our little family: good reads of 2011

fiction

Ship Breaker, by Paolo Bacigalupi. This tale of a post-petroleum future takes place around a broad beach where obsolete cargo ships are broken down for scrap by poor and ragged workers. It's a dangerous and stressful work for children to be engaged in. Terrifying storms blow in frequently over the drowned towns. One young man tries to do his best in this cruel life, in between beatings administered by his father. Things start to happen to him, and he must grow up in a hurry. I listened to the audiobook version, which started a bit slow, but then became so compelling that I kept taking longer drives so that I could listen more. Recommended.

Beggars in Spain, by Nancy Kress. This is one of the best science fiction books I've come across in the last few years, and is arguably the most important. I listened to the audiobook version of this beginning around MLK day and kept thinking about how its message of differentness, community and belonging was perfect. The story takes place in the near future, when parents request various gene modifications to their unborn children. One of these is the ability to avoid sleeping, forever. What happens to these children and their society, and the strange and broken America of the future, is compelling and heartbreaking. If you pick just one of these books to read out of this list... this might be the one. Highest recommendation.

Zero History, by William Gibson. In this strange tale of the present, freelancers help an unusual advertising agency search for the mastermind behind a secret brand of... pants. Variously musicians, recovering addicts, writers, clothing designers, defense contractors, government security firms, private security firms, and assorted others all whip out their iPhones and do wacky stuff. Great fun. I listened to the audiobook version, and quite enjoyed the company of all these characters.

Crooked Little Vein, by Warren Ellis. I've read several of Warren Ellis' graphic novel series this year (Transmetropolitan, Ignition City...) and decided to try out this novel of his. After finishing it, I feel like a hound dog who has rolled in something very smelly [wags tail]. Yes it has a detective in it, and he's on a case, but don't let that scare you away. Who knew the dark underbelly of America could be so dark and funny. You probably won't like it, because you're a good wholesome God-fearing person who would never read this sort of thing. You're right to urge me to repent of enjoying it. Shopping for sackcloth and ashes now...

Embassytown, by China Miéville. A small colony at the very far edge of human space coexists with the strangest race of aliens ever to be major characters in a novel. They speak with their two mouths and wave their giftwings to speak, and biorig living factories that excrete food and wares. The humans wander through their living pulsing city, trying to communicate with the strange dual Language, breathing through living masks. I used to think that Samuel Delany's 'Stars in my pocket like grains of sand' was the most alien of all science fiction books, in its depiction of a very different race that thinks and lives in utter otherness. No longer - it's this one. This is a terrific book and I hope you enjoy it.

Widdershins, by Charles de Lint. Faerie, humans, and native spirits get in a seriously confused tussle in this great book, which is told from many points of view. I listened to the audiobook, and each character had a slightly different voice, all performed by a single narrator. I've long enjoyed Charles de Lint's urban fantasy novels, but I'd never tried one as an audiobook before. This one was great.

The Earthsea Trilogy, by Ursula K. LeGuin. I listened to these as audiobooks while commuting to work. I had read them many years ago as a teen, and remembered liking them, but it had been so long that I'd forgotten everything. The audiobooks were quiet and restrained, like LeGuin's language. Formal. There is a sort of rightness to this series. I liked them.

Zoo City, by Lauren Beukes. This is a strange and scary sci-fi novel set in an alternate Johannesburg where some people have permanent psychic connections to an animal. Our heroine totes a sloth (named "Sloth") everywhere. Totemic magic music sex murders set to Joberg slang built up chaotically until boom. This was a pretty good book but it really did creep me out.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone,
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,by J.K. Rowling. Ok so everybody knows everything about these books. I read the first one a long time ago, but got distracted by life and didn't continue the series. I decided to give the audiobooks a try. They're really super fun, highly recommended. But expensive, so I'm working my way through my library's collection. Somehow I've managed to listen to the first and the third books, waiting on the second (21st hold of 37 circulating copies). These really are great fun to listen to.

The Traveler, by John Twelve Hawks. I started listening to this intense and humorless audiobook right as we were learning about Carrier IQ hacking all of our phones, Google selling our locations to the highest bidders, and the mass media was ignoring widespread beatdowns of peaceful OWS demonstrators. So a conspiracy novel about the vast machine hunting down free-thinkers resonated with me. Imagine Carlos Castenada, Robert Ludlum and the EFF rewriting the Illuminatus and you'll be close. This one gave me the shivers. Now googling instructions on how to make a tinfoil hat while living in a cave.

non-fiction

Designing with the Mind in Mind, by Jeff Johnson. This book captures essentials of perception, vision, and other human psychology factors that influence design, and presents them in an accessible fashion. I don't have a psych background, so the more long-winded tomes nod me right off. This cuts right to the chase, has good pictures, and covers a lot of ground. I might trot this out to show the odd page here or there to clients, since the author explains this stuff a lot better than I ever could.

