please tell me about a book (including audiobook) you enjoyed this year. it doesn't need to be from 2024 and it doesn't need to be a definitive favorite, but I'd love to hear about a pleasant surprise or discovery :)
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Wildwood by Roger Deakin. It's a beautiful rambling wander across the globe framed by the fascinating fauna of forests. There is something about the style that reminds me of Laurie Lee, one of my favourite authors and I love that.,
ALSO I got to see a live performance of it and one of the guys playing the mountain lion was the white guy from Abbott Elementary and that was so funny.
but also it made me soooo sad about the actual mountain lion.
Also, I'm determined to recommend "The Righteous Mind" by @jonathanhaidt.bsky.social to anyone who wants insight on our current political divide. That book is a slog, but it's an important read.
I really like “anxious people,” by Frederik Bachman. A friend recommended it to me when I was feeling shitty and lonely and it felt good (though it does not start off feeling good at all)
I finished reading Essential Bukowsky: Poetry, edited by Abel Debritto. I had read Bukowsky before, yet this collection captured the beauty and inspiration I had been looking for in his work.
I reread The Dispossessed and really loved it. Such a good look at anarchy and what it can look like in society. Ahead of its time. Ursula knows her shit.
I really, really loved The Bone Season. It’s kind of a dystopian, urban fantasy. So well written, the plot is deep but not confusing and it opened my eyes to the prejudice the Irish faced and still face regarding their language and customs
I read Giovanni’s Room for the first time this year and cannot believe it took me this long. Incredible. Also honestly blown away by Gender Without Identity if one is psychoanalytically curious!
Thanks for the recommendation! I narrate audiobooks and do voice over work for a living, but still love to immerse myself in new content, and secret runners sounds intriguing.
i just finished Blue Nights by Joan Didion. Hit home really hard. I'm the age she was when she wrote it. About life and love and loss and death. This lady could reach right down inside you...just brilliant.
Rules for Ghosting read by Petey Gibson - a charming romance about a young transmasc queer Jewish man whose family owns a funeral parlor and who sees ghosts.
Building Thinking Classrooms by Peter Liljedahl changed my life! It imagines math classrooms that center students doing math, and concretized lots of little thoughts and tricks I’d picked up about anti-colonial, inquiry-based, and social pedagogy
Makes math both more casual & gives people access to what they’ve seen as powerful. Knowledgeable teachers have been doling out info on whiteboards — so students writing their ideas there helps level that weird gap.
The most known example is having students do math at whiteboards >> worksheets or notebooks. I also plug making knowledge mobile — when asked Q’s, teachers shouldn’t be the only source of knowledge. Directing students to each other is a fun teacher move and makes us not the barrier to knowing shit
Mistakes, collaboration, and power. When math is about ‘getting things right’, mistakes are scary. When they’re impermanent, it’s easier. Groups can think together, pick up ideas from others (knowl. is mobile), easier. & power — anyone can put shit on the wall where it’s most powerful + visible!
"Year of the Rattlesnake: Tales of Revenants, Revolvers and a Weird West that never was" a collection of interrelated short stories by horror author @stevevansam.bsky.social. It satisfied a hankering I've had since the last volume of "Tales of the Callamo Mountains" by @larryblamire.bsky.social
I sat and read the entire book "Sprinkle With Murder" by Jenn McKinlay while waiting in the four hour window for a tech to come to my house. It's one of those "cozy" murder mysteries that features a cupcake bakery and the murder of an unlikable character. I would suggest it if you're looking for
something easy to read that you don't have to think too much about. It even had cupcake recipes at the back of the book, if that is something that interests you.
I’ve been enjoying the Slow Horses series by Mick Herron. I bought the first one when it first came out but couldn’t get into it for whatever reason. I went back after watching the show and this time really got hooked.
The Ghost Collector by Allison Mills a tween fiction book about grief and loss from a Cree worldview. A great read for adults or kids. To quote Amazon; "an exciting new voice in tween fiction".
