The Favorite Books I Read in 2024

Some New, and Some are Old, but all first reads. Essay down below.

Ash Before Oak by Jeremy Cooper (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2019)

Bolt From The Blue by Jeremy Cooper (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2021)

Mild Vertigo by Mieko Kanai (New Directions, 2023)

Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton (Fizcarraldo Editions, 2021)

This Is Not a Novel by David Markson (Counterpoint, 2001)

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli (New Directions, 2020)

V. by Thomas Pynchon (Harper Perennial, 2005)

Crackling Skulls by Roger van de Velde (Snuggly Books, 2022)

Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2024)

Autonauts of the Cosmoroute by Julio Cortázar & Carol Dunlap (Archipelago, 2007)

I Heard Her Call My Name by Lucy Sante (Penguin Press, 2024)

Ulysses by James Joyce (Vintage, 2013)

Dancing on the Edge by Russ Tamblyn (Blackstone Publishing, 2024)

Limbo by Dan Fox (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2018)

Cloudhead Revisited by S.J. Pearlman (Library of America, 2024)

My Ears Are Bent by Joseph Mitchell (Pantheon, 2001)

My Life in E-Flat by Chan Parker (University of South Carolina Press, 1999)

Concerning The Future of Souls by Joy Williams (Tin House Books, 2024)

Image of the People by T.J. Clark (Thames & Hudson, 1973)

Myth Lab by Jack Skelley (Far West Press, 2024)

Flunker by Dennis Cooper (Amphetamine Sulphate, 2024)

War by Louis-Ferdinand Celine (New Directions, 2024)

Dirty Real by Peter Stanfield (Reaktion Books, 2024)

Selected Stories by Franz Kafka & Translated by Mark Harman (Belknap Press, 2024)

Straight Life by Art Pepper and Laurie Pepper (Da Capo Press, 1994)

The Dandy At Dusk by Philip Mann (Head of Zeus, 2017)

Ornament and Crime by Adolf Loos (Penguin Classics, 2019)

Proses by Garrett Caples (Wave Books, 2024)

Cartoons by Kit Schluter (City Lights, 2024)

The Illiterate by Agota Kristof (New Directions, 2023)

The Stepdaughter by Caroline Blackwood (McNally Editions, 2024)

Modern Art by J-K. Huysmanns (Dedalus Books, 2019)

Pages From The Goncourt Journals by Edmond de Goncourt (NYRB, 2006)

I’m With Pulp, Are You? by Mark Webber (Hat & Beard Press, 2024)

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner (Scribner, 2024)

Office Politics by Wilfrid Sheed (McNally Editions, 2024)

Set My Heart on Fire by Izumi Suzuki (Verso, 2024)

All the books above are excellent. It is also a great year for reading new and known authors, at least to my eyes and brain. Reading should be something new and going back, but if I haven’t read that book, it’s all new to me. Next year, I’ll be reading more of Caroline Blackwood and Joy Williams and finishing up two more Marcel Proust volumes and James Joyce. I adore music and films, but reading has been more interesting this past year. Through reading, I got into Charlie Parker in 2024, and last year, I got into Chantal Akerman, which led me to Proust. And through the world of Jazz led me to Guys and Dolls by Damon Runyan. The great thing about Art is that it grows within you and branches out to other things in the world. It is never just about that artist; it is about how studying one artist can lead to another landscape full of possibilities.