There lives inside of me this Great and Powerful Snob. He wears an old pair of Vans and a pilly cardigan stippled with holes, has dirty glasses and can’t be bothered to get his eyes checked for a new prescription — prescriptions are capitalistic manipulations. This person holds unimpeachable opinions about all things art. He owns a bookstore, or a record store. He has a cataloging brain, speaks three languages, knows everything before everyone else, is an anarchist, a vegetarian on principal, camped out with the Occupy-ers in 2011, and can’t be bothered with anything remotely popular. He is indubitably an asshole. Past romantic partners call him “difficult” and “confusing.” And yet, for some reason, you still want to impress him. You want to find the record he would approve of, understand the books he preaches about, and discover the band before him.
Also inside of me lies this carefree, easygoing Midwestern dad who likes puns and a good old-fashioned hike and doesn’t sweat over semi-colons or definite articles. He unbuttons the top two buttons on his shirts, is generous with his time and attention, writes thank-you cards and shovels his neighbors’ walkways when it snows. He loves Wilco, Sam Cooke, Carole King, and even some Taylor Swift songs his daughter plays from her room. He’s not picky. Mostly, he likes to feel his emotions and have fun and stay connected to his friends. He doesn’t mind thinking deeply or putting in the work to solve problems, but he would never read Proust for fun. Someone said the word “ontology” in conversation the other night, and he forgot what it meant, but it didn’t bother him. He will not google it later in bed. He likes conversation and political debate just fine, but he’d rather be out in the backyard playing ping-pong and drinking beer with his friends. Come on over anytime, he tells almost everyone, and he means it. The house might be a little messy, but who cares?
This year, perhaps more than any other year, I struggled to silence Snob Me. Maybe Snob Me knew this was his last gasp and so he kept flapping about and making a stink. Maybe he knew Easygoing Me was ready to put Snob Me in a timeout or relegate him to the tiny attic above the garage.
In that spirit, let’s start with a few books Snob Me would approve of. House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk. I even wrote about it, but if I’m being honest, when I look back on that experience, it was one of sweat and struggle. (Also, I read it when I had a bad bout of COVID, so the sweat might’ve been brought on by more than the effort of reading.) It is not an easy book. And that’s not to say that I only want to read easy books. I think I’m just more apt to punish myself rather than have fun, but I’m trying to reframe this line of thinking in terms of energy, as in: “This doesn’t have the energy I need right now, although in some other phase, at some other time, I might be ready.”
In September, every hip bookseller/literary person I knew seemed to be reading Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas, billed as punk rock fairy tales, which made me smile the whole way through. I loved it, so I immediately got Tears of the Trufflepig, Flores’s debut novel and devoured it, although I would have a hard time articulating what it was about other than eating the rich. It was one of those rare “ideas” novels I actually made it through. Snob Me loved it. Easygoing Me wondered, “Where’s the character in all these ideas?” And, “Why do I not feel anything while reading this?” My whole self, though, will unequivocally say that Fernando A. Flores is writing unlike anyone else in America right now.
Orbital is another one I’m conflicted about. Snob Me loved it for its Woolfian interiority. Although I think the prose is gorgeous, and the existential meditation on loneliness and embodiment feels apt, I failed to connect to it emotionally. But if you like true plotlessness and playful banter about the existence of God and the meaning of Las Meninas, go buck wild.
Whale by Cheon Myeong-kwan, a playful, genre-bending weirdo novel, might’ve been Snob Me’s ideal book, but I could not for the life of me get past the first ten pages, even after trying half a dozen times.
I plowed through The Vet’s Daughter by Barbara Comyns, and although I think I liked it, it also sent me to a very dark place, and I felt hollowed out by its end. Snob Me loves this book for its bleakness, and its unblinking depiction of abuse. (Easygoing Me kind of wants to cry right now just thinking about it.)
The good news is that I got better at taking care of myself rather than putting that pressure on books as the year went on. I put down many books that just weren’t doing it for me—ideas novels, overtly political fiction (just write the article!), and/or books that infantilize or pander or try way too hard to appease The Snobs. (I’ll refrain from naming them.)
On to the juicy stuff, the stuff I liked with my whole self. I already wrote about Gone to the Wolves, Western Lane, and Homeland Elegies, which I stand by as among my favorites of the year. All of these books made me feel big things and think big things, but more than anything they centered character.
