books 2024
Jan. 6th, 2025 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mitsyr1January still feels the a time of both reviewing and looking forward, so despite being nearly a week into the new year I want to talk about my 2024 reading year.
In terms of base stats I read sixty books or 21,850 pages according to storygraph. I don’t get too picky in terms of edition there and I read a lot via audiobook, but don’t keep track of that either, but it's a good approximation. Apparently I had ten 5 star reads this year, and also some books that I was obsessed with and fandomy over that didn’t make it into the 5 star list and those are the books I'm going to talk a bit more about.
So, in chronological order my 5 star reads:
The Dragon Republic and The Burning God by R.F. Kuang
I read the Poppy War in the summer of 2023 and enjoyed it, though there were parts that turned my stomach along the way. These two books followed that trend. There’s a real sense of foreboding that occurs as you move through these. I didn’t agree with Rin’s decisions lots of the time, but I always knew where she was coming from and from her POV why those felt like the best decisions. The end of the Burning God was my favourite and I am a huge fan of the centering of Rin and Kitay’s relationship, all the way down to the end.
I tried listening to Babel at the end of the year, and just had a hard time getting into it. I didn’t finish any books in December though, so it was just a bad reading month and I look forward to giving it another go in 2025.
Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa
I read this in a concentrated effort to read books by Palestinian authors. This is the only book I managed in 2024 for that goal (there was another one in December, but that got scuppered by a bad reading month) but what a doozy to pick. This was beautiful and tough to read at times, but overall, very engaging. The plot moves, the relationships are complicated, both to people and place, and while many terrible things happen, love and hope remain ever present. For me, basically a perfect literary fiction book.
I’ve seen good things about her other books, particularly Mornings in Jenin, so perhaps that will make it into 2025’s reading.
Dead Beat and Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher or books 7 and 8 of the Dresden Files
I started my re-read of the Dresden Files in 2023, but in 2024 I read books 2 through 8. This is a series I exclusively listen to on audiobook because James Marsters is the narrator and he is delightful. The series as a whole is an urban fantasy, mystery of the month type of thing. The first two books are a bit bumpy. They aren’t bad per-say, but books three and onward are better, and there’s some certain tropes and writing choices in the first two books that I understand why some people wouldn’t like or find it hard to get past. Those things get better though!
I love the world-building in this series, and that becomes increasingly present by the time you get to these two books. Dead Beat had me nearly crying from laughing at times, and is probably my actual favourite of the two. Proven Guilty is also very good and I love the growth that certain characters get, but it’s also lacking a lot of involvement from my favorite character, so it gets slightly lower marks.
I hear rumors that book eighteen in this series will come out in 2025, and in that case I have a ways to go in 2025. Also this is a series I do feel fannish about, so perhaps there will be fic this year if I can keep my good intentions of writing more going.
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
This is a memoir, one of two on this list. It details Chanel’s life just before she goes to a Stanford party and is raped by Brock Turner and the long, long aftermath that was living afterwards, the court case, sentencing, etc. This took me a long time to read, because its tough. I kept wanting it to be over so that the events could be over for Chanel, but of course that’s not how life gets to be.
This is another book that I listened to on audio and I think I got more out of it because of that, as Chanel narrates it. Her writing is already really powerful, but having her voice as well elevated it? I’d be curious to know whether that’s something she insisted on or if it was suggested to her, whether she had any initial reservations to narrating it.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
This was definitely my number one favourite book of 2024. I remember this being heavily featured at my undergrad uni pre-2020, and I’m glad that I wasn’t really reading books at that moment in time so that I could read it now.
This is a novel that follows these separate but intersecting strands that all sort of collide in the onset of a global pandemic. It follows these strands through time, both before the initial pandemic event and after as society basically collapses. The virus in this book is a lot more deadly and fast-acting then covid-19 is, and its interesting now to think about how our world would be different with the novel’s virus and how the novel would be different with ours. There’s also a large theme of the how the arts really saves people, both individually and as a society. I think that message would have hit in 2015-2016, when I first saw this book, but I think it hits harder now, in the current cultural moment we live in.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
This is a book I liked a lot, but didn’t love. However, it was too well-written for me to give it any less then five stars. A World War II story, centering a blind French girl, a young, extremely smart German boy, and the unlikely connection they form.
