2024 in reading

Pictured above are four strong new poetry books I read during the time-out-of-time between Christmas and New Year’s. Television Fathers by Sylvia Jones, a former Shenandoah Editorial Fellow, stretches the boundaries of the poetic in surreal and striking ways, often by deploying ekphrasis. In Rough, there’s lots of powerful ekphrasis too, but what stays with me most is how Nathalie Anderson fashions a spikily alliterative verse as if only rough-textured language can capture her fiercen grieving for lost friends. Jennifer Martelli’s Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree also prickles with fascinatingly sharp edges, but the mood is witchier (lots of divination poems!) and the subject is often sobriety. In The Beautiful Immunity, Karen An-hwei Lee addresses a “dear universe of destroying angels”–her prayer-poems finding the times dear indeed despite pandemic, climate crisis, and a range of other catastrophes. I recommend all these collections, as I’d recommend anything on the lists below. I don’t finish books that don’t interest me. Life is short!

Reviewing a year’s reading helps me remember its moods. I didn’t finish any poetry books during National Poetry Month!–but I was deep in Shenandoah submissions. I also didn’t read many of this year’s buzziest collections, although the ones I did read were excellent–as were so many of the small and micro press books I did spend time with. In fiction I very much enjoyed big new books by Link, Erdrich, and others, but I also read toward the Scotland trip and binged on series, notably by Le Guin and Christie. I fell head-over-heels with Martha Wells’ Murderbot books. My nonfiction list isn’t long, but that’s because I often read parts of books strategically or focus on short forms (articles, journalism). You can spot a summer dip into Dylanology, though, as I worked on a commissioned essay. I like the new Dylan movie, by the way. It’s far from perfect–see this brilliant Substack piece by Merrill Markoe on Toshi’s portrayal, for instance, and the whole thing made me wish for a Joan Baez biopic–but Timothee Chalamet’s performance is riveting, if not as compellingly weird as Cate Blanchett’s in the Haynes film years ago. It was interesting to see how and what the filmmakers fictionalized.

Not 2024 book reading, but I’d also like to call out Rod Smith’s beautiful poems in the latest Cold Mountain Review. If you haven’t had the pleasure, he’s the previous Shenandoah editor and author of many books of poetry and fiction. I just learned he died on Christmas Eve, having been ill the last few years.

Happy New Year, and may 2025 be kind to us all.

The full list of 128, with notes on how I came to each book, is below.

*=published within the last year or so, not a judgment of quality!

POETRY (47)

• 1/3 Skeets, Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers (prize win)
• 2/3 Akbar, Pilgrim Bell (colleague bringing him to campus)
• 3/2 Savage, Noncallable Debenture (fandom)
• 3/4 Beatty, The Body Wars (reread for teaching)
• 3/14 Hong, Fablesque (reread for teaching)
• 3/17 Karetnik, Inheritance with a High Error Rate* (fandom)
• 3/23 Michael, Abundance/ Diminishment* (fandom)
• 3/24 Seuss, Modern Poetry* (fandom)
• 5/12 MacDiarmid, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (friend’s rec)
• 5/23 Joseph, Recover* (fandom)
• 5/29 Yurcaba, The Pale Goth* (bought at lit festival)
• 5/29 LaFemina, After the War for Independence* (bought at lit festival)
• 5/30 Gutowski, The Familiar* (bought at lit festival)
• 5/30 LaFemina, Little Heretic (book trade)
• 5/31 Robertson, Grimoire (friend’s recommendation)
• 6/1 Wahmanholm, Meltwater* (fandom)
• 6/8 Sally Wen Mao, The Kingdom of Surfaces* (campus visit)
• 6/12 Pardlo, Spectral Evidence* (bought at lit festival)
• 7/24 Malech, Flourish (reread for research)
• 7/31 Groff, Live in Suspense* (bought at lit festival)
• 8/2 Brookshire, Love Most of You Too (bought at lit festival)
• 8/3 Duhamel, Second Story (fandom)
• 8/4 Martelli, All Things Are Born to Change Their Shapes (fandom)
• 8/5 Sears, Out of Order (bought at lit festival)
• 8/6 Cross Davis, Haint (fandom)
• 8/8 Shaw, Rust in August (local friend)
• 8/9 Caycedo-Kimura, Common Grace (Shenandoah poet—found browsing a bookstore)
• 8/13 Johnston, Dragons (found browsing at a bookstore
• 8/15 Aylor, Close Red Water (Shenandoah poet)
• 8/17 hooks, Appalachian Elegy (fandom)
• 8/19 Hembree, For Today* (Instagram inspired book trade)
• 8/25 Woolfitt, The Night the Rain Had Nowhere to Go* (fandom)
• 8/26 Barya, The Animals of My Earth School* (fandom)
• 9/1 Igloria, Caulbearer* (fandom)
• 9/15 Woolfitt, ed., Mothman Was Here (anthology I’m in)
• 10/17 Carson, Autobiography of Red* (reread for class)
• 10/27 Guess, Infodemic (traded books)
• 10/30 Smith, Life on Mars (reread for class)
• 11/3 Mao, Kingdom of Surfaces* (reread for class)
• 11/19 Gailey, Flare, Corona* (reread for class)
• 12/4 Parker, Changing Is Not Vanishing (class prep, friend’s rec)
• 12/20 Peterson, The Horse Who Bears Me Away (bought at a reading)
• 12/23 Kittrell, Let’s Sit Down, Figure This Out (bought at a reading)
• 12/25 Martelli, Psychic Party Under the Bottle Tree* (fandom)
• 12/28 Jones, Television Fathers* (Shenandoah poet)
• 12/29 Anderson, Rough* (fandom)
• 12/31 Lee, The Beautiful Immunity* (new press-mate!)

