2024 Books
| Title | Author | Date Finished | Rating | Publisher | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nameless | Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham | 12/25/24 | 5 | Image Comics | One of the best horror comics I’ve read in years. Strange, grotesque cosmic horror about dreams, symbols, extradimensional monsters, and how we free ourselves from the violence of a patriarchal god. Burnham’s art is detailed and kaleidoscopic with a thickness and viscosity as befits the frequently disgusting imagery. The guide at the end by Morrison helped explain a lot of the plot, which is a-linear and dreamlike. |
| Newburn Vol. 1 | Chip Zdarsky and Jacob Phillips | 12/25/24 | 4 | Image Comics | Fun, gritty crime comic about the private detective whose only clients are the most powerful gangsters in the world. Art is minimialist but solid. Very well written and plotted. |
| Mirage | Matt Ruff | Harper Perennial | A counter-history of the early 2000s, where American fundamentalist Christians hijack planes and fly them into the buildings of the United Arab States. This cracked mirror of the millenial globe provides a vantage point for investigating good and evil, fate, and violence. I’m not sure I liked the ending, but the journey was fascinating and thoughtful. | ||
| Worse Angels | Laird Barron | 12/17/24 | 4 | GP Putnam’s Sons | Read my notes |
| Ulysses Moore: The Door to Time | Pierdomenico Baccalario | 12/14/2024 | 4 | Scholastic | Entertaining kids mystery adventure that I read with my 11 year old. The characters are distinct and fun, the puzzles are engaging, and the prose is pretty good! |
| The Dagon Collection | Nate Pederson, ed. | 11/27/24 | 5 | PS Publishing | An edited volume, masquerading as an auction catalog for all the stuff the US government confiscated during the raid on Innsmouth in the Lovecraft story. It was clear that the writers (many of whom are old hats at Lovecraft pieces) had a ton of fun putting these entries together, and it shows. I couldn’t put it down–a real delight for Lovecraft fans. |
| Whale Day and Other Poems | Billy Collins | 11/23/24 | 4 | Random House | Billy Collins poems sound like well delivered jokes: setup, delivery, punchline. But they’re beautifully crafted, full of love for language and a genuine sense of wanting to give a gift to the reader. Nothing exciting or world-shattering, just…nice. |
| The Man in the High Castle | Philip K. Dick | 11/26/24 | 3 | Mariner Classic | I couldn’t get in to this at all. I have liked other Dick books (particularly Ubik and “The Three Stigmata…” but this just felt wooden and dry and wildly end-loaded. |
| Ivory Apples | Lisa Goldstein | 9/23/24 | 4 | Tachyon Publishing | A dark fairy-tale, set in modern times. It’s about a young girl and her three sisters who live with their father in Eugene, OR, and care for their great aunt, the reclusive author of a wildly popular fantasy novel, also called “Ivory Apples”. Their world changes when the girl discovers magical creatures who live with and may have inspired her aunt, at the same time as a strange woman begins to insert herself uncomfortably into the family’s life. Along the way, there’s an elusive and interesting mythology about the Greek muses, and thoughtful contemplation of what creativity gives and what it costs. I didn’t love the ending, but the ride to get there was wonderful. |
| For the First Time, Again | Sylvain Neuvel | 9/8/24 | 4 | Tor Books | Wraps up the series with an incredible amount of violence, but felt kind of unsatisfying. It displaced a lot of the big questions of the series outside the narrative, particularly the mission of the Kibsu to “take them to the stars”. Also, unlike the previous books, the events of world were less foregrounded, which took out the “secret history” element that made the first two books so compelling. |
| The Traitor’s Son | Pedro Urvi | 10/13/24 | 1 | Self-Published | Poorly written, poorly edited (lots of grammar and spelling mistakes) and should be about half of its length. Reads like someone wanted to make Harry Potter in the Skyrim universe and then padded it out with unnecessary and boring exposition. The whole thing was derivative and flat, and if I wasn’t reading it to someone else, I would’ve junked it after the first 30 pages. |
| Through the Woods | Emily Carroll | 8/31/24 | 5 | Margaret K. McElderberry Books | Amazing and creepy short comics from this horror master |
| Until the Last of Me | Sylvain Neuvel | 08/29/24 | 4 | Tor Books | Continues and expands the mythology and thoughtfulness of the first book, focusing on the tumult of the 1960s and 1970s. |
| Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life | Karen Fields and Barbara J. Fields | 8/12/24 | 4 | Verso | I keep meaning to make notes on this book, which is a monumental work that deserves serious consideration, but life continues to get in the way. The short version is that what they call “racecraft” (after witchcraft) is the ideological process of transforming racism (a real form of power and oppression) into race (a fictional category that is treated as real). I’m fascinated by this approach, even as I worry that it risks cooption by colorblind conservatives. |
