A Look Back at 2016: The Year in Hornswoggling

Many years ago, this was a meme. Everyone else gave up on it -- that's how memes work -- but not me! So it's become a tradition here at Antick Musings, to have the year-end post, linking to the first and last sentences of each month of the year.

I have to cheat slightly sometimes, since so many of my posts have boilerplate in them these days, but here are the first and last significant sentences of each month of 2016, helpfully linked to the posts where they originally appeared:

January

Zenith is quite likely the best possible revisionist superhero comic series told in five-page chapters.

Hope the rest of you are having a more pleasant January. 

February

Hello, and welcome to February, the typically dreariest month of the year (if you live in my hemisphere).

None of that was planned; it just sort of happened that I acquired most of the SFF from the other end of the world -- perhaps I was just upside-down in my thinking, and thus connected better with those books.

March

Books are good things. Oh, wait -- look! I have two new books right here in front of me to tell you about!

Cartoonists are as prone to inadvertently assuming their audiences are morons as any other storytellers, I suppose.

April

There's no time for existential doubt -- I have a stack of books to tell you about!
 (Eek, I accidentally rhymed. Oh well, leave it be.)


I might be repeating myself there: is corn grass?

May

It's a long list this week, so that's my official reason for keeping the introductory stuff short this week.

Today, remember those who fought in the wars of the past, but also work to avoid wars of the future.

June

I've been working as a marketer for long enough that words and pictures and video and audio are all just "content" to me -- or, at least, I aspire to that level of world-weary cynicism.

The next book is supposedly the last one, so perhaps Valente is tiring of the world -- there's a feeling in this book that may be the case.

July

For my American readers, remember to be particularly patriotic today, so as to live up to our international reputation.

Not from me...just in general.

August

Here we are at Monday once again -- it's not the best day of the week, but let me share with you some books that came in my mail, to see if that eases the pain.

So: female-focused writing, with believable people and real-world situations and some of the best dialogue available in comics anywhere. What are you waiting for?

September

It is definitely not fair to say "Peter Bagge is a libertarian, and so of course he's obsessed with the Founding Fathers."

City of Truth is a quick read, and a bracing one, from Morrow's early angry period. It's a great introduction to his work, particularly for those who don't want to dive right into the anti-God books.

October

No one can write memoirs forever: there's only so much life to work from.

I'm sure many of you will be happy about that, even if I can't tell you anything meaningful about who's in what story and how they connect to their respective novels.

November

We all knew that Charles Stross wouldn't be satisfied writing secret history forever.

But, since it's supposed to be for people a third of my age, I can't fault it -- it's very good at doing what it sets out to do, and is a lot of fun as it goes along that path.

December

You got a kid named Jack. You got some beans. But it don't go the way you expect, see?

I hope so: I like stories that have endings. It makes them stories.