January 24, 2025 • 43 mins
The books I read in 2024 and what I thought of them!
Books mentioned:
1. A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
2. Death Valley by Melissa Broder
3. Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
4. Rough Sleepers by Tracy Kidder
5. How Not To Drown In A Glass of Water by Angie Cruz
6. Infinite Country by Patricia Engel
7. Knife: .... By Salman Rushdie
8. Stoner by John Williams
9. How High We Go In The Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu
10. The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
11. A Good Happy Girl by Marissa Higgins
12. Mona of the Manor by Armistead Maupin
13. Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
14. The Palace of Eros by Caro De Robertis
15. Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H
16. I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi
17. Hurts So Good: The Science and Culture of Pain On Purpose by Leigh Cowart
18. Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender
19. Kissing Girls on Shabbat: A Memoir by Sara Glass
20. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
21. My Year Of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfeigh
22. All Fours by Miranda July
23. The First Bad Man by Miranda July
24. My Husband by Maud Ventura
25. The Go-Giver by Bob Burg
26. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
27. The Girl With The Louding Voice by Abi Dare
28. The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa
29. To Shape A Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose
30. The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue by Victoria E. Schwab
31. The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante
32. Perfume And Pain by Anna Dorn
Bonus early 2025 mentions: My Brilliant Friend and The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante, Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics by Elle Reeve, The Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki
You can connect with me, Micah Riot, as well as see my tattoo art on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/micahriot/
Micah's website is www.micahriot.com
The podcast is hosted on Buzzsprout but truly lives in the heart of Micah's website at:
https://www.micahriot.com/ink-medicine-podcast/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Micah Riot (00:30):
Hello friends, hello , this is Micah Riott coming to
you with my books I read in 2024episode.
I will also post the list inthe notes for the episode.
I put 32 books on this list.
I finished the vast majority ofthem.
A couple of them I did not, andI will note which ones.
(00:51):
I will also note which ones Ilistened to and which ones I
read on paper.
So let's get going.
I hope that if you are a reader, some of these will make it to
your list, and if you're not areader, maybe these will excite
you and inspire you to read some.
I personally think that havinga really good book going just
(01:16):
makes my life a bit more joyful.
My first official book of theyear of 2024 was A Closed and
Common Orbit by Becky Chambers.
She's a queer writer.
She's a white queer writer.
She likes to build beautiful,cozy worlds.
Her style of sci-fi is calledcozy sci-fi, cozy queer sci-fi.
(01:38):
Her stuff is just are reallysweet.
The worlds she builds arefantastic and kind and curious
and engaging.
That was the second book in herseries that starts with A Long
Way to a Small Angry Planet.
If you're gonna read thatseries, that's where you should
(02:00):
start, and that book wasexcellent, and then this is
number two that I read deathvalley by melissa broder.
Melissa broder is like aqueerish writer, she's a weirdo.
Um, I love her writing.
She is strange and unashamedand just um, I really, yeah,
(02:20):
really heartfelt.
This one's kind of a memoir.
It reads like a memoir.
I'm not sure if it's a memoir.
It reads like a memoir.
I'm not sure if it's a memoir,but it reads like one and it's
about the main charactergrieving the not yet having
happened death of her father whowas in the hospital, and she
sort of escapes from the city ofLos Angeles and goes to Death
(02:42):
Valley and takes a harrowinghike Light from Uncommon Stars
by Rika Aoki.
Rika Aoki is a queer, trans,lesbian sci-fi writer.
She is also a violinist, Ibelieve she's a musician and
this is a very another cozy,delightful piece of queer sci-fi
(03:08):
with, um, lots of trans andlesbian characters, very heavily
asian it's, I think they're all.
All the main characters areasian, the main character is
trans and then the other onesare lesbian and there's also
like an thing, I think, that hasto do with selling your soul to
the devil and like a big nerdout about violins and how
they're made and the history ofmaking violins.
Like music, music pieces arebeautiful in there and then
(03:31):
there's also kind of a reallyfun angle on being local to los
angeles and knowing where allthe best sort of
hole-in-the-wall restaurants are.
So there's musings about foodand violins and love, and it's
so good.
Then I went to something alittle more intense called Rough
(03:51):
Sleepers by Tracy Kidder.
Tracy Kidder is a journalistand this is one of his books.
I believe he did research forthis book for a long time.
He found this doctor who, whenhe came out of medical school in
his middle age, he changedcareers kind of in his middle
(04:12):
age and came out of medicalschool and got involved with a
clinic that was serving thepopulation, the houseless
population of a particular partof Boston and he just stayed in
that work and did all he couldto create a medical system that
would serve the houselesspopulation of Boston in a
respectful, considerate,courteous way.
(04:34):
The book really delves into howthey did it, what worked, what
didn't.
You meet a bunch of the folksthat they worked with.
You understand more about howhouselessness works and how
people end up in a situation andhow they end up staying in that
(04:55):
situation and why housingpeople doesn't always work in
the way that the system tries todo it.
It was really one of my favoritereads of the year.
I learned so much and it wasalso as intense as the subject
matter is was a really easy read.
The way that it was writtenjust flowed.
It read like a novel, in asense of that.
It was easy to read and easy tounderstand what the author was
trying to explain and to bringacross.
(05:18):
So I highly recommend this one.
It's nonfiction, as I said, butI want to make sure that you
understand.
It's nonfiction, as I said, butI want to, you know, make sure
that you understand.
It's nonfiction, excellentnonfiction.
I would totally read more ofTracy Kidder in the subject
matter.
Oh, houselessness and houselessfolks definitely is something I
think about a lot and I'mconcerned about.
(05:40):
And this was, this was great.
Okay, um, this was.
This was around my birthday andmy one of my closest people,
blue um, gave me a few books,and so then I read the books
that she gave me.
Um, so this is how Not to Drownin a Glass of Water by Angie
(06:03):
Cruz.
There's a there's kind of queerthemes, there's an older
protagonist, there's poverty,there is immigration, folks of
color point of views.
So this older woman talks toher counselor I believe it's a
job getting counselor and so theformat of the book is basically
(06:23):
just her coming to see thiscounselor and speaking to her
about her life.
And this older woman is goingthrough different things with
being worried about money andher son and her friends, and
there's some kind of gossipypieces and overall the book
reads also really easily.
It's a quick read.
(06:44):
You kind of like her and thenyou kind of don't like her and
it's that complexity of her notalways being a likable character
is actually quite compelling.
And then I read also from thebooks that my friend Blue gave
me Infinite Country by PatriciaEngel.
Patricia Engel, it's about afamily torn apart by immigration
(07:11):
policy and violence of theirhome country.
It's intense, it's beautifullywritten.
Okay, the next one I saw that Inever read anything by Salman
Rushdie and was like, well,maybe I should try, he's such a
famous writer.
And was like, well, maybe Ishould try, he's such a famous
writer, he's written someinteresting things, I guess.
So this book came out.
It was his memoir called Knife,and it was a story of how he
(07:38):
almost got killed by a mantrying to assassinate him for
writing something that anIslamic government considered
blasphemous.
So they sent kind of somebodyafter him and so he talks about
the experience of having beenalmost killed.
It was not good.
(08:02):
I didn't like it.
I listened to it.
This was one I listened to.
It was the first one of theyear that I listened to.
He's so antagonistic and soarrogant and so self-conscious
at the same time.
The combination of arroganceand self-consciousness just made
me want to gag.
He's a narcissist, I thinkpretty clearly, and the whole
(08:27):
book was just tedious, likeyou'd think.
How could a book about you knowexperiencing almost dying at
the hands of somebody else andkind of coming back from that
experience, how could a booklike that be this tedious and
boring and repetitive andnarcissistic?
But hated it.
I'm not going to try anythingelse by him.
I think I'm done.
I'm actually you know.
(08:48):
This is a thing I thought aboutthe Sierra Bunches.
I don't read a lot of maleauthors.
There are very few men on thislist of books that I read.
Sometimes I read queer men andsometimes I read men of color
who are not queer, but there'svery few white men that I read
and enjoy, and sometimes I'llstart a book somebody
(09:08):
recommended and I'll be likelistening to it or reading it
usually listening because Idon't pay attention to the
author's name always when I'mlistening and I'll be like this
must've been written by a man.
And then I'll look and it was.
That's funny.
I'm talking about this, thisright now, because the next book
I read was by a man.
