Thoughts on every book I read in 2024
Brilliant novels, can't-look-away nonfiction, and a new favorite classic
I knew who I was from a very young age, and that was somebody who could not keep up a Goodreads account. I don’t know why. Sorry. Sometimes I point to its Amazon ownership or cite the oft-unhinged role Goodreads play in literature, but really they’re just excuses—I simply can’t be bothered to log my reading, which makes you wonder from which deep and secret well of conviction I take from in order to film myself talking about them, but people contain multitudes.
Combing through my videos to collate the 39 books I read this year was as much a helpful exercise as it was a harrowing plunge into the passage of time, and my face. But I’m glad I did it. It made me pinpoint why certain books captured my heart, what about them I found particularly special, and what about others didn’t speak to me—but that doesn’t mean they won’t speak to you.
If you feel inspired to read any of these, I hope you enjoy them, too.
(If you’re reading this on email, you’ll eventually have to open it on Substack to read the full thing since it’s too long!)
*A favorite from the month.
*Worry by Alexandra Tanner: This debut novel captures the specific online flavors of contemporary doom in 2019, plus the gross and embarrassing and privately wonderful contours of sisterhood. The dialogue is barbed and funny. It’s at once anxiety-inducing and laugh-out-loud funny, featuring one of the most dysfunctional families I’ve had the pleasure of reading. I really enjoyed it, and recommend for fans of Halle Butler and love-haters of the Internet.
Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang: I listened to this on audiobook. It was very addicting, featuring an abhorrent narrator whose rise to success is horrifying to witness but whose downfall is so delicious, though at times I felt she was a bit flatly rendered, too easy to dunk on. I mostly enjoyed its insights into the publishing world (which includes the woes of Goodreads). I also liked R.F. Kuang’s piece in Time about the trouble with race satire, which seems to be in conversation with the book.
*Writers and Lovers by Lily King: I loved this. If Yellowface punches through the promise of book-writing and publishing, Writers and Lovers builds it back up lovingly, in clear cold carefully placed strokes that refuse to romanticize but manage to be entirely romantic in the end anyway. A beautiful, gratifying novel, playful and funny and curious, about grief, writing, and self-discovery. If you love to write, read this book.
Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire, Edited by Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, and Mike Merryman-Lotze: An urgently powerful, must-read collection of essays, poetry, and writings by Palestinians, mostly Gazans, probing a variety of topics to collectively examine the past and reimagine a future—from the evolution and importance the peasant in Palestinian culture to experimental architecture on the Gaza strip. It gives voice and color to Gaza, so frequently seen only through the lens of destruction. I learned so much, and highly, highly recommend.
Piglet by Lottie Hazell: I liked it until the end. It’s fine. It’s about a woman who, days before her wedding to her picture-perfect fiancé (she’s marrying up), discovers a devastating secret about him. She represses everything and continues to trudge towards wedding day, the book charting her slow descent into somewhat-madness. I thought its class commentary was a bit on-the-nose, though I did enjoy the food writing.
Free Therapy by Rebecca Ivory: A clever collection of short stories about unhappy people who are are fully aware of their unhappiness but unwilling to become happier. The stories magnify the banality of unhappiness without attempting to move beyond it or achieve redemption for redemption’s sake. The writing is clear and sharp and occasionally very funny by surprise, which I enjoy in fiction, I hate when I can tell I’m supposed to laugh before the joke lands.
*Sula by Toni Morrison: From the very first page of this book, you feel safe, in the hands of a master. This is probably my favorite Morrison (I’ve read three), about two once-inseparable girls who become enemies. Morrison is just as masterful at spinning compelling, sweeping generational backstories as she is at vivifying the delicate interior life of the mind. In this book, we sense something is amiss in one of the girl’s imaginations, in her experience of the world, but we’re never certain what it is, or how it feels, until the powerful end. It’s unbelievably good.
*The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue: Adored this. Like listening to someone tell a really, really good story at a party, the kind you know you’re going to recite later to your friends. It follows a literature student who, along with her closeted BFF, gets entangled in the marriage of a wealthy university couple. It’s set in the backdrop of the Irish economic collapse in the 2010’s, with many subtle but piercing insights into the widespread effects of the recession—on the economy, yes, but also on relationships, on culture, on the horrifying and gratifying journey of discovering yourself as a young woman.
Down the Drain by Julia Fox: You should’ve heard me talk about this back when I first finished it. I was obsessed. I had a dream about Julia Fox after finishing. We were in an exhibition of her life, where every room was a different chapter. I ran through the whole building. Needless to say, I would press this book (audiobook, really, she narrates it fantastically) into any of my friends’ hands. She’s a razor-sharp storyteller with perfect comedic timing. It’s juicy and jaw-dropping, yes, but also very vulnerable.
Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley: This tells the story of a teenage girl living in Oakland who is forced to turn to sex work to keep afloat. Her father’s dead, her mother’s in a halfway home, and she’s the only source of income for her brohter and the nine-year-old neighbor she’s grown to care for. It’s based on true events of sexual abuse by police in Oakland. A harrowing read, with a poetic, powerful voice.
*Lost Cat by Mary Gaitskill: One of my new favorite books. It made me feel the way Bluets by Maggie Nelson made me feel, like I was confronting anew all these shades of the human experience that I’ve long felt but could never put into words. A memoir about the disappearance of the author’s cat, but really about the other losses in Gaitskill’s life that she’s finally pushed to excavate emotionally through losing her cat. Gaitskill achieves more in a sentence than many do in a paragraph.
Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow by Steve Almond: I don’t often reach for craft books, but this book succeeded all my expectations. I learned something from—and enjoyed—each page. Almond, a writer and teacher, recounts all his wisdom and failings in a neatly structured, highly readable collection of learnings, from what makes an opening successful to how doubt affects your prose. He cites a wonderful range of texts to illustrate his points, and I actually jotted down a few to put on my TBR.
*Private Rites by Julia Armfield: Another favorite. Armfield’s writing is seductive, charged with beauty and danger. If you want one, you’ll have to take both, that’s a rule for reading her. Set in a future London that’s rapidly sinking underwater, following three estranged sisters who come together after their father, an architectural mogul, suddenly dies, this book captures the madness and sadness of all sorts of suffering—from repressed generational trauma to the climate loss to drifting from your lover to not knowing how to tell your sister you need her.
God Complex by by Rachael Allen: A poetry collection that explores the disintegration of an abusive relationship with the degradation of the natural world (clearly a theme in my April reading). While I enjoyed the momentum of the work, I’m not sure I remember any specific poems or lines.
After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz: A beautifully written, original novel that reimagines and weaves together the lives of visionary women, all the way from ancient Greece up to first-wave feminism. The effort of the book, like the efforts of the women it historicizes, is to envision a woman-centric life of creative and romantic freedom. It’s told in a choral style, with the narrator being a collective “we” of sapphics who have transgressed and trailblazed their own paths. Because the book intentionally focuses on historical feminism up til the 20’s, it feels somewhat willingly detached from reality at times. Still, the prose is stunning, sparklingly alive.
*Assembly by Natasha Brown: A very effective and clear-sighted novel that I’m certain will become required reading, at least in the UK (where it takes place). In just 100 pages, it presents a cutting look into white upper-class spaces as experienced by a Black woman whose body is slowly falling apart as her career reaches new heights. It exposes the insidious consequences of capitalist success being framed as a means of empowerment, the gap between monetary wealth and class power, and the intersection of post-capitalism with post-colonialism.
*Clean by Alia Trabucco Zerán: A very good, haunting literary suspense translated from the Spanish, narrated by the live-in maid of a rich family in Chile just after the 7-year-old daughter of the family has died. With the nation’s slowly crescendoing social upheaval unfolding in the background, the story examines class, domestic labor, power, and how violence is passed down and replicated within the family unit. I couldn’t put it down. After finishing it, I thought often of the maid, who I felt I’d abandoned in closing the book.
Whoever You Are, Honey by Olivia Gatwood: A slow-burner set in the tech-transformed Bay Area following two young women who are both outcasts in the rich waterfront they call home. As the town becomes weighed down by AI secrets and scandal, they become increasingly obsessed with the other. I had high expectations going in, and the writing was great (Gatwood is a poet, and her prose, which is controlled yet probing, reflects this), but I was ultimately unsatisfied. For me, the concept of the book was stronger than its execution.
The Hearing Test by Eliza Callahan: This novel follows a woman who suddenly loses her hearing and must rethink her relationship to the world, to sound, to people in the aftermath. It’s full of ideas. I thought it was fine, not exactly what grabs me in fiction, but if you like Rachel Cusk you’ll like this.
