Somehow another year has passed, and though I theoretically can still blame the pandemic for making the time fly, I am starting to think it’s just how time works. Same deal as the last two years — I’ve read 40+ books this year and want to share the spoils.
The Poley for “Highest Quality-to-Page Ratio” goes to…
- Exhalation by Ted Chiang explores technology, humanity, and meaning-making in a beautiful collection of short stories. Each story is tersely rendered, much like the writing of Ken Liu, but this is one of the rare cases when prettier prose would only distract from the beauty of the story.
- Pastoralia by George Saunders is much like the past two collections I’ve reviewed (in 2020’s Poleys). How does he do it every time? I’ll tell you — brutal compassion and cynical hope suffusing every whimsical sentence.
The Poley for “Oops, I haven’t showered and I’m three hours late to work” goes to…
- It shouldn’t be a surprise that Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir displays the same reverence for the scientific method and knack for thrills as his first novels The Martian and Artemis. What does come as a surprise is the exponential increase of Weir’s skill as a writer, and the tender way in which Project Hail Mary plumbs the meaning of family and courage without ever letting up on the gas.
- Stormlight Archive by Brandon Sanderson won this award last year, too, but hey, the fourth book came out this year so I’m still counting it. Frankly, Sanderson is one of the most inclusive, sensitive fantasy writers out there, which I love because I don’t have to make the all-too-frequent nerd compromise of “great story, but totally objectifies women” or “great story… if you pretend some of the white dudes are POC”. And the best thing is that his style and content markedly improve with every book he writes.
The Poley for “Most Novel Novel” goes to…
- The Witch Elm — somehow Tana French manages to upend the mystery and thriller genres with every book she writes. Her Dublin Murder Squad series is strong, but I prefer most her standalone works, to watch how she’ll break these characters and tell me something new about the parts of my psyche I’d prefer to keep hidden.
The “Words and Pictures” Poley goes to…
- Fox 8 by George Saunders is a book that every human should read, and no one has a sufficient excuse not to. Charming line-art illustrations in a pint-sized package? Check. An anthropomorphized fox with the name “WhySoHefty?”? Check. Gut-wrenching interrogation of humanity and ecology? …Check.
The “Prop Your Furniture Up With This” Poley
I once had a conversation with a neighbor who rated and recorded every movie he watched. He told me he maintains his ratings such that his average is 5/10 — in other words, he intentionally keeps watching 3/10 and 1/10 films so that his average is actually the median possible score.
I think my ideal world is one where every book I read is a 10/10. Why would I intentionally consume media I don’t like? (Moreover, I’ve done the math and I can only read about 3900 more books in my lifetime, so I’ve got to make my time count.) So when I don’t like a book, I use it to prop up my furniture. 2021, unfortunately, had many such structural books.
- The degree to which I adore Brandon Sanderson’s work is a function of how many years of writing practice he’s had, apparently. Elantris, his first novel, disappoints in all the ways that Stormlight amazes. (Maybe it’s precisely because Stormlight gave me such high expectations that I was disappointed by his earlier work.) Either way, if you’re picking up Sanderson for the first time, start with the most recent stuff and don’t succumb to the urge to “fill in the backstory” because his early stuff is just beach reading.
The “Superlative Dinner Conversation” Poley
- Have you ever wanted to know why an 18th-century map of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia is the best quantitative graphic ever drawn? The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte is a paradigm shift — it declutters and demystifies the world of statistical and scientific graphs and charts and paves a road toward clearer (and therefore more accurate) communication.
- The Elements of Style by Strunk & White is to prose as Tufte is to plots. Taken together, these two cogent handbooks have revolutionized the way I communicate professionally. They’re nothing short of great.
The “Concessions to a Pandemic” Poley
Somehow we’re still in this purgatorial pandemic, and the downside is I didn’t read as much as I’d planned, but maybe you can construe the amount of video games played and movies watched as an upside.
- Through the Breach is a delightful (read: fiendishly difficult) little tactics game that channels the kaiju-bashing panache of Godzilla or Pacific Rim in pixellated style. Good for 20-40 hours of teeth-gnashing anxiety (read: all-consuming fun).
- Slay The Spire is a card-driven roguelike game, meaning that death is permanent and results in a game reset, but each failure unlocks new cards on the path to success. Just don’t play this when self-control is at an ebb tide, because otherwise you’ll be like me at 2 in the morning thinking to yourself “just one more level…” like you have for the past 6 hours.
- The acclaimed board game Gloomhaven was released on Steam in October for a fraction of the price (and infinitesimally less tabletop space) as the physical version. The tactical gameplay is punishing, deep, and immensely rewarding, but the early versions are very “clicky” (why do I have to click to confirm that I don’t want to take any actions?), so I expect this game will improve as it’s updated.
The “Dangerously likely to change my life” Poley
- Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari is one of those books that completely changes how I think about everything. Harari frames the whole of human progress as the result of our species’ major competitive advantage — selfless cooperation at unprecedented, supra-tribal scales. This cooperation is singularly enabled by humanity’s ability to believe stories which have no grounding in reality. Some examples: “If I buy a ticket and a hotdog and paint my face and shout myself hoarse, the Patriots will play better.” “My minimum-wage janitor job is an indispensable part of NASA’s efforts!” Or perhaps “because the Pope said these infidels don’t deserve the Holy Land, I’ll go on this crusade and pay extra taxes in the meanwhile.” Those stories may be extra-factual, but they’ve created a world that’s largely free from the species-threatening famines, wars, and plagues of medieval history. Humans already have the technologies to rescue ourselves from predatory media companies, rogue capitalism, and anthropogenic climate change — what we lack are the stories to wisely and ethically generate selfless collective action.
- Last year, this category was won by a quintet of books about capitalism and climate. How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell is a quieter voice in this space, but no less powerful for it. It’s a private meditation on resisting the riptide of easy answers and placebo technologies, honoring our Selves, and changing our worlds.
Here’s wishing you another year of learning, peace-making, and story-telling.