Gay Dwarves of America, by Anne Fleming. It’s not a good year unless one of the books by our pals at Canada’s Pedlar Press makes our best-of lists! And this year it’s this, a story collection by Anne Fleming whose main mark of distinction is that it’s edgy and experimental, but comes to this place by first taking mainstream story ideas and then weirding them up. There are just a couple of clunkers in there, which is what kept it off the “Best of the Best” list; but the best stories suck you in even while impressing you with their literary acumen, the kind of high-quality manuscript that small presses excel at getting out.
I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts, by Mark Dery. After a fully established career that has seen this cultishly loved essayist slowly building a following, 2012 seemed to finally be the big breakout year for Mark Dery, with this dark yet erudite collection being one of the big buzzes among lit hipsters all last year. Granted, it’s not quite as groundbreaking as some of its breathless praise warrants, which is what kept it off the “Best of the Best” list -- although always smart and subversive, it ultimately isn’t anything different than what’s being said by Warren Ellis, Bruce Sterling, the staff of Boing Boing, etc -- but if you’re not familiar with any of these other people, it’s an absolute imperative that you pick this up as soon as you can, a writer destined to be as important to future hackers and Sub-Geniuses as William Gibson and Mondo 2000 was to my own youth.
Religion for Atheists, by Alain de Botton. I’ve only recently become aware of this contemporary public intellectual, and have been reading through both his old work and new over the last six months; this is his latest, an incredibly smart and thought-provoking look at how the secular benefits of religion can be separated from the faith and applied in a humanist way to atheists’ lives. As such, then, this book was trashed by a lot of critics, who called it everything from trite to obvious to unworkable; but I gotta say, I had a much more positive experience with it than they did, and saw it as a highly practical updating of the beliefs of 1950s Existentialists like Albert Camus, with lots of real-world advice on how to incorporate these things into your everyday life. A populist deep thinker but a highly intelligent one, don’t let his mainstream media appearances trick you into assuming this is pop psychology.
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