I don’t actually have a lot to say about this one. There’s a Netflix adaption, it’s popular, its very good, and is the kind of historical fiction I really like.
Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan
I believe I saw a blurb for this in Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar, this is one of the few new releases I picked up in 2024. This story follows a girl, dying of cancer, who ends up falling into her favourite dark fantasy series. If she manages to get a specific flower at a specific time she can go home and heal herself. The catch is that when she lands in the fantasy world, she ends up in the body of the series main villainess. Also she doesn’t really remember the events of the first book so well.
This is a book I almost DNF’d, but I forced myself to read a 100 pages and by that point I was sold. It is meant to be very campy and ridiculous and self-referential. There’s a chapter where the characters spontaneously break into a song and dance routine, for example. Personally, this is why I thought I would DNF, because it took me awhile to ‘get’ the writing style. There is also something kinda fanfic-y about the three main ‘couples’, which isn’t always a good thing, but in this case was.
A book I recommend, but can also understand why it wouldn’t land with people.
What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing From Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo
The second memoir on the list, and one that is no less painful then Know My Name. The title of the book really says it all, but this book was also about how complicated healing is, especially when the would is psychological and/or not widely understood, known to exist, or taken seriously as it’s own particular ailment.
This book details some of the inciting incidents, the process of getting a diagnosis, the many different types of therapy and treatment suggested and tried and ultimately rejected, the struggle of getting your family to take you seriously, and how mental health is treated in Asian-American and Asian communities.
Stephanie Foo is a great writer, though I wasn’t previously aware of her work. She brings you along for the journey.
Works that were not five stars, but that I was obsessed with
These are books that for whatever reason I didn’t quite feel were five stars when I read them, but none the less loved and felt fannish about
The Villains Duology (Vicious and Vengeful) by V.E. Schwab
These were the first V. E. Schwab books I read (I also read Addie Larue and the first Shades of Magic in 2024) and the ones I loved the most. This is often described as a comic book without pictures and I generally agree with that. This is a supervillain, mad scientist origin story and the style really leans into that.
I will say that pretty much everyone I see talking about this book leans in really hard on the Eli/Victor, toxic gay college situationship that changes your life angle, that really holds no appeal to me. Or it does, but as a precursor for the more domestic, found family (that’s also kinda fucked up) vibes. I want Sydney and Mitch to sit on Victor until he accepts being a dad/big brother/emotionally unavailable boyfriend and work through like two of his many issues.
I suspect that much of this has to do with a real dislike for Eli. He’s a great character, but for me personally, I have a hard time with evangelizers. Victor does bad things, but he is often aware that they’re not great choices and that he has a real hole where normal people have a conscience and morals. He sucks and he’s not apologizing for it. Eli, however, does just as bad things and because he’s not in prison for the first book, actually does way more bad things and then insists that actually he’s just doing the Lord’s work of killing people with superpowers, all while having superpowers himself. And I hate that shit.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
I read the Goldfinch over 2022-2023 and enjoyed it, and then also read If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio in 2023 and also enjoyed that. This book sits in that circle for me, obviously it’s one that lots of people hail as THE dark academia book. I listened to it on audiobook, read by the author, which was a good choice I think. She knows best how she wanted Richard’s voice to be and I certainly got that.
This book was probably the one that hooked me the most in 2024. All I wanted to do was just sit and listen to it. If it was possible to do it in one sitting, I might’ve. I spent nearly half the book with the sense of being hunted, going oh my god they’re going to kill him (Richard) despite the narrative structure that told me otherwise. I also had to pause it multiple times to just sit there and say ‘what the fuck’ at various home-erotic and other startling, baffling moments of character work.
And the worst of all of it is, while having read some amazing fic for this, it’s hard to find the kind of fic I want or imagine what I would even write. The characters are so mind-bogglingly unhappy and neurotic and allergic to personal growth (and in the closet, in some cases) that I have a hard time imagining that any of them would ever actually be happy.
A book that I cannot wait to reread at some point and annotate the shit out of it.
