“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
—Stephen King
It’s true. I can’t think of a writer that I know of—personally or otherwise—who doesn’t devour books en masse. I’ve read writers that I might wager have a shallow pond from which they fish for books, but I’d only be speculating. Reading is crucial for writers. A writer ignoring the duty of reading would be like a painter refusing to clean her brushes, like a fighter skipping the gym.
Reading is essential to the writer’s toolkit.
When it comes to reading, I love it. I cast a wide net, and I encourage you to do the same. Reading in the same genre is limiting, and I feel it shows in someone’s writing. Challenge yourself to read as often as you can and in as many genres as you can find. I started using the Good Reads Reading Challenge feature to set and track my reading goals. I also track my reading in lists here on the site.
Here’s a few of my favorites thus far in 2020:
Horror
Horror is simply one of my favorite genres, be that books or film. I love a well done scare.
Stephen Graham Jones more than delivers in his latest novel, The Only Good Indians. Told in installments centered around a group of friends and the consequences of a choice they all made together ten years prior, The Only Good Indians gives new meaning to being haunted by the past.
There are moments in this book that left me floored, and yet, Stephen Graham Jones writes a horrific story enveloped in a beating heart. The ending is profound and beautiful; I may have cried.
Noir/Crime
Buckle the fuck up! Talk about a book so fraught with tension your jaw will be sore from clenching. S.A. Cosby’s Blacktop Wasteland punches the gas and doesn’t let up.
The last fifty pages had me sweating and gripping the book like an old leather wrapped steering wheel as the story fishtailed across a pocked backroad at 90 mph.
This is a tremendous work from a powerful author.
And, let’s not forget to mention that Stephen King lauded praise for Blacktop Wasteland as well.
Literature
This was damn near down to a coin toss, but I ultimately decided to offer up the latest novel form a regional writer whose voice deserves a much wider audience.
David Joy writes with a fierce southern heart. His stories are visceral. And if you’ve ever so much as spent a day in the south with some real folk, his characters are those you met.
His latest novel When These Mountains Burn is set against the wildfires of Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee in 2016, and centers around characters who, one way or another, are a part of the epidemic opioid crisis: a father giving everything he’s got to save his son from addiction, an Eastern Band Cherokee man trying to find himself amidst his own addiction, and an ATF agent determined to stop the flow of drugs through the Boundary and Western NC.
This is a deeply ponderous work full of pain and hope. I’m a big fan of David Joy’s work, but I don’t stutter when I say this is his finest to date.
I’ve read nearly 40 works thus far, and my TBR stack has grown instead of shrunk. Despite the shitshow this year has been, we cannot complain about the quality of work from our writers.
Grab one of these—or any book—and get to reading. And, if it’s not too much trouble, buy that book from your local bookshop, or at the very least, buy from Bookshop.org.