The Best 2024 Yet

The best books I read this year. Plus every book I read this year. Go bananas!

Last year I sent out my best of the year list after the year ended. This year I’m sending it out in December, leaving open the possibility that the best book I read this year is still to come and not mentioned here. It’s a possibility I’m comfortable with, if you are.

The year has been weird. I didn’t read as much as normal. For about half the year I’ve been trying to figure out why this newsletter has been harder to put together and now at the end of the year I’ve realized at least one reason is because I’m not reading as much. Let’s hope I read more in 2025.

Anyways, below are my favorite books I read this year. None were published in 2024. After my favorite books is a list of every book I read this year in the order I read them. A lot of the books in the list didn’t make it to Most Useful Information, so check it out.

Next month should be a normal newsletter. Hopefully things will get more consistent here soon. As always, thank you for reading.

Please share the best books you read this year either in the comments or email. I’ll try to read them.

Favorite Books of 2024

1. The Wall, Marlen Haushofer

I wrote about The Wall in my July newsletter. Throughout my life as a reader there have been several books where I finish and I think to myself, “This is now my favorite book.” Independent People, 2666, Ulysses are some examples. When I finished The Wall I thought to myself, “This is now my favorite book.” I’m far too fickle to ever settle on a favorite book, but The Wall is in contention. I’ve never encountered a book that was tuned into human and animal relationships like The Wall. The premise of a woman waking up one morning with an invisible wall cutting her off from the rest of the world sounds more sci-fi dystopian than the novel actually is. It’s about how the trick to survival is loving and caring for those in your orbit.

2. The Child, Kjersti A. Skomsvold

I didn’t write about The Child this year, but I wanted to and might still. Reading it felt like reading Knausgaard in 2009 or Rachel Cusk in 2016. A novel made specifically for me. Autofiction and soft philosophy. The narrator just gave birth to a second child. The book is addressed to the second child. The narrator recounts her first birth experience. It was traumatic. She recounts meeting her husband. She mentions that she’s been sick. Institutionalized. She’s afraid it might happen again. She has a wonderful relationship with her grandmother.

Years ago I read Skomsvold’s first novel The Faster I Walk, The Smaller I Am. It didn’t stand out to me. At the time it felt like generic Nordic fair. A short, well controlled, sad novel. It was about an old woman, who I know think was based on Skomsvold’s grandmother. Since I was luke on The Faster I Walk I skipped her second novel, Monsterhuman, which I believe covers the time in her life when she was most struggling with mental illness. Now I feel like a chump. I need to revisit her first novel and visit her second novel because I think she might be one of the best contemporary writers around.

3. Closer, Dennis Cooper

I wrote about Closer in my May newsletter. All I knew about Dennis Cooper before reading Closer was that he was very transgressive. To be honest I was a bit scared to read him. I put it off. I wish I hadn’t. He’s definitely transgressive. Some scenes make me feel sick, but there is a sweetness in Closer that I haven’t felt in any other novel. More than that, his George Miles Cycle is the most impressive and intricately structured series of novels. And it all starts here with Closer. I guess the story behind the project is teenaged Dennis Cooper had a friend named George Miles who had a massive impact on his life. They lost touch and Cooper started writing these novels about him as a manifestation of Miles’s influence. In interviews Cooper says as he was writing them he was hoping somehow they’d make their way to George. But just after finishing, I believe, the fourth novel, Guide, Cooper learned that George had taken his own life ten years prior. So George never knew about any of the novels. It’s very sweet and very sad and I think all that comes through in Closer.

4. Hangman, Maya Binyam

I wrote about Hangman in my April newsletter. My memory of Hangman is a bit fuzzy. Shortly after starting it I got covid. So I read it in a Covid haze. Shortly after recovering from Covid I flew to the west coast. So I read it in a jetlag haze. An unnamed narrator returns to his home country after several years. His brother needs help or money or something. The man has a lot of strange encounters and strange conversations that are banal and philosophical. The narrator himself is in a haze. He didn’t pack his bags. He can’t remember where he is going or why. He can’t recognize his cousin or his ex-wife or the house he used to live in. He’s not even sure he’s alive. The narrator is on a quest for meaning. I’m not sure if he finds it or not.

5. Land of the Sons, Gipi

I didn’t write about The Land of Sons this year. When I was really into comics I was obsessed with Gipi. I liked that all his books were about delinquent young men. I liked that he used watercolor so the art looked a bit messy while still being pretty. For a few years now I haven’t read comics as much. I stopped following Gipi. In that time he’s had, like, three books translated into English. My friend Keith loaned them to me by mailing them to me. (For two months now they’ve been packaged in a box in my trunk that I need to take to the post office so he can have them back).

The Land of Sons is still about delinquent boys. This time on a remote island in what seems like a post-apocalypse. But the art is totally different. It’s real scratchy and messy. And no watercolor. Black and white. At first I was disappointed. I became predisposed to not like it. As usual, I was wrong. It’s great. There are pages where it’s raining and something about the way it’s drawn was really breathtaking. I’m glad Gipi tried different art styles.

