My 2024 Reading List
There were lots of really solid books this year, but also one absolute clanger - Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis, which I gave up on after 100 pages of disgustingly flagrant sexism (so I haven't included it in my book count). Sure, books written almost a hundred years ago often have outdated ideas (and I've read and enjoyed plenty of classics), but this was just relentless and I couldn't see past it to enjoy the book at all. It's very rare for me to DNF a book, so you know it's bad.
On to happier things, here is this year's chronological list:
1. Fathoms: the world in the whale by Rebecca Giggs
Starting off the year with a bang, one of the best non-fiction books I've ever read. Poetic, beautiful, meticulously researched, this is exactly the kind of book that my past self (studying marine science and English literature at university) probably should have been writing. Not just about whales, but using whales as a lens to look at the whole world of ecology, environmentalism and consumerism.
For example, one chapter about whale-song raised the idea that whales might construct meaning in their communication not only through the sounds themselves but in their distance, and how they echo through 3-dimensional space:
"Imagine if what a word denoted depended not only on how that word was spelt, how it sounded, and whether it was whispered or whether it was yelled, but also where on the page it was placed.
Don't we know that form already, reader? Don't we call it a poem?"
2. This One Wild and Precious Life by Sarah Wilson
Title obviously taken from one of my favourite Mary Oliver poems - this and the beautiful cover prompted me to read it (and I have read another non-fiction book by this author which I enjoyed). The full title is This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World. And I am always looking for radical hope, a remedy to 'acedia' - "our collective asleepness".
I often think of the phrase: "Joy is an act of resistance." (I don't think this is from this book, but this is The Vibe it's going for in some ways).
3. The Branded by Jo Riccioni
A young adult fantasy novel that Mum bought me for Christmas. It was the first time in a long while that I'd read something in this genre by an author new to me. About the caste society of a post-disease-apocalypse world where some people are 'Pure' and others are 'Branded' by scars/marks left by the illness. The main character was a classic brash and bratty teenager, which I used to think was a YA trope but now think is actually just a feature of realistic teenagerhood.
4. Bewilderment by Richard Powers
I wonder if it's annoying to be a well-known author with many published books but one standout magnum opus, so that for every new thing you write, readers say "It was good, but not as good as The Overstory."
An academic father raising his rather stereotypically precocious child after the death of his wife, and how environmental concerns impact young people who will inherit a degraded earth. Beautiful, sad. And inevitably: Good, but not as good as The Overstory.
5. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
This was a total sleeper hit for me. Like many people, without even seeing the movie with Julia Roberts I had seemingly absorbed this opinion that EPL was shallow and a bit self-indulgent. (Maybe it is, I don't know, but I do question whether if the main character was male if it would have the same reputation). Not at all. The opening chapter about divorce grabbed me by the guts. If I'd read this 15 years ago I don't think I would have got it ("Why would you be in a relationship that makes you so unhappy, I would never be so stupid, not me, no!" - ah, the blind self-assurance of youth). If I'd read it 5 years ago, it would have been too painful. This book was about travel and philosophy and literature and spirituality and how to re-build your life after your foundations shatter. Much of my copy is now underlined and asterisked and dog-eared.
Leanne gifted me a copy of this, which came with the additional gift of feeling Extremely Known, as all the best book recs do. <3
Gosh, reading this quote again, maybe this was actually my book of the year...?
 |
| This is not selfishness, but obligation. |
6. Un Lun Dun by China Mieville
China Mieville seems like one of those authors who sees genre as a challenge and deliberately tries to write a wildly different book each time he starts a new one. All of his books are "weird fiction", and this was a young-YA version of that, with a mysterious London underworld/parallel world called Un Lun Dun. This book delights in puns and injecting magic into the detritus of city life - garbage bins, broken umbrellas, smog, rooftops. A sort of un-glamorous love letter. Quite silly, but enjoyable.
7. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
If I had to pick just one, I think this might be my book of the year. It's rare that you find yourself so squarely in the target audience for a book; nostalgia for early gaming culture and how the videogames we played as children re-wired our brains; how gameplay narrative can be used to tell a story; the nature of creativity; Shakespeare, social issues, romance, friendship. Everything in this book felt so real that it was almost like reading a biography of these characters - like everything really happened and you are just reading about it later. Because something that feels this real couldn't be fictional, couldn't be invented.
