What I Read in 2024

I’ve been pregnant since April and will hopefully deliver while it’s still 2024. This has meant some wild hormone fluctuations; sometimes my brain is so foggy I can’t concentrate, so I listen to audiobooks while playing a phone game, walking, or doing chores. Some days are crystal-clear and I am laser-focused on a physical book. Some times I am so emotionally tender I cannot consume any media at all because absolutely everything makes me cry. And sometimes I can read a book cover-to-cover in one sitting; or, really, the times I have mainlined a book this year were mostly via my new Kindle.

So that is one story this list tells. Another is: I spent this year, so far unsuccessfully, pitching a novel to agents and small presses. It’s a literary work that does feature vampires, so I try to read contemporary horror and also lit world stuff that is dark and borrows from horror. I am told my pitch is quite good! But no sales to report at this moment. I live to fight another day.

ALSO! During the unending heatwaves this summer when it wasn’t safe for anyone to be outside too much, but especially a pregnant person who isn’t even revealing their pregnancy yet, I reread all of Frankenstein for the first time since high school. I cried and cried and cried for The Creation. The doctor is the monster, I am convinced. And this inspired me to read as much work influenced by or responding to Frankenstein as I could. It was my Hot Frankenstein Summer.

And then also: I wrote 30k of a new novel this year, and so chunks of this list is research on historical time periods in Europe as well as Catholic saints. This is a vampire novel, too. So, this list tells kind of a lot of stories and they are all weird!

I was never bored in 2024. That much I can say.

Top Whatever

The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year: – Margaret Renkl

Motherthing – Ainslie Hogarth

Mary: An Awakening of Terror – Nat Cassidy

The Iliad of Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

Maame: A Novel – Jessica George

Big Swiss – Jen Beagin

Early Morning Riser – Katherine Heiny

Yerba Buena – Nina LaCoer

Model Home – Rivers Solomon

Housemates – Emma Copley Eisenberg

What I Read in 2024

1. The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year – Margaret Renkl (essay/nonfiction)
2. Motherthing – Ainslie Hogarth (fiction/horror)
3. A Certain Hunger – Chelsea G. Summers (fiction/horror)
4. Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl – Andrea Lawlor (fiction)
5. The Pretty One – Keah Brown (essay/nonfiction)
6. Vampire Hunter D: Vol 2: Raiser of Gales – Hideyuki Kikuchi (manga/comics)
7. Mistborn: The Final Empire – Brandon Sanderson (fantasy)
8. Mary: An Awakening of Terror – Nat Cassidy (fiction/horror)
9. Tender is the Flesh – Augustina Bazterrica (fiction/horror)
10. Our Wives Under the Sea – Julia Arms field (fiction/horror)
11. The Iliad of Homer, translated by Emily Wilson (ancient poetry)
12. Dark Night of the Soul – St. John of the Cross (religious)
13. No Time to Spare – Ursula K. Le Guin (essay/nonfiction)
14. Baudolino – Umberto Eco (fiction)
15. Maame: A Novel – Jessica George (fiction)
16. Big Swiss – Jen Beagin (fiction)
17. The Voices of Nimes: Women, Sex, and Marriage in Reformation Languedoc – Suzanna Lipscomb (history)
18. Society and Culture in early Modern France: Eight Essays – Natalie Zemon Davis (history)
19. Saga: Vol 10 – Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (comics/graphic novel)
20. Saga: Vol 11 – Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (comics/graphic novel)
21. Whereas: Poems – Layli Long Soldier (poetry)
22. The Invention of Angela Carter – Edmund Gordon (biography)
23. The Sadean Woman – Angela Carter (essay/Nonfiction/literary criticism)
24. While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence – Meg Kissinger (memoir)
25. Normal Women – Philippa Gregory (history)
26. Shaping History: Narratives of Political Change – Molly Andrewd (political history)
27. Shirley – Charlotte Brontë (fiction)
28. Real World – Natsuo Kirino (fiction)
29. 1,000 Words – Jamie Attenberg (essay/craft)
30. Butts: A Backstory – Heather Radke (essay/history)
31. Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (fiction / the first sci fi novel? / my horror role model)
32. Exposure – Katy Resch George (fiction/short story collection)
33. Daily Life in Spain in the Golden Age – Marcelin Defourneaux (history)
34. Yerba Buena – Nina LaCoer (fiction)
35. Night of the Living Rez – Morgan Talty (fiction)
36. Early Morning Riser – Katherine Heiny (fiction)
37. Lila – Marilynne Robinson (fiction)
38. Jack – Marilynne Robinson (fiction)
39. Cleopatra and Frankenstein – Coco Mellors (fiction)
40. The Familiar – Leigh Bardugo (fiction)
41. A Marriage of Lies – Amanda McKinney (mystery)
42. Dark Restraint – Katee Robert (smutty monster fiction)
43. Pizza Girl – Jean Kyoung Frazier (fiction)
44. The Tale of the Body Thief – Anne Rice (horror/vampire fiction)
45. Neon Gods – Katee Robert (smutty monster fiction)
46. Electric Idol – Katee Robert (smutty monster fiction)
47. The Wicked + The Divine #1: The Faust Act – Gillen McKelvie, Wilson Cowles (comics/graphic novel)
48. A treatise on the true devotion to the Blessed Virgin by Louis-Marie Girgnon de Monfort, translated from The French by Frederick William Faber (religious)
49. Ninth House – Leigh Bardugo (fiction)
50. The Elusive Embrace – Daniel Mendelsohn (essay)
51. 77 Dream Songs – John Berryman (poetry)
52. She Bites Back: Black Female Vampires in African American Women’s Novels, 1977-2011 – Kendra R. Parker (literary criticism)
53. Always Coming Home – Ursula K. Le Guin (Sci-Fi / Cli-Fi / Fictional Archive?)
54. Tales of a Low-Rent Birder – Pete Dunn (essay/ecology)
55. My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage – Susan Stryker (literary criticism / essay / performance art / I don’t know but genius)
56. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet – Becky Chambers (comfort sci-fi)
57. White Lives Matter Most: And other “little” white lies – Matt Meyer (politics/essay)
58. Spy in the House of Anaïs Nin – Kim Krizan (essay/biography)
59. When Driving Is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency – Anna Zivarts (Disability Justice / Land Use / Politics?)
60. Model Home – Rivers Solomon (fiction)
61. Housemates – Emma Copley Eisenberg (fiction)
62. Feathers So Vicious – Liv Zander (dark fantasy)
63. In the Form of a Question: The Joys and Rewards of a Curious Life – Amy Schneider (memoir/nonfiction)