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aliendiety · 10 days ago
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2024 FAVORITE BOOKS
I thought this year I would make a post about my favorite books I read in 2024! Fiction and non-fiction, all different publishing years, and various topics, just anything I really liked! I would class some of the non-fiction as recommended instead of really "favorite", but I hope you might consider them anyway!
Summaries, in italics, are taken from the publisher or my library. Anything added after is my own comments (not every book has additional comments). The list mostly goes in reverse order of when I read them, rather than best on top. It's long so I'll put it under a readmore. I hope you find a good book here to read in 2025!
FICTION
The Book of M | Peng Shepherd
At an outdoor market in India, a man's shadow disappears. As the phenomenon spreads, those afflicted gain a strange new power but at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories. Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Then Max's shadow disappears too. She knows that the more she forgets the more dangerous she will become to Ory, and she runs away. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world.
A great use of multiple pov with everything coming together to meet up. I really thought I knew where it was going but it hit me with a twist I didn't expect (in a good way)! A great example of a sacrificial magic system, if you're into that!
She Who Became the Sun + He Who Drowned the World | Shelley Parker-Chan
In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness… In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family's eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family's clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected. When a bandit attack the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate. After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness
This one is a duology, summary is only for the first book. Historical fiction with a slight fantasy bent. I really enjoyed the gender fuckery and how masculinity is explored differently through different characters. Highly recommend!
Ring Shout, or, Hunting Ku Kluxes in the End Times | P. Djèlí Clark
In this dark fantasy historical novella that gives a supernatural twist to the Ku Klux Klan's reign of terror, The Birth of a Nation cast a spell across America, swelling the Klan's ranks and drinking deep from the darkest thoughts of white folk. All across the nation they ride, spreading fear and violence among the vulnerable. They plan to bring Hell to Earth. Standing in their way is Maryse Boudreaux and her fellow resistance fighters, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and a Harlem Hellfighter. Armed with blade, bullet, and bomb, they hunt their hunters and send the Klan's demons straight to Hell. But something awful's brewing in Macon, and the war on Hell is about to heat up. Can Maryse stop the Klan before it ends the world?
The Hanging City | Charlie N Holmberg
Lark, on the run from her abusive father, finds refuge in Cagmar, the troll city that hangs beneath a bridge. Lark has been cursed with the power to thrust fear into others, and the hostile trolls believe she will be a valuable weapon against the monsters that torment the city. Lark will do anything to make Cagmar her home, but her new role comes with one caveat: use her power against a troll and she'll be killed. Her loyalty is quickly put to the test when she draws the hatred of a powerful troll who loaths mankind. Still, she finds friendship in the city and, more surprisingly, love.
Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror
A cop begins seeing huge, blinking eyes where the headlights of cars should be that tell him who to pull over. Two freedom riders take a bus ride that leaves them stranded on a lonely road in Alabama where several unsettling somethings await them. A young girl dives into the depths of the Earth in search of the demon that killed her parents. These are just a few of the worlds of Out There Screaming, Jordan Peele's anthology of all-new horror stories by Black writers. Featuring an introduction by Peele and an all-star roster of beloved writers and new voices, Out There Screaming is a master class in horror, and-like his spine-chilling films-its stories prey on everything we think we know about our world . . . and redefine what it means to be afraid. Featuring stories by: Erin E. Adams, Violet Allen, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Maurice Broaddus, Chesya Burke, P. Djèlí Clark, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemisin, Justin C. Key, L. D. Lewis, Nnedi Okorafor, Tochi Onyebuchi, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nicole D. Sconiers, Rion Amilcar Scott, Terence Taylor, and Cadwell Turnbull
A really great short story anthology and an awesome introduction to Black horror authors!
Project Hail Mary | Andy Weir
The sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission to save both humanity and the earth, Ryland Grace is hurtled into the depths of space when he must conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. Ryland Grace has been asleep for a very, very long time. He's just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. He can't remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. Alone on this tiny ship that's been cobbled together by every government and space agency on the planet and hurled into the depths of space, it's up to him to conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And thanks to an unexpected ally, he just might have a chance.
Andy Weir is the author of The Martian and Project Hail Mary totally lives up to it! I love everything that went into the creation of the various alien species. I'm a huge fan of world building and the world building in this novel is so well done and COOL!
