A Moment Like This
Our favourite books and literary moments of 2024
Sebastian Castillo, author of SALMON and Fresh Green Life
Favorite book: The Queen's Ball by Copi. You could say I am biased here, as this novel—first published in French in 1977—was translated into English by my dear friend Kit Schluter (who has also done the covers of my last and forthcoming book), but this is merely a pleasant accident. It's the best novel I read this year, and in fact probably one of my favorite novels period. I read it in a daze—it is a feverish experience. I recommend this article on Copi and the book.
My favorite literary moment was briefly joining the Log Off-Island tour for its Philadelphia-Baltimore-NYC leg. Though if I had to narrow it down to a moment-moment, it would have to be when my legal representative stood in for me at the Brooklyn backyard reading and gave a rousing performance (for legal reasons I am not allowed to perform my work in the tri-state area). This legal representative happens to be named Kit Schluter—but there is no relation to the aforementioned translator-book designer-writer of the previous question.
Stacey Teague, author of Plastic:
I try to read mostly books that are written by New Zealand authors, so my book of the year is a local one. It's called Bad Archive by Flora Feltham, which is a book of essays. It's a fucking banger, a masterclass in essay-writing. Flora is incredibly generous in the way that she writes, she really brings the reader into her life and gives you the juicy details we all desire. I cried reading it on planes, buses, in the break room at work... It floored me. Read this book! You can buy the paperback or ebook here.
I suppose I should say that the highlight was releasing my second book of poems, Plastic. I'm really proud of it! I had two friends launch it at a bookshop here in Wellington and afterwards we went for dinner and then karaoke, as is tradition for Wellington writers. The celebration of a book coming into the world after you've spent so long labouring over it is quite joyful and emotional, but it's also a weird and complicated feeling. At the launch I just read from my acknowledgements page, then read one poem and I was like okay I'm good. The previous night I had stayed up way too late making Palestine badges to give out to people while they got their book signed. It's overwhelming being in a room full of your friends and people who wish you well. Launches are good! You can read my launch speeches here. Also available in paperback and ebook here :)
Aidan Ryan, author of I AM HERE YOU ARE NOT I LOVE YOU:
I was researching a lot of this past year, reading mostly nonfiction, so maybe that's why two of the novels I read stand out now. Catherine Lacey's Biography of X is the account of CM Lucca, a journalist coming out of a kind of retirement to try to piece together a life-story of her late wife, the enigmatic visual and performance artist X. I loved the weird world-building in this book, as Lacey takes us on a tour through an alternative America where the south had fallen under the control of a repressive and economically dysfunctional theocracy before being haltingly reintegrated with the north. The propulsive force of the book (I wouldn't exactly call it a plot), Lucca's quest-to-understand, allows Lacey to explore questions of writing the self, unwriting the self, traditional biography, and maybe even what Flann O'Brien would have called aesthoautogamy. I also caught up with Paul Lynch's Prophet Song. The novel has a katabatic energy and a kind of Steinbeckian desperation, on the knife edge of determination and despair. It follows a family trying to stay together and get to safety as Ireland falls to fascism. I think it's a great example of how to write of and from a time without producing something strictly documentary that will feel as dated as a news clipping in a few years. (At least, I think so; we'll have to see.) And it's a book that makes you feel.
My favorite literary experience this year was working (for the first time) with a proofreader and fact-checker. My publisher assigned my book to someone who happened to know (a lot more than me) about some of the subjects I had addressed, including Fluxus and the music of John Cage. He was generously permissive of my mannerisms (the book may set a record for em-dashes per page) while sharing observations and suggestions for new avenues for research that I was able to follow before the book (much improved) went to print. I feel so lucky.
Sennah Yee, editor of In The Mood Magazine:
I loved reading Mall Water by Jenna Jaco! Ever since they submitted their What Not To Wear poem to In The Mood magazine (shameless plug lol), I've been hooked. Jenna's words perfectly capture what it's like to wander around this dying mall of a modern world - makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time, in the best way. A brilliant debut!