6. The Birds, Tarjei Vesaas

I wrote about The Birds in my July newsletter. It was my second time reading it. I’ve written about Tarjei Vesaas a bunch in this newsletter over the years. His novel The Ice Palace is a perennial favorite. In truth I don’t have much more to say about him. Jon Fosse has kind of made it into the public eye a bit since he won the Nobel Prize last year. If you like Jon Fosse you should definitely read Vesaas. If you don’t like Fosse you should still read Vesaas. Stylistically I they aren’t similar. But they both center their novels on farmers living near fjords struggling with the limits of existence.

7. The Driver’s Seat, Muriel Spark

I wrote about The Driver’s Seat in my May newsletter. It was recommended to my by my friend Clay. On his blog Dennis Cooper listed his favorite books of all time. The Driver’s Seat was listed. Clay read it. I read it. For me it’s a really hard book to get a handle on. It’s really short and really weird. The main character isn’t like anyone I’ve encountered in fiction before. The structure of the novel in itself is compelling. We learn early on the protagonist is murdered. But for most of the novel she seems like a harmless weirdo. As the novel goes the murder seems more grisly. Interpol is involved. Yet she still seems like a harmless weirdo. Very clever stuff.

8. Final Cut, Charles Burns

I didn’t write about Final Cut this year. Charles Burns is my favorite comic book artist. When he puts out a new book I go to the comic book store and buy it the day it’s released. When X’d Out was published I walked to Book People in Moscow, bought it, walked home, sat down and read it. When I finished I thought, “I just experienced true art. This is my favorite book now.” Whenever October rolls around I try to read the whole X’d Out trilogy. I was excited for Final Cut.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to read it all in one sitting. When I finished I didn’t feel moved or changed or like I’d just experienced great art. Still, it’s great. The story and the imagery is a little more literal and makes more sense, so it’s less unsettling than some of his earlier stuff. The emotion is more straightforward. In that way it is more accessible and maybe has more in common with Black Hole than X’d Out.

9. Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta, James Hannaham

I wrote about Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta in my April newsletter. Carlotta gets out of prison after 20 years and goes to see her family on the 4th of July. The visit doesn’t go well. Nobody really understands her transition. Nobody really cares about her. All Carlotta is concerned about is not going back to prison. She wants freedom. The novel is a play on Ulysses. In Ulysses Bloom and Stephen are wandering around Dublin looking for some type of connection. Some proof that they aren’t totally isolated individuals in the world. Joyce employs every trick to force connection through language. The closes Bloom and Stephen come to a moment of true connection is when they are trying to teach each other languages. So when they don’t understand language. Also, when they cross streams while pissing.

Carlotta isn’t looking for connection. She’s looking for freedom. She can’t find it in the physical world. She’s constrained by prison, by family, by norms, by what have you. The only place she finds true freedom is in language. When I finished reading Ulysses I felt sort of like the book was a catalog of all the things language fails to do. Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit offers a success of language.

10. The Ice Cream Man and Other Stories, Sam Pink

I didn’t write about The Ice Cream Man this year. I started reading this book while in the waiting room of a doctor’s office before an outpatient procedure. As the nurse was taking me back to the exam room she asked what I was reading. I told her and showed her the cover. She said she liked the cover. I said, “It’s kind of psychedelic.” She said, “Now that’s my thing!” Once in the exam room, rather than taking my weight, she asked how much I weigh. Was she the world’s best nurse? Quite possibly.

Short stories aren’t really my thing. I’ve been over it a million times in this newsletter. But I love everything Sam Pink does. There is a fairly long story in the collection seemingly about working a catering event. It ends by encountering a deer in a park. The story made me teary-eyed. I read a section to Adin and it made her teary-eyed too. Sam Pink is a master. His books are short. He’s constantly reissuing them with cool new covers. Buy them all. Read them all. They are all so good.

Every book I read in 2024 in the order I read them:

The Liar, Martin A. Hansen

A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin

Glory, Noviolet Bulawayo

Blood of the Virgin, Sammy Harkham

Closer, Dennis Cooper

Hangman, Maya Binyam

The Polish Boxer, Eduardo Halfon

Against Nature, Tomas Espedal

Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta, James Hannaham

The Driver’s Seat, Muriel Spark

Rent Boy, Gary Indiana

The Wall, Marlen Haushofer

Hellboy: Seeds of Destruction, Mike Mignola

On Boxing, Joyce Carol Oates

Frisk, Dennis Cooper

The Birds, Tarjei Vesaas

The Ice Cream Man and Other Stories, Sam Pink

Something Gross, Big Bruiser Dope Boy

The Women, Hilton Als

Land of the Sons, Gipi

One Story, Gipi

Power Born of Dreams: My Story is Palestine, Mohammad Sabaaneh

My Badly Drawn Life, Gipi

Solenoid, Mircea Cǎrtǎrescu

The Child, Kjersti A. Skomsvold

Black Elk Speaks, John G. Neihardt

Body High, Jon Lindsey

James, Percival Everett

Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man, Joshua Bennett

The Finishing School, Muriel Spark

Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas, Natasha Dow Schüll

Rontel, Sam Pink

Final Cut, Charles Burns

Carnality, Lina Wolff

Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, Naomi Klein

The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa

The Damned, J-K Huysmans

Trickster: Native American Tales, Matt Dembicki (editor)

The Woman in the Dunes, Kobo Abe

The Voyeurs, Gabrielle Bell