Annihilation | Jeff VanderMeer
Area X has claimed the lives of members of eleven expeditions. The twelfth expedition consisting of four women hopes to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.
Another great book for world building! This is the first of a trilogy, but I didn't include the sequels because I didn't like them as much. This one is by far the best, imo.
Desert Creatures | Kay Chronister
Nine-year-old Magdala and her father have been exiled from their home; they flee through the harsh landscape of the American West, searching for refuge. As violence pursues them, they join a handful of survivors on a pilgrimage to the holy city of Las Vegas, where it is said that vigilante saints reside, bright with neon power. Magdala, born with a clubfoot, is going to be healed. But when faced with the strange horrors of the Sonoran Desert, one by one the pilgrims fall victim to a hideous sickness--leaving Magdala to fend for herself. After surviving for seven years on her own, Magdala is tired of waiting for her miracle. Magdala turns her gaze to Las Vegas once more, and this time, nothing will stop her. She recruits an exiled Vegas priest at gunpoint to serve as her guide, and the pair form a fragile alliance as they navigate the darkest and strangest reaches of the desert, on a journey that takes her further from salvation even as she nears the holy city. With ferocious imagination and poetic precision, Desert Creatures is a story of endurance at the expense of redemption. What compromise does survival require of a woman--and can she ever unlearn the instincts that have kept her alive?
Moon of the Crusted Snow | Waubgeshig Rice
With winter looming, a small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark. Cut off, people become passive and confused. Panic builds as the food supply dwindles. While the band council and a pocket of community members struggle to maintain order, an unexpected visitor arrives, escaping the crumbling society to the south. Soon after, others follow. The community leadership loses its grip on power as the visitors manipulate the tired and hungry to take control of the reserve. Tensions rise and, as the months pass, so does the death toll due to sickness and despair. Frustrated by the building chaos, a group of young friends and their families turn to the land and Anishinaabe tradition in hopes of helping their community thrive again. Guided through the chaos by an unlikely leader named Evan Whitesky, they endeavor to restore order while grappling with a grave decision.
I've seen this described as post-apocalyptic but tbh it's mid-apocalyptic. iirc, we never find out exactly what is happening, which can sometimes be aggravating for me (because I want to know everything lol) but it was so well written that it really didn't seem like something I needed to know. There is a sequel that was published sometime after I read it in January! I felt this had such a good ending that a sequel isn't needed, but I'm going to give it a shot and hopefully the sequel will end up on my list next year!
The Disabled Tyrant’s Beloved Pet Fish: Canji Baojun De Zhangxin Yu Chong | Xue Shan Fei Hu
When Li Yu falls asleep reading a webnovel about a ruthless, mute tyrant falling in love with a dainty male concubine, he doesn’t expect to wake up inside the world of the novel—especially not as a fish!
Li Yu soon finds himself adopted as Prince Jing's pet carp, tasked by a less-than-helpful Magic System with preventing the prince from becoming a cruel tyrant. If he can accomplish this mission, Li Yu will regain his human form. Yet how can he succeed from inside a fish bowl?!
I love this series sooooo much! It's super cute! I read the fan translation twice, and now it has an official English translation. It's a BL, and since this is a joke that apparently a lot of people take seriously, they do not fuck while Li Yu is a fish, but it is a joke that in universe people think they do! The first three volumes are out and the last will be released this year.
NON-FICTION
The Dressmakers of Auschwitz: the True Story of the Women Who Sewed to Survive | Ludy Adlington
At the height of the Holocaust, young inmates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp-- mainly Jewish women and girls-- were selected to design, cut, and sew beautiful fashions in a dedicated salon for elite Nazi women. Called the Upper Tailoring Studio, it was established by the camp commandant's wife and patronized by the wives of SS guards and officers. Adlington follows the fates of these women. While exposing the greed, cruelty, and hypocrisy of the Third Reich, she shows how the women of the Studio played their part in camp resistance, providing a fresh look at a little-known chapter of history.
This one I finished just in time to add to the list! It's really interesting. There wasn't as much about the dress workshop as I maybe would've liked, but the book covers the life of a lot of the dressmakers, inside and outside of Auschwitz, as well as how fashion and aesthetic were used by the Nazis. Super fascinating, some great quotes, and really relevant to today. Obviously, be careful with the subject matter. She doesn't shy away from talking about what happened in Auschwitz.
