WORST, adj. A quick note that my professional organization, Romance Writers of America, blew up in a spectacular (and distressingly racist) fashion this week. I’ve spent all week keeping up with the updates and still none of us know how things will shake out. It’s been rage-inducing, so it’s nice to come back to this newsletter and think about things I like (words, books).
BEST, adj. If we say “big, bigger, biggest,” then why don’t we say “good, gooder, goodest”? I don’t really know! But I can tell you that this phenomenon, where the word that means “good” and the word that means “better” come from different roots, is called “suppletion,” or in this case, “comparative suppletion.”
Comparative suppletion is really common across languages—lots of Romance, Germanic, and Slavic languages have this feature, usually with the words for “good” and “bad.” (In French, it’s bon and meilleur for “good” and “better,” which is directly from Latin BONUS and MELIOR, already suppleted; mauvais and pire for “bad” and “worse.”)
Common words, like “good” or “bad,” can support this kind of irregularity in their paradigm. Uncommon words tend toward regularity. I can’t really tell you why we say “better” and “best,” but they both come from an Old English word bōt, meaning “remedy, reparation.” It’s weird that this word is a noun, not an adjective, but you can see the pattern if you squint: bot + er = better. Eventually bot gave rise to betst (the same pattern is visible: bot + [e]st = betst), meaning “of the highest quality or standing.”
So originally these words were following English’s paradigm of adding -er and -est to form comparative and superlative adjectives. Why “better” and “best” came into use with “good,” I can’t say.
Sometimes common words change because people want to be innovative or emphatic, and new word choices lose their power as they become more common. (This is why slang words for what’s cool, “groovy,” “rad,” “awesome,” etc., are always changing.) That might be what happened here. The dictionaries aren’t really telling the full story, presumably because nobody knows.
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the word “best” a lot because the end of 2019 has brought with it an avalanche of year-end and decade-end “best of” lists. I love these lists even though they’re all flawed and incomplete by nature. Nobody can read all the books. I think maybe we could solve a lot of the problem if we just stopped saying “best.” It implies a kind of objective authority.
“Favorite,” on the other hand, just implies favor, a personal inclination. You can’t argue with it. So what follows is not a “best of” list, but a list of favorites. They are not all things that were published in 2019 (who, besides professional book reviewers, actually limits their reading in this way?) but they are all things that I encountered—and loved—this year.
But first, here are some excellent things I read this week. (Mostly prior to the implosion of RWA.)
Three-Part Harmony (bi m/bi m/het f, all cis, contemporary) and Working Title (bi f/bi f/het m, all cis, contemporary, novella) by Holley Trent. God, I love messy bisexuals. These stories are delicious. They’re about people finding their way to polyamorous happy endings are complicated in the best way, where people make bad decisions and don’t say everything they’re feeling, but you still root for them to fix their shit. I love all these characters—every time I try to select one to highlight, I think “oh no, but this other person—” and go round in a circle because they’re all so great—and I also loved the portrait of a chaotic family Christmas in Working Title.
Work for It (bi m/gay m, both cis, contemporary) by Talia Hibbert. I have about fifty pages left in this book as of writing this newsletter, but I want to talk about it anyway. This is so good and I hate to descend into incoherency in the second sentence but I literally do not understand how Talia Hibbert does it?????? This book is funny and tender and deals with wrenching heartbreak and mental illness and grief—and somehow a scene where the only touch is a discreet brush of their hands is wildly sexy? And it’s written in this way where you can read it on your hours-delayed plane when you’re exhausted and uncomfortable and nothing will matter except the next sentence. I think Talia Hibbert might be a witch. We’re all so lucky she’s putting books out into the world, and I can’t wait to read Get a Life, Chloe Brown.
FAVORITE READS OF 2019
Links go to previous newsletters unless otherwise specified. (If there’s no link, it means I read that book before I started writing the newsletter in June—a period of time I now find difficult to recall.)
Obviously, my favorite (and pretty much the only) work of Capital-R Romance that I read this year was Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. I wrote eight newsletters about it, so I don’t have much more to say. Les Mis deserves its good reputation, and I highly recommend it.
I read a few other classics in English and in translation, including Paradise Lost and A Tale of Two Cities, both of which I enjoyed. But the classic I enjoyed the most was Basho’s poetry/travelogue Narrow Road to the Interior, which I read in translation by Sam Hamill. It is concise and beautiful and moving, and I have thought of it often since finishing it.