Metatron Press' 10-year anniversary reading in Montreal was pure magic. Not to be dramatic, but they've changed the lives of so many, mine included! Getting to read and hear writing old and new, from friends old and new, was so emotional. I was buzzing for days after! All my love and thanks to Ashley and the Metatron family <3
Tracy Dimond, author of Emotion Industry:
One of my favorite moments was the Shabby Doll House tour stop in the Hidden Palace Reading Series in Baltimore. Log Off & The Island are such lively books. It is so special to see people I wouldn't normally get to see when they go on tour.
One of my favorite ongoing moments is cheering on all the writers also on Strava now - we're creative & we move :)
Nadia de Vries, author of THISTLE:
Favorite book this year: I recently read Thank You For Everything by Nell Osborne (Monitor, 2024) and really loved it. Nell has a precise poetic voice that at times is very funny, yet also has a touch of mystery. Her work creates a sense of unease, in the way most good writing does. If you like the work of Chelsey Minnis, Selima Hill and Tara Bergin, you'll enjoy Thank You For Everything as well. The pamphlet also comes with a poetry IQ test, which is fun to fill out with friends at parties.
Favorite literary moment: There were many, but my favorite ~surprise~ literary moment was when I traveled to London for work in October and saw Sam Riviere was hosting a reading on one of the nights I was in town. It was the launch event for Daniel Feinberg's Some Sun, which Sam had just published with his own If a Leaf Falls Press, and some of my favorite London writers were reading: Hannah Regel, Habib William Kherbek and Poppy Cockburn. Crispin Best (another favorite London writer) was there as well. After the reading we all went to the Manor Snooker Club in Stoke Newington. I'd never played snooker before but (or perhaps: and so) I had the time of my life.
And of course the Shabby Doll House London reading at The Bell!!
Jonathan Lyon, author of Carnivore:
My favourite book this year was The Collected Poems of Cavafy - a greek poet wandering the streets of Alexandria for most of his life (1863-1933), yearning and fantasising.
My favourite literary moment was reading at the Shabby Doll House event in Berlin!
Lucy K Shaw, editor of Shabby Doll House:
I think I may be biased but I will recommend the book I’m reading right now, which is Fresh Green Life by Sebastian Castillo. It comes out in April from Soft Skull. And I will also recommend The Island by Oscar d’Artois, which I read for the first time, in its final, final form, early this year. Bringing that book together while training for a marathon felt like doing two marathons, or maybe a marathon on ice. In hindsight, I loved it.
As for my favourite literary moment, obviously I have had so many this year, and I feel particularly lucky because of that. One thing that has made me really happy has been planning and running the Zine Writing Club, spending time with so many writers and helping them build up a body of work. That has felt immeasurably valuable and fun. I love that being a part of my life, and I love making it a part of other people’s lives too.
And then, outside of the computer, I have planned two book tours with readings in six different countries and invited so many writers to read with us, invited so many people to hang out and listen and interact with the work. It’s overwhelming to think about. If I have to pick a favourite event, I’ll say the reading in Lisbon in February, because it was the first event we did with Kristen reading from Log Off, and Oscar reading from The Island. And we literally announced it on the Tuesday, as a joke, and then hosted the event, for real, on the Friday. It was the first time Beef Gordon performed as part of a Shabby Doll House reading. And it just gave us a real boost of confidence. It showed us that the books worked together in a performance setting and that we had a great show on our hands. When I think about how focused and driven we were back then, I really can’t believe it. I’m grateful to Kristen, Oscar, Phil, Francisca, Pete and Wally for making that beautiful moment in our lives real.
Francisca Matos, author of HARD SUMMER:
Of course, I would recommend all of the Shabby Doll House titles but since everyone in the newsletter has most likely already read them and recommends them too, I'm going to go with Mary Robison's Why Did I Ever, which came out many years ago. I finish reading it on my birthday at the beach. I remember sitting in silence afterwards, watching my friends do whatever they were doing, feeling very glad about it. This book is alive and desperate. I mean it's so funny and lowkey deeply hopeful too. I think it's a book that can forgive.
My favorite literary event was our fake reading and the week leading up to it, famously documented in The Lisbon Conferences zine. It was a hugely successful event that made our new place feel more real too, more possible. I also want to mention the Zine club, especially when I interviewed my friend Gilad for one of the weekly assignments. It ended up being a very important thing to me. Again, it's just something you can do at any point. But it helps to be in a club where you share your writing and get to know everyone through their weekly pieces. It opens a sort of portal.