Android Wireless Application Development, by Shane Conder and Lauren Darcey. I started the year with an Android design project knowing almost nothing of the platform. As usual when this happens, I bought a couple of books and dived in. This was the most useful. The examples were well-presented, and the downloadable code made sense and ran fine. But the most useful thing to me was how the authors described user interface and system features quickly, giving names to them that I could drill down into on my own. One of the most challenging parts of learning a new environment for me is learning what I need to learn about, and the overviews in this book helped me out a lot.

Android in Action, by Frank Ableson and Robi Sen. This was the other Android book I got when I was starting out. Their introduction to the development tools and code signing was flawless, but I got confused early on trying to follow their code examples. I think these guys are all fine programmers, but the book didn't quite connect with me. I'll keep it around and maybe it will make more sense after I get more experience designing and developing for the platform.

Simple and Usable, by Giles Colborne. This book made a big impact on me. I've been struggling a bit to convey to engineers at work why software overburdened with features was becoming awkward and unwieldy. This book brilliantly tells this story, in pictures as well as words. This is a thin volume, easy to read, that rewards reflection. I've been recommending it to engineers and managers at work, sharing my copy when they've asked. This is the only design book I've ever asked them to read. I think a combination of reading this book and people buying their own iPads for fun at home were both big design influencers in my company this year.

Designing the iPhone User Experience, by Suzanne Ginsburg. I'd been working mostly with BlackBerry and Android devices when I got an iPhone app design assignment earlier this year. So I bought an iPhone and this book to learn more about what to look for. This book was a big help. We ended up working with an outside agency to develop the app, and this book gave me a good grounding in the platform's design language and guidelines.

Web Anatomy, by Robert Hoekman, Jr. and Jared Spool. This is a good book of something like meta-patterns: patterns of patterns that help to make for successful web applications. I was impressed that both authors tweeted back and carried on conversations with me after I mentioned I was reading their book. It's somehow ended up getting carried around in my car, which probably means something.

Web Application Design Patterns, by Pawan Vora. Another keeper covered with tape flags, full of good and bad examples of how to design big web apps.

Designing Social Interfaces, by Christian Crumlish and Erin Malone. As you can tell, I went on a patterns kick this year to prepare for a new project. This book was great because it covered invitations and sharing and other social interactions from a web application. I was looking at a web+mobile system, and the book covered those as well. I've got all sorts of little tape flags stuck in this one still.

You Are Not a Gadget, by Jaron Lanier. This was the most provocative and challenging book of philosophy I've read this year. The author speaks eloquently of how ubiquitous network technologies like MIDI can constrain the human experience into what fits within the protocol. I hope this book is required reading for digital design and computer science graduate students, if only to boost the beer business for arguments in campus taverns.

JavaScript: The Good Parts, by Douglas Crockford. This was a brilliant reduction of Javascript by a brilliant coder. The author proposed a number of changes to coding styles to minimize the effects of namespace collisions and global scope, and to improve readability and performance. The book was a bit over my head in spots, which actually made me happy since a lot of the really sophisticated coders I know seem to hate on JavaScript. It was refreshing to have a computer scientist take a hard look at the language and give the rest of us good advice. I see many references to this book in other current scripting books and on the web. I think I'll keep coming back to it as my understanding grows.

JavaScript Patterns, by Stoyan Stefanov. This is another take on how to code sophisticated and stable work in JavaScript. I found it more accessible and immediately useful than Javascript: The Good Parts, but they're definitely birds of a feather. I see the roots of jQuery poking out from these patterns. I highly recommend this slim volume.

The jQuery Cookbook, Edited by Cody Lindley from the work of many experts. Tremendously helpful as I was learning jQuery. I'm good with JavaScript already, so the handful of jQuery introductory books I picked up just frustrated me. The Cookbook has great short code examples, all explained thoroughly, that immediately made sense. I felt like I was quickly absorbing the jQuery syntax and possibilities as I read this book. Go buy it if you're planning to use jQuery.

manga and graphic novels

Castle Waiting, by Linda Medley. This dreamy collection of tales was as if the Brothers Grimm had a long-lost sister who learned art from Watty Piper. Beautiful and full of heart. Highest recommendation.

Dorohedoro, by Q Hayashida. This grotesquerie follows a lizard-headed man and his partner as they search a twisted and broken city for visiting magic users, so they can kill them. The artwork is gloriously bizarre, the story even stranger. I imagine a China Miéville graphic novel might look something like this. Possess considerable humor, of the very blackest shade. A big favorite.

The Lost Thing, by Shaun Tan. Shaun Tan creates large-format graphic novels of exceptional craft. This one takes place in a plumbing-rich society, full of strange devices. A boy finds a large and unusual thing that doesn't seem to fit in anywhere, and tries to find it a home. A quick read that rewards close examination.

Kings in Disguise, by James Vance, Dan Burr, and Alan Moore. This must be one of the ten best graphic novels of all time. It's a rags-to-rags story of hobos in the 30s, with so much heart. I kept thinking about how we think we've got it tough now with our crummy economy, but nothing like the thousands of homeless during the Depression. Truly a tremendous must-read book.

