Books read in 2024

I still haven't figured out what's going on with accent marks when I upload html pages, so please forgive the errors in the Portuguese entries below. 2024 was a shitty year in most ways, and I didn't read quite as much as usual. I also read a lot more fiction, I think, which seems emblematic of my situation.

January

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Philip K. Dick (reread) (1.13.24)
This made a much greater impression the second time; I barely remember the first time I read it. Heavy, unsettling stuff.

Mind of My Mind, Octavia Butler (1.25.24)
While this addressed some important themes in a broadly interesting way, it was hampered by a dull plot and flat characters. One reason it didn't do much for me is because I don't find telepathy all that compelling: I didn't care much for it in Silverberg's "Dying Inside," which was a better book in many ways, and here it's even less appealing.

The Life and Zen Haiku Poetry of Santoka Taneda, Oyama Sumita (William Scott Wilson, trans.) (12.29.24)
I've been a big fan of Taneda Santoka's poetry for years now, and this biography, which I read a few pages at a time before bed, added greatly to my appreciation. I like the translation- not just of the biography, but the haiku themselves- though I'm still partial to Burton Watson's versions in "For All My Walking."

February

Tropic of Kansas, Christopher Brown (2.17.24)
Found this at Kaboom and bought it on the strength of the William Gibson and Cory Doctorow blurbs. Not bad at all. I was struck by how the politics of some of the characters, and the overall ethos of most of the protagonists, would have appealed to me a lot more 15-20 years ago.

The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene Victor Debs, Ray Ginger (2.26.24)
I loved this book. As a socialist, it was somewhat embarrassing that I knew nothing about Eugene Debs, which is why I read this. Ginger's account gives me a deep appreciation not only of the subjectand then not only for his politics, but as a personbut the art of biography. An extremely worthwhile read.

March

The Hammer: Power, Inequality, and the Struggle for the Soul of Labor, Hamilton Nolan (3.3.24)
I've been a huge fan of Nolan's for a while, so I've been looking forward to this. I'm gonna try to get some non-labor people I know to read it, if only to give them a sense of the task in which I've absorbed myself over these last couple years. It's an easy read, too; I burned through it in a couple-three days.

Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel (3.6.24)
Linda's sci-fi book club pick. I really liked this. Time travel always feels played out, but I always end up reading another time travel novel. This one did it well.

Redshirts, John Scalzi (3.17.24)
Natalia's sci-fi book club pick. Got it from the library and tore through it in three days. Similar to Sea of Tranquility, there were things about this book that in the hands of a lesser author would have made me dislike it, but Scalzi did a killer job of making it all work.

Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History Since 1917, Stephen F. Cohen (3.30.24)
I've read a lot of history over the years, but never really thought too hard about historiography or similar things. There was a lot to chew on in this book, which despite dealing with an effectively field of studySovietologyhas a lot to offer in terms of how to think about the present. It's a shame that Cohen became an apologist for Putin.

April

The Man Who Fell From the Sky, Bill Fletcher Jr. (4.11.24)
I've been reading Fletcher's writing on labor and politics for a while, and it turns out he's not a bad novelist, either. While the book needed a ton of copyediting and proofreading, I found the narrative interesting, sucker for Lusophone history and culture (in this case, Cape Verdean) that I am.

Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone, Hunter S. Thompson (4.30.24)
Selections from HST's Rolling Stone work. The stuff from the '70s, particularly the early '70s, is solid gold.

May

Labor Law for the Rank and Filer, Staughton Lynd and Daniel Gross (5.4.24)
Picked this up at Labor Notes. Useful and thought-provoking.

Fever Dream, Samantha Schweblin (Megan McDowell, trans.) (5.10.24)
Bought it at Brazos Bookstore. It wasn't as creepy as the blurbs made it out to be. I didn't really dig it.

Neon Timor, Sebastio Burnay (5.12.24)
A semi-random find on the Kindle, this is a short collection of poems about Timor-Leste written by a Portuguese poet and lawyer, and released by a Brazilian publisher. Gostei.