*All Fours by Miranda July: The kind of book that makes your brain feel split wide open. You’re shocked! You’re laughing! You’re squirming! You’re crying! July’s narrator, whose mid-life crisis propels her into unpredictable new territories, gives us the gift of losing your mind—letting it run recklessly into new directions, embrace taboo, experience momentary glorious breakthroughs—without actually having to do the work. It is a book that opens doors about what we know and what we can expect from monogamy, marriage, sexuality, pleasure. I thought the final act was a bit long, but the rest of the book was so good that I didn’t care.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe: This book follows a 20-year-old mom who drops out of college to have her baby and turns to OnlyFans to financially support herself. Does that sound really serious? It is, I guess, but the book is wonderfully playful, with a larger-than-life cast of characters, delightful twists, and surprising, earned breakthroughs. I enjoyed it especially for its clear, accurate grasp of the Internet, which is hard to write about since it moves so quickly.
*Intermezzo by Sally Rooney: Loved it. Like a chess game (one of the main characters is a chess player), this book is full of both slow, charged moments and sweeping, calculated moves, and they all come together wonderfully. We follow two grieving brothers, Ivan and Peter, as they navigate new and old relationships, antagonize and avoid each other, wage little wars of language, mess up, and ultimately awaken to the possibilities of love. It feels Shakespearean—there’s a complex cast of interconnected characters, a dead father the king, and coincidental and unplanned encounters with a tragicomic beat. Rooney did cite Hamlet as an influence. It shows (Peter, choose to be!!!).
Glass Houses by Francesca Reese: Set in a rural town in North Wales, this book follows Geth, who comes from a traditional working class family, and Olwen, the daughter of English artists who leaves Wales for London. The book is about them finding their way to and apart from each other over the years, navigating tensions in class and national identity. It wasn’t my favorite, I could never quite fully invest in the characters. I did enjoy the glittery sheen of teenage romance and dramatic setup in the first half, the way you enjoy a beautifully shot movie. But I want more from books than I do from movies.
Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna: I couldn’t get into this book, either (maybe it’s me). It follows a variety of characters as their lives change forever in the course of one very hot weekend in London. I don’t mind a multi-POV book as long as I’m not actively aware of the constant switches—that is, each character’s section must be so compelling that I’m reluctant to leave them behind, only to be immediately hooked by the new section (and the cycle continues). I didn’t feel this here. Some of the characters’ pages I read only to get back to the more interesting ones. I liked the book in theory (change, adult friendships, fraught family dynamics are some of my fav themes) but it sadly didn’t do it for me.
Brat by Gabriel Smith: This features one of the most unlikeable protagonists I’ve ever read. His dad’s just died, and he’s excavating his parents’ house. Crazy terrifying things happen: a home video reveals family secrets, his mother’s manuscript changes each time he reads it, his skin rots off his body. It’s an experimental, formally inventive book, which I respect but did not at all enjoy.
*Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner: This book spans 20 years but manages to feel intimate, holdable. It’s a coming-of-ages story for lovers of family sagas and character studies, about two very different sisters: one rule-following, the other unpredictable. Our narrator, Amy, is the former, chronicling life under the shadow of her older sister’s bipolar disorder. The prose has a quiet, driving energy, whisking you from one year to the next in the turn of a page. It’s not often we get to stay with a narrator from childhood to adulthood, but we get to do that here, to beautiful result.
Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan: I can’t read too many of them, but once in a while, I do enjoy a Mean book. This book follows a millennial Irish expat in Hong Kong who gets involved with a rich male banker and, later, a rich female lawyer. She is wickedly observant, uncomfortably insecure, and thoroughly mean. Not much happens, the book feels pretty of its time (published in 2020, sincerity was so over), and the character’s acid tongue does get a bit tiring, but generally I did enjoy it. Like its narrator, it was too clever to totally disdain.
*Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad: One of my favorite books I’ve read this year. A gripping, contemplative realist novel set in Haifa and the West Bank about homecoming, art, family, and country, and how the four interact. It follows a Palestinian-Dutch actress who gets roped into a production of Hamlet that’s being staged in the occupied West Bank. Through the production, she discovers all the ways Palestine and her family have changed and remained the same. I particularly loved how the novel interrogated Hamlet through the lens of Palestine, what art-making means in occupied land, and the importance of place. The ending is unforgettable.
*Notes of a Crocodile by Qiu Maojin: A queer cult classic set in 1980’s Taipei, this follows Lazi, a college student who falls hopelessly in love with a woman in the year above her at school. The book is a kaleidoscope of journal entries, vignettes, and allegorical snippets about a crocodile who has somehow made it into the realm of humans (a metaphor for queerness). It reminded me of the fragmented prose and theme of fated love in Nightwood by Djuna Barnes and the gothic, psychically violent feelings simmering in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
The Guest by Emma Cline: I preferred this to Cline’s debut, The Girls, which I recall finding overwritten. Here, the prose is withholding, taut—like the mood of the book, which unfolds over a long weekend in (what we presume to be) the Hamptons. We follow Alex, a young escort running away from something in the city, as she grifts her way through rich neighborhoods and closed-off parties to win back the favor of the man she came with. I’m impressed with how anxious this book managed to make me, but it didn’t exactly deliver on its intrigue.