In things that are neither Romance nor romance, my favorite work of fiction was Arkady Martine’s sci-fi masterpiece A Memory Called Empire.
I read very little non-fiction, but every single work of non-fiction that I read this year was fantastic, which makes me want to try to read more of it in the future.
The Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox (a history of the deciphering of Linear B, discussed in this newsletter, recommended if you are a giant language nerd)
How to Ruin a Queen by Jonathan Beckman (a history of the Diamond Necklace Affair that preceded the French Revolution, discussed/summarized breathlessly in this newsletter, recommended if you are a history nerd, a fan of heist movies and the TV show Leverage, or if some ultra-rich people getting beheaded sounds great right about now)
The Lady from the Black Lagoon by Mallory O’Meara (a biography of Millicent Patrick, who designed the Creature from the Black Lagoon, discussed in this newsletter, recommended if you are into monsters or movies or women artists getting rightful credit for their creative work)
The Black Count by Tom Reiss (a biography of General Alexandre Dumas, father of the novelist and hero of the French Revolution, discussed in this newsletter, recommended if you love a real-life adventure and an extraordinary Black figure from history)
Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch (a linguistic exploration of language use on the internet, discussed in this newsletter, recommended if you are a giant language nerd or a full time internet)
I read so much small-r romance, and I love so much of what I read, that it is really, really hard to pick favorites, which is why I saved this category for last. That way, I had more time to dither. Here are my ten—okay, eleven—favorite romance reads of the year.
Joanna Bourne, The Black Hawk (m/f, both cis and het, historical). God, her prose. Her dialogue. The perfect balance of the spy plot and the romance. A heroine who was a child during the French Revolution and cares deeply about democracy. Perfect.
Holley Trent, Writing Her In (het m/bi f/lesbian f, all cis, contemporary). I read this book before I started writing this newsletter, so there’s no link, but if you scroll up, you’ll see me singing the praises of the rest of this series. We can go ahead and embroider “I love messy bisexuals” on my house crest, I think.
Elia Winters, Three-Way Split (bi m/bi m/het f, all cis, contemporary). These bisexuals are only a little bit messy. They behave like adults who can communicate most of the time! And they have really, really scorching sexual chemistry all of the time.
Alyssa Cole, Once Ghosted, Twice Shy (bi f/lesbian f, both cis, contemporary, novella). Fab and Likotsi really stuck with me as characters, and this is just so beautifully constructed, with its intertwined scenes of present and past. I don’t think I really understood novellas until I read this.
Austin Chant, Caroline’s Heart (m/f, both bi and trans, fantasy, novella). Every sentence of this is so lovely, and it folds a rich fantasy world and a convincing love story gracefully into an elegant, compact novella.
Cat Sebastian, A Duke in Disguise (het m/bi f, both cis, historical). Verity Plum—grumpy printer of illicit pamphlets both political and erotic who just wants to be left alone so she can eat cheese in peace—is the ideal woman. Nothing made me happier than to see her get what she wanted in Ash. I still think about the hairpins all the time.
Kate Clayborn, Best of Luck (m/f, both cis and het, contemporary). It was hard to pick one of the three beautiful Kate Clayborn novels I read this year, but I just loved Alex (parentified child who’s never had anyone take care of him) and Greer (chronically ill daughter who’s never been allowed full independence). Every description of the photos they took together, plus Alex thinking about the light. So gorgeous.
Lee Welch, Salt Magic, Skin Magic (m/m, both cis and gay, historical, fantasy). This book made me not think about my pain-racked post-surgery body for the all-too-brief hours I was reading it, and that is its own kind of magic.
Alyssa Cole, An Unconditional Freedom (m/f, both cis and het, historical). Everything that I read by Cole this year was fantastic, but this book had to be on my list. Emotional, complex, gripping, truthful, hopeful. It’s a stunning achievement.
KJ Charles, Gilded Cage (het m/bi f, both cis, historical) and Proper English (f/f, both cis and lesbian, historical). As a bisexual, it is my sacred right not to choose between these two books—both gorgeous, layered romances with a spot of crime on the side. They’re both my favorite. 2019 has been a shit year personally and politically, but KJ Charles is writing the queer women protagonists of my dreams. Anything that can keep you from sobbing on your bathroom floor in the midnight hour is precious, and these books have that power. There is no higher praise.
I have no doubt 2020 will bring me an abundance of words to look up, and I hope it brings us all good things to read. Happy new year!
