This is republished from my Google Groups newsletter, I’m bringing it here simply because I like my stuff and think it should be available—if some items are out of date (this one’s poll has already been tallied) or seem incongrous with the current state of my newsletter, that’s how the time trickles! :)
January 4, 2025
Newsletter #4: Is This Thing On?
First of all, thank you for opening this email / webpage. It’s been a literal year since My Dioptrical Beehive has seen any action; the closing of TinyLetter plus the many things that 2024 had in store forced a hiatus after I archived it in Google Groups.
But at least one of you has asked about the next installment! Spurred on by your encouragement, I sit at my brand-new laptop, typing up this paragraph in Word and thinking about what’s next.
Who am I? I’m sure more than 99% of this newsletter’s subscribers have met me in the real world and know my deal, but I’ll reintroduce myself for posterity. My abbreviated name is Olu O. (you can find the full just by poking around a little), and I’m an aspiring writer in her early twenties bouncing between Rhode Island and Hampshire County. I’m currently working on a text game about a young woman joining her island’s sea monster fighting military. I’m almost always consuming some media: usually indie comics and graphic novels, thriller movies, interactive fiction, and vaporwave music. My collecting vices include colorful sunglasses, gel pens, lip products, and Tokidoki Moofia items.
When I worked at Paperbark Literary Magazine, I wrote in my little masthead bio that I write about “whatever is tickling her fancies at the time.” In this newsletter, I hope to continue to indulge these fancies by writing reviews, think pieces, lists, recommendations, and whatever else you’d like to read. Hopefully, one day I’ll have some personal news to share as well.
Currently Reading: I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé
Last Film Watched for the First Time: Falling Down directed by Joel Schumacher
Last Album Listened to for the First Time: Ultra Pool by salute
The second-best part about the advent of new year (the first is Ferrero Rocher chocolates) is seeing everyone’s ‘best X of the year’ lists.1 In 2024, I read 6 novels, 28 graphic novels and novellas, 2 short story collections (one prose, other graphic), 3 poetry collections, and 2 nonfiction books, bringing us to a total of 41 books.23 I don’t usually rank nor rate books because I feel my thoughts on them are too complex and often ambivalent to quantify on a simple 5- or 10-star scale. Instead, I’ll list two prose novels and two graphic novels, with some brief thoughts and some ‘runners up’ with briefer thoughts. Think of these as less ‘favorites of the year’ and more ‘stuff I liked a lot that I also found particularly interesting, impressive, challenging, and or worthy of discussion.’
Prose Novels
Brainwyrms by Alison Rumfitt (finished 5/7)
Had I read anything by this author before? / How did I come to know of it?: I don’t think I had heard of Rumfitt before. On Tumblr, I came across a screenshot of the novel, where Rumfitt breaks the fourth wall to give a content warning in the middle of a chapter:
How intriguing! I’d been wanting to test my capacity for horror, so when a friend of mine also recommended it to me, I headed for the library.
Brief thoughts: What proceeds those pages is truly disgusting, but not the most unnerving thing Rumfitt serves up in this book. In a barely embellished4 world of anti-trans, anti-queer, and anti-woman fervor going increasingly viral and violent, we get a close-up, gross-out look at our two main characters’ lives, relationships, and coping mechanisms via obsession. While I don’t think some of the more supernatural plots of the novel mesh well with the rest, I was compelled throughout.
If you like this, maybe check out: Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke by Eric LaRocca, if you want to really see how much, much better Rumfitt handles similar material. While not as parasitic, Porpentine Charity Heartscape’s interactive short story Vesp: A History of Sapphic Scaphism5 might scratch your bug bite. Adversary by Blue Delliquanti, a graphic novella, has no supernatural aspects, but like Brainwyrms is also about a complicated queer relationship in contemporary times of violence and upheaval (Minneapolis during the pandemic and after the murder of George Floyd, to be precise).
Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (finished 11/21)
Had I read anything by this author before? / How did I come to know of it?: One of my MFA professors had us read Adjei-Brenyah’s short story collection Friday Black. The man himself came to the university, and, after telling the audience his take on prologues (good, useful, unfairly maligned), he narrated Melancholia Bishop's final fight.
Brief thoughts: While talking to my thesis advisor about the organization of my project, I used a version of the radial / explosion structure from Jane Alison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode to explain my use of hyperlinks as ‘asides.’ Adjei-Brenyah’s novel about the lives and spectacle of death penalty prisoners turned gladiators and reality-TV stars is mostly chronological, but frequently shifts its focus from the fighters to the announcer, the viewers of the games, the protesters, other fighters and prisoners, the bankrolling CEOs, the scientist whose work was appropriated for inhumane purposes, and back to the women at the center of it all. It’s a row of explosions, or a chain of explosives being wired, maintained, and replaced throughout the novel to set up the big boom.
The brutality of the American prison system is the unsubtle villain, the idée fixe of it all, with Adjei-Brenyah describing the injustice of Cyntoia Brown’s conviction,6 the permittance of prison slavery in the law, and the mostly sympathetic backstories of the gladiators in the footnotes. The worldbuilding is fleshed out, but I keep thinking about a Reddit review arguing the reality TV aspects don’t gel with the televised lethal battles in-universe; I’d love to discuss this with someone, as well as the depiction of Thurwar and Hamara’s relationship.