It's called Stoner and it's by aman named John Williams and
(09:31):
it's just this like story of aman's life and he's born in the
1800s to some farmers and hegets an education.
He's the first one in hisfamily to get an education.
He falls in love with academia.
He becomes a professor, firstone in his family to get an
education.
He falls in love with academia.
He becomes a professor.
He kind of doesn't really gobeyond.
You know, the immediatevicinity of where he was born
(09:52):
and grew up and then moved to goto college, which is like a
horse and buggy right away.
And he, you know, he grows up.
He hopes to have a beautifullove story.
He marries the first woman hehas feelings for.
It doesn't turn out the way hewould like it to.
They have a beautiful lovestory.
He marries the first woman hehas feelings for it doesn't turn
out the way he would like it to.
They have a child.
It's just the story of his life.
It's from his birth to hisdeath.
(10:14):
Um, it's slow, not a ton happenslike things definitely happen,
but not a whole lot of thingshappen.
It's very contemplative, almostmeditative, and I really,
really, really, really liked it.
Honestly, it was one of myfavorites of the year too, and
probably like the only straightwhite man writer that I read.
Number nine on our list is howhigh we go in the dark by
(10:37):
sequoia nagamatsu.
Um, I didn't realize this was acollection of short stories.
They, they all kind of fit intogether, but I was reading it
on paper also and got throughprobably half and then stopped.
I just he takes them a littlefar in certain ways, in the ways
that didn't please me, and Iended up stopping.
(10:59):
Yeah, short stories are notusually my thing.
I like a long story.
I'm kind of like if a story isgood and the writing is good,
please just let's keep it going.
Give me 2000 pages, give me3000.
I'm down.
After that I read the SpaceBetween Worlds by Micaiah
Johnson, and this is anotherpiece of like dystopian sci-fi,
(11:22):
kind of young adulty literatureand the main character is a
Black lesbian.
It's a kind of a world buildingtime traveling not time
traveling so much, but the sortof metaverse experience that the
main character goes throughbeing able to travel between
different realities of similarworlds, and I like that type of
(11:45):
thing a lot.
So I really liked that one.
I bought the second oneimmediately, actually didn't
read it, because when I buybooks sometimes I don't read
them Because, as you all know,those of you who read and buy
books, reading books and buyingbooks are different interests
and different hobbies.
They can overlap but they don'talways.
In fact, if I don't get thebook from the library, I almost
(12:08):
never read it because it's justat my house available to me.
But when I have to bring itback to the library I read.
After that I listened to A GoodHappy Girl by Marissa Higgins.
This is in the category ofbooks that I consider similar in
the sense of that there is adamaged main character, usually
(12:30):
a woman, because I read booksabout women, you know, written
by women and such, and she iskind of like a bad person, you
know, and it's because she hasall this trauma or whatever, but
she's just kind of like a badperson.
She makes bad decisions and shehurts people and most of the
book is like a description ofhow this person is kind of a bad
(12:53):
person and how messy their lifeis and how messy they are.
And at the end there's a bit ofa redemption arc.
And I feel like I read likefour or five of those books last
year and I'm mostly annoyed bythem, but sometimes I've just
like invested too much so I'lljust finish them, and this was
one of those.
I would say that the differencein this one was that it was a
(13:13):
lesbian book.
There was kink and sex in it um, not the type of sex I like to
read about, but maybe the typeof sex you like to read about.
It felt really realistic, veryorganic.
The main character getsinvolved with a lesbian couple
and that's a big part of thestoryline.
Then we have another queer book, mona of the Manor, by
(13:36):
Armistead Maupin.
This is the last in a reallylong series called Tales of the
City.
If you are queer and have beenreading for a long time, and
maybe even Californian aCalifornian queer you will
probably know about this.
They also made Tales of theCity show like limited series
that had Elliot Page playing oneof the main characters.
(13:59):
This series I read the series inhigh school.
It's really sweet, it just has.
I read the series in highschool.
It's really sweet.
It just has so much heart andso much soul.
The really quirky characters,lots of like lesbians and trans
people and gay men.
They're all living togetherlike a community, like a family,
and that's sort of what I washoping for from queer community
when I was that age.
Anyway, mona of the Manor wasthe last book he's written of
(14:24):
the series Tales of the City.
I recommend the entire series.
This last book was so sweet anda pleasure to listen to.
Okay, then I read Beautyland byMarie Helene Bertino.
This one smashed my heart tosmithereens.
It really was one of myfavorites.
(14:44):
It has a vibe, a very dusky,purplish sort of vibe.
The cover is dusky and purplish, so maybe that's part of why it
feels that way to me.
But it's about this girl who isborn and when she's a little
kid she realizes that she'sactually an alien that was sent
here to observe humanity andsend her observations back to
(15:06):
her superiors.
But it just has the mostmelancholy vibe and it is
painfully beautiful.
I will start crying if I thinkabout it too much.
It's about coming of age, it'sabout being a human.
It's about mental health.
It's about being a woman inthis world Book really got into
(15:28):
my heart and I highly, highly,highly recommend it.
This next book was not somethingI liked, so let's go through
that real quick.
It's the Palace of Eros by Carode Robertis.
This is a queer, local Bay Areaauthor.
It's a rewriting of some ofGreek mythology into like a more
(15:49):
queer context.
It was supposed to be very sexyand subversive and it read very
mainstream to me.
I was expecting sexy andsubversive and unique and
interesting and real andauthentic, and it didn't read
that way to me.
It read mainstream.
After that I read Hijab ButchBlues by Lamya H.
It's a memoir about being aMuslim immigrant and being a
(16:13):
queer person and coming out andhow difficult it is to come out
for some folks because of wherethey come from.
It's really raw and real andpainful and worth your time.
Next one was a piece ofself-help, and I listened to
this one.
It's a really cheesy title.
I will teach you to be rich byRamit Sethi, and this is a man
(16:38):
who is Indian.
Man influencer, moneyinfluencer, financial influencer
.
I heard about him throughMaestro the movement Maestro on
Instagram, my friend Shante, drShante Cofield.
I followed Ramit and I waslooking at his posts and I was.
I found out he has a podcast.
I was listening to his podcasta bit, then I rented his book so
(17:00):
I could read it and I feel likeit was a really, really good
primer for really anybody whowants to take their financial
health to the next level.
He explained a lot of stuff thatI didn't know before and he
made me feel like I was not asfar behind as I thought I was.
And also there's work to dofinancially.
A lot of the techniques heoffers is around investing.
(17:23):
How to build wealth isinvesting.
You know, the sooner you can doit, the better it is for you.
He does not say that you shouldbe buying a house.
He doesn't say that you shouldnot drive a nicer car or that
you should not buy avocado toast.
His advice is essentially likeprioritize what's really
important to you and let go ofthe rest and save, you know this
(17:44):
amount so that you can becomfortable and have choices and
options and spend your time andmoney in the future Now and
also in the future really livingyour best life Sounds really
simple, but there's a lot ofreally good practical advice.
I recommended this book to alot of people in my life and I
think they all got something outof it.
Number 17 was another listenand it was another nonfiction
(18:09):
and it was called Hurts so Good.
The Science and Culture of Painon Purpose by Leigh Cowart.
It was a recommendation from aclient and it was so good.
It's a journalist going intodifferent subcultures where
people experience pain onpurpose.
She talks about somebody in thesuper intense body modification
(18:30):
community getting their tonguesplits.
She talks about ballet cultureof ballet, about people eating
hot peppers, about marathonrunners, and so each chapter is
about this specific subculturewhere people experience pain on
purpose as part of theirinterest in the subculture
(18:51):
presented.
It was so good, it was sowell-written, kind of bringing
home the points that we all seekout pain on purpose because
it's part of our humanexperience and desire and range
of experience to want toexperience pain and we do it in
different ways.
It's not just the kinky,submissive pain sluts, it's
everybody, and I really, really,really liked it Especially
(19:15):
really enjoyed the chapters thathad to do with the hot pepper
eating and the running.
Her descriptions of, you know,being a part of these
competitions were so good.
Next one was a quick littleyoung adult read called Felix
Ever After by Kacen Kalender.
It was a queer, trans POC youngadult little novel, sweet
(19:38):
little read with a nice ending.
Number 19, kissing Girls onShabbat, a memoir by Sarah Glass
Painful, intense.