FICTION (66)

• 1/6 Diaz, Trust (reviews)
• 1/18 Christie, The Sittaford Mystery (fandom)
• 2/2 Millet, Ghost Lights (fandom)
• 2/11 Laxness, Under the Glacier (gift)
• 2/19 Christie, Mysterious Affair at Styles (fandom)
• 2/28 Link, Book of Love* (fandom)
• 2/29 Christie, Murder on the Links (fandom)
• 3/8 Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Fairies (friend’s recommendation)
• 3/14 Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands (“)
• 3/30 French, The Hunter* (fandom, but spotted review in Washington Post)
• 4/8 Livesey, The Road to Belhaven* (fandom, but spotted review in the New Yorker)
• 4/25 Le Guin, The Wizard of Earthsea (reread for teaching)
• 4/27 Le Guin, The Tombs of Atuan (reread for teaching)
• 4/28 Le Guin, The Farthest Shore (reread for teaching)
• 5/2 Le Guin, Tehanu (reread for teaching)
• 5/5 Le Guin, The Other Wind (reread for teaching)
• 5/7 Lynch, Prophet Song (work thing)
• 5/18 Robertson, The Testament of Gideon Mac (friend’s recommendation)
• 5/22 McDermid, The Mermaids Singing (friend’s recommendation)
• 5/25 McDermid, Distant Echo (“)
• 5/29 McDermid, Darker Domain (“)
• 6/2 McDermid, Skeleton Key (“)
• 6/10 McDermid, Out of Bounds (“)
• 6/22 Mc Dermid, Broken Ground (“)
• 6/24 McDermid, Still Life (“)
• 6/26 McDermid, Past Lying (“)
• 6/27 Smith, Like (“)
• 7/3 Huchu, Library of the Dead (“)
• 7/3 Barker, O Caledonia (“)
• 7/8 Huchu, Our Lady of Mysterious Ailments (“)
• 7/23 Grossman, The Bright Sword* (fandom)
• 7/30 Seckel, The Wild Hunt* (friend’s recommendation)
• 8/2 Kingfisher, A House with Good Bones* (bought at conference)
• 8/10 Harvey, Orbital* (recommended by a conference panel)
• 8/16 Leichter, Terrace Stories* (recommended by a conference panel)
• 8/21 Atkinson, One Good Turn (fandom)
• 8/25 Atkinson, When Will There Be Good News? (fandom)
• 8/27 Christie, The Man in the Brown Suit (audiobook for car drives)
• 9/2 Atkinson, Started Early, Took My Dog (fandom)
• 9/8 Atkinson, Big Sky “
• 9/12 Atkinson, Death at the Sign of the Rook “
• 9/27 Wells, The Witch King* (reviews)
• 9/28 Wells, All Systems Red (recommended by friends)
• 9/29 Wells, Artificial Conditions “
• 9/30 Wells, Rogue Protocol
• 10/3 Wells, Exit Strategy “
• 10/6 Wells, Network Effect “
• 10/9 Wells, Fugitive Telemetry “
• 10/15 Wells, System Collapse* “
• 10/25 Jones, Mongrels (reread for class)
• 10/25 Christie, The Secret of Chimneys (audiobook for travel)
• 11/4 Beagle, ed. New Voices of Fantasy (reread for class)
• 11/9 Tartt, The Secret History (recommendation from my eldest kid)
• 11/15 Christie, The Murder at the Vicarage (fandom)
• 11/19 Christie, The Body In the Library (fandom)
• 11/25 Christie, The Moving Finger (fandom)
• 12/1 Christie, A Murder Is Announced (fandom)
• 12/4 Christie, The Moving Finger (fandom)
• 12/8 Christie, They Do It With Mirrors (fandom)
• 12/15 Christie, 4.50 from Paddington (fandom)
• 12/18 Christie, The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side (fandom)
• 12/20 Christie, A Caribbean Mystery (fandom)
• 12/22 Christie, At Bertram’s Hotel (fandom)
• 12/24 Christie, Nemesis (fandom)
• 12/26 Christie, Sleeping Murder (fandom)
• 12/31 Erdrich, The Mighty Red* (fandom)

NONFICTION/ HYBRID (15)

• 1/3 Millan, Laughter at the End of the World (unpublished ms by a colleague)
• 2/1 Fodor’s Aruba (trip planning)
• 3/25 Finch and Varnes, An Exaltation of Forms (reread for teaching)
• 6/3 Duhamel and Seaton, Oyl (reread for blog)
• 6/3 Gavaler and Goldberg, Revising Reality (partly by my spouse!)
• 6/10 Alison, Meander, Spiral, Explode (friends’ recommendations)
• 6/11 Brown, An Orkney Tapestry (friends’ recommendations)
• 7/5 Hughes, Invisible Now: Bob Dylan in the 1960s (research)
• 7/11 Rotolo, A Freewheelin’ Time (research)
• 7/13 Dylan, Chronicles: Vol. I (research)
• 7/23 Malech and Smith, The American Sonnet (research)
• 9/3 Duncan, The H.D. Book (research)
• 11/15 Chesak, The Psilocybin Handbook for Women (friend’s rec)
• 11/16 Barford, Occult Experiments in the Home (friend’s rec)
• 12/22 Woolfitt, Eyes Moving Through the Dark* (fandom)