I Want to Die But I Still Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Sehee: The follow-up to I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, a bestseller in Korea that also got a lot of attention in the US/UK. It’s a collection of transcripts from the author’s therapy sessions with her psychiatrist exploring her dysthymia and anxiety. I found it really difficult to get through. I appreciated the author’s empathetic voice but much of the content to me felt hackneyed or overly simplistic.
The Age of Innocence* by Edith Wharton: A new favorite classic. Absolutely delicious prose. This is a novel of manners set in upper-class New York society in the 1870s, following a duty-bound man who finds himself caught between the life he knows, safe in the confines of class and expectation, and a life of possibility, introduced by the arrival of his fianceé’s “exotic” cousin. It’s a novel of clarifying consciousness and psychological revelations, full of moments of wit and tragedy. I haven’t been this invested in a world and a character’s relationships in a while. Clearly I need to read more outside the 21st century.
Happy* by Celina Baljeet Basra: A wonderful, heartbreaking book that challenges (with a healthy amount of cheek) what we think fiction is allowed to do, pulling us confidently into its larger-than-life journey. It follows a moony young man named Happy, who lives in a rural village in India and dreams of becoming an actor in Europe. His dream seems to be on the brink of coming true, but what happens is far more insidious. This is a story that unfolds in daydreams, in song, in image, in big hungry bites of imagination. I wept openly on a train when I finished.
*Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein: Necessary reading. Hard to describe without selling it short. An expansive exploration of political doubling, online fracturing, conspiracy, identity construction, and the impending threat of fascism. After years of being confused for the alt-right conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf, Klein examines the phenomenon of the doppelgänger to confront the fragility of her own identity and the dangers of our sociopolitical moment. Read it, please.
She’s Always Hungry by Eliza Clark: An unsettling collection of short stories about desire, dissatisfaction, and shadowy uncomfortable impulses. Some of these are sincerely gross, others surprisingly moving. If you like dark humor, weird imagined worlds, and don’t mind a bit of body horror, give it a try.
When We Lost Our Heads by Heather O’Neill: This novel, set in 1800s Montreal, follows two young girls who develop an obsessive and dangerous friendship. I was really looking forward to reading this because it felt like the perfect thing to get lost in—a loose historical fiction with fairy-tale-like stakes and an unfamiliar setting. Sadly, I couldn’t get over the prose, which felt wooden and overly decorative, laden with exposition and metaphors.
*Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe: I first started listening to this on audiobook before deciding to buy the book because I knew it was something I could, and wanted to, completely lose myself in. I was correct, I inhaled it. The book is an intricate, deeply researched narrative into the Troubles in Northern Ireland, specifically centering the disappearance of a mother of ten in Belfast, plus the lives of several IRA volunteers who came of age during the time. To me, the best nonfiction propels with the same drive as fiction, teaches the reader without the reader actively registering that they’re learning, and deftly reminds of the line between fact and truth while offering a point of view from both sides. This book does all of that and more.
*Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon: Brilliant. Accomplishes all that good fiction can do: sparkling, alive dialogue, characters you’d follow anywhere (even somewhere very bad), a riveting emotional and event-driven plot. Set in the Peloponnesian War, yet told in a contemporary Irish voice, it follows two poor Syracusan potters who decide to stage a Euripides play using Athenian prisoners-of-war. It reminded me a bit of Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost in the way it uses art to complicate simple ideas of humanity, allegiance, and homeland. Funny and moving, I was hooked from the very beginning.
*The Coin by Yasmin Zaher: As gross as it is stylish, this is a book that oscillates between extremes: cleanliness and filth, wealth and poverty, nationhood and statelessness. We follow a young Palestinian woman who moves to New York and gets a job teaching at a school for underprivileged boys. Far from home, in the filth of the city, she starts slowly to lose her mind. Reminded me of Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder and The Vegetarian by Han Kang, but make no mistake, it’s entirely original, and I was greatly inspired by the narrator’s ability to lure you into her accepting her madness as normal. Also, it’s funny.
That’s all for now! If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading. I hope this post is something you continue to come back to in the future. And if you’ve read and enjoyed any of these books, please let me know in the comments! I love to gush.
you always have the perfect way of introducing new interesting reads into my life, still can't wait to read writers and lovers!!
definitely a few new titles i’ll be aiming to read in 2025 here!