2024: Year of Reading in Review

Total Books Read: 52

Because I spent much of the year at home, trying my best to do the writing I told myself this was the perfect time for (and largely failing), I ended up reading a lot more than usual, and a lot more widely than usual, which means I got to both some really interesting ones and some really disappointing ones!

So, here are the books I read in 2024, with some general thoughts on each (again, with my favorites marked with asterisks).

Novels

Your House Will Pay by Steph Cha

This book had great aspirations that, ultimately, fell sort of flat for me. I didn't hate it, but this story felt very self-conscious of its own failings without quite seeming to know how to address those failings. Which didn't inspire my confidence as a reader.

Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin

I was surprised by how much I liked this! I haven't read much classic horror since my Stephen King days, so this was a fun callback to that, while being more thoughtfully written than I anticipated, especially in regards to gender, sexuality, and the very white American relationship to historicity that's both fascination and an inability to really face the violence of that historicity.

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

I have thought long and hard about my feelings about this book. I really struggle to write an adequate summation because the thing is, at its core, this book is brilliantly imagined. Every element of it, if someone summarized it to me, sounds like the kind of thing I'd go absolutely wild for. Generation ships that deal explicitly with race and gender, autism and neurodiversity; that explores, by nature of its conceit, the colonialist fantasy that IS the generation ship, as well as the spectre of the Black Atlantic that it conjures. The concept is incredible. And yet...

I wanted to like this book more than pretty much any other book I read this year. I bought it about three years ago, totally confident in the fact that I'd love it, and it just. Didn't come together for me. Partially because it felt like important scenes were disappearing between chapters. Important character and world-building was summarized after happening "off-screen" and we would skip right to the part when the characters had already sorted everything out. But also because the events that drive the story seemed to happen almost completely at random. This is a character with such deep insight about so many things, and a great deal of skill in a variety of fields, and yet she seems to stumble accidentally across every discovery, every step forward. I loved the characters, loved so much about the idea behind it, but it fell too short in construction for me to ignore.

That said, SO MANY PEOPLE whose opinions I really respect and generally agree with love this book! So I'm not ready yet to write it off completely. I've kept my copy, I'm going to let it simmer for maybe a year, and then I plan to try to read it again, looking for what they see in this story. I hope I understand you one day, An Unkindness of Ghosts...

This Census-Taker by China Mieville

A really interesting story, and the first I'd read by China Mieville, despite having been recommended his books for years! The images and setting of this story have really lingered with me, thought I was definitely left feeling like there were things about the deeper themes I wasn't picking up on. Another one to keep thinking about, for sure.

The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle

I loved this!!! My sister and I were HUGE HUGE fans of the movie growing up, and it was kind of emotional sometimes coming back to these characters I loved so much when I was like, 5, and experiencing them as an adult. Really lovely, everything I hoped it would be.

*The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson

Incredible, incredible novel. I first heard about this book in another book I read last year, called Ezili's Mirrors by Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley, which surprised me because I was already such a fan of Nalo Hopkinson and thought I'd heard of everything she's written! And now it's one of my favorite novels by her, ever, despite being one of the less explicitly speculative. Beautiful meditation on sex, love, violence, and the faces of Ezili as experienced by this series of Black women throughout history and across the world. Cannot recommend this book enough.

Bestiary by K-Ming Chang

This one was another major disappointment, made all the more disappointing by the moments of truly beautiful prose and sharp insight. The first 30 pages I was absolutely locked in, having my breath taken away by every page. And then I realized the entire thing was going to be using the same style, with the same momentum, and without any chances to breathe and settle in with the characters. You can really tell Chang is a poet primarily, because her descriptors and the precision of her language are gorgeous. But then the same metaphors started getting repeated over and over and over and the whole thing really started to slow. Really wanted to like this one and just didn't :(

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

A really great, short little book that I didn't realize was for more of a middle-grade audience until I was halfway through, but I didn't mind that, really. I love love loved Emezi's book Freshwater, and their writing was gorgeous as ever, just simplified a bit for their target readers. Sometimes more simplified than I'd have preferred, but I get why it had to be like that. I love a utopia with a twist!

The Moor’s Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie

I honestly expected to hate this one (it was someone else's book club pick lol) but was really drawn into it. Lots of the things I love about One Hundred Years of Solitude with only a bit more realism. A bit longer than it needed to be, but I did like it.

The City & The City by China Mieville

This one is up there with The Expanse and Disco Elysium in terms of stories that are really good, but that I really had to force myself to get into because I find detective stories excruciatingly boring. I don't caaaaare about the dead girl, I want the weird physics and fucked up politics of nationalism!! Ultimately really good, but took a lot more time to read than it should have because I kept mentally tuning out when it became a cop drama.

