Ten Books I Loved In 2024
December 21, 2024
I read 34 books this year (give or take)! Here's my top ten (in no particular order, except that in which I read them)...
Eleven Hours by Pamela Erens
I read Eleven Hours just a few months after the stillbirth of my son and it was really meaningful to me to simply read about these two characters and their thoughts, fears, and experiences of pregnancy and childbirth. I’ve never seen labor and delivery really explored in detail the way it is in this book and I think that alone makes it worth reading. But it was especially a comfort for me.
An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken
(First off - incredible title!)
Elizabeth’s memoir about the stillbirth of her own son is another book that offered me a life raft when I felt like I might drown. She writes about each moment and emotion in a way that is straightforward and plain and puts you there next to her. Her story offered me comfort, commiseration, and hope that one day I would actually feel like a functioning human person again.
Penance by Eliza Clark
In the 2010s, a teen girl is murdered by her friends. About ten years later, the case has become fodder for true crime junkies, dissected in lurid articles and podcasts. The book takes the form of a journalist’s attempt at the “definitive account” of the murder.
This was a really intriguing exploration of the true crime genre, as well as adolescent girlhood and an era of the internet that I found very familiar and almost nostalgic.
Grey Dog by Elliott Gish
I really love Anne of Green Gables and reading this was like reading a really good horror-flavored fanfic in which Anne grows up to be queer and I mean that in the best way! Full of creeping dread and queer longing, and all about the grief and horror of being a woman - specifically in the early 20th century, though it still feels quite relevant.
Delicate Condition by Danielle Valentine
Can you tell I had a slight fixation in my reading this year?
To be fair, the pregnancy horror was only half the reason I picked this up. The other half was American Horror Story.
I have slightly complicated feelings towards AHS, namely I think it’s first season is its best (and only good) season. For a few years, I kept trying to get into each subsequent season and never really felt that same magic, so I eventually gave up. When I heard that the latest season was based on a book, I still wasn’t really interested in watching the show but I was definitely interested in reading the book, especially once I read more about it.
The pregnancy horror aspects are really effective here and I found a lot of Anna’s (our main character) experiences to be quite relatable. And I really loved the ending! It goes off the rails but in the most satisfying and delicious way.
Honey by Isabel Banta
Honey seems to take inspiration from Britney Spears’s story, as well as that of a number of other pop stars, and fleshes out the iconic teen girl pop idols of the 00s into fully fledged people, following them as they grow and come of age under a spotlight.
Growing up in the 90s and early 00s, I loved Britney Spears. Oops!…I Did It Again was the first album I owned. My parents got it for me for Christmas and I just remember being so ecstatic.
But, regrettably, I also fell victim to the negative media portrayal of Britney. I was young and didn’t yet know how to question the narrative of the media.
I remember all of that very distinctly so reading Honey really hit close to home and brought me back to my inner child. I found it so nostalgic and emotionally arresting, I truly couldn’t put it down until I was done.
Arcadia Falls by Carol Goodman
Every autumn I get really into dark academia but, because I’m also a pretentious brat, I’m always looking for the lesser known stuff. I’m not interested in your Secret Histories, your Ninth Houses, your Atlas Sixes. No, give me the stuff no one else has heard of. I don’t know why I’m like this, but it was this impulse that led me to Carol Goodman. I wouldn’t say all of her stuff is dark academia but she seems to be an author that consistently brings a whiff of the gothic element that I love, both in dark academia and in fiction in general. Arcadia Falls has a little bit of everything you could want in gothic fiction - a beautiful dead girl; a grand, old school up in the mountains; pagan rituals; hidden old diaries; lesbians; convents; ghosts! It was my first read from Carol Goodman but it certainly won’t be my last!
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins
This book was completely unlike anything I’ve ever read! The Library at Mount Char is a bit like if the phrase “trust the process” was a book - there were some points where I had very little idea what was going on, and at no point did I have any idea what was going to happen next, let alone how it might end. But by the end, it all wraps up so well, I wanted to start over from the beginning as soon as I’d finished. I absolutely loved every minute of it!
X and Pearl by Tim Waggoner (and Ti West)
I feel like it makes more sense (at least to me) to talk about these together.
One thing about me - I love a movie novelization. I just think it’s neat to see a story told in different formats and see how that changes it.
I only recently watched the first two movies in Ti West’s horror trilogy (I still haven’t seen Maxxxine yet) but I became a little obsessed as soon as I saw them, so when I saw they were releasing novelizations of the whole trilogy, it felt like a gift for me, personally! And they really kind of blew me away. They just made me like the movies and these stories even more, especially X. When I watched the movies, I found Pearl more enjoyable and interesting. But the X novelization lets you into Maxine’s head and lets you get to know the characters a bit more which made it that little bit more interesting for me than a typical slasher.
I thought both of these were a lot of fun, they bring a little something to each of their stories, and I’m really looking forward to Maxxxine (both in movie and novel form)!
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