For the second year in a row I tracked my reading on Goodreads, and challenged myself to read more than I had in 2010 (20 books), initially setting the bar at 36 books before raising it mid-year to 50. Including a mix of graphic novels, novellas and short-story collections, I beat that goal by two books as of today, and am halfway through Eduardo Galleano’s Genesis, quite a book to end the year on!

Here are my five favorites (plus one honorable mention), in order of combined awesomeness and emotional impact, in what has arguably been one of the best years of reading in a long time, not just in quantity, but quality, too:

Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Most books you read and review, but some just cut too close, so you simply demand that everyone read them because a review would be too reductive.

Mockingbird is an absolutely wonderful must-read, skillfully combining Asperger’s, To Kill a Mockingbird and the ripple effects of a tragedy on a small community; it had me in full-on tears by the end.

Go read it now! I insist.

Nine Lives by Dan Baum
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book has all the rave reviews it needs, so let me not belabor the point. Nine Lives is an important book, a necessary book, a simultaneously heart-breaking and heart-warming, frustrating and inspiring book. Read it.

Now.

I expected the Katrina section to have the most impact, but Dan Baum does an excellent job of putting it in perspective by focusing on what really makes New Orleans special: its people. By starting with Hurricane Betsy and deliberately following these nine lives over the following 30+ years, he paints an insightful mosaic with poignant vignettes that alternately left me laughing, smiling, shaking my head, and choking back tears, all before he even gets to August 2005.

When it comes to that proverbial fantasy dinner party meme, I have a new answer: Timothy Bruneau, Belinda Carr, Billy Grace, JoAnn Guidos, Ronald W. Lewis, Frank Minyard, Joyce Montana, Wilbert Rawlins Jr., and Anthony Wells.

Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“There it is.”

Karl Marlantes juggles a large, diverse cast of complex characters (that sadly narrows over time), while deftly exploring one of America’s darkest periods from the proverbial fog of war with as close to a matter-of-fact, non-judgmental, nuanced hand as might be expected from an actual veteran. It’s a relentlessly gut-wrenching read that absolutely broke my heart on numerous occasions.

Read it.

The Influencing Machine by Brooke Gladstone
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“We get the media we deserve,” declares NPR’s Brooke Gladstone in her excellent The Influencing Machine, an insightful graphic manifesto that sits comfortably alongside Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business and Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, both of whom make cameo appearances.

Gladstone, aided by Josh Neufeld’s seamless visuals, makes a compelling case that the ills that plague media today — mass and social — are nothing new, that “we’ve been here before: the incivility, the inanities, the obsessions, the broken business models. In fact, it’s been far worse and the Republic survives.”

What follows is a broad, contextual overview of the history of media, recounted with a healthy sense of humor, and a refreshing undertone of optimism. eg: Near the end of the book, in two pages, she covers Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity, Lanier’s skepticism, Planet of the Apes and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs… and it all makes sense!

“Graphic non-fiction” is a tricky format to pull off and not to everyone’s taste, but Neufeld does a great job complementing Gladstone without letting the medium overshadow her message, and any student of media, formally or arm-chair, should read The Influencing Machine without hesitation.

Kudos to W.W. Norton for taking a chance on such an innovative book, though it’s rather disappointing that the publisher of Frank Rose’s excellent The Art of Immersion has zero online presence for it. A missed opportunity, but one that should be easily (and quickly) rectified.

This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us a by Marilyn Johnson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Love, love, LOVE this book! Johnson’s clear-eyed look at one of our most devalued resources, the librarian, is part love letter, part wake-up call. In the digital age, libraries and librarians are more important than ever, and Overdue presents a variety of examples that not only make that case, but illustrate how, in many ways, librarians are WAY AHEAD of the digital curve.

READ THIS BOOK! NOW!

HONORABLE MENTION – SELF-PUBLISHED

Make a Move by Steven Gaskin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Perhaps the European definition of “slacker” is different from my American interpretation, but categorizing Make a Move as a “slacker-thriller” feels unnecessarily narrow and reductive; like referring to Lawrence Block’s Matt Scudder novels as “recovering alcoholic crime fiction.”