I finished reading the last chapters of this book sitting at the dining table at my rented house in Hobart, Tasmania. It's just, I always remember the books I read while travelling. It was cold, and through the window the city lights glittered across the open watery space of the river.
8. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
Another sleeper hit, this book has sat on my 'to-read' shelf after a friend loaned it to me, like, 10 or 15 years ago (sorry Eddy!). I'm not very linear with my TBR shelf, I just pick things off it based on whatever strikes my fancy at a particular moment, and the life-story of a Biblical woman (Dinah, sister of the colourful and sartorially-inclined Jacob) didn't jump out at me. But this book was a nice little subversion of biblical patriarchal traditions, so I ended up quite liking it.
9. Deep Water: The World in the Ocean by James Bradley
Another fantastic non-fiction book, I felt it dovetailed nicely with Fathoms. In a similar way (but one step further back) it used the ocean as a prism for humanity's environmental impacts. The highways of colonialism, and a whole chapter about the container shipping industry, really turned my conception of the ocean on its head. It doesn't seem fair that James Bradley can be equally good at non-fiction as he is at fiction.
10. Into the Mouth of the Wolf by Erin Gough
I went to the launch event for this book at Gleebooks in Glebe (in their beautiful, newly refurbished event space above the bookstore). I loved Erin Gough's YA book The Flywheel which I read "a few years ago" (it turned out to be 8 years ago, time flies). This was a really cool YA speculative fiction set in a coastal town in Australia. Hard to say too much about it without spoiling the twist but I really enjoyed it. More Australian speculative fiction please!!
 |
| (Plus, look how cute the author's book stamp is!) |
11. The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff
I was prompted to read this book because I was seeing the author at my favourite annual bookish event, the Sydney Writers' Festival. This was so good. I want to say that the prose was glittering, but that's not right, it was much more bare and muscular than that. It was a historical novel about a woman alone in the wilderness, but that's so far off from describing it that it's almost laughable.
...Guys, talking about books is really hard???
[Should not work on writing this book list after multiple glasses of wine]
12. Saltblood by Francesca De Torres
Another discovery from the SWF. Historical fiction, queer women, PIRATES. Far out I love a good pirate story, I cannot lie. If you have even the barest hint of curiosity about Anne Bonny and Mary Read, then this book is for you. A cracking read.
13. Dark Heir (Dark Rise, #2) by C. S. Pacat
(Refer to review of book 1 from the beginning of the 2023 book list).
The author really spent 98% of book one waiting for the massive needle drop that came right in the final chapter and now we are Off To The Races here in book 2, the delicious subversion of tropes in full play and the sexual tension even more spicy. Cemented book #3 as a must-read when it comes out (though I will once again have forgotten most of what's happened and will need to read a Tumblr re-cap like I did for this one).
14. Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy by Frances Mayes
This was a bit like a more-surface-level of Eat Pray Love, and I couldn't help thinking about A Year In Provence as I read it. This is the Italian version of that: 'English-speaking couple buy an old house in France Italy and do it up, while writing explorations of the local landscape, culture, food, people'. I read this in preparation for travelling to Italy later in the year and it was a great piece of travel-writing.
My favourite passage (I feel this strongly when visiting ancient places):
 |
| "... How everything matters intensely even as it is disappearing." |
15. Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
Sarah Moss is an automatic must-buy, must-read author for me and I check periodically to see if she has published anything new. Ghost Wall is short (more of a novella) but it is not an easy read. Like all of her books it is about gender, and history, though this is set in modern times. It's also about violence, human nature, psychology. It is a haunted book.
16. One Song by A. J. Betts
Back to something a bit more light-hearted! Realistic Australian YA-fiction at it's finest, I would have absolutely eaten this up as a teenager (nevertheless I will settle for reading it in my 30s and thinking back fondly on my youth). It's about a year-12 student and a group of fellow musicians writing and recording an entry to Triple J Unearthed (you will only know what this is if you are Australian).