While I found it somewhat slow at the beginning, in the last few chapters I brought in the tag-team of index card and bookmark to obscure the right page and next lines, allowing each line to hit me like each swing of Thurwar’s hammer. Devastatingly written.
If you like this, maybe check out: Dystopic death games are a hugely popular genre, from Battle Royale to the Hunger Games to Squid Game. If you’re interested in the team aspect and are looking for lighter, all-ages fare, maybe the currently running comic series I Heart Skull-Crusher! By Josie Campbell and Alessio Zonno could be a fun read.7 There is fun to be had in CGAS. But research about the prison system and the incarcerated is more relevant.
Graphic Novels
A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll (finished 4/17)
Had I read anything by this author before? / How did I come to know of it?: I’ve read most of her published work, from Through the Woods to When I Arrived at the Castle to her online short comics. I also keep an eye on First Second’s publications, so it was only a matter of time.
Brief thoughts: One of those ones where you finish it and immediately do begin a reread. Contrasting Abby’s gray daily life with her new husband and step-daughter with her fairy-tale fantasy self, Carroll plays with our familiarity with Gothic novels about repressed women and their bland and/or oppressive husbands—I was reminded of the second story in Through the Woods, “A Lady’s Hands Are Cold”—and crafts a twisty narrative. To say too much about the story would spoil it—go get for the self-styled lady knights in your life if you want to teach them a lesson, ha.
If you like this, maybe check out: Obviously, there’s your du Mauriers and your Brontës and Carters and even your Jameses, so I’d read those if you haven’t yet. For a more contemporary Gothic piece about repression, consider A Visitation of Spirits by Randall Kenan.8 Read Carroll’s other work for sure.
Roaming by Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki (finished 5/17)
Had I read anything by this author before? / How did I come to know of it? The Tamaki cousins are prolific comic creators. Books I’ve read that at least one of them worked on include Skim, Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, and SuperMutant Magic Academy.9 I also got to speak to both of them at MICExpo in 2023 and they signed a copy of Skim for me!
Brief thoughts: I read this one at graduation, sitting out there in the field with the sun melting the glue of my library copy (sincere apologies!) while the student speaker called out the chancellor for protest-busting. Admittedly, I found the ceremony and the following proceedings to be overly long, badly organized, and frenzied, so the book got lost in the hustle and bustle of the day. But even after I returned it to interlibrary loan, I was thinking about its characters and Jillian Tamaki’s lively renderings of NYC attractions and first blushes.
I’ll always appreciate Mariko Tamaki’s Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me for introducing me to the work of Rosemary Valero O’Connell (who is a wonderful artist and amazingly kind person I also met at MICE), but I’ve always struggled with why its protagonist, Freddy, doesn’t immediately end things with Laura, who is arrogant, a liar, a cheater, inconsiderate, and possibly fetishizes her. But Zoe falling for the arrogant, lying, inconsiderate Fiona after a day or two in the Big Apple? I get it.
If you like this, maybe check out: The Contradictions by Sophie Yanow, another graphic novel—a memoir, even—about college women on big city trips exploring new ideas. If the Tamakis’ is about neglecting your lifelong friend and ignoring the sights to please the aloof girl you just met and have a crush on, Yanow’s is about experimenting with anarchism, hitchhiking, and veganism to please the aloof girl you just met and have a crush on. Powerful catalysts, these aloof girls.
Some ‘Runners Up’ Which I Won’t Go Into Today Because This Is Long Enough
(but tell me if you want to hear about them)
Punk Rock Karaoke by Bianca Xunise
Thirsty Mermaids by Kat Leyh
What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez by Claire Jiménez
Thank you for reading! What were some of your favorite books that you read in 2024? Have you read any of the books mentioned? Feel free to try leaving a reply (I think that’s possible in Google Groups? Help me test it!) below.
Once a month is probably the best frequency for these, so you’ll hear from me again in February. For my next newsletter, I want to finally address F.V.’s request and talk about movies I’ve recently watched and rewatched. I like movies! Let’s do a poll: which are you more interested in reading?
A Unironic Defense of Bee Movie
Shooting Against the System… Literally Me? Thoughts on God Bless America & Falling Down
Please click this link to vote in the poll: https://take.supersurvey.com/poll5374545x21A74aef-161
Happy New Year to all, and see you soon!
Sincerely,
Olu O.
Not as many as I’d hoped, considering I hit the big five-oh last year, but nothing to be ashamed of.
To be clear, these are not all books that came out in 2024.
Good chance literal brainworms take the spotlight in 2025…
Personally my favorite Porpentine work; it’s influenced some of my writing as well.
Brown is the cited inspiration for the novel’s deuteragonist, both of whom are jailed for killing their rapists. I don’t think any other characters are explicitly compared to real-life convicts, but the protagonist’s history continually brought Wanda Jean Allen to my mind.
I’m only on issue #6, so don’t spoil anything!!
There are definitely closer recommendations out there (for example, The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden is one of the books that appears in the emails Barnes and Noble sends me, and seems to be more similar), but I can only recommend what I’ve read myself.
This One Summer is their ‘big’ book, but I’ve never been curious about it, to be honest.