Steven Gaskin’s debut is a deliberate, methodical thriller which owes as much to its genre ancestors as it does the character-driven wave of indie movies from the 90s, and it’s no surprise that he notes Grosse Pointe Blank as an inspiration. Much like Block does with Scudder, Gaskin pays an atypical amount of attention to developing his engaging trio of lead characters — twenty-somethings at similar crossroads in their respective lives, but far from slackers — amplifying the story’s many thrills via empathy and smart dialogue instead of simply relying on well-worn genre tropes. Mind you, the tropes are all there: the violence, the double-crossing, the mysterious past, the bomb; but they never overshadow the characters, certain key events taking place completely off-page, experienced only in reflection or via their aftershocks.

Make a Move is a smartly paced, immensely enjoyable read that defies simple categorization. While there’s plenty enough genre elements to satisfy thriller fans, I think its appeal is far broader than that and highly recommend it.

*** Later this week, I’ll post my favorite movies and games, the two media that steal the most time from reading, but until then, let me know what some of your favorite reads were this year and why.

BEHIND WHICH DOOR, by marc falardeau, via Flickr

For years, Hollywood has tried and failed to get video game publishers to let them license their most popular titles (like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto), but top publishers like Activision and Rockstar Games have begged off, believing their franchises to be worth far more than the potential downside of any movie incarnation. After all, in its first weekend in release, GTA IV posted more than $500 million in sales — and that was back in 2008.

–Claude Brodesser-Akner, NY Magazine

In light of Hollywood’s miserable record of video game adaptations (and vice versa, game developers’ shovelware adaptations of movies), I think Ubisoft is right to demand as much control over a movie version of their Assassin’s Creed franchise as possible, and Sony is smart to give it to them since it reportedly includes a notable investment in story development that will offset some of their financial risk.

It’s Transmedia 101, really: s/he who owns the IP, owns the future. And the profits.

Marvel Comics learned that lesson the hard way when their cut of the hugely successful X-Men and Spider-Man movies was far smaller than they’d have liked, and the embarrassingly awful Elektra was a financial and critical flop, so they invested $525 million back in 2005 to establish their own film unit, ensuring full control over the B- and C-list likes of Captain America, The Avengers, Nick Fury, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Cloak & Dagger, Dr. Strange, Hawkeye, Power Pack, and Shang-Chi.

Buried in there under “The Avengers” was Iron Man, whose first two films alone grossed more than $1B worldwide in theaters, establishing the onscreen storyworld that positioned fellow B-listers Thor and Captain America for strong box office returns this past summer, and set the stage for what will likely be one of the biggest summer movies of 2012.

It will be interesting to see what other publisher can successfully go the Marvel route; with a $2B+ worldwide box office already in for the Avengers’ on-screen storyworld (one that still bizarrely lives in total isolation from the comics), I’m guessing several will make the attempt within the next 2-3 years.

Because Marvel’s situation is relatively unique among book publishers in that they actually own their IP, and licensing was already a strong revenue stream for them, it’s probably more likely that a game publisher will successfully make that jump first, while book publishers will continue to seek out partnerships until they can ramp up their own original IP development. (eg: Scholastic’s oft-referenced The 39 Clues.)

Two gaming franchises I think have some serious transmedia potential are Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls and Activision’s Skylanders, though you might be surprised by which one I think has the most potential.

Multiple Entry Points are Critical

When Dungeons and Dragons Online crapped out on me a few months back, I decided to check out Steam to find an alternative, buying The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, a franchise I was already familiar with from The Elder Scrolls III on Xbox, and ended up deeply immersed in it for a few weeks. (aka, several nights playing until 2am!) While I was playing it, Steam kept putting some great deals in front of me for other games every time I finished up a session, and I ended up buying Civilization V and Star Wars: Empire at War, too.

All three have been a lot of fun to play, and while Elder Scrolls started out as my favorite, I found it difficult to reconnect with after a few weeks’ break playing the other games, losing track of where I was in the story. One of the downsides of single-player RPGs, even somewhat non-linear ones like TES that offer a deep story and relatively open world to play in, is there’s pretty much only one entry point — the beginning of the game itself.

Pop Quiz: Name two major characters from The Elder Scrolls and the actors you think should play them?

Unlike D&D or Star Wars, The Elder Scrolls’ storyworld is relatively one-dimensional; with the exception of an impressive, unofficial wiki and two recent novels, it’s really just a setting in which a few amazing games have been created and lacks any other significant entry points to augment that gaming experience, or that might appeal to non-gaming fans of the fantasy genre. While it certainly has the depth to support movies, novels, comics, etc., there aren’t any notable characters to build upon, so its opportunities are currently far more incremental than expansive, and I wouldn’t make any serious bets on a movie or HBO series coming out of it anytime soon.