The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It's always been on my "Must Read" list, but I never got around to it until this year. In its own way, it really helped me a lot after my father died in July.
I'm not an audiobook person, but I listened to Demon Copperhead while I repaired the plaster and painted my third floor over the summer. It absolutely took my breath away multiple times.
The Green Ember series from S. D. Smith. It's about rabbits fighting wolves and birds in a Game-Of-Thronee-Lite setting. Lots of battles and betrayal and court stuff, but just not as serious.
Hell Followed With Us (and honestly a few others by Andrew Joseph White but this one was my favorite) post-apocalyptic horror with some great diverse characters and interesting themes
Celestial Monsters (2nd of Sunbearer Duology) by Aiden Thomas- almost a combo of Percy Jackson (but with a Mexican-inspired pantheon) and The Hunger Games. Tons of gender diverse characters, great world building, and intriguing themes.
I've been working on my attention span, since I fucked it up with social media. I just finished Fairy Tale, by Stephen King. I really enjoyed it. It's been a while since I've been able to start and finish a decent sized novel.
biography of x by catherine lacey -- great use of "what is her DEAL?" as plot engine, interesting look at construction of public/intimate/private selves & limits of control over ways of being remembered/forgotten, alternate history added depth & was not annoying to me personally
"not annoying to me personally" is so key! the manic pixie dream x was a lot for me, and it was really bizarre to see my friends show up as authors in fake citations from 1996 (when they were 5 years old) lol But I am GLAD u ENJOYED
I read Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami. I believe it will be translated for the U.S. in 2025, a follow up to her mega popular Breasts and Eggs and it’s vastly different in style but is a page turner and I kind of love it.
It’s hard to choose because they’re so different, but Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (sequel to The Three-Body Problem), Illborn by Daniel T. Jackson, and Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver were my absolute standouts from the year.
Rust In Peace- The inside story of the Megadeth masterpiece by Dave Mustaine with Forward by Slash. I LOVED this album as a kid and through adulthood. I got to learn how the songs were conceived, written, recorded, and how the band overcame near debilitating drug addiction.
Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollett. An amazing memoir of a musician who started life in a cult and the effects on the rest of his life. He wrote music to go along with the book and there are snippets of the music throughout. Read by the author.
The Searcher by Tana French. I’ve read all of her books, but this one really got to me. I loved it so much! I read the second one The Hunter and look forward to the third of the trilogy.
Letter to Gil audiobook by Malik Al Nasir. It’s a beautifully interwoven account of racism, growing up in the system, and meeting your hero, touring with him and becoming a legend in your own right.
The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson - no idea where how I learned about this book but one of the few works of fiction I read this year and loved it.
Also that Hanif Abdurraqib's There's Always This Year which is a book about basketball that is somehow also a book for people who aren't into basketball.
Pomegranate by Helen Elaine Lee. I listened to the audiobook during a seven hour drive. A beautiful story about a queer Black woman’s recovery from addiction and her triumph in staying clean and reconnecting with her child after a stint in prison. I loved every bit of it.
Dowry of Blood by ST Gibson, How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kaung, Margo’s got money troubles by Rufi Thorpe and You Should be so lucky by Cat Sebastian
I first approached The Satanic Verses a decade ago and only a few pages in decided it was trying too hard. Revisited it as an audiobook, this past summer. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Escapism par excellence!
Andrew Robinson (who played Garak in DS9) reading aloud his book A Stitch In Time. Sci-fi books not my usual fair, but if ever watched the show it is a must listen for his story telling and delivery. Ties up loose ends and background to Garak.
Good thing that it doesn't need to be from 2024, because a re-reading of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Confessions" (in its original language) always takes the pole position.
Maybe this won’t be your cup of tea, but I discovered Abby Jimenez this year. She writes romcoms. They’re super quick and easy reads. My favorite has to be Just for the Summer!