I also saw this author at the SWF and I really liked how she spoke about the young people of today. I went down a glorious deep dark rabbit hole and looked up (and read) the author's entire PhD thesis. Because I am a massive nerd and I do these things for fun.
17. The Bookbinder of Jericho by Pip Williams
A companion novel to the excellent Dictionary of Lost Words, I liked this book just as much, especially because I had visited Oxford within the last 12 months (it kept a piece of my heart, it is my favourite English city) and I could picture every scene of this book so clearly; the canals, the river boats, the fields. While I was there I even spent an afternoon in The Rickety Press, which is around where the staff of the printery and the bookbinders would have had their weekday drinks. And who doesn't love a book-themed pub??
18. Babel by R. F. Kuang
Sticking with the Oxford theme, Babel is a speculative fiction/alternate history novel about colonialism, translation and language. The first half of it is a sort of problematic-but-idyllic depiction of Oxford University life (it made me want to go back to university and study English literature again). The second half if it is an action-packed page turner. I've read some reviewers that didn't like it because "the symbolism is too blatant."
I think this is a misrepresentation and a misunderstanding. There is barely any symbolism in this book. It is blunt, it is unapologetically anti-colonial and it is badass.
On the original biblical story of Babel, the separation of languages, and the act of translation, it has this to say:
"Never forget the audacity of what you are attempting. Never forget that you are defying a curse laid by God."
(Just one more reason for me to enjoy my attempts at learning other languages.)
19. Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
Sort of a similar vibe to The Once and Future Witches, this book was a great little piece of American Gothic. Magical haunted houses, monsters, plot twists, fantastic characters. Recommended to all.
20. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
According to Goodreads this is bar far the 'most popular' book that I've read this year, which is funny. I read this to see what exactly had thrown my very sensible friend head first into intensities of fanfiction. I have to say the spicy sex scenes were actually (surprisingly) pretty well-written (though I have still read better smut on AO3).
Dragons and Americanisms galore (which I always find a weird combination).
21. The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold
I started reading Bujold's 'Five Gods' books last year on Kindle while I was travelling, and continued for this year's trip. The Hallowed Hunt continued the incredible world-building and expanded it to a new sort of magic system (though that's a rather simplistic shorthand for it), explorations of spirituality, and colonialism. Really great characters.
22. Prospero's Cell by Lawrence Durrell
This is sort of a book, sort of a diary about Lawrence Durrell's time spent on the Greek island of Corfu in his 20s, just before World War II, which I read in its entirety while staying on Corfu myself during the Greece part of this year's international jaunt. I read and re-read My Family And Other Animals by his brother, Gerald Durrell, many times in my youth (it's been in a previous book list) and I figured I should read something by The Other Literary Durrell. In fact, Lawrence Durrell became an even more well-known writer himself (he was nominated for the Booker Prize at one point, and I now understand why).
A luscious, voluptuous collection of landscapes and ideas, which made for perfect Greek reading. One example from many highlighted sections in my Kindle edition:
"The whole Mediterranean - the sculptures, the palms, the gold beads, the bearded heroes, the wine, the ideas, the ships, the moonlight, the winged Gorgons, the bronze men, the philosophers - all of it seems to rise in the sour, pungent taste of these black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat, older than wine. A taste as old as cold water."
Also an unexpectedly devastating coda as Greece falls to Nazi occupation in WW2 and all of these beloved characters, many of whom I feel I've known for decades, are killed or scattered to the winds. "The loss of Greece has been an amputation."
23. Penric's Demon and 24. Penric and the Shaman, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Back to the fantasy world of the Five Gods for some more travel reading. Penric is a bit of a sweet clueless golden-retriever of a character who accidentally becomes possessed by - or possessed of - a many-generations old demon. Desdemona (as he names her) is not malicious, but infinitely more experienced than Penric.
Both books feature this amazing oddball duo and their miscellaneous adventures. Will read more of these the next time I'm overseas.
25. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
This was the scifi page-turner of the year. The main character of this novel is a government employee of the eponymous Ministry, and her job is to be the 'handler' for one of the people who have been yoinked out of their own timelines and brought forward in time. I loved this unique take on some well-worn time travel tropes (say that 3 times fast); particularly seeing characters from multiple different centuries coexisting with each other and with their 21st(?) century Handlers. All of the characters were extremely well-written, as was the romance subplot. I'm a sucker for time travel but it really has to be done well, and this book stuck the landing.
26. Sinning Across Spain: Walking the Camino by Ailsa Piper
I wish that I could have talked to my Gran about this book/memoir (I know that she read it herself a few years before she died). Another exploration of travel, language, and walking - to add to my international collection. A woman solo-hiking hundreds of kilometres along one of the Caminos, the pilgrimage routes of Spain. What does it mean to be a pilgrim, even if (in this author's case, and in my case), a non-religious one? This made me want to lace up my hiking boots and walk across a country. Passionately, lovingly, tiredly, thoughtfully, reflectively.
"We were taught as little things that God is Love.
Well, I think that love is god. That's all.
And that loving well is the test and the gift."
27. She Who Became the Sun (The Radiant Emperor, #1) by Shelley Parker-Chan
Really liked the premise of this book; a young girl is prophesied for a future of nothingness and annihilation, while her brother is prophesied for greatness. When her brother dies, she assumes his identity and must live his life in order to escape her own destined fate. Through sheer force of will Zhu goes from starving peasant child to a great leader of armies; and the thing that drives her is not an innate will for greatness itself, but simply that she must stay on the path of greatness so that her destiny of nothingness does not consume her. I found this a really unique motivation and she is almost pathologically ruthless and single-minded in the choices that she makes. (See #30 below for the continuation in book 2).
28. The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon
This fantasy novel is literally the approximate size and weight of a large house-brick; the kind of book where you can't read it while lying in bed because if you drop it on your face you will definitely break your nose. So that was quite intimidating, but once I got through the first few chapters and started to get a handle on the very large and diverse cast of characters and fictional kingdoms and countries, it did not feel like a slow read at all. I've seen it compared to Game of Thrones and described as a 'feminist Lord of the Rings', and I could see both of those influences in it.
29. Orbital by Samantha Harvey
I don't generally make a particular point of reading the Booker Prize-winner (Gran used to do this, then realised after about 15 years that she didn't actually enjoy it), but this was already on my 'want to read' radar just from reading the blurb of it when it was shortlisted, and then when it won I discovered it was available in my library and snatched it up.
Written from the perspective of 6 astronauts on the International Space Station, over 24 hours as they orbit the earth. This was a jewel of a book; beautiful, deeply emotional, world-affirming, a love letter to our planet.
30. The Thinning by Inga Simpson
I asked for more Australian speculative fiction and the world (well, Inga Simpson) delivered. This book is about climate change, space, nature, Indigenous knowledge, astrophotography, and the future. Intimately connected to the Australian landscape.
"Hey," says the main character Fin when she encounters birds and mountains and other creatures. As a girl occasionally known to speak with nature myself, I resonated with this acknowledgement.
31. He Who Drowned the World (The Radiant Emperor, #2) by Shelley Parker-Chan
(Review continued from #27) - In the final author's note Parker-Chan thanks readers for embracing her "murderous queers", and honestly, yeah. That's the best summary for the finale of this 2-part series. There were a lot of Bad People Doing Bad Things in this alternative re-telling of the rise of the Ming Dynasty, but they were so gloriously messy and nasty and broken-by-the-world that it was a gripping read. Someone PLEASE turn this into an absolutely epic full-on historical television show I AM BEGGING YOU.
32. Tales From The Inner City written and illustrated by Shaun Tan
I am placing this gorgeous hardback illustrated short story collection chronologically last on my list, but I began reading it when I picked it up in a Tasmanian book store in April, and devoured the stories one by one like delicacies over the course of the year. They were my bedtime stories to myself; magical, elegiac, vibrating under the surface of the everyday. Shaun Tan is most well-known for his artwork, but he is also currently my favourite Australian short story writer. A perfect, perfect book and work of art.
Comments
Post a Comment