It was one I listened to.
I kind of was at the edge of myseat, metaphorically, the whole
time, since I spent a lot oftime walking when I listened to
it.
It's about a woman, the writer,leaving her religious cult,
(20:01):
hasidic Judaism, which she takesa long time and a lot of sort
of steps and back and forth tofinally leave it completely.
Meanwhile she marries twice,marries men twice, has a few
kids, and this book is reallyhonest and it's really good.
(20:22):
Um, if, uh, leaving religiouscults to truly be yourself is
something you enjoy queermemoirs, if you really enjoy
that, you will like this one.
Number 20 lessons in chemistryby bonnie garmas.
I really enjoyed this one.
It was a novel.
(20:43):
It was about a woman scientistin the 50s figuring out how to
survive patriarchy and raise herdaughter by herself.
And there's a really great dogin there and I did not want it
to end Very nice, well-writtenleaves you wanting more kind of
book.
(21:03):
The main character isneurodivergent.
Okay 21, my Year of Rest andRelaxation by Otessa Moshfe.
This is another one of thoselike self-indulgent bad person
main character with trauma andlike not very well explained
trauma.
Just sort of like this kid losther parents but also they had
(21:26):
all this money and it had a moreinteresting premise than the
other bad main character person.
This person is very selfish andself-centered and it's
unpleasant to watch them live inthe world with other humans.
But there was kind of aninteresting bit of the book in
(21:46):
the last quarter of the book.
I don't want to reveal it, Idon't want to spoil it, but yeah
, I would say this one'sprobably worth a read,
especially if you like this typeof this type of structure of a
novel.
Okay number 22, all Fours byMiranda July.
Miranda July is queer and is afilmmaker and a writer and this
(22:07):
was my first introduction to herwork and I loved it.
I mean, you will see this bookin every bookstore right now.
It's very popular.
I think it made it to like bestof 2024.
It's kind of autobiographical,essentially about a woman having
a midlife crisis in her own wayand making a series of really
(22:27):
interesting, very wild decisions.
But everything makes sense tome, it feels very relatable and
I think it was a reallybeautiful, well-written
adventure of a book Some reallyhot, sexy moments that I did not
expect at all.
But it's essentially aboutlosing yourself as a middle-aged
(22:48):
woman as society starts tonotice you less and as you feel
like you don't have any morechances to feel alive, and so
the lengths you'll go tocontinue to feel alive in your
life is what this book is about.
Then, because I really enjoyedthat Miranda July book, I looked
(23:10):
up what else she has writtenand listened to the first bad
man, which is one of her earliernovels.
I don't she doesn't have awhole lot of.
She has a lot of projects shedid with other people, but this
is and like art projects andalso a couple of films, but
there's only, I think, twonovels.
(23:31):
If you consider all fours anovel or memoir, I don't know,
but the first bad man is a noveland this was also up there in,
like my, in one of my few, very,very favorite reads of the year
.
This is one that I fell in lovewith little by little.
And then all at once it startswith this very neurotic, very
(23:52):
quirky main character and atfirst you're like, oh my god,
can I really hang with this?
And then bits get revealed andanother character gets
introduced and you start to fallin love with the whole book and
the tenderness of it and thevulnerability of it and it's so
strange and it's so weird andquirky.
But also there's this beautifullove story and you just can't
(24:16):
help but completely fall in lovewith everything about it
towards the middle and end Gayand weird and neurotic and
neuro-spicy and have a giantheart.
You might love this one as muchas I did.
Number 24, my Husband by MaudeVentura.
You know, another one of thoseself-indulgent female bad person
(24:39):
, mental character, mentalhealth issues and there's a
little to an end that did makeit kind of worth it.
But overall I did listen to it.
So at least you know I wasdoing stuff while listening to
it.
So it wasn't a total waste oftime, but it was close, okay.
Number 25, the Go-Giver by BobBerg, which is a little
(25:03):
self-help book.
It's like a couple hundredpages I think it takes about two
hours to listen to.
I listened to it in this oneday when I was hiking and then
going to Costco driving around alittle bit.
It was, you know it has alittle, some little life lessons
about business and being a goodperson and it was nice.
(25:24):
A quick little easy read.
Belcanto by Ann Patchett.
I read this one because it wason that list of best 100 books
to come out of the first quarterof the century.
It had a really lovelydescription.
I mean it wasn't bad writingright, but it just it bugged me.
(25:46):
I forget where she said it.
I don't think she said it inLima, peru, but the real
situation happened in Lima, peru.
There was a hostage situation.
Basically, a bunch of rebellionforce, anti-government fighters
who live in the woods, tookthis house over that belonged to
a politician and there were allthese fancy guests there and so
(26:12):
this was an ongoing I think itwent on for a couple months
hostage situation.
And so she took that premiseand wrote this novel about
basically an opera singer andall the ways in which she's
admired, and so this book reallyis much more about opera and
love and people falling in loveand people at odds in a context
that is not very favorable tolove.
(26:33):
So she romanticized this thingthat happened, this real event
that happened, this hostagesituation in a country with
political turmoil, and didn'treally touch upon it at all.
It was super, even though notevery character in there was
white.
It was just such a whiteintelligence book and I read it,
(26:56):
kind of enjoyed the writingstyle, but it just the whole
thing just kind of bugged me andthen I started reading more
about it after I finished it andunderstood why.
And I think I'm kind of donewith Ann Patchett.
This is some white,self-centered bullshit.
27.
The Girl with the Louding Voiceby Abider Odare Not sure how to
(27:17):
pronounce the last name.
It's spelled D-A-R-E.
There are themes of poverty andfeminism.
It's set in Nigeria starts in asmall village where this girl
grows up and her mom passes awayand she basically gets sold to
a man into marriage because ofpoverty and machismo,
(27:39):
essentially.
And she has such a strongpersonality and such a strong
voice and this is something shesays I want to have a loud voice
.
I want people to hear my voice.
She wants to be a teacher andthe character was really built
in such a complete way.
Like you, just you can fullyimagine this character.
(28:00):
You can fully imagine talkingto her.
She's such a cool human andsuch a great spirit, and so you
know she's in this marriage.
This horrible thing happens,with somebody dying, and then
she ends up in the big cityserving at a wealthy house, and
so the book sort of shows youhow women's fates are
(28:21):
intertwined and how similar theexperiences of women can be,
even if their class is vastlyputs them in a vastly different
category of access.
I think my favorite thing aboutit was there's such a specific,
particular voice that the maincharacter has.
Yes, there is a way that shetalks.
When you're reading it I readit on paper.
(28:43):
So there's a way that she talksthat feels so particular, gives
her specificity.
She's not just anybody and Ireally love that.
I love that in writing andreading.
Good writing is when charactershave such a specificity and
such a fleshed outness andthey're so believable.
But you know if you're going toread it, just know there's a
lot of difficult themes.
(29:03):
There's violence, there's death, there's abuse, there's women
hurting other women and alsoit's a very powerful story and I
would totally read more by thiswriter.
These next few books were kindof like the wrapping up of the
year and they were all so good Iwas happy to end on a good note
.
So number 28 was the MemoryPolice by Yoko Ogawa.
(29:27):
This was recommended to me by aclient.
It's a dystopian, japanesesci-fi type of book.
You have to suspend yourdisbelief when you're reading it
.
The premise is that there'sthis small community on an
island in Japan and every sooften something disappears from
(29:47):
life, and when it disappears thepeople are expected to also let
go of that thing and forgetabout it.
It's mundane things at first,like photographs and flowers and
perfume and some foods andpeople can sort of deal, but
then things become less bearable.
It's got a really beautifulflow and a really intimate sort
(30:14):
of closeness to the maincharacter and also feeling like
you're watching a movie, likeyou're not in their head, you're
watching a movie.
It's sort of a combination ofdystopian and absurdist and I
really, really enjoyed it.
Very thought-provoking Lingerswith you for a long time
(30:37):
afterwards.
Number 29 was To Shape aDragon's Breath by Maniquil
Black Goose.
This was sent to me by a friendof mine who is a big reader and
over the last year my partnerread it after she was recovering
from her surgery and then Iread it as I was recovering from
my surgery and it's such acomforting young adult sort of
(31:00):
fantasy that has dragons in itbut also like is it the best?
Type of allegory and commentaryon society and class and
whiteness versus folks of color,in this case very specifically
Native people?
