2015 Books, Stories & Author of the Year: Marge Piercy

This is my favorite category:

For me, when it comes to books, its frequently the weirder the better and I read some fabulously weird standout books this year including:

Memoirs of a Space Woman, Naomi Mitchison (1962) - on my to-read via the Feminist SFF & Utopia recommendations aka the feminist sf canon at FeministSF.org for some time
Planet of the Apes, Pierre Boulle (1963) - I was curious about this classic and yes it deserves the title, classic
Doctor Rat, William Kotzwinkle (1976) - a great recommendation via Cat Rambo's blog

More straightforward, but a lot of fun was The Martian, by Andy Weir (2014). I was absolutely cheering for the hero Mark Watney and I loved this quote and theme "...every human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it's true."

I also enjoyed talking about this book with friends since so many of them had read it (fewer had read, say Doctor Rat) and seeing the movie (although the book was better — of course! — and I was disappointed that my favorite theme morphed into a more typical sole survivor story). There's a great review of the movie by Gary Westfahl in Locus Magazine, ‘A Huge Moment for NASA’ … and Novelists: A Review of The Martian.

My own book of the year pick, however, goes to feminist utopia/dystopia (How had I not read this book, yet?!) Woman on the Edge of Time (1976):

"The gift is in growing to care, to connect, to cooperate. Everything we learn aims to make us feel strong in ourselves, connected to all living." — Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time

And, after also reading her collected essays and poems in My Life, My Body (2015) and stories The Cost of Lunch, Etc. Short Stories (2014) and just starting to re-read one of my Top 10 Books I Read in the Peace Corps books, He, She and It (1991) my reunion with Marge Piercy's works makes her officially my author of the year.

I only took the time to review two short stories this year on my blog. These two were stand outs. Stories of the year go to:

"Gestella," by Susan Palwick is included in Sisters of the Revolution (2015) and The Fate of Mice (2007) (I also read Palwick's excellent novel Shelter (2007)). Palwick is my author discovery of the year. Why haven't I been reading her sooner?
"Torching the Dusties," by Margaret Atwood is the final story in her collection Stone Mattress: Nine Tales (2014)

What is this? My Year in Review.

Comments

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Shel Graves' Sensorium

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