On the other hand, Skylanders, the new multi-platform franchise from Activision, has amazing potential right out of the gate to be the next Pokemon, one of the most underrated transmedia success stories ever.

The game itself is a surprisingly well-reviewed, family-friendly, one- or two-player platformer that distinguishes itself in a number of ways, not the least of which is that it’s truly cross-platform, recognizing that there is a physical component to social gaming. In Skylanders, you can take your favorite characters from your Wii version of the game over to your friend’s Xbox or PS3 or 3DS or PC versions, because all of its stats and data are saved in the base of the physical action figure itself.

That’s the real beauty of Skylanders; it’s not just that it’s a fun game (it really is; my kids and I have been loving it for the past three weeks, and I sometimes even play it without them! Shhh…), but that it’s more than “just” a video game. There’s a compelling storyworld underneath it and Activision has been very savvy about how to leverage it from the start.

While Spyro is loosely branded as the lead character (sort of Skylanders’ Pikachu, though to a much lesser degree), it’s really an ensemble cast that features a variety of engaging characters, each with their own personalities, back stories, and strengths, all of whom could easily make the jump into other media. While cartoons and comics are perhaps the most obvious, it’s interesting that Activision went with the toy angle first — and they really are cool toys in their own right — and their fledgling Webkins-esque website adds another layer of engagement that builds upon them.

So stories and games are intimately connected because they’re two sides of the same impulse. Stories give rise to play, and play gives rise to stories. Think of Star Wars, and all those action figures, and the fan fiction that came out of it–story transmuted to play and then to story again.

-Frank Rose, The Art of Immersion, via Transmythology

My 9-year-old daughter spends more time playing with the toys than she does the video game, and I’ve noticed her visiting Skylanders.com more often than Webkins, despite having just gotten a premium account for the latter for her birthday last month.

Of course, all of the coolest transmedia extension possibilities are moot if the game isn’t good, and I can’t praise Skylanders enough. Beyond the main story’s adventure, there’s also a separate two-player Battle Arena that’s effectively Super Smash Bros. for Skylanders, and could arguably have been a standalone game in its own right.

Replayability is another area where it excels. While it is often a side note in gaming reviews, you might not realize how important replayability is until your new, 3-week old Wii (which replaced your original, 3-year-old Wii) craps out and all of your data and progress in all of your games is lost! Fortunately, thanks to each Skylanders character retaining its own data — including upgrades, hats, and nickname — even though we had to re-start the adventure from the beginning on both profiles we’re running (yes, I have my own!), we’re doing so with a bunch of characters we’re already invested in, not starting completely from scratch and potentially moving on the next game.

The Gonzalez household is completely hooked on Skylanders: we’ve each bought several additional characters, including the Toys R Us exclusive Legendary Pack, as well as both Adventure Packs; both of my kids have online accounts set up and play there; plus, and more importantly, it’s the one game all three of us play together on a regular basis.

While I can’t think of any gaming angle that would pull my wife into the mix, she’d be far more likely to go to the theater with us for a movie, if for no other reason than our excitement about it.

It will be interesting to watch how things play out for Skylanders over the holiday season, to see if it becomes a sleeper hit or simply an intriguing idea that fails to connect with a wide enough audience, and how Activision responds to that reception. Hopefully they’re taking a stance similar to Marvel and Ubisoft, ensuring as much as possible that whatever comes next matches the quality and appeal of an impressive launch.

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“We get the media we deserve,” declares NPR’s Brooke Gladstone in her excellent The Influencing Machine, an insightful graphic manifesto that sits comfortably alongside Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business and Jaron Lanier’s You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, both of whom make cameo appearances.

Gladstone, aided by Josh Neufeld’s seamless visuals, makes a compelling case that the ills that plague media today — mass and social — are nothing new, that “we’ve been here before: the incivility, the inanities, the obsessions, the broken business models. In fact, it’s been far worse and the Republic survives.”

What follows is a broad, contextual overview of the history of media, recounted with a healthy sense of humor, and a refreshing undertone of optimism. eg: Near the end of the book, in two pages, she covers Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity, Lanier’s skepticism, Planet of the Apes and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs… and it all makes sense!