Jeni Pirtle, author of a forthcoming memoir I can’t wait to read:
I read Hua Hsu's Stay True this year. There's a lot I could say about it, but what's lingering most right now for me is the relationship between art and friendship - the way that listening to a really great song is even better when you're listening with friends; the way that you become better friends listening together. And the ways that art can help you try and chisel out meaning from inexplicable losses like the one at the heart of Stay True.
Related: My favorite literary moment this year has been making a new friend in Editing Club that I write with every Sunday! It's a ritual that I look forward to every week now, because it feels good to write and make things with friends.
Graham Irvin, author of I have a gun:
One of my favorite reads of this year was the poetry collection Relief of My Symptoms by Kevin Chesser. Kevin channels Russell Edson and Joy Williams and Lydia Davis in these prose poems, but they are wholly his own vision and voice. Whenever I want to show someone that a poem can do anything, go anywhere, I show them Relief of My Symptoms.
In April of this year, for Theo Thimo’s book launch, I read at the Sugar Hill Supper Club in Brooklyn. A portion of my reading was recorded and featured on a SoundCloud mix by Cube. He releases these collages of street noise, readings, live music intermittently in conjuncture with a print magazine Baited Area. The magazine is beautiful. Great interviews and fiction. And Cube’s music is amazing. I feel lucky to have found something to read and listen to this year via the literary world.
Yvonne Lin, scholar of modern Chinese literature and contributing translator to Log Off:
Mating by Norman Rush. This was actually the first book I finished this year, which I started in 2023. I admit my interest was piqued by all the trend pieces that came out about it, and I gotta say I think the hype is justified. I really loved the neologism of the idioverse to describe the shared language that grows between people who make their lives together over a period of time, the way that it makes language sound like an ecosystem that sustains and begets life.
Is it teacher's pet behavior to say I loved zine writing club? I tried to think of a particular moment, but I think what I loved was having writing be a structured part of my week and looking forward to reading everyone else's pieces each week. It was great!
Claire Foster, writer, translator, bookseller & events coordinator at Type Books:
Aruna D'Souza's Imperfect Solidarities (Floating Opera Press) sounded out a lot of good, smart thinking around the notion of empathy in ways I'd been stammering towards, but stopping short of, all year. Some others, because as a bookseller I can never recommend just one book: Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks (for a book to begin with a chapter called "Description of Maud Martha" [!!!]), The Cellist by Jennifer Aitkins (for what it gave me to think about in terms about performance and translation), and Paul Yamazaki's Reading the Room.
As the manager + events coordinator of Type Books, an independent bookstore in Toronto, I get to be part of so many moments. And one of my greatest pleasures of this job is interviewing and being in public conversation with authors about the experience of reading and thinking through their new books. I'm so proud, too, to be in relation to such a vibrant community of Toronto readers who want to come out to events for non-local authors. Indeed: some of the very best --- in terms of audience turnout, engagement, and the energy level of the room --- events this year were for authors who live in different cities and countries, many of whom write in languages other than English: What is Mine by José Henrique Bortoluci (translated from the Portuguese by Rahul Bery, Fitzcarraldo Editions), An Earthquake is a Shaking of the Surface of the Earth by Anna Moschovakis (Soft Skull), What Kingdom by Fine råbøl (translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken, Archipelago Books). One of my very last events this year was for Sound Museum: A Theory Fiction by poupeh missaghi (Coffee House Press), and the bookstore was packed to the gills. poupeh also concluded the event by opening up her reading to the room: each audience member, if they wanted to, was asked to read a sentence and pass it to the next person: this moment enabled the movement of language into sound, and the transformation of reading into collaborating.
Tyler Burn, host of the Lo Fi Lit podcast:
Victor Luckerson : Built from the Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District
(This book read like a novel. I enjoyed it. I don’t read many history books. I recommend it if y'all like that kind of thing. It canvasses an entire hundred years of this one place. Not just the riots. Follows a bunch of families before and after the events. Real good shit.)