It sort of centers on this oneNative community and this one
(31:21):
Indigenous woman, and theirwhole mindset and philosophy
(31:42):
around dragon keeping and dragonnearing is completely different
from how she and her peoplehave related to dragons over the
course of millennia.
So it's kind of like a HarryPotter type of idea, except
there's no transphobia.
In fact it's the opposite.
It's an indigenous girl who isbisexual and polyamorous and
it's beautiful and so fun and Ireally, really wish Monocle
Black Goose would write anotherone, and maybe Monocle Black
(32:05):
Goose is on their way of writinganother one, maybe it's coming,
because this book came out in23,.
So I'm hoping a second one isin the works because this is
clearly marked as first in theseries.
So yay, okay.
Number 30 was the Invisible Lifeof Addie LaRue by Victoria
Schwab.
It's kind of a fantastical,really epic novel.
(32:27):
Really long I listened to thisone.
The main character is bisexualin case that makes you be more
interested.
Is bisexual in case you?
That makes you be moreinterested.
And, um, it's about this woman.
Who's this young woman who isborn to poor folks in a village,
a small village in france, andI believe it starts in the 1600s
(32:48):
and maybe the 1400s and shedoes not want the life that is
set out before her, likemarrying a man, having a child,
staying, staying in this village, not traveling, not
experiencing life.
She wants to be out there inthe world, she wants to
experience things, she wants tobe an artist, she's into drawing
and so, out of desperation, shemakes a deal with the devil to
(33:13):
have the ability to live life.
Because she makes a deal withthe devil, she doesn't really
realize what exactly she's doing, but what happens is that the
devil makes her absolutelyforgettable to anybody who meets
her and gives her immortality.
So she lives for hundreds ofyears and whenever she meets
somebody, the second they don'tsee her anymore.
(33:36):
The second she's out of theirline of sight.
They forget that she exists.
She is able to survive, likeshe can steal fairly easily,
because people don't rememberher face and don't know that she
took something.
But also she can't, um, have aplace to live and she can't have
a job.
So she can't make money and shecan't stay.
You know, she has a regularhuman body, even though it's
immortal, so she still needs tolive and she can't have a job,
so she can't make money and shecan't stay.
You know, she has a regularhuman body, even though it's
(33:58):
immortal, so she still needs toeat and she still needs to sleep
somewhere and she still needsto stay warm and those things
are really difficult to do.
But she gets to live forhundreds of years and she gets
to experience everything and shegets to.
She ends up going from place toplace in interesting ways and
it's just beautifully written.
It's beautifully written.
It's about not wanting to beforgotten, wanting to leave a
(34:21):
mark on the world, wanting tohave love, wanting to have
somebody love you truly, deeply,continuously.
Number 31, elena Ferrante is apseudonym of a writer in Italy
who grew up in Naples, and herbooks are often seemingly about
a community of kids growing uptogether in Naples.
(34:42):
It's a poor community, veryworking class.
She's extremely detailed in theway that she gets into
someone's, the main character'sthoughts.
It's like reading someone'sinnermost thoughts, their diary.
It's incredibly passionate.
There's a lot of things aboutfeelings, strong emotions.
That's sort of the confusion ofbeing a teenager growing up
without a lot of guidance, justkind of, you know, growing up
(35:05):
with your, your own self only asa resource.
And the lying life of adults byelena ferrante is was one of my
favorites of the year.
It's about that time in youryoung teenage years when you
realize that your parents arenot gods, they're not perfect,
they're just humans.
They're fallible and they areimperfect, and they did not do
(35:29):
the best job at raising you andthey made mistakes, and so it's
about that time when you, whenyou go from from believing they
are perfect and they're gods toseeing that they're not right.
After I read this, I requestedfrom the library the first book
in her neapolitan series.
(35:50):
It's a four book series Ibelieve that got into the best
books of the first quarter ofthe century.
That's how I found out abouther, about her name and about
these books is from that listthat New York Times put together
.
Okay.
And then the last book I readin 2024 was Perfume and Pain by
(36:10):
Anna Dorn, and it's a.
It's like a trashy pulp novelabout a lesbian in LA who's a
writer and she's messy and she'sinto drugs and she doesn't want
to face her own feelings or herown life and she's very judgy
and she goes after toxic womenand at the end she sort of
(36:32):
redeems herself.
But you know, in that sort ofcategory that I spoke about
earlier of bad person maincharacter and you just sort of
watch them be a bad person formost of the book and then maybe
the last few pages is them themhaving a redemption arc.
It just bores me.
I don't like.
I don't like watching badpeople be bad people.
It's just, it's boring.
(36:53):
I think there's enough of it inthe world.
I like the idea of there beingperfume content in it, since
it's called Perfume and Pain andlike, if you read the
description, it says that themain character has a perfume
collection and is obsessed withit.
I got the impression fromreading it that the writer did a
little bit of research,probably on like Reddit boards,
but isn't actually like aperfume hobbyist, not a perfume
(37:14):
obsessed person, which is what Iwas hoping for.
I feel like when you read aboutsomething and there's like a
hobby in there or some sort oflike a side quest about, you
know, creation of something like, for example, in Light from
Uncommon Stars that I spokeabout earlier by Rika Aoki,
there's like this whole theme inthe book of making of the
(37:35):
violin and violin making cultureand like the types of wood and
glue that they use and like howa violin gets put together and
made and fixed and like what isrequired.
It's like so detailed and it'sso delicious to me, like I love
a good nerd out.
So I was hoping for that inPerfume and Pain but alas I
(37:56):
didn't get enough for it to besatisfying.
And that was the last book of2024 that I read in full or
tried to start and did notfinish.
I also mentioned those as abonus, since you listened
through almost an hour of meyapping about the books I read.
I will tell you about the coupleof books that I read, since
(38:17):
it's two weeks we're two weeksinto January of 2025.
And I also got through myBrilliant Friend, which was the
first one in the Neapolitannovels by Elena Ferrante.
I really liked it, got thesecond one immediately and I'm
reading the second one.
It's about this friendshipbetween these two girls.
(38:37):
The main character is reallyobsessed with her bestie and she
talks about their friendshipfrom just having met as little
kids.
I think they're about probablyfive or six years old when they
first meet and then they'restudents together and they're
both brilliant at school.
But her friend is made to stopstudying because of the poverty
(39:00):
of her family and the maincharacter.
I guess her family is a littlebit better and she's slightly
more encouraged to study by ateacher and so she stays in
school and she observes her bestfriend and her life and how it
goes after she leaves school andit's so intimate, it's so very
intimate.
I love that obsessive, intimate, detail-oriented type of
(39:22):
writing.
You can just clearly see howthe presence of each other in
their lives really had so muchto do with how their lives went.
So I'm looking forward to seewhat else happens Now that the
girls are like late teenageyears as opposed to kids.
And then the other book Ilistened to was Black Pill how I
(39:44):
Witnessed the Darkest Cornersof the Internet, come to Life,
poison Society and CaptureAmerican Politics by L Reeve,
and this was scary andunsettling and interesting and I
kind of wanted to stop and Ididn't.
Um, I kept reading it.
Investigative journalism aboutwhat happened and what is
(40:07):
happening with the battlebetween the right and the left.
Um, that is coming out of thecorners of the internet that are
not the social media that therest of us are on.
It's about these young men whoare really into coding and
really into computers, creatingthese spaces where they outright
can breed and thrive and besupported by each other.
(40:30):
And there's kind of a lot in itand she introduces us to
various characters in that worldand lets us see how much
influence and power they havehad because of the internet with
other young men and it all sortof.
What I understood is it stemsfrom their feeling frustrated
(40:50):
with young women becomingempowered not to just settle for
any man and not to have tomarry if they don't want to.
They're lonely and they feelentitled to female attention.
I mean, this is intel culture,but this is kind of where a lot
of this alt-right stuff startedand continues to grow from.
Very interesting, scary.
(41:10):
I recommend if you'reinterested in this topic.
It was really well written.
Elle Reeve is fantastic.
And then I read this super sillylittle book called the Full
Moon Coffee Shop from a Japanesewriter, mai Mochizuki, and it's
about these different folks whoare kind of lost in their lives
(41:32):
and they don't really know whatto do next, just how to, you
know, be happier.