| A History of What Comes Next | Sylvain Neuvel | 8/12/24 | 5 | Tor Books | A fascinating and exciting alternate history about a line of (alien?) women who have been working for millenia to help humanity develop the capacity to leave Earth before some ambiguous calamity occurs. The narrative is written in a very tight First person style, but works to keep the narrative propulsive and interesting. I couldn’t put it down! |
| At the Mountains of Madness (Illustrated Classics) | HP Lovecraft and Ian N.J. Culbard | 08/08/24 | 3 | Sterling | Makes the original rather rambling narrative a little bit tighter, but doesn’t do much beyond that. |
| How Much for Just the Planet? | John M. Ford | 8/9/24 | 5 | Pocket Books | I remember seeing this book at the B. Dalton’s in Cedar Rapids. Turns out, it’s funny and strange and delightful. The easiest way to describe it is that it’s a slapstick musical comedy set in the TOS universe. |
| The Salt Grows Heavy | Cassandra Khaw | 8/1/24 | 5 | MacMillan | Lush, violent, and very weird. The main character is a mermaid who, before the book begins was wedded and enslaved to a now dead king. Through some cataclysmic event of her own design, the kingdom is destroyed, and she wanders the barren and violent landscape along with the Plague Doctor who assisted her. It’s a world of elusive magic and everyday sadism. I’ve never really read anything like it, and I couldn’t put it down. |
| This is How You Lose the Time War | Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone | 7/29/24 | 5 | Simon & Schuster | A beautifully written epistolary novel about two time travelers who start as foes, then become rivals, then friends, then lovers. The prose is beautiful, poetic, and engaging. The world (worlds) of the novel is equally fascinating, full of interesting alternate histories and rich, complicated futures. |
| Music is History | Questlove | 7/29/24 | 3 | Harry N. Abrams | Read my notes |
| The Jumbies | Tracey Baptiste | 8/6/24 | 3 | Algonquin Young Readers | An interesting idea to create a young adult series based on Caribbean folklore, but for my money, the characters felt pretty flat and the story wasn’t terribly exciting |
| Holes | Louis Sachar | 7/13/24 | 5 | Yearling | An anti-carceral novel wrapped in a kids mystery. It was funny and exciting and strange and both my 11 yo and I loved it. |
| Climbers | M. John Harrison | 07/18/24 | 5 | Gollancz | Read my notes |
| Muggie Maggie | Beverly Cleary | 7/7/24 | 2 | HarperCollins | Has the same empathy for kids as the Ramona books, but feels crueller, somehow. Maybe it’s the fact that Maggie’s conflict is not wanting to learn cursive, which feels like the kind of capricious school tasks that Cleary usually makes fun of. |
| Sensation | Nick Mamatas | 06/26/24 | 4 | PM Press | A paranoid, satirical meander through the chaos of 21st century America. Echoing Philip K. Dick at his best, Mamatas posits a US buffeted both by strange and impersonal forces of capitalism and the whims of state power, but also by the interventions of super-intelligent insects for whom humans are hosts and subjects of curiousity and experimentation. It was funny and weird and thoughtful in its exploration of free will and alienation. |
| Locklands | Robert Jackson Bennett | 06/29/24 | 4 | Crown | Caps off an inventive and adventurous series with a grand battle between the forces of community and the forces of control. I remain awed by Bennet’s ability to cram so much creative exposition into an otherwise propulsive and exciting narrative. |
| It Never Ends: A Memoir With Nice Memories | Tom Scharpling | 06/19/24 | 4 | Harry N Abrams | A funny, sad, and hopeful memoir by one of the most singular comic voices of the 21st century. It’s a really personal book, with the centerpiece being Scharpling’s long struggles with mental health problems. It’s also very funny, nerdy, and very well written. |
| Anansi Boys | Neil Gaiman | 6/9/24 | 3 | William Morrow | A fainter, paler imitation of American Gods. Characters are a bit wooden and weightless and despite some occasionally beautiful prose, the whole thing fell flat for me. |
| Monkey King: Journey to the West | Wu Chen’en | 6/30/24 | 5 | Penguin | A fantastic, funny, and satirical adventure that I read with my 11 year old. The translation by Julia Lovell makes the book and characters feel fresh and alive. |
| Song for the Unraveling of the World | Brian Evenson | 5/19/24 | 4 | Coffeehouse Press | A wonderful collection by a weird fiction/horror master. Evenson’s ability to evoke dread with mundane or passing phrases and images is nearly unparalleled. I read it so quickly because I was enjoying it, and I’m looking forward to going back and slowly working my way through again. |
| Walkaway | Cory Doctorow | 5/13/24 | 4 | Tor Books | An interesting and thoughtful techno utopia set in an environmentally degraded and viciously hierarchal North America, filled with ragtag open-source hacker anarchists and scientists who walk away from the world they reject and try to build an alternate one. Mostly, it made me want to 3d print massive things! |
| Wayside School and the Cloud of Doom | Louis Sachar | 5/12/24 | 3 | HarperCollins | |
| Wayside School Gets a little Stranger | Louis Sachar | 5/2/24 | 3 | HarperCollins | Not my favorite of the series, but still fun and funny. |
| Shorefall | Robert Jackson Bennett | 4/25/24 | 4 | Crown | Continues the engaging world and mythology of the first book, though the villains motivations and actions are starting to become a little uneven. |
| Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in 19th Century America | Steven Stoll | 04/30/24 | 4 | Hill and Wang | A genuinely fascinating book about the ecological, political and economic problems of soil in 19th century America. Perhaps undersells the place of capitalism in pre-19th century rural life, but otherwise, well written and insightful. |
| Revenants | Daniel Mills | 4/12/24 | 4 | Chomu Press | A kind of puritan gothic novel, focused on a fictional New England village called Cold Marsh, where over the past year, several young girls have gone missing. It captures the fundamental strangeness of the colonial world, half-way between the primitive darkness and magic of medieval world and the cold bright rationality of the modern world. Beautifully written, strange, and rich. |
| Foundryside | Robert Jackson Bennett | 4/7/24 | 4 | Crown | A really well-written, well-paced fantasy with a clever world and interesting characters. |
| Wayside School is Falling Down | Louis Sachar | 4/20/24 | 4 | HarperCollins | |
| Sideways stories from Wayside School | Louis Sachar | 4/4/24 | 4 | HarperCollins | As fun, weird, and unusual with my 10 year old as it was when I read it as a kid. |
| The Centauri Device | M. John Harrison | 3/27/24 | 4 | Orion Publishing | An anti-space opera, drained of the Romantic one-dimensionality that generally props up the genre. The main character is drug-runner and self-described “loser” who wins only by refusing to take a side, and whose exploits may or may not even be real. Entertaining, thoughtful and (of course) beautifully written. |
| The Magician’s Nephew | C.S. Lewis | 3/25/24 | 4 | HarperTrophy | Delightful and strange and a fitting prequel-as-postscript to the series. |
| Riot Baby | Tochi Onyebuchi | 3/10/24 | 5 | Firestorm Books | Read My Notes |
| I Walk With Monsters | Paul Cornell and Sally Cantirino | 3/6/24 | 3 | Vault Comics | Some wonderful imagery and interesting ideas, but the mythology was a little too confusing to really grab me. |
| Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements | Bob Mehr | 3/17/24 | 4 | Da Capo Press | An exhaustive and insightful examination of one of the great American rock and roll bands of the 1980s. It makes clear that the ‘Mats were working-class victims of of their own traumas, insecurities and addictions, compounded by a rapacious and exploitative record industry that pushed them to be something they weren’t. |
| A Cosmology of Monsters | Shaun Hamill | 3/1/24 | 3 | Pantheon | Read My Notes |
| The Last Battle | C.S. Lewis | 3/2/24 | 2 | HarperTrophy | Meh |
| Fire on the Mountain | Terry Bisson | 2/25/24 | 5 | PM Press | Brilliant and moving American counter-history, sketching an alternate and hopeful present out of a past where John Brown and Harriet Tubman liberate the American South alongside a multi-racial working class army. What unfolds is a very different 20th century, with advances in science and politics thus far unachieved in our world. While not a Utopia, the world Bisson sees as a result of this alternate history is curious, hopeful, and eminently desirable. |
| Strange Skies Over East Berlin | Jeff Loveness, Lisandro Estherren | 02/17/24 | 3 | Boom! Studios | |
| Ramona Forever | Beverly Cleary | 02/08/24 | 3 | Scholastic | Read this with my 5 year old. Definitely a more mature book than the earlier Ramona books, with mentions of death, birth, and big change. It did make for some good conversations, but a lot of it probably went over her head. |
| The Silver Chair | C.S. Lewis | 02/13/24 | 3 | HarperTrophy | |
| Saga Vol. 11 | Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples | 1/15/24 | 4 | Image Comics | There is no violent path out of violence |
| Saga Vol. 10 | Brian K. Vaughn and Fiona Staples | 1/15/24 | 4 | Image Comics | Punk rock changed our lives |
| Techniques of the Selling Writer | Dwight V. Swain | 2/01/24 | 3 | Univ. of Oklahoma Press | An almost algebraic approach to fiction writing, written by a master pulp writer turned writing teacher who knows how to write in bulk for publication. Originally written in 1965, a lot of the language is very dated, with lots of sexism and a couple of racist jokes. I’m currently trying to make some notes about it, and draw out the insights separate from the inappropriate commentary. |
| Perdido Street Station | China Mieville | 2/16/24 | 4 | Pan Books | I have always felt like China Mieville’s books have difficult or problematic endings, and this one is maybe the worst offender. I liked the book overall; an essentially conventional noir/urban thriller, set in a colorful, complicated, and imaginatively rendered weird city. It was a fun journey to take. But the ending, in which one of the primary characters is revealed to have done a shocking and needlessly cruel thing, recast the whole book for me in ways that I can’t get over. |
| Occult Features of Anarchism | Erica Lagalisse | 1/8/24 | 5 | PM Press | [Read My Notes](/books/2024_notes |
| Voyage of the Dawn Treader | C.S. Lewis | 1/13/23 | 5 | HarperTrophy | I think this may be my favorite so far. The quest, the strangeness of the edge of the world, and the beauty and richness of what lies beyond. |
Currently Reading, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2000s, 1990s