Literary moment : I was stuck in Philly for an extra day. I stayed in Austin Islam’s tiny apartment all day and read an entire book called ‘The Highly Sensitive Person’. I thought it’d be stupid. But it was surprisingly good? Yeah, I was in Philly for four – five days. Met a lot of cool folks. But yeah, like my favorite moment was me in someone else’s bed reading one of their books lol)
Stevie Belchak, poet and writer of Mother Of
Leslie Jamison's Splinters: In the first 6-8 months postpartum, I was really struggling, and read Splinters, which is about Jamison's divorce but is also a love letter to her daughter in so many ways. The way she writes to sweetness, made me decide to write exuberance, even JOY (when I could muster it), and it showed me the ways sweetness and joy, even in their simplest forms, can feel alive, unexpected, and moving, that the most universal experience can feel singular. This line got me: "She knew the mama circles was bigger than the baby, and the baby circle was bigger than the mama, too."
Anne de Marcken's It Lasts Forever and Then Its Over: This living dead novel upends all Zombie novels. It's funny, heartwrenching, and captures loss in its many forms (physical loss of body parts, longing for what is lost). From filling bodily holes (with a living crow!) to losing limbs, from searching endlessly for the beach, water, the West, "home," to being caught and hung upside down for days, months, seasons on end, the nameless speaker's movement through the landscape is relentlessly strange and beautiful. I read it in three days.
Writing I'm On Fire, which started as a seed in Zine Club and was shared via my Substack Mother Of. Sharing my writing, for free, with those that know it well and enjoy it has been rewarding.
Liz Bowen, author of Compassion Fountain
The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas. I don’t want to say too much about it because it is a sacred little object and it should speak for itself. But, loosely, this is a novella by a very prominent Norwegian writer who hasn’t been widely translated into or read in English, and it tells the story of two young girls who are spellbound by each other and by the nightmarishly magical Scandinavian winter landscape they inhabit. It does contain a literal ice palace. It is brutally gorgeous and spare and left me transformed.
Hosting Shabby Doll + Beef Gordon at SEEMINGLY MATURE / poetry getting me in trouble with the neighbors once again
Tyler Dempsey, host of Another Fucking Writing Podcast
Think my favorite book from the year was "Ripcord" by Nate Lippens. Out through Semiotext(e). It has a combination of stunning prose, aphorism, and loneliness, that exist in most of my favorite writing. Like William T Vollmann, if Bill were a little more connected to the beating heart of society.
The new friends I've made through the pod. There aren't many opportunities for in-person moments when you live in rural-Utah and can't telework, so I'm grateful for the connections the internet affords me.
Adelaide Faith, author of Happiness Forever
One of the books I was most amazed at this year is one my boy friend recommended me 30 years ago and I finally read it, Henry Miller Tropic of Capricorn. I underlined lots, there was lots of clarity.
I was against life, on principle. What principle? The principle of futility. Everybody around me was struggling. I myself never made an effort.
Whoever, through too great love, which is monstrous after all, dies of his misery, is born again to know neither love nor hate, but to enjoy. And this joy of living, because it is unnaturally acquired, is a poison which eventually vitiates the whole world.
A best literary moment was taking my daughter and dog to London to see Sheila Heti
.... Nothing will top that I don't think!
Kristen Felicetti, author of Log Off
For the past few weeks, I had been struggling to get back into reading, and then I picked up an ARC of Shelby Hinte's debut novel HOWLING WOMEN (which comes out in April next year), and the voice gripped me from page 1 until the end of its tour-de-force 200 pages. This book rules, and it has everything I like in a story—vivid characters, a great setting in a New Mexico desert town, honest sentiment without a hint of sentimentality, and again, a really great voice. Plus, it's part revenge tale; how can you resist that?
Is it cheating to say the fifteen Shabby Doll House events Oscar, Lucy, and I did for The Island and Log Off this year? But seriously, my favorite part was having other readers join us for almost all of those events. Thank you to the more than 60 people who read or performed and the many more who helped make those events a success. It really does feel like one large weird family, a community, a moment, and I feel so grateful to be part of it.
