top 2024 books I was looking at the books I've read by…
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top 2024 books
I was looking at the books I've read by year, and noticed that 2024 was pretty strong. Of the 10 books I read, I'd say 5 are worth reading and I'd recommend them to many people. These are the ones. I'd love to know other people's top 5 for the year, or a different recent year that they loved, and if anyone has noticed a trend between good and bad years.
5. *Rejection* by Tony Tulathimutte
One of the darkest, funniest, most absurd books I’ve read. This collection of slightly interconnected stories will have you wondering why and how people go so crazy. There’s an article in Harpers about gooning, and many of this book’s character would fit in that world. It’s a great book in part because it doesn’t try to make you like anyone or try to make the world or people realistic. It’s not about a real person whose brain has been rotted by the internet. It’s about characters who are saturated in ugliness, who reflect back our own ugliness without adornment. It goes too far sometimes, and that’s part of the point.
4. *Reading Genesis* by Marilynne Robinson
Really, you can’t get any more different from the last book to this book. Rejection is about the world’s ugliness, about the hate and self-loathing contiained in us all. Reading Genesis is, as the title suggests, a close reading of the first book of the Bible. Robinson writes with love and admiration for the world in the Bible, where every act, good or evil, serves an eternal and righteous purpose. She has almost boundless knowledge on the subject, and she offers sharp, original readings throughout. I’m a Marilynne Robinson stan, but trust me, this is worth every word.
3. *Intermezzo* by Sally Rooney
Not Sally Rooney’s best (that would be Conversations with Friends), but maybe her most mature and interesting. The two brothers betray each other, fight, and judge, but I loved them both. Their romances are each complicated and tortured in their own ways. There’s something about romances in old novels (think Austen, Bronte, Flaubert) that Sally Rooney understands. That something is stakes and complications. The complications here are an age gap, a wounded woman, and another age gap. She’s reimagining how relationships might be if free of certain constrictions, and I’ll keep reading every book she comes out with. This one feels like the advancement of something new.
2. *All Fours* by Miranda July
Insanely good sex scenes. Also one of the funniest, most tender books I’ve read. Again, there are age gaps. There are middle-age crises. There are aborted love affairs. There are frustrated grasps at orgasm. There’s a beautiful scene about dancing. A woman takes a road-trip and stops one hour outside her house, to hole up, pine, lie, and wonder. She is rediscovering her sexuality, and she is rediscovering her passions. I recommend to almost everyone I know.
1. *The Alphabetical Diaries* by Sheila Heti
For a long time now, I’ve known I’ve had a crush on Sheila Heti, and this book only adds fuel to the flame. She took her diary from across decades, and instead of presenting excerpts in chronological order, she presents them in alphabetical order. You see patterns as one person comes up for multiple sentences when their name is starting the sentences. Certain anxieties might go on a little streak. I would wonder, which sentence was written first. I would creep up on a section and anticipate—sometimes correctly, sometimes not—a certain topic. Love, for instance, or writing. This isn’t for everybody, but everybody would benefit. It’s about the nature of language, of our minds, and of Sheila. One of the great pieces of literary art of this year.
#entertainment
I was looking at the books I've read by year, and noticed that 2024 was pretty strong. Of the 10 books I read, I'd say 5 are worth reading and I'd recommend them to many people. These are the ones. I'd love to know other people's top 5 for the year, or a different recent year that they loved, and if anyone has noticed a trend between good and bad years.
5. *Rejection* by Tony Tulathimutte
One of the darkest, funniest, most absurd books I’ve read. This collection of slightly interconnected stories will have you wondering why and how people go so crazy. There’s an article in Harpers about gooning, and many of this book’s character would fit in that world. It’s a great book in part because it doesn’t try to make you like anyone or try to make the world or people realistic. It’s not about a real person whose brain has been rotted by the internet. It’s about characters who are saturated in ugliness, who reflect back our own ugliness without adornment. It goes too far sometimes, and that’s part of the point.
4. *Reading Genesis* by Marilynne Robinson
Really, you can’t get any more different from the last book to this book. Rejection is about the world’s ugliness, about the hate and self-loathing contiained in us all. Reading Genesis is, as the title suggests, a close reading of the first book of the Bible. Robinson writes with love and admiration for the world in the Bible, where every act, good or evil, serves an eternal and righteous purpose. She has almost boundless knowledge on the subject, and she offers sharp, original readings throughout. I’m a Marilynne Robinson stan, but trust me, this is worth every word.
3. *Intermezzo* by Sally Rooney
Not Sally Rooney’s best (that would be Conversations with Friends), but maybe her most mature and interesting. The two brothers betray each other, fight, and judge, but I loved them both. Their romances are each complicated and tortured in their own ways. There’s something about romances in old novels (think Austen, Bronte, Flaubert) that Sally Rooney understands. That something is stakes and complications. The complications here are an age gap, a wounded woman, and another age gap. She’s reimagining how relationships might be if free of certain constrictions, and I’ll keep reading every book she comes out with. This one feels like the advancement of something new.
2. *All Fours* by Miranda July
Insanely good sex scenes. Also one of the funniest, most tender books I’ve read. Again, there are age gaps. There are middle-age crises. There are aborted love affairs. There are frustrated grasps at orgasm. There’s a beautiful scene about dancing. A woman takes a road-trip and stops one hour outside her house, to hole up, pine, lie, and wonder. She is rediscovering her sexuality, and she is rediscovering her passions. I recommend to almost everyone I know.
1. *The Alphabetical Diaries* by Sheila Heti
For a long time now, I’ve known I’ve had a crush on Sheila Heti, and this book only adds fuel to the flame. She took her diary from across decades, and instead of presenting excerpts in chronological order, she presents them in alphabetical order. You see patterns as one person comes up for multiple sentences when their name is starting the sentences. Certain anxieties might go on a little streak. I would wonder, which sentence was written first. I would creep up on a section and anticipate—sometimes correctly, sometimes not—a certain topic. Love, for instance, or writing. This isn’t for everybody, but everybody would benefit. It’s about the nature of language, of our minds, and of Sheila. One of the great pieces of literary art of this year.
#entertainment
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