And they come upon a magicalcafe with talking cats that
serves them beautiful treats andshows them their paths through
astrology, and it's super cuteand very much of a departure
from my usual reading, but verycute.
(41:52):
It was a nice little break.
And that's where I'm at, uh,with all the books.
If you got through all of this,congratulations.
I am impressed, very impressed,um, and if you found some books
that you hopefully will lovealso, then my job here is done.
(42:14):
And the thing that's been makingme happy lately is I'm doing a
little bit of sewing.
I'm using a quilting sort oftechnique to create my little
bags that I like to sew.
I'm still making things for thepeople who gave me money when I
was healing from my surgery andthey'll be my little gifts to
people.
So I've given out a bunch, butI still have a lot to make.
(42:35):
That's it.
That's what's making me happylately is doing my little bits
of sewing from little quiltedsquares.
Okay, bye, thank you.
Hello friends, hello , this is Micah Riott coming to
you with my books I read in 2024episode.
I will also post the list inthe notes for the episode.
I put 32 books on this list.
I finished the vast majority ofthem.
A couple of them I did not, andI will note which ones.
(00:51):
I will also note which ones Ilistened to and which ones I
read on paper.
So let's get going.
I hope that if you are a reader, some of these will make it to
your list, and if you're not areader, maybe these will excite
you and inspire you to read some.
I personally think that havinga really good book going just
(01:16):
makes my life a bit more joyful.
My first official book of theyear of 2024 was A Closed and
Common Orbit by Becky Chambers.
She's a queer writer.
She's a white queer writer.
She likes to build beautiful,cozy worlds.
Her style of sci-fi is calledcozy sci-fi, cozy queer sci-fi.
(01:38):
Her stuff is just are reallysweet.
The worlds she builds arefantastic and kind and curious
and engaging.
That was the second book in herseries that starts with A Long
Way to a Small Angry Planet.
If you're gonna read thatseries, that's where you should
(02:00):
start, and that book wasexcellent, and then this is
number two that I read deathvalley by melissa broder.
Melissa broder is like aqueerish writer, she's a weirdo.
Um, I love her writing.
She is strange and unashamedand just um, I really, yeah,
(02:20):
really heartfelt.
This one's kind of a memoir.
It reads like a memoir.
I'm not sure if it's a memoir.
It reads like a memoir.
I'm not sure if it's a memoir,but it reads like one and it's
about the main charactergrieving the not yet having
happened death of her father whowas in the hospital, and she
sort of escapes from the city ofLos Angeles and goes to Death
(02:42):
Valley and takes a harrowinghike Light from Uncommon Stars
by Rika Aoki.
Rika Aoki is a queer, trans,lesbian sci-fi writer.
She is also a violinist, Ibelieve she's a musician and
this is a very another cozy,delightful piece of queer sci-fi
(03:08):
with, um, lots of trans andlesbian characters, very heavily
asian it's, I think they're all.
All the main characters areasian, the main character is
trans and then the other onesare lesbian and there's also
like an thing, I think, that hasto do with selling your soul to
the devil and like a big nerdout about violins and how
they're made and the history ofmaking violins.
Like music, music pieces arebeautiful in there and then
(03:31):
there's also kind of a reallyfun angle on being local to los
angeles and knowing where allthe best sort of
hole-in-the-wall restaurants are.
So there's musings about foodand violins and love, and it's
so good.
Then I went to something alittle more intense called Rough
(03:51):
Sleepers by Tracy Kidder.
Tracy Kidder is a journalistand this is one of his books.
I believe he did research forthis book for a long time.
He found this doctor who, whenhe came out of medical school in
his middle age, he changedcareers kind of in his middle
(04:12):
age and came out of medicalschool and got involved with a
clinic that was serving thepopulation, the houseless
population of a particular partof Boston and he just stayed in
that work and did all he couldto create a medical system that
would serve the houselesspopulation of Boston in a
respectful, considerate,courteous way.
(04:34):
The book really delves into howthey did it, what worked, what
didn't.
You meet a bunch of the folksthat they worked with.
You understand more about howhouselessness works and how
people end up in a situation andhow they end up staying in that
(04:55):
situation and why housingpeople doesn't always work in
the way that the system tries todo it.
It was really one of my favoritereads of the year.
I learned so much and it wasalso as intense as the subject
matter is was a really easy read.
The way that it was writtenjust flowed.
It read like a novel, in asense of that.
It was easy to read and easy tounderstand what the author was
trying to explain and to bringacross.
(05:18):
So I highly recommend this one.
It's nonfiction, as I said, butI want to make sure that you
understand.
It's nonfiction, as I said, butI want to, you know, make sure
that you understand.
It's nonfiction, excellentnonfiction.
I would totally read more ofTracy Kidder in the subject
matter.
Oh, houselessness and houselessfolks definitely is something I
think about a lot and I'mconcerned about.
(05:40):
And this was, this was great.
Okay, um, this was.
This was around my birthday andmy one of my closest people,
blue um, gave me a few books,and so then I read the books
that she gave me.
Um, so this is how Not to Drownin a Glass of Water by Angie
(06:03):
Cruz.
There's a there's kind of queerthemes, there's an older
protagonist, there's poverty,there is immigration, folks of
color point of views.
So this older woman talks toher counselor I believe it's a
job getting counselor and so theformat of the book is basically
(06:23):
just her coming to see thiscounselor and speaking to her
about her life.
And this older woman is goingthrough different things with
being worried about money andher son and her friends, and
there's some kind of gossipypieces and overall the book
reads also really easily.
It's a quick read.
(06:44):
You kind of like her and thenyou kind of don't like her and
it's that complexity of her notalways being a likable character
is actually quite compelling.
And then I read also from thebooks that my friend Blue gave
me Infinite Country by PatriciaEngel.
Patricia Engel, it's about afamily torn apart by immigration
(07:11):
policy and violence of theirhome country.
It's intense, it's beautifullywritten.
Okay, the next one I saw that Inever read anything by Salman
Rushdie and was like, well,maybe I should try, he's such a
famous writer.
And was like, well, maybe Ishould try, he's such a famous
writer, he's written someinteresting things, I guess.
So this book came out.
It was his memoir called Knife,and it was a story of how he
(07:38):
almost got killed by a mantrying to assassinate him for
writing something that anIslamic government considered
blasphemous.
So they sent kind of somebodyafter him and so he talks about
the experience of having beenalmost killed.
It was not good.
(08:02):
I didn't like it.
I listened to it.
This was one I listened to.
It was the first one of theyear that I listened to.
He's so antagonistic and soarrogant and so self-conscious
at the same time.
The combination of arroganceand self-consciousness just made
me want to gag.
He's a narcissist, I thinkpretty clearly, and the whole
(08:27):
book was just tedious, likeyou'd think.
How could a book about you knowexperiencing almost dying at
the hands of somebody else andkind of coming back from that
experience, how could a booklike that be this tedious and
boring and repetitive andnarcissistic?
But hated it.
I'm not going to try anythingelse by him.
I think I'm done.
I'm actually you know.
(08:48):
This is a thing I thought aboutthe Sierra Bunches.
I don't read a lot of maleauthors.
There are very few men on thislist of books that I read.
Sometimes I read queer men andsometimes I read men of color
who are not queer, but there'svery few white men that I read
and enjoy, and sometimes I'llstart a book somebody
(09:08):
recommended and I'll be likelistening to it or reading it
usually listening because Idon't pay attention to the
author's name always when I'mlistening and I'll be like this
must've been written by a man.
And then I'll look and it was.
That's funny.
I'm talking about this, thisright now, because the next book
I read was by a man.
It's called Stoner and it's by aman named John Williams and
(09:31):
it's just this like story of aman's life and he's born in the
1800s to some farmers and hegets an education.
He's the first one in hisfamily to get an education.
He falls in love with academia.
He becomes a professor, firstone in his family to get an
education.
He falls in love with academia.
He becomes a professor.
He kind of doesn't really gobeyond.
You know, the immediatevicinity of where he was born
(09:52):
and grew up and then moved to goto college, which is like a
horse and buggy right away.
And he, you know, he grows up.
He hopes to have a beautifullove story.
He marries the first woman hehas feelings for.
It doesn't turn out the way hewould like it to.
They have a beautiful lovestory.
He marries the first woman hehas feelings for it doesn't turn
out the way he would like it to.
They have a child.
It's just the story of his life.