In terms of base stats I read sixty books or 21,850 pages according to storygraph. I don’t get too picky in terms of edition there and I read a lot via audiobook, but don’t keep track of that either, but it's a good approximation. Apparently I had ten 5 star reads this year, and also some books that I was obsessed with and fandomy over that didn’t make it into the 5 star list and those are the books I'm going to talk a bit more about.
So, in chronological order my 5 star reads:
The Dragon Republic and The Burning God by R.F. Kuang
I read the Poppy War in the summer of 2023 and enjoyed it, though there were parts that turned my stomach along the way. These two books followed that trend. There’s a real sense of foreboding that occurs as you move through these. I didn’t agree with Rin’s decisions lots of the time, but I always knew where she was coming from and from her POV why those felt like the best decisions. The end of the Burning God was my favourite and I am a huge fan of the centering of Rin and Kitay’s relationship, all the way down to the end.
I tried listening to Babel at the end of the year, and just had a hard time getting into it. I didn’t finish any books in December though, so it was just a bad reading month and I look forward to giving it another go in 2025.
Against the Loveless World by Susan Abulhawa
I read this in a concentrated effort to read books by Palestinian authors. This is the only book I managed in 2024 for that goal (there was another one in December, but that got scuppered by a bad reading month) but what a doozy to pick. This was beautiful and tough to read at times, but overall, very engaging. The plot moves, the relationships are complicated, both to people and place, and while many terrible things happen, love and hope remain ever present. For me, basically a perfect literary fiction book.
I’ve seen good things about her other books, particularly Mornings in Jenin, so perhaps that will make it into 2025’s reading.
Dead Beat and Proven Guilty by Jim Butcher or books 7 and 8 of the Dresden Files
I started my re-read of the Dresden Files in 2023, but in 2024 I read books 2 through 8. This is a series I exclusively listen to on audiobook because James Marsters is the narrator and he is delightful. The series as a whole is an urban fantasy, mystery of the month type of thing. The first two books are a bit bumpy. They aren’t bad per-say, but books three and onward are better, and there’s some certain tropes and writing choices in the first two books that I understand why some people wouldn’t like or find it hard to get past. Those things get better though!
I love the world-building in this series, and that becomes increasingly present by the time you get to these two books. Dead Beat had me nearly crying from laughing at times, and is probably my actual favourite of the two. Proven Guilty is also very good and I love the growth that certain characters get, but it’s also lacking a lot of involvement from my favorite character, so it gets slightly lower marks.
I hear rumors that book eighteen in this series will come out in 2025, and in that case I have a ways to go in 2025. Also this is a series I do feel fannish about, so perhaps there will be fic this year if I can keep my good intentions of writing more going.
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
This is a memoir, one of two on this list. It details Chanel’s life just before she goes to a Stanford party and is raped by Brock Turner and the long, long aftermath that was living afterwards, the court case, sentencing, etc. This took me a long time to read, because its tough. I kept wanting it to be over so that the events could be over for Chanel, but of course that’s not how life gets to be.
This is another book that I listened to on audio and I think I got more out of it because of that, as Chanel narrates it. Her writing is already really powerful, but having her voice as well elevated it? I’d be curious to know whether that’s something she insisted on or if it was suggested to her, whether she had any initial reservations to narrating it.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
This was definitely my number one favourite book of 2024. I remember this being heavily featured at my undergrad uni pre-2020, and I’m glad that I wasn’t really reading books at that moment in time so that I could read it now.
This is a novel that follows these separate but intersecting strands that all sort of collide in the onset of a global pandemic. It follows these strands through time, both before the initial pandemic event and after as society basically collapses. The virus in this book is a lot more deadly and fast-acting then covid-19 is, and its interesting now to think about how our world would be different with the novel’s virus and how the novel would be different with ours. There’s also a large theme of the how the arts really saves people, both individually and as a society. I think that message would have hit in 2015-2016, when I first saw this book, but I think it hits harder now, in the current cultural moment we live in.
All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
This is a book I liked a lot, but didn’t love. However, it was too well-written for me to give it any less then five stars. A World War II story, centering a blind French girl, a young, extremely smart German boy, and the unlikely connection they form.