A few more novels I loved:
Nathan Hill’s Wellness. Hill is one of the most captivating and charming fiction writers alive. His style is chatty and effortless. Critiques tend to dwell on that fact that his plots are too good and rely perhaps a little too much on coincidence. If that’s the worst thing you’ve got going, well, perhaps it says more about the reviewer than the book.
The Future Was Color by Patrick Nathan is that rare novel that gathers ideas with long arms but succeeds because of the painstakingly sensual language and observations as filtered through the protagonist George, or György’s, fragile consciousness. Making art out of life, and life out of art, Hollywood decadence, queer coming-of-age, McCarthyism—I’m not sure how Nathan squeezed all this into a novel and made it move so elegantly and swiftly.
I never want summer to end, and so I soaked up the dying light of a few precious August days by drinking Negronis in the backyard and reading The Material, far and away the funniest novel I read all year. I laughed on almost every page. No, not the nose-puff laugh of smug self-congratulation but full-on Duchenne laughter. The novel follows a cohort of an MFA in Standup Comedy and their sad-sack professors over the course of a few days as they grope toward comedic greatness. Camille Bordas: brava.
Thirst For Salt caught me by surprise with its lush, coastal Australia setting, sexual tension, and hushed sophistication. It feels like a friend telling you of her of her once-upon-a-time affair with a much older man in a dark bar. Not normally my thing, but the prose is elegant and the atmosphere is so thick you can almost feel the rainforest start to grow around you as you read.
One thing that surprised me about all the chatter of Miranda July’s All Fours was that no one seemed to talk about how it’s actually a very conventional story—housewife grows discontent and runs away. Only, this isn’t the 1950s but present day, so the parents are raising their young child as nonbinary, and July’s narrator packs lunches in bento boxes rather than brown paper sacks. Does anyone get more energy on a page than Miranda July? The fearful, bird-like mind of the narrator is sensitive, yet seeks a raw sexual and emotional awakening she can’t seem to find in conventional parenthood and marriage. Her quest for messy, authentic embodiment — even as her body protests against her in pre-menopause— amounts to a crazy amount of linguistic energy. This is what novels are for. Energy. Momentum. I honestly don’t really care about likability — there’s enough to admire in July’s sentences and movement—the movement of the mind—that the narrator could do much, much worse and I still would’ve delightfully charged ahead. Novels are about trouble, people. Trouble! There’s plenty of it here.
Victim by Andrew Boryga is an ostensibly funny book that feels more true than Duchenne. I loved watching Javy weasel his way into situations set up for diversity candidates — from fancy schools to jobs at magazines—and exploit them and the people who insist on infantilizing people like him—a working-class kid and son of Puerto Rican parents from the Bronx. In Boryga’s words, Javy is a “cynical, lean-in diversity conman.” He notices all these opportunities set up for POC (a term he scoffs at) and rides them to the top of the publishing world. I loved this book.
I might’ve had just as much fun listening to Eleanor Catton on podcast interviews as I had reading Birnum Wood, about a New Zealand guerrilla gardening collective in cahoots with an American billionaire. The first half is a little uneven, but the characters are large and unknowingly pathetic in their individual and often self-righteous pursuits, but the second half rips along. If you want a smart thriller, look no further.
How many Canadian nonvelists can you name off the top of your head? Days By Moonlight by André Alexis walloped me. (Thanks, Celia!) It’s dark, surreal, very smart, and reminded me of an Atlanta episode.
I stumbled across Elizabeth Stix’s Things I Want Back from You while browsing publisher catalogues and immediately asked for an advanced copy. I was lucky enough to chat with her a few weeks ago. I’m a sucker for linked story collections, especially ones where oppressive men turn into dirigibles and dead mothers reappear as moles. Stix is some ungodly melding of Lorrie Moore, George Saunders, Miranda July, and I don’t even know what.
I reread Lincoln in the Bardo after gifting it to a friend, and we had a fun text exchange afterward. (Hi, Andrew!) I reread The Art of Fielding while muting the commercials during the Timberwolves’ historic playoff run in June. (Go, sports!) It’s one of those books that makes feel sad I didn’t write.
