December 2024 Wrap-Up and January TBR
Plus the next Booker of the Month and Conversation Pusher picks and upcoming releases on my radar
Hi, friends.
I hope your new year is off to a great start. We were snowed in this weekend (15 inches have fallen since New Year’s Day!), so I spent a cozy day yesterday cleaning up my TBR and reading about 2025 books. And today I expected to write reviews for the books I read in December and get some things done around the house, like taking down the Christmas decorations — a little sad, but also satisfying.
Well, I did get the Christmas decorations down, but everything else went sort of off the rails. So I don’t have full reviews for you yet, but they’re coming! I’m determined to get all ten of them done by Friday. Keep an eye on Instagram as I post them throughout the month, or check the review blog periodically if you’re especially eager. For now, I’ve written a mini-review blurb for each book below.
What I Read in December
December was a race to the finish! I started the month at 89 books and was determined to hit 100, because I haven’t missed that milestone in many years. I finished my 100th book at about 10:30 PM on the 30th — just in time since we were traveling on the 31st.
But the best part is just how amazing the quality of those books were — if you read my top recs of 2024 a few days ago, you know. I prioritized titles that I’d been meaning to read for months, some nearly the whole year. They were the books that had hung out on my TBR because I just knew they’d be winners — and they seriously were. This was my best reading month in a very, very long time! Now I’m trying to figure out a sustainable way to bring that same energy into my reading every month.
Loved
The Bone Season (The Bone Season, #1) by Samantha Shannon 📖🎧: I’m kicking myself for waiting so long to read this urban fantasy that starts in London. There was a lot of worldbuilding information shoved into a few quick chapters, but I didn’t even mind because I was already having so much fun. The fifth book comes out at the end of February (there will eventually be 7 and we love a long haul), so I’ll be making my way through the next three between now and then!
Held by Anne Michaels 📖: This was a reread, but a very intentional one since I just read it the first time in October. I’m so glad I made space to read this one twice; it was beautiful the first time, but I loved peeling back even more of its layers the second time. Read this in print and don’t rush it, but don’t split your attention from it, either.
The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss† 📖🎧: Is this the equivalent of a cozy nonfiction? I had such a great time curled up on my couch with a cup of tea reading this book about bookstores by a person who loves bookstores. And I learned a lot, too — for example, I did not know that the NYC Pride parade was originally conceived by the owner of Oscar Wilde bookstore in the West Village. How cool!
There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib*† 📖🎧: This was my first Hanif, and yes, I get it now. What prose. What poetry. What a smart connection between memory, idea, and cultural criticism. Learn from my mistakes; don’t sleep on his work like I did!
How to Tell When We Will Die: On Pain, Disability, and Doom by Johanna Hedva 📖🎧: This essay collection pulls no punches. Johanna Hedva is a queer nonbinary Asian-American disabled person who’s not afraid to be gritty and pissed and smart as hell.
Abortion: Our Bodies, Their Lies, and the Truths We Use to Win by Jessica Valenti† 📖🎧: This is full of thoroughly cited facts and talking points about abortion in the US today. But more importantly, it will make you wise to anti-abortionists’ sneaky BS, of which there is an abundance. Please read it.
Liked a lot
The Voyage Home (Women of Troy, #3) by Pat Barker*† 📖🎧: This is the third book in Pat Barker’s greek retelling trilogy, which started with The Silence of the Girls. I just love her work. The audiobook edition of this one — which is about Ritsa, enslaved handmaiden of Cassandra as they journey back to Mycenae with Agamemnon, where Clytemnestra awaits — was especially well performed.
Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling by Jason De Léon† 📖🎧: This won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and I can see why. Jason De Léon is an anthropologist who spent years enmeshed into the social networks of human smugglers (those who are hired to help people cross the border, not to be confused with traffickers who steal people). This book is different from most books about border crossings in that it doesn’t focus on the migrants. But as we learn, these “soldiers and kings” are often fleeing just as much violence as those who hire them.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey* 📖: Another reread (I originally read it in March), and another where I was very glad I did.
Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal† 📖🎧: The month of smart essay collections, I guess! This one is just as good as everyone says it is.
Liked
Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst*† 📖🎧: This is a work of queer historical literary fiction that I didn’t dislike, but maybe didn’t love as much as I’d expected to. Maybe it was because it was my last book of the year and I was trying to push through, but it felt a bit longer than I thought it needed to be. But still a solid read!
*print copy gifted to me by the publisher
†audiobook gifted to me by the publisher
January TBR
You’re going to see a lot of fantasy on my TBRs for the first few months of the year. Part of that is because I’m working on cutting back on frontlist lit fic FOMO and restoring balance with my other favorite genres, but it’s also because there are a lot of highly anticipated sequels, third books, etc on their way soon.
