Reads

2024

Favorites so far:

Comics

Taiyo Matsumoto, Ping Pong, Omnibus vol. 1, VIZ Media, 2020. Strange subject matter – high school ping pong – but Matsumoto’s characters and drawings are incredible. On my top 5 artists list.

Fiction

Daniel Mason, North Woods, Random House 2023. Tells the story of a yellow house in the woods of Massachusetts as it moved through time from family to family, from the 1700s to today. Extremely well written. I bounced back and forth between the audiobook and the print version.

Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead. Harper, 2022. Fantastic, sad and joyous. The closest thing to the lovely, A Prayer for Owen Meany I’ve read. Hit me right in the heart bone.

Christopher Buehlman, The Daughters’ War, Tor, 2024 [32]. Very good. He does a nice mix of horror and fantasy. I like the “Blacktongue Thief” better but this is still really good and I am here for more books in this world. The goblins in both of these novels are some epically scary baddies.

Non-Fiction

Chris Miller, Chip War. Scribner, 2022. [27]. A little long but fascinating history of microchips. A little technical, a little geopolitical. Very good read. Learned a lot.

Samantha Irby, Quietly Hostile, essays. Vintage, 2023. hilarious actually. a whole essay on poop. I think Irby may be my spirit animal.

Poetry

Ada Limon, The Hurting Kind: Poems, Milkweed Editions, 2022. Very enjoyable collection. A few will stay with me for a bit.

