Books (2024)

Reading list with minor notes and quotes

The day after Christmas, a writer I’m newly enamored with said: “Putting out a list of your year’s favorite books, I think, is hack and anti-literature.” I’ve thought about it every few hours since. This guy’s novel is on my list below, and highlighted as a favorite. Joke’s on you dude. Your work is beloved by hacks and anti-literaturists!

Fuck, putting anything out there is embarrassing and lists are particularly suspect, but I devour the year-in-reading posts. I buy stuff because of your lists, and decide to skip stuff, too. Here are the books I read this year, in the order I finished them, along with notes and a few quotes.

I’ve done the math. If I live a long life, keep my eyes—or at least my ears—and keep my mind, I suppose I’ll read ~1500 more books before I die. For 2025, I’ll aim to reread regularly, hit more in translation, and put some heavy-duty classics on the board. Dante’s up first.

Happy New Year!
🖤AV

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Goth: A History by Lol Tolhurst

Molly by Blake Butler
Find the first edition with the typos and fuck-ups. I found that stuff additive.

Septology by Jon Fosse
A singular winter reading experience, and a sick meditation on art, death, and all of that shit. One of two “one sentence” beasts in My Year of Reading Thiccly. The book is meditative and relaxing, the opposite of taxing, which is what you might expect from a sentence going hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages. I myself never relax. A client I worked for over many years, who I was around all the time, once said in all seriousness, “I have not seen you relaxed once in my entire life.” Not only am I bad at relaxing, I’m don’t even recognize when I am relaxed. Someone on a podcast casually said reading relaxes them, and it does it quickly, as soon as they get a few sentences in. I wanted to jump up and down. “Oh shit, oh shit! I do relax! I do!”

The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic by Jessica Hopper
This collection rules, essential for anyone into punk and indie music from the last 30 years. I read the newer, expanded edition, and I’d read more expansion if she did another. I’m working on a novel about a real band in 1997/98 and there’s a potential character based on Hopper I keep wanting to write, but don’t. Reading this book made it more intimidating to try and do so.

The Red-Headed Pilgrim by Kevin Maloney
One of the funniest scenes I’ve ever read within! It’s the childbirth bit.

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby
Hated this book more than any I read this year.

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
Ultimately, bit of a “that’s cute” vibe at this point?

Opioid, Indiana by Brian Allen Carr
I’m late to Brian’s books, but catching up. I read three this year.

Teenager by Bud Smith
A favorite ending of the year.

Bad Foundations by Brian Allen Carr

Work by Bud Smith

Cult of Loretta by Kevin Maloney

The Burden of Joy by Lexi Kent-Monning

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño
Thicc. I read this because Mike Nagel told me to. That’s true of other books here, I’m sure. Yesterday, a copy of Playboy from 2010 with a Bolaño story inside arrived. I ordered it from eBay when it came up in a search for his books. I remarked to Mal how weird to have not known this fucker’s name just over a year ago, and now to have read his two thicc ones and, of course, realized that everyone’s talking about him all the damn time. I wonder who’s next on that list, killers hiding in plain sight?

Sonic Life by Thurston Moore
Thicc. In the way I liked Flea’s Acid for the Children, which ends when RHCP begins, I liked the pre-Sonic Youth years, young and running around NYC.

2666 by Roberto Bolaño
Very thicc.

Cheap Therapist Says You’re Insane by Parker Young

World Within A Song by Jeff Tweedy
Empty for me.

Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti
Best of the year, best of the decade. Overdelivers so hard on the premise. Eager to read this one again.

“Been thinking about authenticity, and about how we have been done a great disservice by being taught that what we are to be authentic to is our feelings, as opposed to our values.”

Fudge by Andrew Weatherhead

Something To Do With Paying Attention by David Foster Wallace
I remember nothing from this. Not one-single thing. A complete blank.

Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
Holy shit. Let’s replace half the Jesus’ Son talk with TD worship.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick
No clue what this was about.

Be Brief and Tell Them Everything by Brad Listi

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson
I love all her little novels, and my daughter is now getting into the Moomins, who are new to us both. Hyped.