Anatomia dos Mrtires, Joo Tordo (5.13.24)
Um pouco mais longo do que precisava ser mas, no entanto, uma leitura valiosa. O tema de Catarina Eufmia, a camponesa assassinada pela polcia e depois transformada em mrtir pelo Partido Comunista Portugus, foi o motivo inicial para ler este livro, e no final aproveitei do narrativo como um todo. Recomendado.

Rainbow Black, Maggie Thrash (5.21.24)
Bought this when I bought Fever Dream. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach the whole time I was reading it, which sounds bad but is a testament to how well this story was told. It's nothing like The Final Girl Support Group, but the experience of reading it was kinda similar. Really, really good.

Gnomon, Nick Harkaway (5.27.24)
Tracey's sci-fi book club pick. Fascinating and compelling in many ways, tiresome and self-absorbed in others, my brother describes it well: "a bit too into itself." Take that statement on many levels, as the book would encourage you to do of itself.

Contos e Lendas de Timor-Leste, Anabela Leal de Barros (5.31.24)
Uma colectnea de, como dito na capa, contos e lendas timorenses. De fontes lingusticas variadas (o nmero de lnguas faladas em Timor-Leste incrvel), os acontecimentos destas histrias so bem invulgares e frequentamente as lendas faltam as morais que esperamos de fbulas e lendas ocidentais. Valeu muito a pena.

June

Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend, Robert W. Cherny (6.11.24)
Kinda dry, but a good study of the ILWU and its iconic leader. Both the ILWU and Bridges are fine examples of what a democratic union should look like, and how its leadership should generally be.

Between Two Fires, Christopher Buehlman (6.20.24)
I discovered this at BookPeople in Austin. A tremendous read: horrific, funny, terrible, brutal, human. Highly recommended.

Stories From Joe's Sit-Out, Bernadette Correia Afonso D'Souza (6.30.24)
A few years ago Frederick Noronha from Goa1556 had a bunch of unsold books sent to me, since I'm in the States and it wouldn't make sense to ship them back to India. This was one of them, and I recently picked it up as an antidote to, well, everything. Nice little stories about family and travel and Goa, it was a welcome change.

July

Soviet Trade Unions: Their Development in the 1970s, Blair A. Ruble (7.3.24)
I was curious about labor unions in the USSR, and found this on the Internet Archive. Pretty even-handed, and it's always interesting to see how unions in other countries, and operating under different political systems, function (or don't).

Where Was the Working Class? Revolution in Eastern Germany, Linda Fuller (7.13.24)
A study of how workers did or did not participate in the fall of the DDR and reunification of Germany, and why. Good, sober analysis, with lots of interesting stories about working life and union activity that aren't radically different than what you might hear in the US.

The Sheep Look Up, John Brunner (7.25.24)
My sci-fi book club pick, chosen because William Gibson spoke highly, in 2007 or so, of how this book portrayed a future eerily similar to our present. I didn't love it, partly because satire doesn't do a lot for me and partly because none of the characters were interesting. Still, there was a sort of Dos Passos USA Trilogy quality to it that I appreciated, and satirical hyperbole aside, Gibson wasn't totally off the mark in his assessment of the novel's vision.

August

A Coffin for Dimitrios, Eric Ambler (8.9.24)
Someone quoted this on Metafilter, and I was intrigued upon reading more about it, so I checked it out from the library. A very satisfying, intelligent book that I can totally see reading again.

Beyond the Wall: A History of East Germany, Katja Hoyer (8.27.24)
This was a pleasure to read, and embodies what a good general history should be. I like that Hoyer, who was born in the GDR, gives the now-defunct country as fair a shake as one can.

September

The Brief History of the Dead, Kevin Brockmeier (9.1.24)
I saw the title of this book in passing on Bluesky, and like A Coffin for Dimitrios, the library had it. A really tremendous read, and I'm grateful for the serendipity that lead to reading it.