Anywho, here’s what’s on my TBR book cart this month:
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab*: No, this doesn’t come out until June. Yes, I am reading it first. Yes, I had to restrain myself to wait until 2025.
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor*†: Out 1/14. This one is getting even more hype than Okorafor usually gets. I love her work and can’t wait to read it.
We Do Not Part by Han Kang*†: Out 1/21. When the most recent Nobel Prize winner has a new book coming out, you pick it up!
Tartufo by Kira Jane Buxton*†: Out 1/28. I CANNOT WAIT, y’all. I still find myself shoving Buxton’s hilarious, heartwarming Hollow Kingdom into people’s hands years later.
The Mime Order (The Bone Season, #2) by Samantha Shannon: Told ya.
Mirrored Heavens (Between Earth and Sky, #3) by Rebecca Roanhorse†: I’m excited to finally finish this series!
Heavenly Tyrant (Iron Widow, #2) by Xiran Jay Zhao*†: Ditto. This came out on Christmas Eve and was a looooong time coming. But it’s finally here!
How to Read Literature by Terry Eagleton: One thing I’d like to do in 2025 is learn more about literary theory so that I can improve my criticism skills. This was recommended by
and sounds like a good entry point!On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder: This month’s Conversation Pusher. Apt for inauguration month, no?
High-Impact Content Marketing: Strategies to Make Your Content Intentional, Engaging and Effective by Purna Virji: This one is for work, obviously. I don’t usually read whole books on content marketing because the field changes so quickly. But it comes very highly recommended by Rand Fishkin, who’s a titan in the industry.
*print copy gifted to me by the publisher
†audiobook gifted to me by the publisher
Conversation Pushers
If you missed December’s column on Abortion, full of actionable insights you can use right now, you can read it here:
I earned $10 in commissions thanks to folks who used my Bookshop and Libro.fm links to buy the book. I’ve matched that and donated $20 to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which fights critical battles in the courts. (I also now donate to the CFRR monthly.)
This month, I’m reading On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. It’s a backlist title from 2017 that was published in response to Trump’s first election. Here’s the synopsis:
On November 9th, millions of Americans woke up to the impossible: the election of Donald Trump as president. Against all predictions, one of the most-disliked presidential candidates in history had swept the electoral college, elevating a man with open contempt for democratic norms and institutions to the height of power.
Timothy Snyder is one of the most celebrated historians of the Holocaust. In his books Bloodlands and Black Earth, he has carefully dissected the events and values that enabled the rise of Hitler and Stalin and the execution of their catastrophic policies. With Twenty Lessons, Snyder draws from the darkest hours of the twentieth century to provide hope for the twenty-first. As he writes, “Americans are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism and communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.”
Twenty Lessons is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.
Here’s a link to buy it from Bookshop or Libro.fm — it’s slim and inexpensive. As always, commissions will be donated (and matched) to a cause related to the topic.
January Booker of the Month
ICYMI, I run a book club called Booker of the Month, where we read one book from the Booker Prize longlist each month. There are 13, so we double up just once, and by the time next year’s longlist is announced, we’ll have read them all.
Our December selection is Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. It’s our final read from the shortlist. Join us!!
NOTE: This book is not yet published in the US. Riverhead has offered a limited number of advanced copies to book club participants. If you're sure you will be able to make the meeting and would like one, please fill out the form mentioned on the Zoom registration page. Otherwise, you can get a copy for $20 with free US shipping from Blackwells in the UK here. Then generally ship pretty quickly!
Find Stone Yard Devotional on The StoryGraph
Sign up for our Zoom discussion on Monday, January 27 at 8 PM ET.
January hot releases
FYI, I keep a running list of new releases I’m excited for on my Bookshop storefront (it’s already two pages long), plus a list of recent releases I love or expect to love.
Some of the books that I have my eye on in January include:
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
Onyx Storm (The Empyrean, #3) by Rebecca Yarros — obviously!!
We Do Not Part by Han Kang
Tartufo by Kira Jane Buxton
Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People by Imani Perry
All that said, LitHub and The Millions haven’t released their seasonal book previews yet, and I always read through them to learn more about what’s coming. Stay tuned for a special newsletter dedicated to my most anticipated 2025 releases later this month.
As always, thanks for sharing your corner of the internet with me! It would mean a lot if you were to take a second to like this post. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, too.
Finally, if you like this newsletter, please send a few friends my way.
See you on Instagram!
— Deedi (she/her)
hyped for your fantasy era; thrilled you're reading ON TYRANNY.