I don’t actually have a lot to say about this one. There’s a Netflix adaption, it’s popular, its very good, and is the kind of historical fiction I really like.
Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan
I believe I saw a blurb for this in Leigh Bardugo’s The Familiar, this is one of the few new releases I picked up in 2024. This story follows a girl, dying of cancer, who ends up falling into her favourite dark fantasy series. If she manages to get a specific flower at a specific time she can go home and heal herself. The catch is that when she lands in the fantasy world, she ends up in the body of the series main villainess. Also she doesn’t really remember the events of the first book so well.
This is a book I almost DNF’d, but I forced myself to read a 100 pages and by that point I was sold. It is meant to be very campy and ridiculous and self-referential. There’s a chapter where the characters spontaneously break into a song and dance routine, for example. Personally, this is why I thought I would DNF, because it took me awhile to ‘get’ the writing style. There is also something kinda fanfic-y about the three main ‘couples’, which isn’t always a good thing, but in this case was.
A book I recommend, but can also understand why it wouldn’t land with people.
What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing From Complex Trauma by Stephanie Foo
The second memoir on the list, and one that is no less painful then Know My Name. The title of the book really says it all, but this book was also about how complicated healing is, especially when the would is psychological and/or not widely understood, known to exist, or taken seriously as it’s own particular ailment.
This book details some of the inciting incidents, the process of getting a diagnosis, the many different types of therapy and treatment suggested and tried and ultimately rejected, the struggle of getting your family to take you seriously, and how mental health is treated in Asian-American and Asian communities.
Stephanie Foo is a great writer, though I wasn’t previously aware of her work. She brings you along for the journey.
Works that were not five stars, but that I was obsessed with
These are books that for whatever reason I didn’t quite feel were five stars when I read them, but none the less loved and felt fannish about
The Villains Duology (Vicious and Vengeful) by V.E. Schwab
These were the first V. E. Schwab books I read (I also read Addie Larue and the first Shades of Magic in 2024) and the ones I loved the most. This is often described as a comic book without pictures and I generally agree with that. This is a supervillain, mad scientist origin story and the style really leans into that.
I will say that pretty much everyone I see talking about this book leans in really hard on the Eli/Victor, toxic gay college situationship that changes your life angle, that really holds no appeal to me. Or it does, but as a precursor for the more domestic, found family (that’s also kinda fucked up) vibes. I want Sydney and Mitch to sit on Victor until he accepts being a dad/big brother/emotionally unavailable boyfriend and work through like two of his many issues.
I suspect that much of this has to do with a real dislike for Eli. He’s a great character, but for me personally, I have a hard time with evangelizers. Victor does bad things, but he is often aware that they’re not great choices and that he has a real hole where normal people have a conscience and morals. He sucks and he’s not apologizing for it. Eli, however, does just as bad things and because he’s not in prison for the first book, actually does way more bad things and then insists that actually he’s just doing the Lord’s work of killing people with superpowers, all while having superpowers himself. And I hate that shit.
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
I read the Goldfinch over 2022-2023 and enjoyed it, and then also read If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio in 2023 and also enjoyed that. This book sits in that circle for me, obviously it’s one that lots of people hail as THE dark academia book. I listened to it on audiobook, read by the author, which was a good choice I think. She knows best how she wanted Richard’s voice to be and I certainly got that.
This book was probably the one that hooked me the most in 2024. All I wanted to do was just sit and listen to it. If it was possible to do it in one sitting, I might’ve. I spent nearly half the book with the sense of being hunted, going oh my god they’re going to kill him (Richard) despite the narrative structure that told me otherwise. I also had to pause it multiple times to just sit there and say ‘what the fuck’ at various home-erotic and other startling, baffling moments of character work.
And the worst of all of it is, while having read some amazing fic for this, it’s hard to find the kind of fic I want or imagine what I would even write. The characters are so mind-bogglingly unhappy and neurotic and allergic to personal growth (and in the closet, in some cases) that I have a hard time imagining that any of them would ever actually be happy.
A book that I cannot wait to reread at some point and annotate the shit out of it.
