentions. First, some authors that I now feel that
I want to read all of their work, add them to my list of authors whose work I
want to read, everything that they write, those would be Theodora Goss and
Octavia Cade. I read The Don't Girls by Octavia Cade, that was a novella, in 2018, and
even though it wasn't my favorite, I've read two things from her, and both of them
have been really, really intriguing and really fascinating and different from
other things that I read. So I want to read everything by Octavia Cade and
everything by Theodora Goss. Then favorite art I would give to Beneath the
Dead Oak Tree, Emily Carroll's one of my favorites, but then also to The Wicked
and the Divine, I really love Jamie McKelvie's artwork and I also love Matt
Wilson's colors in this series. I'm desperately trying to find some art that
isn't a spoiler from this volume, this is volume 7. Here's like an issue cover, but I
can't really show any of the art, because I think everything in this is a spoiler
for the past volumes. My favorite protagonist of the year was definitely
Murderbot, and my favorite side characters were the group of geek
women from Princess Jellyfish: I love them all, but I especially have a soft
spot for Mayaya. There's something that I wouldn't normally think of giving,
my favorite romantic interest was Shu from Princess Jellyfish - I just loved all the
scenes between Tsukimi and Shu, it just made me giggle. Then my favorite
relationship I would give them to the main characters from The Girl from the
Other Side. They have this guardian-child relationship that is very heartwarming.
And then I would also like to give it to the relationship, the friendship
developing between Maika and the demon god inside her whose name I have
forgotten, from Monstress. This is also quite different for me, but I'd like to
give a shout out to a favorite short story that I read in 2018, and I would
like to mention Olimpia's Ghost by Sofia Samatar, which
was collected in Tender: Stories, her short story collection. That just
introduced me to the story of The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffmann, which I didn't
know about before. The story itself... I don't think I understood everything
about it, because I didn't know the original work, but it inspired me to go
and read the original work, which was quite interesting as well, and then I
went on and read a Finnish horror novel that was also inspired by the same short
story, so Olimpia's Ghost really gave me a lot of other stuff to read in 2018.
I would like to go back and reread the short story, maybe I would get more out
of it this time. Funniest read would go to Delicious
in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui, which is this manga series where this group of
adventurers cook and eat the monsters that they kill. It's ridiculous. And then
finally, a tear-jerker, super-emotional read award would go to Homunculus by Joe
Sparrow and also Volume 11 of Fullmetal Alchemist that I mentioned. So those were
my favorite reads of 2018, let me know if you have also read any of these, and
let me know if you have done your own video of 2018 favorites and I will go
and watch that. But that's all from me for now, and I will see you in my next video.
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