Hummingbird Salamander by Jeff Vandermeer

This had the same problem for me as The City & The City except it wasn't actually good underneath the detective story, lol. I was so annoyed because I love Jeff Vandermeer! This was my book club book I made all my friends read! And then it sucked so much! How could you do this to me Jeff! Completely incomprehensible leaps of logic made to solve the main mystery, and then the mystery itself wasn't even compelling. The betrayal of it all...

*Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

Now THIS was a shining moment of the year. I've had this on my list for years and years: one of my classmates did a presentation on it for their final in an undergrad class I took, called Imaginary Landscapes, and I've been wanting to read it ever since. It's had a reputation as one of THE quintessential lesbian texts for ages, and I completely get why. So good. Heartbreaking and funny and feels like coming home. Everyone read this book right now.

If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino

Another tragic disappointment...I didn't hate this book, but I've liked other works by Calvino so so much, and this one just didn't work for me. I liked the ideas, the concept of the book was compelling, but I just couldn't get into it.

Concrete Island by J.G. Ballard

I really wanted this to be a complete magical realist Robinson Crusoe about surviving and forging a life on a traffic island, but instead it was about the compulsion of white masculinity to conquer and exert power, and its complete inability to handle embarrassment or even the perception of weakness. Which was also really good.

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler

This was a reread, because I assigned it to my students! Love this book even more the second time, especially paying closer attention now to the craft and the use of language. So good, god.

Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

I'd never read anything by Jenny Offill before, but I definitely will now. I loved the voice of this and the way it moved between the surreal and the more grounded narrative.

Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson

Another one that had been on my list a long time. I think I expected this to have more fairy tale to it, in the vein of the "Winette" chapters of Oranges are Not the Only Fruit, but I did like how off the rails and bizarre it went. Thank you Ms. Winterson, you always deliver.

Novellas

No One Dies in Palmyra Ohio by Henry Elizabeth Christopher

Really great little book written by one of my grad school classmates! Hi Henry, I liked this a lot!

Linghun by Ai Jiang

This was alright. Super interesting concept but the writing style didn't really hook me and the really interesting themes it was working with didn't really come together for me in the end, which seems to be a theme for my reading this year.

River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey

I'm going to say something controversial. I don't think I can read another speculative fiction novella that's just a straightforward heist BUT with XYZ fantastical element. Love the concept of hippo-riding southern cowboys, wish we got a more interesting story out of it.

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (ed. by Carmen Maria Machado)

This was an interesting one, especially because I read it with my partner! There's so much left out and unsaid and implied in this story, with all its attendant violence and homophobia and fucked up class dynamics, which made it really interesting to read through slowly (we read maybe a chapter every other week). Though, from a writing perspective, I enjoyed the annotations Machado added, but I wasn't always sure what their goals were or how we were meant to understand them. They definitely stuck out as asides, rather than feeling integrated into our understanding of the story the way I imagined.

Comfort Me with Apples by Catheryne M. Valente

Really liked this! It's kinda what Don't Worry Darling was trying and completely failed to be.

The Grasshoppers Come by David Garnett

Weird little book that I picked up just because I liked the grasshopper illustrations and because Garnett's more known book, Lady Into Fox, was next to it on the shelf. I pretty much always love a plane crash story (watched Lost at too formative of an age), and I thought this was an interesting take on the trope, the idea of returning again and again to the things we love, even when they hurt us, and the ways we can be driven by forces we don't quite understand.

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

My translation of this was awesome, though some others in the book club apparently got drier, more boring versions. Hilda Rosner's interpretation though felt very fresh and vivid, despite being one of the oldest English translations of it. Great book, it does actually live up to the hype. Also, Siddhartha and Govinda definitely have something going on.

The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

So good! I have to get my hands on the other stories in this world (I think Vo has written at least a few others?), because the little bits we get here are so compelling. I wasn't huge on Psalm for the Wild-Built, which had very similar vibes, but this felt like a lot of the things I liked about that book put together in a more compelling and thematically resonant way. I've been hearing good things about this for years, glad I finally read it.

Fiction Collections

The Science of Herself by Karen Joy Fowler

We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is one of my favorite books, and I hadn't read much of Fowler's short form stuff, so I picked up this little sampler book of hers on a whim. It was a good introduction to the author for people not familiar with her, but a bit too short, only had a handful of stories. I bought one of her proper collections at the same time, and I honestly could have just gotten that. Oh well!

Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories by Vandana Singh

Somehow I had never heard of Vandana Singh and I have no idea how because these were all really good!! The collection as a whole, I thought, was a bit longer than it needed to be, but there were so many gems in this. I'll have to find more of her work, because I liked these a lot.

