✨ it's a wrap!!
my 2024 in books + some errant thoughts on tech and recommendations
Dear friend—
Hello. It’s Wrapped Season :-)
For the uninitiated, Spotify Wrapped is the collection of listening stats that Spotify shows its users at the end of every year, featuring superlatives such as one’s “most-listened-to artist” of the year. While I love Wrapped Szn, I am also increasingly seeing how the Wrappification of Everything is an indicator of some dark Tech Stuff—a list that grew with this year’s installment.
If the internet rumors have any truth to them, the 2024 Spotify Wrapped sucked mega because the company fired a bunch of staff and tried using AI to make up the difference.
The result was, according to many, short, boring, and wrong. Another indictment of AI, which is continuing to eat up vast, planet-endangering amounts of water and energy while making labor more precarious and dangerous—for little more than bad and/or unnecessary tech products and warfare (I am open to the idea that this is hyperbolic, but this is the way I see it at the moment).
However, while Wrapped As Product is fast losing its enchantment for me, the spirit of Wrapped Szn, of folks sharing what shaped them in the past year and gushing about the art they love, remains very dear to me.
In recent weeks, I have been (once again, lmao, as though it ever ends) thinking a lot about my technology use, specifically how I can use it in ways that help me reach certain goals and live out certain values. To use tech to feel more human, not less.
What do I mean by that? There are certain technologically mediated activities that make me feel out of my body or want things I do not want to want (i.e., pretty much any witnessing of any ad ever). Scrolling through certain social media apps (Instagram, mostly) fits in this category.
And then there are certain activities that make me feel more human. For example:
DM’ing an old friend to catch up,
FaceTiming my family,
Finding beautiful art and telling the artist how beautiful I thought it was, and
Learning from loved ones and talking about what we love together.
This year, I moved yet further away from my friends. One of my favorite rituals we use to stay connected is a monthly playlist. We each add up to five songs to a (Spotify!) playlist every month. This not only gives me a wonderful look into the ears and brains of my friends; it also helps me find new music in a way that is more human and heartful than the abomination AI DJ Spotify has foisted upon us, lmao.
In a similar vein, I've found myself using book-tracking website The Storygraph more than ever, especially its community feature, which shows you your friends’ updates. My to-read list is now chock-full of things my friends are reading or have read.
These tech uses feel intensely human for me, especially when I reach out to friends later to tell them how much I enjoyed this song or that book. So, in the sprit of sharing and Wrapped Szn and being more human on the internet—here is my 2024 Wrapped (Reading Edition).
Below you will find:
My six favorites,
Everything I read this year, and
The most honorable of mentions.
(I read mostly nonfiction about politics/social issues, fantasy novels, and memoirs/essay collections. That's pretty much all you'll find below—just to give you an idea of what you're getting into! Content warning for discussions of war, violence, and genocide as I describe these books. I generally recommend checking out the content warnings for all these books; if you look them up on Storygraph, you’ll find a list of crowd-sourced content warnings.)
my favorites
(in order of having read them)
1) The Greenbone Saga, by Fonda Lee
This was the first series I’d read in a while that immediately had me reaching for the second and then the third book. The final one, Jade Legacy, is a decades-spanning epic that literally had me sobbing in club (my bedroom at 2am). I think collectively this series is my only five-star fiction read of 2024.
Synopsis time: A generation has passed since the island nation of Kekon finally repelled its occupier. Kekon’s capital has become a thriving metropolis ruled by two clans founded by guerilla fighters. The country is now known for its magical jade, which only the Kekonese can wield.
For years, the No Peak and Mountain clans have been at an uneasy peace. But when new drugs enable non-Kekonese to use jade, the Mountain starts making moves to dominate the city. The young leaders (and siblings) of No Peak find themselves preparing for a war—and the growing spotlight on Kekon on the world stage.
This series deftly juggles so many elements done extremely well: Incredible relationship-building and character development among a large ensemble cast; huge emotional pay-offs; gripping fight scenes, twists, and turns; and the geopolitics of a complexly, richly imagined world. Incorporates themes of family, duty, honor, redemption, cultural shifts over time; the tradeoffs inherent in both violence and diplomacy.
Lee also explores questions like—What happens the day after revolution? How do you rebuild a country after fighting off occupation? How does a nation change as it becomes more powerful? How do you change the world to make it better for your children?