Boy-wives and Female Husbands: Studies in African Homosexualies
A significant contribution to anthropology, history, and gender studies that reveals the denials of homosexuality in traditional and contemporary African societies to be rooted in colonialist ideologies. Among the many myths created about Africa, the claim that homosexuality and gender diversity are absent or incidental is one of the oldest and most enduring. Historians, anthropologists, and many contemporary Africans alike have denied or overlooked African same-sex patterns or claimed that such patterns were introduced by Europeans or Arabs. In fact, same-sex love and nonbinary genders were and are widespread in Africa. Boy-Wives and Female Husbands documents the presence of this diversity in some fifty societies in every region of the continent south of the Sahara. Essays by scholars from a variety of disciplines explore institutionalized marriages between women, same-sex relations between men and boys in colonial work settings, mixed gender roles in east and west Africa, and the emergence of LGBTQ activism in South Africa, which became the first nation in the world to constitutionally ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. Also included are oral histories, folklore, and translations of early ethnographic reports by German and French observers. Boy-Wives and Female Husbands was the first serious study of same-sex sexuality and gender diversity in Africa, and this edition includes a new foreword by Marc Epprecht that underscores the significance of the book for a new generation of African scholars, as well as reflections on the book's genesis by the late Stephen O. Murray.
This was such and interesting and insightful book, and I really think Western queers should learn about queerness in other places and how it differs socially, to help combat the idea that there is a single correct way to do queerness and everything else is actively harmful. Originally published in 1998, I read a second edition published in 2021, which had a few more essays.
Debt: the First 5,000 Years | David Graeber
Before there was money, there was debt. Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems--to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There's not a shred of evidence to support it. Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods - that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors. Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like guilt, sin, and redemption) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it
One of my absolute favorites on this whole list. David Graeber is by far my favorite academic writer. He had an amazing ability to lead you by the hand from "common knowledge" to what the evidence actually shows without making you feel looked down on, and absolutely blowing your worldview in the meantime. This book covers the history of money and debt systems in large chunks, and ends with stating that we're at the beginning of a new monetary system. Strongly recommend!!
The Palestinian Labratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World | Antony Loewenstein
Bestselling journalist Antony Loewenstein uncovers a hidden world in a global investigation, drawing on secret documents, revealing interviews, and on-the-ground reporting. He shows how Palestine became the perfect laboratory for the Israeli military-techno complex: surveillance, home demolitions, indefinite incarceration, and brutality of the hi-tech tools of the "Start-up Nation."
Voices of Witness
No official summary here, Voices of Witness is a series or collection of oral histories from peope from different areas experiencing extreme hardship and prejudice. It's an excellent way to just familiarize yourself with how things actually affect humans instead of just dry facts. The ones I read this year were Underground America: Narratives of Undocumented Lives, Out of Exile: The Abducted and Displaced People of Sudan, and Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life Under Occupation
Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America's Empire | Jonathan Katz
A groundbreaking journey tracing America's forgotten path to global power-and how its legacies shape our world today-told through the extraordinary life of a complicated Marine. Smedley Butler was the most celebrated warfighter of his time. Bestselling books were written about him. Hollywood adored him. Wherever the flag went, "The Fighting Quaker" went-serving in nearly every major overseas conflict from the Spanish War of 1898 until the eve of World War II. From his first days as a 16-year-old recruit at the newly seized Guantánamo Bay, he blazed a path for empire: helping annex the Philippines and the land for the Panama Canal, leading troops in China (twice), and helping invade and occupy Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Mexico, and more. Yet in retirement, Butler turned into a warrior against war, imperialism, and big business, declaring: "I was a racketeer for capitalism." Award-winning author Jonathan Myerson Katz traveled across the world-from China to Guantánamo, the mountains of Haiti to the Panama Canal-and pored over the personal letters of Butler, his fellow Marines, and his Quaker family on Philadelphia's Main Line. Along the way, Katz shows how the consequences of the Marines' actions are still very much alive: talking politics with a Sandinista commander in Nicaragua, getting a martial arts lesson from a devotee of the Boxer Rebellion in China, and getting cast as a P.O.W. extra in a Filipino movie about their American War. Tracing a path from the first wave of U.S. overseas expansionism to the rise of fascism in the 1930s to the crises of democracy in our own time, Gangsters of Capitalism tells an urgent story about a formative era most Americans have never learned about, but that the rest of the world cannot forget
I absolutely think this needs to be required reading for US Americans
Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-ravaged Hospital | Sheri Fink
Here the author, a physician and reporter, provides a landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, and a suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice. She reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and to maintain life amid chaos. After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths. She unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, of a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing. In this book, she exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals just how ill-prepared we are in America for the impact of large-scale disasters, and how we can do better.