Oscar d’Artois, author of The Island
2024 was a pretty solid reading year for me, because I read a lot of good books, but I'd say the poetry book I most enjoyed was probably Ana Carrete's Blush & Blink. I liked its wry ex catholic school girl at Denny's flirtatiousness, its misleading simplicity, how it poses for you then drags you down. I felt it had, like my book, this sort of "vampire slut" vibe that I loved & felt a lot of kinship with. As for my favorite prose book, it was probably Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story, for the accuracy with which it portrayed a dawning teen awareness of homosexuality, despite being about the US in the 50s, as well as Kristen Felicetti's Log Off, for the relatability with which it depicted coming of age in the exciting and confusing years of the dawn of the internet.
I mean, again, I had a lot of literary moments, most of which are probably a little self-centered since they're basically all the readings we did as part of our big tour to launch my and Kristen's new books, but if I had to pick one, I guess it would have to be our New York event, because we had it in my bff's backyard, and we got such a great crowd with so many friends, and it was a chilling & grilling party type thing, and also because it felt, maybe, the most like a 'homecoming.' Having said that, I really loved a lot of the other ones too!
Mike Young, poet, songwriter & lead singer of Clementine Was Right:
Over the last couple years, I seem to remember my dreams less. Do I have less dreams? Jury's out, but last night I was wondering if this dream lull has anything to do with a fiction dip in my reading life, a turn especially potent this year. Most of the books I read this year were a weird mix of anarchist anthropology, political science, craft, code, what-is-to-come-of-us shit. Is this just getting older?
I don't have kids, but I do have friends in their early 20s. Several of them play the bass well, but I'm thinking of one who plays the bass, like, really fucking well. He dropped out of college because the world is doomed. I can't blame him! Whenever he comes on tour with us, he enjoys the redwoods and the oceans more than anyone. He does so quietly; you can see something memorializing in his immersion. He is overwhelmed by Buccee's. You'll think he wasn't paying attention, and then he will post a collage on his Instagram story of all the moments from last week, always the right ones. What will happen to him when he can't sleep in the van so easy? I guess I've always thought a little about building systems to help good life stick around and reach more people, but these days I think almost completely about such things.
In the manner of wistful assholes everywhere, I have been keeping a list of essays I want to write, and one of them is: "essay about a love of bewilderment turning into a love of systems thinking." Here are some others: "essay about delusional scrappiness." Essay about how I love it when a change to a truth in the world becomes a change to the source of that truth. Moose in a suburban lawn. The smell of avocado oil in a cast iron pan. Essay about how true creativity means starting over every time. Essay about how one thing poetry can be is the process of cataloging flares.
My favorite book this year is probably going to be Lifehouse by Adam Greenfield. It's on its way. I read about it in a so-so book called Culture is Not an Industry, which had a great sense of things but was fuzzy on the insteads. You can read about the idea of lifehouses here, but basically the book is about practical schemes for centers of local resilience. In neighborhoods, in small towns. I mean, I hope it's about that. I will tell you if I remember it, or if I lose it to my dreams.
My favorite literary moment was probably traveling all around New Mexico with my friend Raashan to meet people and figure out how to make creative life more of a livelihood. The state of New Mexico paid me to do this, but I have less and less faith in the state of New Mexico to actually help. I already had none! So you can imagine what I have now. But it was such an incredible experience that of course I want to write a real book about it. (Not just a "plan").
It also spurred me to really start de-fuzzing an idea I've been kicking around since my last big solo poetry and music tour in 2019. What I would love to do is visit many people I know and ask them how they're doing life right now. Especially if they're writers, artists, musicians, etc. And especially if they're my age or older, and if they've ended up in schemes that feel adjacent or "beyond" how we might've met, where our idea of life was doing readings, going to bars, maybe getting a teaching job. I'm thinking of Adam and Amy's Snowfort in Westport. My friends who run libraries, make spoons, fight oil companies in court, run branding for the food they put on airplanes. That kind of shit. What I'm hoping to collage, like a young bass player, is a theory about the civic role of the artist. I don't believe artists are special. But what are they instead? It's just a dream I'm waiting to remember.
Thank you to everybody to who contributed to this list of recommendations and moments! Thank you to everybody for reading! I hope you have some new ideas for what you want to read next. I hope you have a happy holiday time. See you in 2025.
What are you doing on New Year’s Day?
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