last half of 2024, pt. 2
What I read October through December
Hey pals, and welcome back to tiny book review!
Maybe I should rename this tiny book reviews since I’ve got so many to catch up on, but I think it’s too early for a rebrand. Anyways, here’s what I read in the last three months of 2024. My reading definitely tends to increase as we enter The Big Dark1 in the Pacific Northwest and 2024 was no exception.
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Let’s get into it.
Good Material by Dolly Alderton
I read Good Material in one day, split between two flights on the way home from the Midwest. It was an almost-perfect companion. Funny, lightly thoughtful but not requiring my full attention so that I could intersperse my reading time with airport-people watching (which is a truly delicious part of air travel), and compulsively readable. My only criticism is that about one third of the way through the book I found Andy tiresome and annoying. But we got through it! I’m glad I persevered (and that Andy stopped being such a self-centered prick) because it ended up being a sweet read.
3.5/5 ⭐
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
As a general rule, I have a hard time getting into any book where the only main female characters are nuns and the one-time lover of the main character who gives him a debilitating and nearly fatal illness. I have nothing against nuns. But I do have something against male authors who only write female characters within the virgin/whore dichotomy. That said, I enjoyed Cutting for Stone, despite the way Verghese used the main character’s unrequited childhood love as a plot device and the fact that the book begins with the birth of the main character Marion and his twin brother Shiva, but they aren’t born born until almost page 100. I seriously considered giving up after that, but I’m glad I didn’t. I’m a sucker for a book set in a historical landscape that I know virtually nothing about, and 1960s Addis Ababa was really doing it for me this October.
3/5 ⭐
Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss
A nearly perfect book. 152 spooky, prescient, immersive pages. I have profound respect for authors who wield brevity to devastating effect, and Moss’s linguistic economy was masterful. Out of all the books I read in 2024, this is one of the novels that I still think about most frequently. Someone, please read this so we can talk about it.
4.5/5 ⭐
Byzantium by Stephen Lawhead
An extremely 90’s novel about a Celtic monk traveling to Constantinople to deliver the Holy Roman Emperor the Book of Kells. He gets waylaid and adventure ensues. Excellent bildungsroman that treats the spiritual with the same sincerity as the material. My main gripe is that it was written in the first person which felt distracting at times. Nothing earth- or genre-shattering, but deeply enjoyable nonetheless!
3.5/5 ⭐
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
I’m willing to admit that I am a celebrity book club hater by choice2, and I read this despite the fact that it was endorsed by Good Morning America. But even a broken clock is right twice a day and this book ruled, I’m happy to report. If science fiction is a spectrum from “hard science” (e.g. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy) to “vibes only” (e.g. Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven) this is much more “vibes” side of the spectrum. Put succinctly, this is a time-traveling love story, but not in the mopey, tear-jerking Time Traveler’s Wife kind of way. It’s a witty, smart, cosmic exploration of colonialism and power and if love has the power to overcome the tacit evil of government bureaucracy to change the future.
4/5 ⭐
On the Incarnation by Saint Athanasius of Alexandria
It feels bad to rate a theological classic like On The Incarnation on a 5-star scale, but I’m going to do it anyway. I read this in preparation for Advent and the several Advent sermons I was slated to give in December, and boy howdy, they don’t make them3 like they used to. If you’re a person of faith and have at least a passing tolerance for paragraph-long sentences, this is a must-read.
But really, all jokes aside, this small but extremely dense text blessed me immensely in the lead-up to Christmas. What a gift to receive Athanasius’s wisdom as I was preparing to preach on the Incarnation.
5/5⭐
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe
I would read Patrick Radden Keefe describe paint drying. This book is a work of nonfiction, but Radden Keefe’s meticulous research and writing style make it read like a propulsive crime-thriller. As stated before, I love a book that transports me to another place and time, and wow Say Nothing delivered. A journalistic feat.
5/5 ⭐
Fireborne by Rosaria Munda
I’m feeling brave, so I’m going to say it: this is a better version of Fourth Wing. Someone has to tell the truth, and the truth is that if you’re going to read about child soldiers falling in love and learning how to fly the dragon they’re magically connected to while fighting their militario-fascist government, Fireborne is significantly more politically interesting and well written than Fourth Wing. Munda credits Plato’s Republic and the effects of the Bolshevik revolution on Russian society as inspirations for the novel. Yarros was inspired to write Fourth Wing by *checks notes* the United States Military. I will say that Fireborne is YA, so it’s less, shall we say, explicit than Fourth Wing. But what it lacks in problematic sexcapades it makes up for in small details like plot, character development, etc. My only gripe is that my local library doesn’t have the next two books in the trilogy, so I am agonizing over whether I want to spend 30 of my hard-earned dollars to find out what happens next. If you own these, please lend them to me!
4/5 ⭐
The Library Book by Susan Orlean
Ostensibly this book is about the fire that burned down the Los Angeles Central Library on April 29, 1986. But it’s really a paean to libraries as a whole hidden in a book specifically about the LA Public Library System. Obviously, I loved it. Orlean has a fabulous vocabulary and her ability to capture the distinct experience of being inside a library was rapturous.
“It seems simple to define what a library is—namely, it is a storeroom of books. But the more time I spent at Central [Library], the more I realized that a library is an intricate machine, a contraption of whirring gears. There were days when I came to the library and planted myself near the center of the main corridor and simply watched the whirl and throb of the place. Sometimes people ambled by, with no apparent destination. Some people marched crisply, full of purpose. Many were alone, some were in pairs; occasionally they traveled in a gaggle. People think that libraries are quiet, but they really aren't. They rumble with voices and footsteps and a whole orchestral range of book-related noises—the snap of covers clapping shut; the breathy whisk of pages fanning open; the distinctive thunk of one book being stacked on another; the grumble of book carts in the corridors.”
― Susan Orlean, The Library Book
4.5/5 ⭐
The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent
I said in my introduction newsletter that there would be no genre-snobbery in this newsletter, and I stand by that, so I am going to fully own that I gleefully devoured this book and have already started the sequel. But I also have to be honest; was it well-written? Not particularly. Is the cover art completely inscrutable and looks like it was put together with bad Photoshop? 100%. Could I sniff out the love interest based on the first sentence that was about him? Yes. Was the protagonist kind of annoying and suffering from a severe case of not-like-other-girls-itis? Also yes. Did I absolutely love the twist at the end and I am ride-or-die for Oraya and Raihn’s love story? You bet your behind I am. I will not be shamed!
3/5 ⭐
There we have it, folks! A truly rangy and multifarious end-of-2024 reading list. What was your favorite or most impactful read of 2024?
Also known as the end of Daylight Savings time.
I think it’s profoundly weird that in America we expect people who are known primarily for being beautiful to be intellectual and/or literary tastemakers, but I digress.
theological treatises
You make me want to read more. I love reading your reviews. Will be giving some of these a go!