Although I remember Katrina happening, I honestly don't know that much about what went on beyond the surface level stuff. I was honestly stunned by this book. Interesting and horrifying. Warning for fatal ableism and fatphobia.
The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class | David Roediger
The classic history of how the identity of “white worker” came to be, and the awful results.
An enduring history of how race and class came together to mark the course of the antebellum US and our present crisis. Roediger shows that in a nation pledged to independence, but less and less able to avoid the harsh realities of wage labor, the identity of “white” came to allow many Northern workers to see themselves as having something in common with their bosses. Projecting onto enslaved people and free Blacks the preindustrial closeness to pleasure that regimented labor denied them, “white workers” consumed blackface popular culture, reshaped languages of class, and embraced racist practices on and off the job. Far from simply preserving economic advantage, white working-class racism derived its terrible force from a complex series of psychological and ideological mechanisms that reinforced stereotypes and helped to forge the very identities of white workers in opposition to Blacks. Full of insight regarding the precarious positions of not-quite-white Irish immigrants to the US and the fate of working class abolitionism, Wages of Whiteness contributes mightily and soberly to debates over the 1619 Project and critical race theory.
Profit and Punishment: How America Criminalizes the Poor in the Name of Justice | Tony Messenger
In Profit and Punishment, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist exposes the tragedy of modern-day debtors prisons, and how they destroy the lives of poor Americans swept up in a system designed to penalize the most impoverished. As a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Tony Messenger has spent years in county and municipal courthouses documenting how poor Americans are convicted of minor crimes and then saddled with exorbitant fines and fees. If they are unable to pay, they are often sent to prison, where they are then charged a pay-to-stay bill, in a cycle that soon creates a mountain of debt that can take years to pay off. These insidious penalties are used to raise money for broken local and state budgets, often overseen by for-profit companies, and it is one of the central issues of the criminal justice reform movement. In the tradition of Evicted and The New Jim Crow, Messenger has written a call to arms, shining a light on a two-tiered system invisible to most Americans. He introduces readers to three single mothers caught up in this system: living in poverty in Missouri, Georgia, and South Carolina, whose lives are upended when minor offenses become monumental financial catastrophes. As these women struggle to clear their debt and move on with their lives, readers meet the dogged civil rights advocates and lawmakers fighting by their side to create a more equitable and fair court of justice. In this remarkable feat of reporting, Tony Messenger exposes injustice that is agonizing and infuriating in its mundane cruelty, as he champions the rights and dignity of some of the most vulnerable Americans
Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories From the Transformative Justice Movement
Structural inequality is the root cause of crime; here are some strategies for accountability beyond the criminal justice system.
I felt this book is something that prison abolitionists definitely should read, as it deals with how to handle interpersonal violence that has already occurred. While I do think a lot of crime can be ended, a lot of prison abolition fully acts as though this can be done 100%. This book doesn't take that approach, and rather gives some things that can be done in the community when violence does occur. Notably, they talk about the need to keep the abuser IN the community whenever possible to allow for accountability and the possibility of rehabilitation. This book does deal with sexual assault and domestic violence.
Thanks for reading! I hope you found something to your fancy!
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lexa-griffins · 3 years ago
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Pirate Clarke/Mermaid Commander Lexa AU where Clarke's ship is wrecked at sea and she nearly drowns but is saved by a group of very very friendly mermaids who drag her to the Island of Trikru and bring her to their leader, a very unfriendly (to put it lightly) stone faced mermaid Lexa who dislikes humans but allows Clarke to be nursed back to health by her subjects as long as she makes daily efforts to find rescue and leave.
At first Clarke wants to stay because, well, a pirate's life isn't an easy one and here she's surrounded by pretty girls who really really really like her but quickly it becomes all about making the gorgeous stoned faced leader see that she's deserving of staying on her sacred island.
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