Fall-ing for Dystopia
With fall comes sweater weather, pumpkin spice everything, and Christmas at Costco. For this menopausal woman, sweaters are a no-go, pumpkin spice anything makes me want to puke, and I get pissy when I see Christmas trees in Costco when we aren’t even close to Halloween.
As the leaves fall, most people seek the cozy warmth of a sweater or the comfort of a hearty bowl of soup. Not me. Sure, I’ll indulge in the occasional grilled cheese/tomato soup combo, but what I really want is chaos.
Fall triggers my desire for dystopian novels. As the days gets darker, so does my reading. On a cold and rainy day, I want to get a fire going, brew some tea, and curl up with a world where nothing goes right, people die, and the rules don’t matter (or constantly change). I want characters I can root for, antagonists who are deplorable until their not (I love an unexpected character arc), and a world that is familiar, but set in a time and environment I hope to never witness.
I wasn’t always like this, but something snapped in me in March of 2020. My brain had trouble processing what was happening. My business crumbled. I couldn’t focus on my own writing, and my rage and discomfort leached into the pages of Murder on my Mind. I didn’t want to read what I normally read: character or plot driven fiction. The last book I read before COVID changed the world was Karma Brown’s Recipe for a Perfect Wife, a book I still highly recommend and think about. It was edgy, fun and intriguing, but also made me thankful I was not a housewife in the 1950s.
But then, I can see a trend emerging on my Goodreads. I was reading dark, brooding, novels, horror, anything with a plague, and lots and lots of dystopia. By the time spring of 2021 rolled around, I was reading a lot of young adult and middle grade fiction. Then in fall, the dystopia started to appear again. Repeated in 2022.
Now that fall of 2023 is upon us, I am looking forward to some new dystopia. I pre-ordered Waubgeshig Rice’s Moon of the Turning Leaves (released 10/10/23), the sequel to one of my favourite dystopian novels, Moon of the Crusted Snow. I loved that book so much, I had Waub on the podcast.
My holds at the library are also starting to reflect the change in reading season. There are several strange and interesting dystopian novels there and a new trend is emerging: dark humour. I had one entry in this category in fall of 2021 (Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson), and one in 2022 (A Certain Hunger by Chelsea Summers).
Who knows how the rest of the year will progress, but one thing remains: reading is the best escape for me, no matter what I’m reading.
Get your signed copy of Shift directly from me, or pick up a copy at Owl’s Nest Books, or any Chapters/Indigo in Calgary. Consider purchasing a copy for teachers. They love having books gifted to be added to the classroom library!
One more thing: My memoir class at AWCS is completely sold out! Watch this newsletter for announcements of upcoming courses.