“Graphic non-fiction” is a tricky format to pull off and not to everyone’s taste, but Neufeld does a great job complementing Gladstone without letting the medium overshadow her message, and any student of media, formally or arm-chair, should read The Influencing Machine without hesitation.

[Check out this cool animated trailer by Benjamin Arthur.]

Kudos to W.W. Norton for taking a chance on such an innovative book, though it’s rather disappointing that the publisher of Frank Rose’s excellent The Art of Immersion has zero online presence for it. A missed opportunity, but one that should be easily (and quickly) rectified.

View all my Goodreads reviews

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Poke the Box should have been titled Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us – The Remix as Godin brings nothing new to the table other than a relationship with Amazon and some promotional pricing gimmicks. It’s his usual mix of paper-thin insights and exhortations to be bold! to lead! to ship! — but with notably less energy or conviction than usual, as if he wrote it in between blog posts over a rare quiet weekend.

I pre-ordered the Kindle version for $1 and read it in a total of about 2 hours, and would still rather pay full price for the hardcover version of Tribes, a far superior book that I not only devoured and raved about 2.5 years ago, but bought copies for my entire staff at the time, and still recommend to people on a regular basis.

Perhaps the most interesting idea in the book gets buried in his Stuart Smalley-esque shtick:

One reason organizations get stuck is that they stick with their “A” players so long that they lose their bench. In a world that’s changing, a team with no bench strength and a rigid outlook on the game will always end up losing.

It’s a concept worth exploring further, and one that fits perfectly under Tribes‘ philosophical umbrella, but in Poke it’s an odd aside that gets glossed over.

One of Godin’s running themes throughout Poke is to be an initiator, and that risking failure is the best road to achieving success, and by making it the first offering from The Domino Project, he’s practicing what he preaches. He initiated, he shipped, and he pretty much failed to deliver a good book.

Now the question will be whether or not “Powered by Amazon” and his marketing gimmicks have introduced him to a wider audience than Portfolio, his previous publisher, could have, and whether or not The Domino Project’s bench is deep enough to give this publishing experiment real legs.

View all my Goodreads reviews

–Frank Rose

The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation Is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories by Frank Rose

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Art of Immersion is a much-needed bridge to/from Henry Jenkins’ seminal Convergence Culture, as Frank Rose crafts an engaging, insightful overview of how storytelling has evolved in the digital age that’s accessible to all, whether enthusiast or skeptic. Focusing primarily on the intersection of film, TV and gaming, there are plenty of takeaways and insights of interest to writers and publishers, too.

Unlike most transmedia advocates, myself included, Rose focuses on immersion and depth of story, rather than just the primacy of STORY itself, offering a variety of compelling examples. Among them, his contrast between Star Wars and Avatar is on point, and I enjoyed his emphasis on marketing and engagement vs. interruption advertising; it’s a key aspect that gets overlooked in most discussions about transmedia.

The final three chapters delve into the science of immersion, with some really interesting info, though Rose’s take on Twitter is surprisingly simplistic and disconnected from earlier references in the book. Particularly interesting is the Lanier-ish (You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto) cautionary tone he ends the book on, somewhat surprising coming from one of the Wired crew.

All in all, a great read, and highly recommended.

NOTE: A complimentary copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher, W.W. Norton. My disclosures are here.

View all my reviews at Goodreads.

This Christmas, between the four of us, we added 33 new books to our overflowing bookshelves, and then returned from a short trip to Virginia on Thursday with 10 more new books!

One of my goals for 2010 was to read more books and review them — including ebooks and sampling new genres and authors — and even though I only managed to read 20 books and my to-read-pile is twice as large as it was last January (not counting a slew of public domain ebook classics), it was a pretty good year of reading for me.

While my preferences lean heavily towards genre fiction and graphic novels, I’m a pretty eclectic reader, open to trying just about anything as long as the hype isn’t too much to live up to (eg: it will be a long time before I read Freedom or The Passage.) I’m not a big bestseller, hardcover or literary fiction reader, though, and have only started to embrace ebooks recently, so most of what I read is unlikely to appear on any mainstream “Best of 2010″ lists.