ZZ Packer’s stories are still as powerful as the day they were published, and I reread them with delight. Her stories are so rich and giving, even as they are anchored in the late nineties and early aughts. Ditto for Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, which all MFA students should swear on, memorize, and tuck under their pillows. Do you like altered states and headlong prose? Do you wish Hemingway were a little more wobbly or human? “Emergency” is a shattering story and still makes me gasp.
I read some flat-out disappointing or books that just didn’t do it for me, but I’ll spare you those unless I see you in person, as I know how hard it is to write a book let alone publish one, so, in my mind, even a book that turns me off completely is a job well done. After all, I’m not for everyone either.
I read a few fun books with my daughter: The Wild Robot (although we enjoyed the movie, we agreed the book is better), The Adventure is Now, This Was Our Pact, and The Guardian Test (thanks, Tim!).
I read a bunch of books with my Rock ‘n’ Roll Book Club, including the massively gorgeous and exhaustively researched Lou Reed biography from Will Hermes (does anyone have a better death scene than Lou Reed?), Petty by Warren Zanes, Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock, and Divided Soul: The Life of Marvin Gaye. The last was probably the most entertaining, although it was kind of a mess in execution. If you like sordid tales of drugs with a lack of self-reflection and a heaping scoop of self-aggrandizement, look no further than Keith Richards’ Life. Some of us loved it. To me, it felt a little cringy. Are we reading this because we’re laughing with him or at him? Most likely, it’s the latter.
I reread all of Jeff Tweedy’s books early in the year for a potential 33 1/3 book I didn’t get a contract for but felt lifted and inspired nonetheless. After seeing Wilco play a three-hour set in Saint Paul last week—they sound better than ever—and hearing Tweedy lob out jabs about corporate greed during Christmastime and the senseless waste of wrapping paper, I wanted to ask him to adopt me.
I picked at a lot of story collections this year. Some highlights: Pemi Aguda, Paul Yoon, Lydia Davis, Venita Blackburn, Manuel Muñoz, Zach Williams, and Whitney Collins. All wonderful. I’d highly recommend subscribing to The Sewannee Review or the The Paris Review, whose stories blew me away this year. I can’t stop thinking about Morgan Thomas’s “Everything I Haven’t Done,” about an abusive relationship, co-dependence, depression, and a character who is possibly suicidal and definitely adrift on a rickety raft of delusion. Do want to know what writing teachers mean by “urgency”? Read this. It left me breathless. My pal Scott recommended Cursed Bunny, and though I’m only one story in, I do love it in the same way I love Samanta Schweblin or Mariana Enriquez’s dark stories best read under the covers. “Cloudland” by Amy Hempel is probably one of the best, if not the best, story I read this year. Diaristic and cutting, meandering and tight: it feels like a long poem, a send-up to the world as it is.
I picked at other books, savoring them like soul fortification: Ross Gay’s Inciting Joy and The Book of (More) Delights, and The Poetry of Presence. (Thanks, Michael!)
I reread some favorite poets this year—Bob Hicok, Ellen Bass, and Terrance Hayes. A friend turned me onto Shane McCrae’s In the Language of My Captor, (thanks, Ryan!) which I read in awe while at my daughter’s ballet studio.
Here’s to more poetry in 2025? And more books in translation? I’ll drink to that.
As I write this, I have Huck Finn (which I’m halfway through) and James and Hanif Abdurraqib’s There’s Always This Year sitting on my desk, which I hope to get to before the year is done.
In the new year, I hope to finish a handful of incredible books I for some reason put down: Raymond Antrobus’s Signs, Music, Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy, Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai, Laura ven den Berg’s The Third Hotel, Elizabeth Rush’s The Quickening, and Jeff Sharlet’s The Undertow, Selva Almada’s Not a River, and Carlene Bauer’s Girls They Write Songs About. Put down a thing you love? Why do I do this? Is it because I’m afraid of too much of a good thing? Or that I feel I don’t deserve delight? It probably all goes back to that dark religious closet I grew up in. It’s OK. I’m getting better, I promise.
As MJ Lenderman sings, “It gets dark, we all got work to do.”
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How about you? I’d love to hear about your year in reading.
See you next week for some entries from my friends. Take care, and support the indies if you can.