I remember when all the punks were enthusiastically telling each other to read Derrick Jensen, so it’s really nice to realize that one of the co-founders of Deep Green Resistance doesn’t suck AND can spin a damn yarn.
The handmaids tale. I read it every few years. I just didn’t realize Margaret Atwood could predict the future. You will find me on the wall!
#herfictionournewreality
#handmaidstale #dystopiansociety
It is eery how the pages of this book have in a way transcended into the real world. Sad really. But it is a great read! The audiobook version is great too!
The Book of Days by Francesca Kay was one of the most beautifully written books I have ever read. I could feel myself walking through the scenes as the seasons changed.
The Many Lives of Mama Love, by Lara Love Hardin. A memoir by a woman in Santa Cruz county who overcame drug addiction, jail & achieving independence post jail to become a writer honored by Oprah & Dali Lama. A story of redemption, hope and love.
My two 5 ⭐️ books on StoryGraph this year were We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian (gay romance set in 1958 Brooklyn newspaper) and The Spirit Bares It’s Teeth by Andrew Joseph White (trans autistic rep, the literal horrors of institutionalization)!
I'm reading 'One Billion Years to the End of the Earth' by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky- for the fifth time. It's funny, strange, gritty and ambiguously weird- I keep reading it because I can't decide what's really going on. I love the characters, the setting. It would make a fantastic play.
Was first read of the year, and I’ve been telling people about it ever since. I think everyone should read it, especially people that were raised in black or immigrant families
I was in a severe reading drought and earlier this month I took out a copy of The Kissing Quotient by Helen Hoang and it was so fun and sexy. It ended my reading drought and pushed me into a romcom kick.
The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman (and second in the series The Daughters War). Best fantasy I've read in a long time. Well written and the audio book is fantastically narrated in the voice of the titular thief of the first novel.
And Galva of the second novel (a supporting character in the first) is a proper fantasy badass. She is a daughter called to fight in the third goblin war (when the armies had run out of men) whose unit is trained to raise and fight alongside 6 foot tall war corvids. And she has top surgery.
Jon Sopel: If Only They Didn't Speak English: Notes From Trump's America
"Jon Sopel tries to explain the madness of Trump's America with an elegant sense of stoic bewilderment. Brilliant" - - Emma Kennedy, Actress, Writer and Broadcaster
The book I read this year that I'm going to spend the rest of my life talking about is 'The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports' by @michaelwaters.bsky.social. It traces the history of sex-testing in sport back to the 1930s, explaining how the current policies (1/3)
that exclude trans women from competing in the Olympics today originates with literal Nazi sports doctors. I cried so, so many times while reading it; I felt so connected to a previous generation of queer & trans people who I *knew* must have existed but had basically no idea what their lives (2/3)
would have looked like. And it was both horrifying and kind of affirming to realise that the transphobic rhetoric we see being used to deny trans people healthcare (and dignity) today isn’t new - it’s the same talking points that Nazis and eugenicists were spreading in the 1930s. (3/3)
Shout-outs also go to 'Cleat Cute' by Meryl Wilsner, 'The Prospects' by KT Hoffman, 'We Could Be So Good' by Cat Sebastian, 'But How Are You, Really' by @brosandprose.bsky.social, and 'Sons and Others: On Loving Male Survivors' by Tanaka Mhishi, all of which I loved and cried over.
RING TOSS A John Ceepak Mystery Short by Chris Grabenstein A delightful discovery because I had somehow missed this 1 in the Ceepak series. Love the dry wit and the "doesn't cheat, lie or tolerate those who do!"
Assata Shakur’s autobiography Assata & Chelsea Manning’s memoir README.txt are both spectacularly written & have similar themes & emotional impact. both are v misunderstood figures even among the left so it was impactful to absorb both (v difficult) life stories through their own words/thoughts.