Where We Go When All We Are Is Gone by Sequoia Nagamatsu

Another really interesting collection, this one read at the recommendation of a grad school classmate! There were some stories I really liked and some that didn't really do it for me, but the ones I liked I REALLY liked. The first story in particular I think about a lot. Being destroyed by the thing you love most and not even being mad because you understand and accept and love it so completely...and also that thing is Godzilla....

*At the Mouth of the River of Bees by Kij Johnson

WOW! OH MY GOD!! WOW!!! I very very rarely read short story collections where every single story just HITS but my god. Every one of these is gorgeous. One of my grad school professors tried to describe the title story to us in class once and I forgot about it entirely until I found this collection, and I'm so so glad I did. Definitely a new favorite.

*Tomorrow’s Parties ed. by Jonathan Strahan

A rare, excellent anthology! I honestly have read so many middling anthologies that are strung together by a more interesting concept than any of the individual stories can actually live up to, but there was not a single bad story in here. Loved every single one, really really glad I bought this one.

*White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link

Kelly Link.......my beloved, beloved Kelly Link.......I love this book so much. It helps that I got a signed copy and a little zine of the illustrations for pre-ordering it. But I have preordered plenty of beloved authors' books that have turned out blah, and this absolutely blew me away. I love the way she's continued to evolve her approach to fairy tales, spinning them out into less and less traditional narratives that end up being both surprising in story and stunning in form. I think about the story "The White Road" every single day.

The Way Home by Peter Beagle

Well. This had some hits and misses. I mean, it's two novellas, so one hit and one miss. I really liked "Two Hearts" as a follow up to The Last Unicorn, but as pretty much everyone who has read this book warned about, "The Way Home," the second novella, can and absolutely should be skipped. Honestly in pretty poor taste, I thought. But, the first one was good at least!

What I Didn’t See by Karen Joy Fowler

Should have just started with this one! A really solid collection all the way through. It didn't absolutely dazzle me like some others did this year, but I really enjoyed it all the way through! I really like Fowler and have to start reading some of her other novels.

The Way Spring Arrives ed. By Yu Chen and Regina Kanyu Wang

This really got me thinking about the role of translation in what we consider to be a good story. I was really excited by this: a collection of sci-fi in translation from Chinese-speaking women and nonbinary authors? That rules!! But unfortunately most of the stories felt really flat to me. There were a few I enjoyed, but they were the exception. I really preferred the essays, which were really interesting meditations on the process of translation, assumptions around language and culture, and gender. Disappointing :(

Walking on Cowrie Shells by Nana Nkweti

I have similar thoughts on this as I had to What I Didn't See. I liked it a lot! But it didn't linger with me the way some other collections did this year. I think I'm too much of a speculative fiction girlie, and these were more grounded in realism.

*Tales of Neveryon by Samuel R. Delany

One of my absolute favorites this year. God, I knew Samuel Delany was legendary, but when I last tried to read this collection, I was an undergrad and much dumber and less patient. Also more sleep deprived. And I was assigned it by a professor I really didn't like. So I didn't get through it then! Like an idiot! But honestly it's probably for the best because I wouldn't have known what the goddamn hell he was talking about then, so I'm glad I read it now, with a greater appreciation of some of the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings he was drawing from. God this book is so good. I really need to read the rest in this series.

Krik? Krak! By Edwidge Danticat

Baby's first Danticat! I've been meaning to read her work for years and hadn't gotten to it, but I'm glad I have now. A dark and at times tough to read collection, but excellent, obviously, and got me looking forward to reading more of her work.

Love After the End ed. By Joshua Whitehead

Remember what I said about anthologies with a stronger premise than actual creative execution? I wanted to love this, and it had a few good pieces, but overall it felt like the stories were a bit redundant to one another (two just have the same exact plot? how did that happen?) and suffered from a lack of careful editing. Which is a shame, I was so excited to read this!

Literary and Critical Theory

*The Undercommons by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten

The intro to this book alone kicked me in the head: "Revolution will come in a form we cannot yet imagine." As an academic and someone who takes deep issue with the structures of academia, this book gave me a lot to think about and helped me radically shift my approach to teaching, writing, thinking, and "study."

Harney and Moten define study as "what you do with other people. It’s talking and walking around with other people, working, dancing, suffering, some irreducible convergence of all three, held under the name of speculative practice. The notion of a rehearsal – being in a kind of workshop, playing in a band, in a jam session, or old men sitting on a porch, or people working together in a factory – there are these various modes of activity. The point of calling it ‘study’ is to mark that the incessant and irreversible intellectuality of these activities is already present...To do these things is to be involved in a kind of common intellectual practice." This idea of being engaged in speculative, reimaginative work as not something that can be done alone with any amount of rigor, but something that has to be done in conversation with others, and by building upon shared perspectives of what's possible and what's needed. Made me wish I was reading it in a grad school class so I could discuss it with someone...