Rosewater, Tade Thompson (9.18.24)
Scott's sci-fi book club pick. I enjoyed pretty much everything about it, though it dragged a bit in the middle. I don't know that I'll read the rest of the series, in part because I like the hints and glimpses provided here and don't know if I want any more explanation.
Dweller on the Threshold, Skyla Dawn Cameron (9.22.24)
I follow the author on Bluesky, and was drawn to this when she announced up front that nothing bad happens to the cats. I liked it quite a bit, and it served as a nice lead-in to the Halloween season.

Crypt of the Moon Spider, Nathan Ballingrud (9.26.24)
Jay's sci-fi book club pick. A novella, really, so it read quickly. I loved it, and for once this is a book whose sequels I will eagerly read.

October

Cinderwich, Cherie Priest (10.2.24)
A great story, read at the perfect time of year. Super atmospheric, and packs a psychological punch. Who put Ellen in the blackgum tree?

The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor LaValle (10.5.24)
An exploration of what else was going on in H.P. Lovecraft's "The Horror at Red Hook" and the racism underlying (and writ large upon) that story. A terrible tale, in the "Terrible Old Man" sense of the word.

Refuge Recovery: A Buddhist Path to Recovering from Addiction, Noah Levine (10.6.24)
Noah Levine went in a direction I don't care for, but I did like his books. I never read this one, though. I bought it because my brother went to rehab this year and found Dharma-based recovery tools more useful than things like AA, and as a Buddhist I wanted to see how the Buddha's teachings were applied to recovery. This is a very good book for applying the fundamentals of Buddhism to a practical, difficult task like overcoming addiction, and I will certainly reread it.

A Light Most Hateful, Hailey Piper (10.21.24)
One of the books I got at BookPeople. Minor quibbles about too many chase scenes aside, I enjoyed this, especially the series of plot reveals.

Living Yogacara: An Introduction to Consciousness-Only Buddhism, Tagawa Shun'ei (Charles Miller, trans.) (10.27.24)
A relatively digestible approach to a fairly minor but historically influential school of Buddhism that tries (the school's still around in Japan) to systematically lay out the components and aspects of consciousness. Lots of good stuff to chew on here, but even at this scale, the level of detail is overwhelming.

November

Ron Carey and the Teamsters: How A UPS Driver Became the Greatest Union Reformer of the Twentieth Century By Putting Members First, Ken Reiman (11.13.24)
A rank-and-file look at Ron Carey, the Teamsters president who ran on cleaning up the union and led the historic 1997 UPS strike. It could've used some editing, but was otherwise a solid read.

The Gone World, Tom Sweterlitsch (11.17.24)
Linda's sci-fi book club pick. I read a large print edition from the library; highly recommend both this book and large print in general. This was really bleak and horrifying, and reminded me of a Delta Green story.

Gateways to Abomination, Matthew M. Bartlett (11.30.24)
The title of this book, which I heard about on Bluesky, immediately recalled Morbid Angel's album Gateways to Annihilation, which was a selling point. While I liked this, it didn't quite do it for me; I think I would've liked a more grounded world and less "gory Lovecraft with goats."

December

Death in a Budapest Butterfly, Julia Buckley (12.5.24)
One of a handful of books I bought recently at Murder By the Book. A light, cozy mystery that tried very hard to convince me that Hungarian food is the best in the world. It didn't succeed (though Hungarian food is good).

Taiwan Travelogue, Yang Shuang-zi (Lin King, trans.) (12.15.24)
A wonderful book in every way. It will make you hungry and dislike colonialism at the same time. It made me want to visit Taiwan again, too.

Moby-Dick, or, The Whale, Herman Melville (12.25.24) (reread)
Probably my favorite novel. Absolutely transcendent. I finally got a Moby-Dick tattoo this year, and it may not be the last.

The Story of Bermuda and Her People, W.S. Zuill (12.26.24)
A short, slightly but pleasantly old-fashioned history of Bermuda. I read the second edition, published in the 1980s.


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