It's from his birth to hisdeath.
(10:14):
Um, it's slow, not a ton happenslike things definitely happen,
but not a whole lot of thingshappen.
It's very contemplative, almostmeditative, and I really,
really, really, really liked it.
Honestly, it was one of myfavorites of the year too, and
probably like the only straightwhite man writer that I read.
Number nine on our list is howhigh we go in the dark by
(10:37):
sequoia nagamatsu.
Um, I didn't realize this was acollection of short stories.
They, they all kind of fit intogether, but I was reading it
on paper also and got throughprobably half and then stopped.
I just he takes them a littlefar in certain ways, in the ways
that didn't please me, and Iended up stopping.
(10:59):
Yeah, short stories are notusually my thing.
I like a long story.
I'm kind of like if a story isgood and the writing is good,
please just let's keep it going.
Give me 2000 pages, give me3000.
I'm down.
After that I read the SpaceBetween Worlds by Micaiah
Johnson, and this is anotherpiece of like dystopian sci-fi,
(11:22):
kind of young adulty literatureand the main character is a
Black lesbian.
It's a kind of a world buildingtime traveling not time
traveling so much, but the sortof metaverse experience that the
main character goes throughbeing able to travel between
different realities of similarworlds, and I like that type of
(11:45):
thing a lot.
So I really liked that one.
I bought the second oneimmediately, actually didn't
read it, because when I buybooks sometimes I don't read
them Because, as you all know,those of you who read and buy
books, reading books and buyingbooks are different interests
and different hobbies.
They can overlap but they don'talways.
In fact, if I don't get thebook from the library, I almost
(12:08):
never read it because it's justat my house available to me.
But when I have to bring itback to the library I read.
After that I listened to A GoodHappy Girl by Marissa Higgins.
This is in the category ofbooks that I consider similar in
the sense of that there is adamaged main character, usually
(12:30):
a woman, because I read booksabout women, you know, written
by women and such, and she iskind of like a bad person, you
know, and it's because she hasall this trauma or whatever, but
she's just kind of like a badperson.
She makes bad decisions and shehurts people and most of the
book is like a description ofhow this person is kind of a bad
(12:53):
person and how messy their lifeis and how messy they are.
And at the end there's a bit ofa redemption arc.
And I feel like I read likefour or five of those books last
year and I'm mostly annoyed bythem, but sometimes I've just
like invested too much so I'lljust finish them, and this was
one of those.
I would say that the differencein this one was that it was a
(13:13):
lesbian book.
There was kink and sex in it um, not the type of sex I like to
read about, but maybe the typeof sex you like to read about.
It felt really realistic, veryorganic.
The main character getsinvolved with a lesbian couple
and that's a big part of thestoryline.
Then we have another queer book, mona of the Manor, by
(13:36):
Armistead Maupin.
This is the last in a reallylong series called Tales of the
City.
If you are queer and have beenreading for a long time, and
maybe even Californian aCalifornian queer you will
probably know about this.
They also made Tales of theCity show like limited series
that had Elliot Page playing oneof the main characters.
(13:59):
This series I read the series inhigh school.
It's really sweet, it just has.
I read the series in highschool.
It's really sweet.
It just has so much heart andso much soul.
The really quirky characters,lots of like lesbians and trans
people and gay men.
They're all living togetherlike a community, like a family,
and that's sort of what I washoping for from queer community
when I was that age.
Anyway, mona of the Manor wasthe last book he's written of
(14:24):
the series Tales of the City.
I recommend the entire series.
This last book was so sweet anda pleasure to listen to.
Okay, then I read Beautyland byMarie Helene Bertino.
This one smashed my heart tosmithereens.
It really was one of myfavorites.
(14:44):
It has a vibe, a very dusky,purplish sort of vibe.
The cover is dusky and purplish, so maybe that's part of why it
feels that way to me.
But it's about this girl who isborn and when she's a little
kid she realizes that she'sactually an alien that was sent
here to observe humanity andsend her observations back to
(15:06):
her superiors.
But it just has the mostmelancholy vibe and it is
painfully beautiful.
I will start crying if I thinkabout it too much.
It's about coming of age, it'sabout being a human.
It's about mental health.
It's about being a woman inthis world Book really got into
(15:28):
my heart and I highly, highly,highly recommend it.
This next book was not somethingI liked, so let's go through
that real quick.
It's the Palace of Eros by Carode Robertis.
This is a queer, local Bay Areaauthor.
It's a rewriting of some ofGreek mythology into like a more
(15:49):
queer context.
It was supposed to be very sexyand subversive and it read very
mainstream to me.
I was expecting sexy andsubversive and unique and
interesting and real andauthentic, and it didn't read
that way to me.
It read mainstream.
After that I read Hijab ButchBlues by Lamya H.
It's a memoir about being aMuslim immigrant and being a
(16:13):
queer person and coming out andhow difficult it is to come out
for some folks because of wherethey come from.
It's really raw and real andpainful and worth your time.
Next one was a piece ofself-help, and I listened to
this one.
It's a really cheesy title.
I will teach you to be rich byRamit Sethi, and this is a man
(16:38):
who is Indian.
Man influencer, moneyinfluencer, financial influencer
.
I heard about him throughMaestro the movement Maestro on
Instagram, my friend Shante, drShante Cofield.
I followed Ramit and I waslooking at his posts and I was.
I found out he has a podcast.
I was listening to his podcasta bit, then I rented his book so
(17:00):
I could read it and I feel likeit was a really, really good
primer for really anybody whowants to take their financial
health to the next level.
He explained a lot of stuff thatI didn't know before and he
made me feel like I was not asfar behind as I thought I was.
And also there's work to dofinancially.
A lot of the techniques heoffers is around investing.
(17:23):
How to build wealth isinvesting.
You know, the sooner you can doit, the better it is for you.
He does not say that you shouldbe buying a house.
He doesn't say that you shouldnot drive a nicer car or that
you should not buy avocado toast.
His advice is essentially likeprioritize what's really
important to you and let go ofthe rest and save, you know this
(17:44):
amount so that you can becomfortable and have choices and
options and spend your time andmoney in the future Now and
also in the future really livingyour best life Sounds really
simple, but there's a lot ofreally good practical advice.
I recommended this book to alot of people in my life and I
think they all got something outof it.
Number 17 was another listenand it was another nonfiction
(18:09):
and it was called Hurts so Good.
The Science and Culture of Painon Purpose by Leigh Cowart.
It was a recommendation from aclient and it was so good.
It's a journalist going intodifferent subcultures where
people experience pain onpurpose.
She talks about somebody in thesuper intense body modification
(18:30):
community getting their tonguesplits.
She talks about ballet cultureof ballet, about people eating
hot peppers, about marathonrunners, and so each chapter is
about this specific subculturewhere people experience pain on
purpose as part of theirinterest in the subculture
(18:51):
presented.
It was so good, it was sowell-written, kind of bringing
home the points that we all seekout pain on purpose because
it's part of our humanexperience and desire and range
of experience to want toexperience pain and we do it in
different ways.
It's not just the kinky,submissive pain sluts, it's
everybody, and I really, really,really liked it Especially
(19:15):
really enjoyed the chapters thathad to do with the hot pepper
eating and the running.
Her descriptions of, you know,being a part of these
competitions were so good.
Next one was a quick littleyoung adult read called Felix
Ever After by Kacen Kalender.
It was a queer, trans POC youngadult little novel, sweet
(19:38):
little read with a nice ending.
Number 19, kissing Girls onShabbat, a memoir by Sarah Glass
Painful, intense.
It was one I listened to.
I kind of was at the edge of myseat, metaphorically, the whole
time, since I spent a lot oftime walking when I listened to
it.
It's about a woman, the writer,leaving her religious cult,
(20:01):
hasidic Judaism, which she takesa long time and a lot of sort
of steps and back and forth tofinally leave it completely.
Meanwhile she marries twice,marries men twice, has a few
kids, and this book is reallyhonest and it's really good.
(20:22):
Um, if, uh, leaving religiouscults to truly be yourself is
something you enjoy queermemoirs, if you really enjoy
that, you will like this one.
Number 20 lessons in chemistryby bonnie garmas.
I really enjoyed this one.
It was a novel.
(20:43):
It was about a woman scientistin the 50s figuring out how to
survive patriarchy and raise herdaughter by herself.