Scenes of Subjection by Saidiya Hartman

Really difficult but important book. I had read chapters from it in grad school, but decided to read the whole thing this year, now that I had more time and mental energy. Took me a few months to work through it, but worthwhile.

Demonic Grounds by Katherine McKittrick

Another book I read parts of in grad school and decided to finish. I had really wanted more engagement with Octavia Butler and how explicitly speculative attitudes toward space might help us build a deeper understanding of this idea of demonic grounds and what they mean, but that's just my lit background talking. Another excellent book that got me thinking differently about how we normalize certain understandings of space and place.

The Queer Art of Failure by Jack Halberstrom

The style of this book honestly took some getting used to. I love irreverent, I love animation, I love storytelling as praxis, but even still, I struggled at times to feel like this was...I don't know, "serious enough"? Whatever that means? Which I'm sure is what Halberstrom would love to hear! I'm going to spend more time thinking this one through, but there were a few parts that really stood out to me: the in-depth analysis of Chicken Run, my absolute childhood favorite movie; and the critique of Coraline as a reactionary story in its framing of the return to normalcy and the nuclear family as synonymous with safety and maturity. As a big fan of both the movie and book, this was a super compelling way to think differently about the story.

Playing in the Dark by Toni Morrison

I think a lot of times when we talk about race in fiction, it's Blackness that gets pathologized as the thing being "constructed" by the story, and so I really really appreciated this analysis of the ways that whiteness is in fact constructing itself in oposition to its images and constructions of Blackness. Packs a real punch for how short this book is.

Bodyminds Reimagined by Sami Schalk

Probably the fastest I've ever read a book of theory: partially because the writing style was intentionally very accessible and partially because I was so into the subject matter! There were some areas I wish went into more detail, but I really really liked this as a primer on the ways (dis)ability, race, and gender all intersect in speculative fiction, especially written by women of color. The possibilities of the body, both its materiality and the social inscriptions placed upon it, in speculative stories is so so interesting to think about. I might try to find a succinct excerpt of this to assign my students next semester, even.

*Becoming Human by Zakiyyah Iman Jackson

This one took me a long time to work through, but it was well worth the time and effort. This is yet another book I was assigned parts of in college, and bought a digital copy of in the hopes that one day I'd be able to read the whole thing. Fascinating, thorough, and (again) really got me thinking about the ways the body and its reading as a raced, gendered, speciesed thing are shaped by so much more than biological forces: and that in fact our idea of what can neatly be attributed to "biological forces" isn't really extricable from social and imperial forces either.

General Nonfiction

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

Probably not a book for people who don't have a vested interest in either writing or running. It kept my attention well enough because there were some interesting reflections on writing, but the running stuff was largely repetitive and boring. Also wow is Murakami weird about women.

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Boooooo this was bad and Erik Larson should feel bad!!! He literally made up half this book and had the gall to call it nonfiction, while avoiding anything other than straightforward celebration of everything that went into the Chicago world fair, totally ignoring all the dubious bullshit they were engaged in.

I literally had a running count of both outright racist remarks and places where the presence of racism in the narrative was extremely obvious, but very awkwardly sidestepped. Yeah, Erik Larson? African tribes were "hired" as exhibits? They were shipped across the ocean to perform primitivity for a white American audience? Oh, they weren't paid? What would you call that, pray tell? Truly, fuck this guy.

Poetry, Plays, and Otherwise Difficult to Categorize

*The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell

One of my very favorites of the year, and actually kicked off my plunge into reading theory solo. The end acknowledgements explicitly reference The Undercommons as a source of inspiration, and I started reading it the very next day.

I don't know quite what to call this book: part fairy tale, part novella, part poetry, part political manifesto, and all illustrated with weird, wonderful ink drawings. But it felt like the book I needed at this moment when the world sucks so bad. It's a call both to hope and to action. All isn't lost, we're just between revolutions!!

A Map to the Door of No Return by Dionne Brand

Another lovely and very difficult to categorize book. Part poetry, part memoir, part philosophy...I really loved the structure of this, and the way it wove back and forth between different narrative styles without trying to explain or simplify itself. I'm currently looking for some of her collections of poetry and essays, and hoping to read more.

Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine

I didn't realize under part way through reading this how many excerpts of it I'd already come across, either through school or just reading essays online. I'm glad I finally got to read the full context behind those pieces, and how they all work together.

The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill

A play! I so rarely read plays! This was definitely of its time, but I was pleasantly surprised by how interested it was in anarchism and some of the politics behind prohibition and American cities. I feel like there's probably a lot more to this play that I probably missed, just from lack of knowledge about the era and ideas it was working with, but it was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be, and it got me interested in trying to read more plays in the future. Bought another one recently that I hope to get to soon!