• Christopher Buehlman, The Daughters’ War, Tor, 2024 [32]. Very good. He does a nice mix of horror and fantasy. I like the “Blacktongue Thief” better but this is still really good and I am here for more books in this world. The goblins in both of these novels are some epically scary baddies.
• Charles Burns, Final Cut, Pantheon, 2024 [31]. Reminds me of some of his older stuff. Some strange characters and enough to keep the pages turning. amazing art and some really nice/fine ink work.
• Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Grand Central Publishing, 2016 [30]. Got on the waiting list for Newports “Digital Minimalism” but this one was available so I took a flyer. Some interesting bits about making time for actual work and not getting distracted by bullshit stuff.
• Eleanor Davis, Why Art?, Fantagraphics Books, 2018. [29]. Davis’ drawings are amazing to me. so easy looking and wonderful. Semi-interesting take on creating art and spins into a little story. I sort of just liked the pictures…
• Kevin Huizenga, Glen Ganges: The River at Night, Drawn and Quarterly, 2019. [28]. I love Huizenga’s comics – he is a wizard at levering the comics form to tell stories that can only be told using comics. This comic follows the main character trying to make himself fall asleep on a long sleepless night. A bit long at 200+ pps but very relatable.
• Chris Miller, Chip War, Scribner, 2022. [27]. A little long but fascinating history of microchips. A little technical, a little geopolitical. Very good read. Learned a lot.
• Cassandra Khaw, The Salt Grows Heavy, Tor Nightfire, 2023. [26]. Horror novella about a mermaid. Almost no water in the book but it’s wonderfully bloody, gooey and gross.
• Camile Dungy, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden, Simon & Schuster, 2023 [25]. I heard Dungy on a poetry podcast and thought this book would be a cool intersection of gardening and poems. It was more a commentary on how nature writing generally comes off as divorced from the author’s day-to-day reality. I dunno, maybe that’s because readers want to get away from their day-to-day realities sometimes?
• Daniel Mason, North Woods, Random House, 2023. [24]. Tells the story of a yellow house in the woods of Massachusetts as it moved through time, from family to family, from the 1700s to today. Extremely well written. I bounced back and forth between the audiobook and the print version.
• Atul Gawande, Being Mortal, Metropolitan Books, 2014. [23]. Eye opening, educational and very helpful in thinking about what end of life should look like for our selves and loved ones.
• Ada Limon, The Hurting Kind: Poems, Milkweed Editions, 2022. [22]. very enjoyable collection. A few will stay with me for a bit.
• Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds, Riverhead Books, 2023. [21]. Set in Virginia 1610. A girl (“The Girl”) escapes the Jamestown Settlement to go it alone in the wilderness. a bit sad but has some incredible writing in the final chapter.
• Taiyo Matsumoto, Ping Pong, Omnibus vol. 1, VIZ Media, 2020. [20]. Strange subject matter – high school ping pong – but Matsumoto’s characters and drawings are incredible. On my top 5 artists list.
• Neil Gaiman. The Ocean at the End of the Lane. William Morrow, 2013. [19]. Beautiful tale. Magical. Bittersweet. The ending is fantastic – well, the whole thing is. Sticking with me quite a bit.
• Kate Baer. I Hope This Finds You Well: Poems. Harper Perennial, 2021. [18]. Turning mean comments from her blog into poems. Creative. Great way to put up a middle finger to dickheads.
• Billy Collins. Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems. Random House, 2013. [17]. One or two good ones. He has an accessible style but feels formulaic sometimes. Maybe on a mission to prove he can make a poem about anything.
• Barbara Kingsolver. Demon Copperhead. Harper, 2022. [16]. Fantastic, sad and joyous. The closest thing to the lovely, A Prayer for Owen Meany I’ve read. Hit me right in the heart bone.
• S.A. Cosby, All the Sinners Bleed. Flatiron Book, 2023. [15]. Decent little serial killer book. creepy.
• Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. Two Dollar Radio, 2017. [14]. Short stories about a love of music and growing up black in the mostly white Ohio burbs. Great style. Loved some of the bands he talked about.
• Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah (Dune #2). Ace 2008 (1969). [13]. Loved this when I read it in the early 90s. Hit me a lot different this time. Stone Burners for the win/loss.
• Ann Leckie. Ancillary Sword (Imperial Radch, book 2). Orbit (2014). [12] Same great characters but suddenly shrinking the world and doing a local murder mystery. It was fine but I wanted a lot more from this.
• Susumu Higa (Jocelyne Allen, translator). Okinawa (#1-2), Fantagraphics, 2023. [11]. Non-fiction stories of Okinawa centered on the impacts of WW2 from the locals to modern day.
• Robert Frost. The Road Not Taken and Other Poems: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Robert Frost. Penguin, *my dog ate the cover and first few pages so not sure the year this collection was published….but Frost mostly did poetry in the first half of the 20th century. [10]. Loved a handful of these. Lost interest in a bunch as well.
• Matthew Desmond. Poverty by America. Crown, 2023. [9]. Surprised to see work by Mom cited in the references. Proud son. The book was fine. Some good points about the tax code being social welfare for the rich.
• Maria Ressa. How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future. Harper, 2022. [8]. Feels important in our current times. Scary and hopeful in a way.
• Ann Leckie. Ancillary Justice (Imperial Radch, book 1). Hachette Book Group 2023 (2013). [7]. Good Sci-fi. Great world building with some very cool concepts, good action, tech, violence. Enjoyable.
• Samantha Irby. Quietly Hostile, essays. Vintage, 2023. [6]. hilarious actually. a whole essay on poop. I think Irby may be my spirit animal.
• Clint Smith. Above Ground. Little, Brown and Company, 2023. [5]. Poems mostly about family and being black in America. I loved a few of these very much.
• R.F. Huang, Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution. Harper Voyager, 2022. [4]. A little long but really cool magic story set in old London and a magic system based on language.
• Ling Ma. Bliss Montage: Stories. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022. [3]. Some gems. Loved the one about the professor.
• Ran Walker. Can I Kick It?: Sneaker Microfiction and Poetry. 45 Alternate Press, 2020.[2]. Somewhat forgettable. Mostly read it cause it was available on the Libby app.
• Dan Jones. Essex Dogs. Viking, 2023. [1]. Decent dramatization of a historical thing. Cool characters.