2) The Priory of the Orange Tree, by Samantha Shannon
In the island country of Inys, dragons are hated and feared. A young woman named Ead serves in the court of Queen Sabran Berethnet, the latest in a long lineage whose existence is believed to keep the dragons at bay. Across the ocean, on the isolated island of Seikii, dragons are worshipped. A young orphan named Tané achieves her dream of being chosen by a dragon to become a venerated rider.
The hare-brained scheme of two Inysh teenagers in love brings all these characters together to fight an existential peril that threatens not only each country, but also their founding mythologies and worldviews.
There's so much to love about this book. The world is rendered at a bonkers level of detail, and it feels like you could step into it. The lore, history, and plot are slowly, gracefully, and at times shockingly unpacked. It's a huge page-turner.
It also includes so many things I love: long time scales and deep history; knights and monasteries and secret religious orders; geopolitics and political intrigue; a good romance that took me by surprise; and dragons. Love a good dragon book.
3) The Drone Eats With Me: A Gaza Diary, by Atef Abu Saif
This book continues to stick with me as we enter the 15th month of genocide in Gaza. The Drone Eats With Me is Atef Abu Saif's journal, kept during the 2014 bombardment of Gaza.
He writes about the daily musings, fears, and adaptations while surviving under fire. The routines he clings to, to maintain his sanity, despite the dangers they pose; how his family finds food and observes Ramadan; his experiences pulling bodies and body parts out of the rubble; the losses of his neighbors and extended family; the psychological toll of the omnipresent, capricious threat of sudden death; and the constant, deafening hum of the drones overhead.
Months ago, I saw an Instagram post explaining all the things in Gaza you can't experience through photos or videos: the sounds and smells, the constant flies, the freezing temperatures. Abu Saif's book illuminates many of these aspects—though the current scale and duration of the carnage are orders of magnitude greater compared to the 2014 war.
Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza has led Gazans to post floods of photos and videos of their experiences. Increasingly, I have become wary of social media (not the photos themselves, which are a horrifyingly vital form of documentation and communication) as a vehicle for psychic numbing.
The form of social media—constant, endless imagery encouraged to be processed as fast as possible before moving on to the next thing on your feed, which is probably an advertisement—feels designed to numb us and normalize what's happening. This feels incredibly dangerous to me.
Sitting down with Abu Saif for 250 pages felt like a much more human way of understanding Gaza and Gazans, and I'm incredibly grateful for his work, though those words feel wholly insignificant.
In 2023, Abu Saif published accounts of living in Gaza under Israeli bombardment in outlets like The Nation. He has since evacuated with some of his family.
4) How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures, by Sabrina Imbler
One of my favorite essay collections I've read ever—though perhaps I am biased because of my love of creatures of the deep. From goldfish to whales, jellyfish to cuttlefish, Imbler braids science writing with their own experiences as a journalist, a survivor, and a mixed and queer Chinese American person.
Using each creature as a prism, Imbler deconstructs culture and language, unpacking taxonomy and epistemology, resilience, violent misogyny, patriarchy, queer spaces, family history and trauma, eating disorders, gender, and sexuality.
Despite the sometimes dark topics, this book is chock-full of wonder, love, and curiosity—for the sea creatures, but also for Imbler’s community and themself. The relationships they write about are so different and related with varying levels of intimacy and analysis, but they are all granted the same careful openness and empathy.
5) Blood Over Bright Haven, by M. L. Wang
A wild allegory about ethics, oppression, violent systems, and how we act when faced with a horrible truth about ourselves and our society.
Sciona Freynan has spent her whole life fighting to become the first female archmage in Tiran, a magical haven of progress and innovation, shielded from the harsh outside world made harsher by Blight—sudden bursts of light that eviscerate living things.
Thomil, an immigrant to Tiran, fled the Blight and lost nearly his entire tribe to it. Now, he works as a janitor in the hallowed halls of High Magistry, where he and all outsiders are scorned. When Sciona and Thomil cross paths, they uncover a devastating secret about magic that threatens to upend their entire world.
I had a few issues with this book—awkward dialogue, caricature-y side characters—but I am still thinking about it because it juggles so many themes in really thoughtful, nuanced ways:
Confronting the hypocrisy of your own religion and being disillusioned; intersectionality and the way privilege and oppression overlap; the consequences of political violence and revolution; how to live as the last of your people; and, most poignant for me, how we act when we find our world is built on the suffering of others.
This feels especially important at this political moment, as I’m seeing (and experiencing) a growing consciousness that many of the comforts we enjoy in the U.S. are built on the exploitation and suffering of marginalized communities at home and abroad.