The Surrogates, by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele. This graphic novel takes place in a near-future Atlanta, where most people stay home while letting their surrogate bodies go out to work and play. Things happen, I don't want to give too many away, but it's a great story and would make a terrific movie.

Okko, by Hub. This collection of graphic novels has exquisite art. I kept turning pages thinking, I wish I had this painting hanging on my wall. It's a story set in a Japan / China sort of place, with swords and islands, and boats, and magic, and drunken priests, and beautiful women, and all the other wonderful things that fantasy comics can have. Plus a great story. Love these.

Ocean, by Warren Ellis. A rousing science-fiction graphic novel that takes place primarily on a remote moon in the outer planets. Much action and chasing around in dangerous ways.

Transmetropolitan, by Warren Ellis. The blackest of black comedies about news, elections, and the society of the future. The lead character is a sort of reporter/investigator who drinks like a fish, wears glasses with differently shaped and colored lenses for each eye, travels with arguing female bodyguards, and defends himself with a Bowel Disrupter Gun. Truly brutally funny. You should read this great series. Very timely for an election year. Plus it has the best cat in the entire human history of cats in comics.

American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang. My librarian recommended this to me. She had loved it, and suggested it to her book club, who weren't as open-minded about "comic books" as she was. Their loss. This full-color graphic novel interweaves a Chinese fairy tale about a monkey king with stories of an American born Chinese boy's childhood in the States. The characters are good and the art is simple and expressive. It's a fun read. I think that my librarian was right - this is a good starting-point book to share with people who don't read graphic novels.

Channel Zero, by Brian Wood. Future America, as seen from the 90's, sports a totalitarian government with a violent right-wing Christian agenda, complete media censorship, and a foreign policy consisting of imperialist invasions. The UN has relocated outside the US, and Russia and India have joined NATO. One girl known as Jennie 2.5 attempts to break free of the censorship and wake people up a bit. People kept recommending this to me as one of the great works of comics and they were absolutely right. Now I'm recommending it to you.

anime

Xam'd. This series goes way up in my top ten. A huge cast, biowar engineering, battle mechs, a flying sky kayak, compelling main characters, and the best anime opening music ever. Almost too short. Gets my absolutely highest recommendation - best of the year. Watch this one. Plus the home team works for the post office.

Starship Operators. A group of space defense students run off with a warship after their home planet is overrun. They get themselves sponsored as a reality show and have all their battles broadcast in real time. The students use their creativity to advantage and become media stars in the process. I loved the great user interfaces in the starship's control room - all bright neon grids and geometric shapes.

Stellvia. This series takes place primarily in a space station orbiting the earth, where a group of bright high school students are training to become pilots. They're learning about themselves and each other while learning how to fly spaceships and combat the strange energies flowing into the solar system. This series really got under my skin and I loved the music. This series is out of print so you may need to hunt around. I ended up buying it second-hand as Netflix was missing disc 3. Netflix' broken anime sets are legend in the otaku community and one of the reasons I ditched them for Crunchyroll this year.

Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom. Ok let's get this out of the way right now: this is the suckiest name in the history of anime. It's also a truly great show about vicious assassins who work for the mob. So great show / terrible name. It's ok to snigger a little when you say the name, but do watch this one - it's tremendous.

SHANGRI-LA. Here's another series to get excited about. After a huge earthquake, complete with volcanoes and tsunami, Japan has crumbled into ruins below the huge towering city in the sky that the elites live in. An economy based around carbon credits further limits development. The series offers variously: killer boomerangs, a flaming transgendered bodyguard, carbon trading that wrecks national economies, and a post-apocalypse Tokyo that looks like a pretty fun place. The character designs are by Range Murata, so that's another reason to watch. The series hasn't been imported on DVDs yet, so go watch it on Crunchyroll.

No.6. It must be the season for anime distopias in planned cities. No.6 takes place in and around a large walled utopia created after wars and environmental destruction rendered much of the earth uninhabitable. The lives of three young people cross in unusual ways, and all are threatened by the controlling city-state that is No.6. There's just a hint of BL in this series. It's very good. Another one to watch on Crunchyroll.

Blue Exorcist. This is one of the prime exemplars of the TV trope called "Anime Catholicism". This is where you go to church to become an exorcist and fight demons, Satan, the Pope, etc. I have to say that if churches were this exciting, they'd have no trouble filling up pews. Although the concept of this series is completely silly (the son of Satan trains to be an exorcist), the execution is terrific, there's plenty of action, and the blue flames are really pretty. So spend a bit of time in exorcist school with this one - it's a lively place.

Summer Wars. Here's the rarest of rare things - a first-run anime feature film that I saw in a theatre, with actual working popcorn and tickets and everything. Mamoru Hosoda is the most brilliant insane wonderful genius directing anime right now. I just wish he worked faster so that I could watch more of his stuff. This mashup of a large extended family reunion and the hacking of a MMO game is terrifically plotted and looked gorgeous on the big screen.

I hope there's something in this list that appeals to you. Have fun reading and watching!