And there's a really great dogin there and I did not want it
to end Very nice, well-writtenleaves you wanting more kind of
book.
(21:03):
The main character isneurodivergent.
Okay 21, my Year of Rest andRelaxation by Otessa Moshfe.
This is another one of thoselike self-indulgent bad person
main character with trauma andlike not very well explained
trauma.
Just sort of like this kid losther parents but also they had
(21:26):
all this money and it had a moreinteresting premise than the
other bad main character person.
This person is very selfish andself-centered and it's
unpleasant to watch them live inthe world with other humans.
But there was kind of aninteresting bit of the book in
(21:46):
the last quarter of the book.
I don't want to reveal it, Idon't want to spoil it, but yeah
, I would say this one'sprobably worth a read,
especially if you like this typeof this type of structure of a
novel.
Okay number 22, all Fours byMiranda July.
Miranda July is queer and is afilmmaker and a writer and this
(22:07):
was my first introduction to herwork and I loved it.
I mean, you will see this bookin every bookstore right now.
It's very popular.
I think it made it to like bestof 2024.
It's kind of autobiographical,essentially about a woman having
a midlife crisis in her own wayand making a series of really
(22:27):
interesting, very wild decisions.
But everything makes sense tome, it feels very relatable and
I think it was a reallybeautiful, well-written
adventure of a book Some reallyhot, sexy moments that I did not
expect at all.
But it's essentially aboutlosing yourself as a middle-aged
(22:48):
woman as society starts tonotice you less and as you feel
like you don't have any morechances to feel alive, and so
the lengths you'll go tocontinue to feel alive in your
life is what this book is about.
Then, because I really enjoyedthat Miranda July book, I looked
(23:10):
up what else she has writtenand listened to the first bad
man, which is one of her earliernovels.
I don't she doesn't have awhole lot of.
She has a lot of projects shedid with other people, but this
is and like art projects andalso a couple of films, but
there's only, I think, twonovels.
(23:31):
If you consider all fours anovel or memoir, I don't know,
but the first bad man is a noveland this was also up there in,
like my, in one of my few, very,very favorite reads of the year
.
This is one that I fell in lovewith little by little.
And then all at once it startswith this very neurotic, very
(23:52):
quirky main character and atfirst you're like, oh my god,
can I really hang with this?
And then bits get revealed andanother character gets
introduced and you start to fallin love with the whole book and
the tenderness of it and thevulnerability of it and it's so
strange and it's so weird andquirky.
But also there's this beautifullove story and you just can't
(24:16):
help but completely fall in lovewith everything about it
towards the middle and end Gayand weird and neurotic and
neuro-spicy and have a giantheart.
You might love this one as muchas I did.
Number 24, my Husband by MaudeVentura.
You know, another one of thoseself-indulgent female bad person
(24:39):
, mental character, mentalhealth issues and there's a
little to an end that did makeit kind of worth it.
But overall I did listen to it.
So at least you know I wasdoing stuff while listening to
it.
So it wasn't a total waste oftime, but it was close, okay.
Number 25, the Go-Giver by BobBerg, which is a little
(25:03):
self-help book.
It's like a couple hundredpages I think it takes about two
hours to listen to.
I listened to it in this oneday when I was hiking and then
going to Costco driving around alittle bit.
It was, you know it has alittle, some little life lessons
about business and being a goodperson and it was nice.
(25:24):
A quick little easy read.
Belcanto by Ann Patchett.
I read this one because it wason that list of best 100 books
to come out of the first quarterof the century.
It had a really lovelydescription.
I mean it wasn't bad writingright, but it just it bugged me.
(25:46):
I forget where she said it.
I don't think she said it inLima, peru, but the real
situation happened in Lima, peru.
There was a hostage situation.
Basically, a bunch of rebellionforce, anti-government fighters
who live in the woods, tookthis house over that belonged to
a politician and there were allthese fancy guests there and so
(26:12):
this was an ongoing I think itwent on for a couple months
hostage situation.
And so she took that premiseand wrote this novel about
basically an opera singer andall the ways in which she's
admired, and so this book reallyis much more about opera and
love and people falling in loveand people at odds in a context
that is not very favorable tolove.
(26:33):
So she romanticized this thingthat happened, this real event
that happened, this hostagesituation in a country with
political turmoil, and didn'treally touch upon it at all.
It was super, even though notevery character in there was
white.
It was just such a whiteintelligence book and I read it,
(26:56):
kind of enjoyed the writingstyle, but it just the whole
thing just kind of bugged me andthen I started reading more
about it after I finished it andunderstood why.
And I think I'm kind of donewith Ann Patchett.
This is some white,self-centered bullshit.
27.
The Girl with the Louding Voiceby Abider Odare Not sure how to
(27:17):
pronounce the last name.
It's spelled D-A-R-E.
There are themes of poverty andfeminism.
It's set in Nigeria starts in asmall village where this girl
grows up and her mom passes awayand she basically gets sold to
a man into marriage because ofpoverty and machismo,
(27:39):
essentially.
And she has such a strongpersonality and such a strong
voice and this is something shesays I want to have a loud voice
.
I want people to hear my voice.
She wants to be a teacher andthe character was really built
in such a complete way.
Like you, just you can fullyimagine this character.
(28:00):
You can fully imagine talkingto her.
She's such a cool human andsuch a great spirit, and so you
know she's in this marriage.
This horrible thing happens,with somebody dying, and then
she ends up in the big cityserving at a wealthy house, and
so the book sort of shows youhow women's fates are
(28:21):
intertwined and how similar theexperiences of women can be,
even if their class is vastlyputs them in a vastly different
category of access.
I think my favorite thing aboutit was there's such a specific,
particular voice that the maincharacter has.
Yes, there is a way that shetalks.
When you're reading it I readit on paper.
(28:43):
So there's a way that she talksthat feels so particular, gives
her specificity.
She's not just anybody and Ireally love that.
I love that in writing andreading.
Good writing is when charactershave such a specificity and
such a fleshed outness andthey're so believable.
But you know if you're going toread it, just know there's a
lot of difficult themes.
(29:03):
There's violence, there's death, there's abuse, there's women
hurting other women and alsoit's a very powerful story and I
would totally read more by thiswriter.
These next few books were kindof like the wrapping up of the
year and they were all so good Iwas happy to end on a good note
.
So number 28 was the MemoryPolice by Yoko Ogawa.
(29:27):
This was recommended to me by aclient.
It's a dystopian, japanesesci-fi type of book.
You have to suspend yourdisbelief when you're reading it
.
The premise is that there'sthis small community on an
island in Japan and every sooften something disappears from
(29:47):
life, and when it disappears thepeople are expected to also let
go of that thing and forgetabout it.
It's mundane things at first,like photographs and flowers and
perfume and some foods andpeople can sort of deal, but
then things become less bearable.
It's got a really beautifulflow and a really intimate sort
(30:14):
of closeness to the maincharacter and also feeling like
you're watching a movie, likeyou're not in their head, you're
watching a movie.
It's sort of a combination ofdystopian and absurdist and I
really, really enjoyed it.
Very thought-provoking Lingerswith you for a long time
(30:37):
afterwards.
Number 29 was To Shape aDragon's Breath by Maniquil
Black Goose.
This was sent to me by a friendof mine who is a big reader and
over the last year my partnerread it after she was recovering
from her surgery and then Iread it as I was recovering from
my surgery and it's such acomforting young adult sort of
(31:00):
fantasy that has dragons in itbut also like is it the best?
Type of allegory and commentaryon society and class and
whiteness versus folks of color,in this case very specifically
Native people?
It sort of centers on this oneNative community and this one
(31:21):
Indigenous woman, and theirwhole mindset and philosophy
(31:42):
around dragon keeping and dragonnearing is completely different
from how she and her peoplehave related to dragons over the
course of millennia.
So it's kind of like a HarryPotter type of idea, except
there's no transphobia.
In fact it's the opposite.
It's an indigenous girl who isbisexual and polyamorous and
it's beautiful and so fun and Ireally, really wish Monocle
Black Goose would write anotherone, and maybe Monocle Black
(32:05):
Goose is on their way of writinganother one, maybe it's coming,
because this book came out in23,.
So I'm hoping a second one isin the works because this is
clearly marked as first in theseries.
So yay, okay.
Number 30 was the Invisible Lifeof Addie LaRue by Victoria
Schwab.