People Scare Me by Cash Compson

The Exvangelicals by Sarah McCammon

Valdez is Coming by Elmore Leonard
Zero memory but have evidence in the group chat that I liked it.

Fuccboi by Sean Thor Conroe
Loved it wholeheartedly. Thank you to Julie for giving this to me. I am happy to have found it after the noise around it had come and gone.

Refuse to be Done by Matt Bell

Norwood by Charles Portis
Not for me. Wasn’t impressed with the chicken.

Person by Sam Pink

Witch Piss by Sam Pink

No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai

Pure Color by Sheila Heti
1 for 2 on Heti. Did not go for this one.

Body High by Jon Lindsey
Read it after I saw Jon do his “don’t look at the page” thing while reading in Boise. Effective! The book rips.

The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster (reread)
Have already forgotten it for the second time.

Something I Might Say by Stephanie Austin

(unpublished) by Kyle Seibel
I believe you’ll get to see bits of this rolling out in various outlets in 2025.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Users by Colin Winnette
Nothing retained.

The Militia House by John Milas
Liked it, but then the dude got mad at me for sending him a magazine with a Bob Hicok poem in it, so now it’s spoiled.

The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt

Mutations: the many strange faces of hardcore punk by Sam McPheeters
Might be the best book cover of the bunch this year. A surprising collection which won’t let itself be aligned. A good one entered into the American punk record.

The Father by Sharon Olds

Let Me Try Again by Matthew Davis

Fuccboi by Sean Thor Conroe (reread)
Oops I did it again.

Tonight I’m Someone Else by Chelsea Hodson (reread)
“Pity the Animal” is always highlighted, but I disagree. The opening essay, “Red Letters from a Red Planet,” is the one. “Second Row” is the other one.

Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg
I’m mostly ashamed of craft books. In protest, I’m quoting without Klinkenborg’s annoying line breaks which were distracting and, I think, in opposition to what he’s saying in the book! Some good nuggets in here, though.

“Writing doesn't prove anything, And it only rarely persuades. It does something much better. It attests. It witnesses. It shares your interest in what you've noticed. It reports on the nature of your attention. It suggests the possibilities of the world around you. The evidence of the world as it presents itself to you. Proof is for mathematicians. Logic is for philosophers. We have testimony.”

Tropicália by Harold Rogers
I’ve fallen very hard for Harold. I’m going to re-do this one via audiobook.

Early Work by Andrew Martin (reread)

I Lived to Tell It All by George Jones with Tom Carter
Do not watch the TV show! Get a copy of the book, one sized and printed for sale on a spinning wire rack at the grocery store.

The Sportswriter by Richard Ford

“Tomorrow, like all tomorrows, could still be a banner day.”

Waste by Eugene Marten

Parasocialite by Brittany Menjivar

Home Movies by Michael Wheaton

Love by Hanne Ørstavik
Random pull from the shelf at Parnassus. Huge, huge win. One of my favorites this year.

Autoportrait by Edouard Levé
Thanks, Nagel. Loved it.

Sip by Brian Allen Carr

Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
Another one-sentence deal, the last thicc book I got through

Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima

Mindfucking Roundabouts of Carmel, Indiana by Dan Grossman

How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell

Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut (reread)
This should rank higher among Vonneguts.

Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
Damn. No one told me, or if they did I wasn’t listening. What a pleasure.

“But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.”

Plus: high-end literary shit talking!

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (reread)
Mal and I watched the movie the other night. Afterward, she said the girl in coal shed is the Virgin Mary pregnant with Jesus in the stable. I was like Damn, I did not make that connection, and felt embarrassed. It’s pretty fucking obvious and overt, but then I searched for reviews which draw the comparison, and found none saying it directly. I re-read the book the next morning to see if it’s in there. In the novel, the girl’s already had her baby, already been separated from it, so it’s less parallel, but the Keegan does throw in baby Jesus and Mary references which the movie omits. The lesson is that I should ask my wife what shit means.

The Living and the Dead by Sharon Olds
Will finish this one today. I read little poetry this year.