Home Sweet Own Book 22

I just finished Steampunk with The Immersion Book of Steampunk, a collection of diverse short stories edited by Gareth Jones and Carmelo Rafala. I love this geek subculture. The costumes, the visual aesthetic, the creativity, the different ways to tell a story based in the same idea. This book is a great introduction to the various ways people handle steampunk: science, magic, aliens, monsters, ether, clockwork men, using figures we know from history, etc.

For me the range was the best and worst thing about this book and why it took me so long to read. This genre requires a good bit of world building so with each story I had to relearn the rules of each world. Here we have steampunk science then we have aliens now here are some clockwork people and now we’re entering a dream world with characters from history. Each of these is written in a totally different voice. It gave me literary whiplash to zip from one the other. It made it hard to finish because I wanted to stop before I had to work to understand another universe.

All the stories are decent and all of the writing is good but I got the most out of it when I read the stories one or two at a time. My favorites were The Machines of the Nephilim, The Clockworks of Hanyang, Cinema U, Empire of Glass, Steam Horse, and Professor Fluvius’s Palace of Many Waters.

If you like the genre, this is worth a shot but if you’ve never read steampunk, I would try a novel first. Learn how the genre works before you see where it can go.

1) Fiction – A Once Crowded Sky by Tom King

2) Nonfiction – The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett

3) Sci-Fi – Redshirts by John Scalzi

4) Fantasy 

5) Mystery – Book of Lies by Brad Meltzer

6) Horror 

7) Memoir/Biography – Data, A Love Story by Amy Webb

8) Chick Lit – Me and Mr. Darcy by Alexandra Potter

9) Feminist – Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan

10) Teen – What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen

11) Holiday 

12) Essays – What Was I Thinking? ed. by Barbara Davilman & Liz Dubelman

13) Short Stories 

14) Library 

15) Animal 

16) Book about Books – Judging a Book By Its Lover by Lauren Leto

17) New – Pitch Perfect by Mickey Rapkin

18) Old – Dark and Stormy Knights edited by P. N. Elrod

19) Pop Science – Why Men Fake It by Abraham Morgentaler, MD

20) Near 

21) Far 

22) Graphic Novel – Love and Capes: Do You Want to Know a Secret? by Thomas F. Zahler

23) Reread – Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

24) Wild Card 

25) Otherworldly Creature 

26) Free – Point Your Face at This by Demetri Martin

27) Noteworthy 

28) Bestseller – How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

29) Themed Anthology – Red edited by Kris Goldsmith

30) Steampunk – The Immersion Book of Steampunk edited by Gareth Jones and Carmelo Rafala

31) Movie-Book 

32) Media – Doctor Who: Touched By an Angel by Jonathan Morris

33) Travel 

34) Food 

35) Classic 

36) Humor – Sleep Talkin’ Man by Karen Slavick-Lennard

37) Poetry 

38) Past – Stasiland by Anna Funder

39) Future 

40) Dystopia/Post-Apocalyptic 

41) Zombie 

42) Sports

Music: The Story that Never Starts by Abney Park