30 Dec 2024 – Book round-up: Oct-Dec 2024

Final book round-up for the year!

I've been experimenting with format this year, from longer-form narrative write ups, author deepdives and my classic ‘feeling’ lists.

I’ve been debating whether to continue writing these. Does anyone read them? Because I can just write it in my journal, right? Anyway, if YOU are a person who reads them, lmk for next year.

Anyway, let’s get into it.

2024 in numbers:

As always, full list on The Storygraph.

The Actual Star by Monica Byrne

Incredible range and brings in – like any good speculative fiction – so many interesting ideas about constructing societies. The biological adjustments, ‘hunters’, the utopia/dystopia dualism, present day humans being referred to as ‘hoarders’. Makes you want to go do some psychedelics.

Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan

Set in the beginning of the Sri Lankan civil war. Beautifully written, riveting and deeply emotional (also quite historically accurate, if Wikipedia is to be believed).

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann

Astonishingly good storytelling, woven with delightful little nautical quips that have made it into common parlance. For example “takes a walk up Ladder-lane, and down Hemp-street.” I used to think history books were boring, how wrong I wasSee also, The Black Jacobins.

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck

In this house, we stan Steinbeck. I didn’t love the characters as much as East of Eden and it didn’t churn me up in the same way. But god can this man WRITE!

The End We Start From by Megan Hunter

London floods. Detail of the visceral and broadbrush strokes of wider context and environments, which I guess is what real life is like.

Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life by Giorgio Agamben

Incredibly hard work but rewarding and generative. It was a reading group book and we discussed it over 2 sessions for several hours each. Not for the weak of will.

We are all completely besides ourselves

Excellent narrative voice, first person work doesn’t always work but this does! Reads lightly but is an incredible story. And the themes! The plot twist a quarter of the way through had me shook! And I cried at the end.

Authority by Jeff VanderMeer (Southern Reach #2)

After finishing Annihilation, I remember feeling an overwhelming urgency to read the next part. That was 2 years ago and I since forgot how it ended, so it took me most of the book to re-figure it out. Story and narrative have almost movie like quality and the descriptions of place and nature are both visceral and stunning.

Parable of the Talents (Earthseed #2) by Octavia E. Butler

Tense! Conflicting! Book 1 sets you up to identify with Olamina but book 2 is narrated through her daughter’s diaries as well. It wasn’t as narratively rewarding as the first one and the ending fell flat for me. But still good (I mean, it’s Butler).

Always Coming Home by Ursula K. Le Guin

My first Le Guin book that I didn’t really like. I do believe you have to meet some books at the right time, and I was not ready for that one.

The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino

Suffers from its own cleverness. An experiment that fell flat, though one has to admire the effort. Worth having on one’s bookshelf for the stunning Tarot illustrations.

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

The way she writes about disability and neurodiversity is gross, and as a bonus, we also have insufferable characters and lots of unpleasant, unsexy sex. Not chic to get het up about Rooney but this was disappointing.