Over the last week or so of 2006, it seemed that everybody and their mother was posting lists of books they’d read over the course of the year. This got me thinking. While I read a lot of books in 2006, I didn’t really keep track of them in any organized way, so I’ve got no clue how many I devoured. Just to hazard a guess, based on the sixteen or so titles from last semester still sitting on my desk, I’d estimate I read four to five times as many, maybe more, since I'm not counting not counting manuscripts, short stories, and e-texts. So add this to my list of resolutions: in 2007, I’m actually going to keep track of what I read, and might even, come December 31, post my own booklist.

There is, of course, an element of bragging involved in a booklist posted on the Internet, as if the poster was somehow saying “Hey, look. I read books, I must be an intellectual.” It’s an unavoidable conceit, even when said booklist includes such popular pabulum as The DaVinci Code (which, admittedly, I haven’t read, though I did enjoy (more so in theory than in practice) the rude-as-humanly-possible (fair warning, I'm not kidding that it's as rude-as-humanly-possible) take on it that they guys over at Explosm.net created for an exceedingly lazy high school student’s class project). Still, at least there’s some sort of intellectual involvement in reading enough books to create a list, and since that sort of high-sighted ambition is so very rare these days (my sister’s rants against subtitles in action movies come to mind), perhaps the Internet booklist is a noble pursuit.

So far this year, I’ve finished reading two books, K.J. Bishop’s The Etched City and World War Z, by Max Brooks, and I’ve just started reading Michael Moorcock’s The Cornelius Chronicles (Since it’s an omnibus, does that one count as one novel, or four?).

I picked up The Etched City because it was name-dropped in the jacket copy of Jay Lake’s Trial of Flowers, along with texts by China Miéville and Jeff VanderMeer. Like Lake, Miéville, and VanderMeer, Bishop's novel is Fantasy, but a branch of Fantasy that owes more to the Surrealist, Magical Realist, and Noir literary movements than to the swords and sorcery of epic fantasists like J.R.R. Tolkien and Robert E. Howard. Although it does occasionally get bogged down, particularly near the novel's middle (as first novels are wont to do), The Etched City features captivating storytelling, memorable characters, and outstanding set pieces (including a battle on a statue-covered bridge that manages to affect a tone both epic and personal). Unlike Lake, Miéville, and VanderMeer, however, whose City Imperishable, New Crobuzon, and Ambergris actively become characters within their novels’ narratives (in the mode of M. John Harrison’s Viriconium), Bishop’s lush and teeming Ashamoil, while evocative and picturesque, never quite rises to the occasion, remaining a setting that is well-imagined, yet never quite real.

Bishop’s leading characters, the gunslinging soldier for hire Gwynn and his female counterpart, the outlaw surgeon Raule, are compelling, charismatic, and believable. While the duo technically share protagonist duties, peacock-coat clad Gwynn quickly moves to the narrative's center, becoming a peacock himself, taking the more active, adventurous role as Raule spends most of her time on the sidelines, observing, philosophizing, speculating, and tending to the wounded. Although Gwynn cuts a flamboyant figure with an affectation of glam-rock panache, for a novel that name-drops Aubrey Beardsley and J.K. Huysmans in its jacket copy, The Etched City depicts a surprisingly heteronormative world, with a touch of tacked-on exotic orientalism included to make the city seem decadent. Frankly, Lake and Miéville both do decadence better. Still, I would call The Etched City an easy recommendation, an enjoyable and thoughtful bit of fantastic escapism with plenty to offer.

Max Brooks’s World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War is another easy recommendation, though I knew, based on Mike the Gorehound’s fervent recommendation and the novel’s high concept (Studs Terkel’s The Good War meets Dawn of the Dead) that this was going to be a book I couldn’t help but like. While World War Z is categorized by its publisher as humor (actually “War—Humor”), this genrefication is a bit of a misnomer, and likely based more on Brooks’s genetics than anything else. Sure, the book’s got plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, but these are not only few and far between, but are far outnumbered by the novel’s anxious, tearjerking, angering, and, ultimately, crowd-pleasing scenes. This is a novel with something for everyone. Fans of current events will find plenty of allegorical connections to today’s headlines and will have a blast identifying the thinly-veiled avatars of newsmakers and politicians. Fans of action will find a relentless pace. Fans of military novels will be fascinated by the day-after-tomorrow tactics and hardware on display. Fans of voice and character will be astounded by the way in which Brooks channels hundreds of distinct personalities. And fans of zombies… well, let’s just say there are lots and lots of zombies.