RAW DOG by Jamie Loftus, always great when an author reads their own book, and what starts as a fun road trip food history is actually about the sledgehammer impact of COVID on factory workers, businesses, and relationships
Oh cool since you've read that one, bonus book in a totally different direction: DEARBORN by Ghassan Zeineddine. Short story collection about every facet of Arab-American life (mostly but not exclusively Lebanese) in southeast Michigan
I remember watching Lonesome Dove with my grandmother as a kid. I should say I remember it being on. I picked up the book this past year and was absolutely blown away. I’m not into westerns. That doesn’t matter. I couldn’t put this book down. It will be one of the few I reread.
I read this book in the late 80s. I’m still blown away since that first reading. I’ve enjoyed all of McMurtry’s writing, but this one… this one is just beautiful.
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara made me sob (fwiw - the criticisms are very valid but does not make it a bad read for me, just know what you’re going into).
How I Leaned to Understand the World by Hans Rosling is as inspirational as it is informative. Truly one of a kind person.
Here are 3: Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe, Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride, and Trans Girl Suicide Museum by Hannah Baer (most dead on book about what it’s like to be a trans woman that I’ve read since Nevada).
The Village Carpenter, by Walter Rose: an accessibly written 1930s memoir by a British carpenter. It deals a lot with how his grandfather and older generations made things like wells, windmills, and houses in the 1800s with no modern tools. Fascinating, and good life lessons, too. Quick, easy read.
I so love this book. It’s a new fantasy involving magic. The story takes you on a journey with some wonderful people. It’s full of life and you will miss it when you’re done.
Bluff by Danez Smith, Good Monster by Diannely Antigua, The Book of Delights by Ross Gay & The Woman Who Fell from the Sky by Joy Harjo which I’m reading now
I finally finished the Wheel of Time series this year. The last three written by Sanderson after Jordan’s death are by far the best three of the 14. A Memory of Light is my fav. If only for Ch 37 a 221 page single chapter telling the story of The Last Battle.
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but also it made me soooo sad about the actual mountain lion.
okay maybe I should just be texting u all this!!!
*Scalia: A Court of One* by Bruce Allen Murphy
I highly recommend: Chapter 15: Bush v. Gore
Yeah, heavy, I know, but informative.
Also: Mo has a podcast version. Also wonderful.
I’m currently listening to Conspirituality by the lads at @conspirituality.bsky.social, which is also fantastic.
The worst book I read this year? Marketing for Libraries 🤣
The Social Transformation of American Medicine: The Rise of a Sovereign Profession and the Making of a Vast Industry.
Author: Paul Starr
*It's not true crime; I'm trying to be funny.
I also finally read The Expanse series this year after finishing the show and it was great!
Whether or not you know it, her image is everywhere.
Found family, loving family, good government, UBI. Engrossing read.
One of the coolest pieces of fiction I have ever read.
Also that Hanif Abdurraqib's There's Always This Year which is a book about basketball that is somehow also a book for people who aren't into basketball.
And audiobook The Deseret Reckoning - fun, mystery-ish, a woman’s growth into herself.
And a book by another Jen, Jen Hadfield: Storm Pegs. A wonderful memoir of settling in the Shetland Islands.
Read it in a day (yesterday)
I remember when all the punks were enthusiastically telling each other to read Derrick Jensen, so it’s really nice to realize that one of the co-founders of Deep Green Resistance doesn’t suck AND can spin a damn yarn.
#herfictionournewreality
#handmaidstale #dystopiansociety
1. Martyr - Kaveh Akbar
2. There There - Tommy Orange
3. Wandering Stars - Tommy Orange
Was first read of the year, and I’ve been telling people about it ever since. I think everyone should read it, especially people that were raised in black or immigrant families
Best book I’ve read in quite some time. Really well written thriller that’ll keep you guessing.
"Jon Sopel tries to explain the madness of Trump's America with an elegant sense of stoic bewilderment. Brilliant" - - Emma Kennedy, Actress, Writer and Broadcaster
How I Leaned to Understand the World by Hans Rosling is as inspirational as it is informative. Truly one of a kind person.