Of those 20 books, these five stand out as especially remarkable and highly recommended, listed in the order I read them:

You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

YOU ARE NOT A GADGET is the 21st Century’s AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH, shining a bright light on the dark side of Web 2.0, “open culture” and the dehumanizing effects of technology for technology’s sake. Jaron Lanier is a thought-provoking genius and his manifesto is a must-read, especially for my digitally minded publishing colleagues.

Finch by Jeff VanderMeer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A bizarre, brutal mix of noir and fantasy that hits all the right notes; leaves you breathless, wanting more.

I can’t really do FINCH justice, so read Hindmarch’s review which sums up my own thinking on it: http://wordstudio.net/thegist/?p=1668

The Black Minutes by Martin Solares

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Calling The Black Minutes, Martin Solares’ debut novel, a “quixotic adventure” is an understatement; it features a compelling cast of colorful characters and his loose, almost stream-of-consciousness style reminded me a bit of Richard Price’s excellent Lush Life. I’m not sure if it’s a real genre, but halfway through I began referring to it as Tropical Noir, though Solares’ emphasis on vivid characters and imagery over plot makes it all feel more literary than you’d typically expect from noir.

A great, if somewhat challenging read, and recommended for fans of literary detective novels.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In ZEITOUN, Dave Eggers does an excellent job of weaving Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun’s compelling backstories and Katrina experiences together, shaded by post-9/11 xenophobia, and delivers a powerful documentary of what will most likely be looked back upon by history as one of this country’s most tragic eras/errors.

In its final pages, I was most struck by the proverbial banality of evil and the limited resiliency of the human spirit. When I first heard about this book, I fully expected to be infuriated after reading it, but it simply left me feeling something more like a deep, hollow sadness.

Tumor by Joshua Hale Fialkov

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Joshua Fialkov delivers a solid noir with a Christopher Nolan meets Quentin Tarantino vibe, and as with their excellent Elk’s Run, Noel Tuazon nails the atmospheric tone with his sketchy, gritty visuals. Their lead, Frank Armstrong, is a sympathetic character put through the wringer, and the bittersweet ending satisfies.

The book itself is another great package by Archaia, from the ragged edges of the thick, off-white paper stock, to the multiple extras, including a tight short story that fleshes out one of the key sub-plots of the main story. Recommended!

View all my reviews at Goodreads.

What were some of your goodreads of last year?

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Iron Duke came highly recommended as a steampunk novel, with the caveat that it’s also very much a romance novel, and not being a fan of the latter, I was skeptical. VERY skeptical. Not only was it the first romance novel I’ve ever read, it’s the first full-length novel of any type I’ve read completely as an ebook (via Kindle for iPad and Blackberry), so the deck was really stacked against it. But Meljean Brook nailed it, combining a fascinating setting with an engaging cast of characters and a fast-paced thriller of a story, so by the time she weaves the romance in, it actually works without feeling (too) corny or distracting.

Brook’s worldbuilding skills are impressive, her Iron Seas setting rivaling Cherie Priest’s Clockwork Century for potential stories, and I daresay its backstory is actually a bit more compelling, despite my general preference for American-flavored steampunk. A great setting is nothing without great characters, and Brook’s cast is one of the most compelling I’ve read in recent years, led by Detective Inspector Mina Wentworth, a rare three-dimensional female heroine and the true star of the story.

The romance — and by “romance” I mean “sex” — looms over the story from the beginning, but Brook takes her time bringing it front and center, and when she finally does right around the middle, it’s explicit without ever crossing the line into gratuitous. The relationship between Mina and the Duke is surprisingly complex, though, smartly tied into one of the key elements of the world’s backstory, and Brook’s delicate balance is what makes this Steampunk Romance instead of Romantic Steampunk, a key difference for non-Romance fans.

While I don’t see myself ever reading much Romance, I am definitely looking forward to the next installment in Brooks’ Iron Seas series, and might even check out her “Here There Be Monsters” short in the Burning Up anthology.

PS: About the ebook experience, while I remain a hardcore print advocate, I “get” the appeal of ebooks, especially for disposable fiction. A good story makes the container disappear, and this was the first time that happened for me. That said, if The Iron Duke had an alternate cover, say one featuring Mina or Marco’s Terror or even the Blacksmith, I’d buy a copy in print.

View all of my reviews on Goodreads

ETA: I received a copy of the Kindle edition of The Iron Duke as a gift from Dear Author‘s Jane Litte.