Wally the Wordworm by Clifton Fadiman

A slim children's book by the well-known bookman Clifton Fadiman, first published in 1964. Fadiman wrote it because he hated children's books that limited their vocabulary to words supposedly suitable for children. He found words fun--they opened up new worlds, new meanings, and new feelings, things which should be encouraged in children. Thus the tale of Wally the Wordworm, an explorer who eats his way through odd words in a dictionary. It's a clever and amusing contrast to the many modern books of a less ambitious nature. 

Web by John Wyndham

John Wyndham is one of those authors that I would expect to like but don't. British and dour, hopeful and initially optimistic, are qualities in the right direction, but a classic like The Day of the Triffids left me cold. The reason?  Because Wyndham underplayed the interesting overarching plot and centered on a small boring group of survivalists. I've been tempted for years to read his final novel, Web, which went unpublished until a decade after his death in 1969. In the mid-1960s he had tried to get a co-author for it, but when he would explain that it was about "giant spiders" it turned off potential collaborators like Brian Aldiss. I started the novel but saw Wyndham's typical dullnesses quickly begin to emerge. Instead of abandoning it completely, I found another option. In 1991 it was retold by Jocelyn Potter and Andy Hopkins in a much truncated version designed for "upper intermediate" young readers. Thus in about fifty small pages I could get the plot and feeling of the novel of some 180+ pages, with much less suffering.  I'm glad I did this, for it satisfied my curiosity about the book in one sitting and I didn't have to slog through extended passages of Wyndham's weaknesses. In this small form it's kind of like a Twilight Zone episode--dated, with dull characters on a serious mission, who encounter malevolent spiders on a remote south seas isle, and with the expected stinger in the tail. Good for a short entertainment, but not for anything more.

The Sluts by Dennis Cooper

I recently saw two films that were co-written and co-directed by Dennis Cooper and Zac Farley:  Like Cattle Towards Glow (2015) and  Permanent Green Light (2018), and I realized that I've never read anything by Cooper, who is primarily known as a fiction writer. So I looked around a bit, and thought I'd try The Sluts (2004). After reading the book, I was surprised by how accurate the blurb on the rear cover is as regards the set-up of the book: "Set largely on the pages of a Web site where gay male escorts are reviewed by their clients, and told through the postings, e-mails, and conversations of several dozen unreliable narrators, The Sluts chronicles the evolution of one young escort's date with a satisfied client into a metafiction of pornography, lies, half-truths, and myth." What this doesn't hint at is how violent much of the book is. S&M is mild compared to the extended discussions of snuff films and the extreme torture played out on the supposedly willing underage street prostitutes. The book is basically torture-porn, with a bit of a plot. Neither the subject matter nor the technique of this book interests me, so I think I'm done with Dennis Cooper.

Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong

Every year or so I feel I ought to try some new poet, and this year I decided to try the slim "first full-length collection" by Ocean Vuong, with the intriguing title Night Sky with Exit Wounds. It came out in 2016, and my copy is an undated fourth printing, so it's evidently been successful, as far as poetry goes. But sadly the book's best moment is the title itself. The rest is drivel, all moments and thoughts very personal to the author, but of little interest for anyone else. So, thirty-five poems spaciously spread over eighty-five pages in a slim book, and it really was a waste of time. A perfect exemplar of why the audience for modern poetry gets smaller and smaller.

Prosper's Demon by K.J. Parker

Prosper's Demon is a novella by K.J. Parker, a pseudonym of Tom Holt. It is the tale of a mortal exorcist fighting possessions by immortal demons, in a quasi-medieval setting. The exorcist discovers that the famous self-proclaimed scientific genius, Prosper of Schanz, is possessed by a demon, and the exorcist begins a forbidden collaboration with the demon, seeming to aid the demon's long-term plans because they will outlast the exorcist. The dual between the two is clever, but the story is only moderately successful, and the ending is rather rushed. Prosper's Demon is  darker in ways than the other books by Tom Holt that I've read.

Witchmark by C.L. Polk

Witchmark is the tale of Dr. Miles Singer, secretly a witch who uses his forbidden powers clandestinely to heal people. It is set in an other world modeled after Edwardian England, where there is a great war ongoing between Aeland and Laneer, and the otherworldly beings called Amaranthines have sent a representative to Aeland to figure out what is happening to all the souls of the dying. Dr. Miles Singer was originally Sir Christopher Miles Hensley, part of the (hidden) elite who manage Aeland, who turned his back upon his family (including his sister, to whom he was supposed to be attached as a secondary magical power) and his position in society in order to serve in the war and become a doctor. In Witchmark he develops a quick romance with the Amarathine Tristan Hunter. Witchmark was nominated for Nebula Award, and a Lambda Literary Award (for LGBTQ content), and won the World Fantasy Award for Novel. It's a pleasant read, with not very involved world-building and not very well-drawn characters, and it should not in my view have been a candidate for any major awards. There are two sequels (so far) that I do not feel at all inspired to read.

Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin

Powers is the third and final volume of the series "Annals of the Western Shore." It is a longer and more substantial book than the previous two, telling the story of Gavir, a Marshland boy taken as a slave when very young, on to his adulthood. While a slave, he is privileged to learn to read, and his special gifts include a remarkable ability to recall what he has read, and a power to dream of the future. He escapes from slavery after his sister is murdered, and wanders the country, first among various bands of men, and later among his own people, leading him towards his own destiny. A powerful capstone to Le Guin's series. (Reading Le Guin directly after reading Maggie Stiefvater only makes Le Guin's stature as a writer seem more towering.)