It's kind of a fantastical,really epic novel.
(32:27):
Really long I listened to thisone.
The main character is bisexualin case that makes you be more
interested.
Is bisexual in case you?
That makes you be moreinterested.
And, um, it's about this woman.
Who's this young woman who isborn to poor folks in a village,
a small village in france, andI believe it starts in the 1600s
(32:48):
and maybe the 1400s and shedoes not want the life that is
set out before her, likemarrying a man, having a child,
staying, staying in this village, not traveling, not
experiencing life.
She wants to be out there inthe world, she wants to
experience things, she wants tobe an artist, she's into drawing
and so, out of desperation, shemakes a deal with the devil to
(33:13):
have the ability to live life.
Because she makes a deal withthe devil, she doesn't really
realize what exactly she's doing, but what happens is that the
devil makes her absolutelyforgettable to anybody who meets
her and gives her immortality.
So she lives for hundreds ofyears and whenever she meets
somebody, the second they don'tsee her anymore.
(33:36):
The second she's out of theirline of sight.
They forget that she exists.
She is able to survive, likeshe can steal fairly easily,
because people don't rememberher face and don't know that she
took something.
But also she can't, um, have aplace to live and she can't have
a job.
So she can't make money and shecan't stay.
You know, she has a regularhuman body, even though it's
immortal, so she still needs tolive and she can't have a job,
so she can't make money and shecan't stay.
You know, she has a regularhuman body, even though it's
(33:58):
immortal, so she still needs toeat and she still needs to sleep
somewhere and she still needsto stay warm and those things
are really difficult to do.
But she gets to live forhundreds of years and she gets
to experience everything and shegets to.
She ends up going from place toplace in interesting ways and
it's just beautifully written.
It's beautifully written.
It's about not wanting to beforgotten, wanting to leave a
(34:21):
mark on the world, wanting tohave love, wanting to have
somebody love you truly, deeply,continuously.
Number 31, elena Ferrante is apseudonym of a writer in Italy
who grew up in Naples, and herbooks are often seemingly about
a community of kids growing uptogether in Naples.
(34:42):
It's a poor community, veryworking class.
She's extremely detailed in theway that she gets into
someone's, the main character'sthoughts.
It's like reading someone'sinnermost thoughts, their diary.
It's incredibly passionate.
There's a lot of things aboutfeelings, strong emotions.
That's sort of the confusion ofbeing a teenager growing up
without a lot of guidance, justkind of, you know, growing up
(35:05):
with your, your own self only asa resource.
And the lying life of adults byelena ferrante is was one of my
favorites of the year.
It's about that time in youryoung teenage years when you
realize that your parents arenot gods, they're not perfect,
they're just humans.
They're fallible and they areimperfect, and they did not do
(35:29):
the best job at raising you andthey made mistakes, and so it's
about that time when you, whenyou go from from believing they
are perfect and they're gods toseeing that they're not right.
After I read this, I requestedfrom the library the first book
in her neapolitan series.
(35:50):
It's a four book series Ibelieve that got into the best
books of the first quarter ofthe century.
That's how I found out abouther, about her name and about
these books is from that listthat New York Times put together
.
Okay.
And then the last book I readin 2024 was Perfume and Pain by
(36:10):
Anna Dorn, and it's a.
It's like a trashy pulp novelabout a lesbian in LA who's a
writer and she's messy and she'sinto drugs and she doesn't want
to face her own feelings or herown life and she's very judgy
and she goes after toxic womenand at the end she sort of
(36:32):
redeems herself.
But you know, in that sort ofcategory that I spoke about
earlier of bad person maincharacter and you just sort of
watch them be a bad person formost of the book and then maybe
the last few pages is them themhaving a redemption arc.
It just bores me.
I don't like.
I don't like watching badpeople be bad people.
It's just, it's boring.
(36:53):
I think there's enough of it inthe world.
I like the idea of there beingperfume content in it, since
it's called Perfume and Pain andlike, if you read the
description, it says that themain character has a perfume
collection and is obsessed withit.
I got the impression fromreading it that the writer did a
little bit of research,probably on like Reddit boards,
but isn't actually like aperfume hobbyist, not a perfume
(37:14):
obsessed person, which is what Iwas hoping for.
I feel like when you read aboutsomething and there's like a
hobby in there or some sort oflike a side quest about, you
know, creation of something like, for example, in Light from
Uncommon Stars that I spokeabout earlier by Rika Aoki,
there's like this whole theme inthe book of making of the
(37:35):
violin and violin making cultureand like the types of wood and
glue that they use and like howa violin gets put together and
made and fixed and like what isrequired.
It's like so detailed and it'sso delicious to me, like I love
a good nerd out.
So I was hoping for that inPerfume and Pain but alas I
(37:56):
didn't get enough for it to besatisfying.
And that was the last book of2024 that I read in full or
tried to start and did notfinish.
I also mentioned those as abonus, since you listened
through almost an hour of meyapping about the books I read.
I will tell you about the coupleof books that I read, since
(38:17):
it's two weeks we're two weeksinto January of 2025.
And I also got through myBrilliant Friend, which was the
first one in the Neapolitannovels by Elena Ferrante.
I really liked it, got thesecond one immediately and I'm
reading the second one.
It's about this friendshipbetween these two girls.
(38:37):
The main character is reallyobsessed with her bestie and she
talks about their friendshipfrom just having met as little
kids.
I think they're about probablyfive or six years old when they
first meet and then they'restudents together and they're
both brilliant at school.
But her friend is made to stopstudying because of the poverty
(39:00):
of her family and the maincharacter.
I guess her family is a littlebit better and she's slightly
more encouraged to study by ateacher and so she stays in
school and she observes her bestfriend and her life and how it
goes after she leaves school andit's so intimate, it's so very
intimate.
I love that obsessive, intimate, detail-oriented type of
(39:22):
writing.
You can just clearly see howthe presence of each other in
their lives really had so muchto do with how their lives went.
So I'm looking forward to seewhat else happens Now that the
girls are like late teenageyears as opposed to kids.
And then the other book Ilistened to was Black Pill how I
(39:44):
Witnessed the Darkest Cornersof the Internet, come to Life,
poison Society and CaptureAmerican Politics by L Reeve,
and this was scary andunsettling and interesting and I
kind of wanted to stop and Ididn't.
Um, I kept reading it.
Investigative journalism aboutwhat happened and what is
(40:07):
happening with the battlebetween the right and the left.
Um, that is coming out of thecorners of the internet that are
not the social media that therest of us are on.
It's about these young men whoare really into coding and
really into computers, creatingthese spaces where they outright
can breed and thrive and besupported by each other.
(40:30):
And there's kind of a lot in itand she introduces us to
various characters in that worldand lets us see how much
influence and power they havehad because of the internet with
other young men and it all sortof.
What I understood is it stemsfrom their feeling frustrated
(40:50):
with young women becomingempowered not to just settle for
any man and not to have tomarry if they don't want to.
They're lonely and they feelentitled to female attention.
I mean, this is intel culture,but this is kind of where a lot
of this alt-right stuff startedand continues to grow from.
Very interesting, scary.
(41:10):
I recommend if you'reinterested in this topic.
It was really well written.
Elle Reeve is fantastic.
And then I read this super sillylittle book called the Full
Moon Coffee Shop from a Japanesewriter, mai Mochizuki, and it's
about these different folks whoare kind of lost in their lives
(41:32):
and they don't really know whatto do next, just how to, you
know, be happier.
And they come upon a magicalcafe with talking cats that
serves them beautiful treats andshows them their paths through
astrology, and it's super cuteand very much of a departure
from my usual reading, but verycute.
(41:52):
It was a nice little break.
And that's where I'm at, uh,with all the books.
If you got through all of this,congratulations.
I am impressed, very impressed,um, and if you found some books
that you hopefully will lovealso, then my job here is done.
(42:14):
And the thing that's been makingme happy lately is I'm doing a
little bit of sewing.
I'm using a quilting sort oftechnique to create my little
bags that I like to sew.
I'm still making things for thepeople who gave me money when I
was healing from my surgery andthey'll be my little gifts to
people.
So I've given out a bunch, butI still have a lot to make.
(42:35):
That's it.
That's what's making me happylately is doing my little bits
of sewing from little quiltedsquares.
Okay, bye, thank you.
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