6) Emergent Strategy, by adrienne maree brown
(Shout out to P for inadvertently getting me to read this!) I read this during and in the wake of the election and man, it was a balm. In a world so full of complex systems and problems and horrors, it’s so easy to feel powerless. But brown points to nature and their own experiences to give us faith that what we do does make a difference.
Rather than going fast and big, brown argues, we can and must go slow to ensure kindness and justice, cultivating individual relationships and local communities—"Critical connection over critical mass." These seemingly small acts are both necessary and sufficient for huge systems change.
brown draws from so many people doing justice work—organizers, novelists, scientists—that I got to learn from all of them.
For me, as a writer, some of brown’s most compelling points are about imagination and narrative—the need to be bolder, braver, and more loving in our visions of what is possible.
I'm taking all the lessons of this book into 2025 and beyond.
here is every damn book
also want to shout out some honorable mentions
(in order of having read them)
Against the Loveless World, by Susan Abulhawa. A decades-long story of the daughter of Palestinian refugees, whose life changes forever when she returns to her mother's hometown. An incredible tale of resilience and resistance. Its romance is a terribly bittersweet one that will stay with me for a long time.
The Palestine Laboratory, by Anthony Lowenstein. On how Israel develops military technology used against Palestinians and exports it to authoritarian regimes around the world. More broadly—how the weapons, tech, and surveillance industries enable terrible state violence around the world.
In Other Lands, by Sarah Rees Brennan. A fun YA fantasy that is both a satire of and love letter to the coming-of-age fantasies from the last 30 years. It spoke deeply to the past-me who stayed up until 2 am reading fanfiction many a night in high school, lol.
Certain Dark Things, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. SMG doesn't miss. A super fun, dark vampire noir that takes place in Mexico City. It incorporates a lot of Central American mythology in neat ways and creates a fascinating world of vampire lore.
A Day in the Life of Abed Salama, by Nathan Thrall. A wild feat of reporting and all-around story-telling. Thrall uses a single day and fatal accident as a prism through which to see recent Palestinian history and the Israeli apartheid system that manufactured this horrifying tragedy.
Dirty Work, by Eyal Press. A thought-provoking and urgent exploration of how society pushes already-marginalized folks into taking on its most morally bankrupt labor. I don’t think I jive with all of Press’s arguments, but I’m still turning this one over in my head months later, and its implications for political/social change.
An Enchantment of Ravens, by Margaret Rogerson. A great entry into the fairy YA romance genre; Rogerson especially leans heavily into the horror elements of Ye Olde Fairy Tales in ways that swing between the grotesque and the beautiful. (Thanks to V for the rec!)
Elite Capture, by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò. A short but powerful book on how elites co-opt identity politics, how certain well-meaning manifestations of identity politics hinder transformational change, and the alternatives we need. I’m still thinking about this one and will be for a long time.
Border & Rule, by Harsha Walia. (Shout out to K for putting this on my radar!) A searing and geographically diverse introduction to border abolition; Walia shows the devastating human consequences of borders not just as walls, but as systems of violence, exclusion, and exploitation.
A Line in the River, by Jamal Mahjoub. A memoir of Sudan and its capital, Khartoum, from the lens of an expat’s homecoming. Combines reporting, family history, political analysis, and a sweeping chronicle of Sudan’s past, all the way back to antiquity.
The Saint of Bright Doors, by Vajra Chandrasekera. A fabulist tale that is unlike anything I’ve ever read. Magic and mysticism collide with present-day technology: “Crowdfund the Messiah’s visit!”-core. Themes of fascism, inheritance, destiny, religious fanaticism, storytelling, and more. There’s something Miyazaki about it.
The Arsonists' City, by Hala Alyan. A decades-spanning family drama, centered on a pivotal event that takes place during the Lebanese Civil War. Really incredible, unflinching character work—How do we atone for our mistakes? Alyan seems to ask. What is irreparable, and how do we go on despite it?
The Burning Kingdoms trilogy, by Tasha Suri. (Thanks to J for buddy-reading the whole trilogy with me!) Ancient India-inspired fantasy with sapphic romance! Sublime, evocative imagery and world-building! Religion, politics, war! Characters you just want to bundle up in a blanket and protect forever and ever!
and that's a wrap!!!
If you've made it all the way down here, thanks for sticking around! Would love to hear your favorites from this year or your own thoughts on some of the books mentioned! If you feel so moved, you can reply right to this email (private) or drop a comment on this post (public).
To more reading and learning in 2025 :-) Chat soon, take care,
—mia xx