Good Riddance, 2024
Hello!
Once again, I’m writing this newsletter a little earlier in the month in order to take a couple of weeks off from writing. So if something terrible has happened, or some news has broken that seems like the kind of thing that I might ordinarily comment on, you can rest assured I’m not ignoring it—I’m just writing this from the past. I generally spend the last newsletter of the year writing about some of my favorite art of the year. And in that respect, it’s honestly been kind of a tough year.
I saw some movies I enjoyed. Conclave is a lot of fun if you like grown men in full-length gowns gossiping about each other, for instance, and Carrie Coon delivered two great performances in Lake George and His Three Daughters, both of which are interesting films. I liked the way Anna Kendrick’s movie Woman of the Hour debunked some of the true crime myth-making around serial killers. Dune 2 was a great sequel. Challengers was interesting, and so was The Bikeriders. Tilda Swinton’s performance in Problemista was an all-timer, and even I was charmed by Glenn Powell in Hit Man. But none of those movies rocked my world—they all had some serious flaws or felt underdeveloped. Maybe this is an aftereffect of the writer’s strike that delayed projects in Hollywood last year, or maybe it’s pandemic-related malaise, or maybe it’s just me and my mental state.
For TV, it was much the same. I liked the usual sitcoms including Only Murders in the Building and What We Do in the Shadows, but big and largely enjoyable shows like Interview with the Vampire, Penelope, Kaos, and The Decameron all fell short of blowing my mind. My favorite show of the year was an old one: I devoured both seasons of Detroiters, which I had never seen before, in the haze after the election. It was a great little comfort watch, very funny and a bigger-hearted than Tim Robinson’s current Netflix show, I Think You Should Leave. And Sam Richardson is always a goddamned delight.
In books, September was a big month for me in that Dash Shaw’s exceptional comic Blurry, and John Ganz’s history When the Clock Broke. Charlie Huston’s magic-as-nostalgia novel Catchpenny was one of the most fun things I read this year, along with The Husbands. New Nigeria County was probably my favorite audiobook—maybe a cheat because it’s a full-cast novella that wasn’t published in book form and created specifically for audio.
And that’s it. To be clear, I’m not making the case that the entire world is entering into an artistic slump—I’m mostly failing to get into a place where I can successfully receive art that moves me. I didn’t do a good job of going to readings, plays, and art shows this year at all, for instance, and I feel like I spent too much time doing comfort reading and viewing, which feels good in the moment but is often kind of empty calories in the long haul. I’ll try to be a better consumer of art next year.
I’ve Been Writing
I wrote about 11 new paperback releases in December that you can spend your bookstore gift cards on.
And I interviewed four great local bookstore owners about their favorite cozy reads of the year. The booksellers behind both Nook and Cranny Books and Ridgecrest Books also were kind enough to share their favorite books of the year.
I’ve Been Reading
Jasper Jones is an Australian novel about two boys who come across a dead body. It’s kind of an Australian John Irving novel—a big and complicated story that’s a little bit cliche and a little bit unsettling. This was a gift from someone who went to Australia, and it was interesting to read some popular fiction from there that largely hasn’t made a dent on this side of the world.
The Work of Art is a big old coffee table book full of interviews with artists about their process. I took this out from the library because I don’t have much need for giant art books around the house, but it’s got some very interesting interviews. I don’t recommend reading it all at once like I did—this is definitely a book that’s best enjoyed dipping into occasionally.
I listened to Entitlement by Rumaan Alam a while ago and the audiobook really didn’t work for me. But I just took the physical book out from the library as a Peak’s Pick selection and read it and enjoyed it a great deal. It’s about a poor young Black woman who goes to work for a billionaire who wants to give his money away, and there’s a lot of very incisive observations about class in America.
Consent is a memoir by novelist and painter Jill Ciment about her relationship with her husband of decades, who she met when she was a 17-year-old student and he was her 47-year-old married art teacher. She previously wrote a memoir about their relationship, but that was before the time of Me Too, and now she’s reinvestigating her feelings now that she has a new vocabulary to explain the beginning of her relationship. She would certainly have been described as being groomed if the two met under the same circumstances today, and her feelings about their marriage have changed with the times. It’s a thoughtful and interesting book.
I really liked the Misery-in-reverse premise of The Last Word, Taylor Adams’s new thriller—it’s about a woman who gives a self-published book a one-star review on Amazon and the author tracks her down and begins tormenting her. But my problem with the book arrived about halfway through—spoilers, I guess—when the author is revealed as an impossibly cartoonish incel, complete with fedora, neckbeard, katana, and Mountain Dew addiction. I made the rare decision to abandon this book halfway through because it just became a litany of incredibly easy “fuck this nerd” jokes. It’s possible that later on in the book Adams flips the script on all the fat-shaming and easy mockery of socially awkward men, but I wasn’t invested enough to push my way through.
I’ve read a couple of interesting sci-fi books this month. Chrysalis is technically a podcast—it’s a complete story told as part of the Dust podcast series—but I listened to it in one continuous four-hour stretch and it is absolutely a sci-fi novella. It’s about an AI that has survived the human race and taken to the stars, only to seek vengeance on the alien race that made Earth unlivable, and it’s a full-cast ensemble. And Helen Phillips’s Hum is about a world where robot helpmates are everywhere, and it has a lot to say about our modern panopticon, with its ever-present advertisements, viral parent-shaming, and endless subscriptions. This is one of the better books I’ve read this year, I think.
Thus Endeth This Curséd Year
Holy cow was 2024 not a fun year. My personal life was fine and there were lots of enjoyable moments, but as I’m writing these words in the middle of December I’ve never been so eager to put a year in the rear view mirror. Part of the problem, too, is that I know that next year’s headlines are going to be an endless slog of frustration, misery, and chaos.
I’m not a New Year Resolution kind of person, but I’m going to make an effort to try to figure out how to be smarter about my energy expenditures in the months ahead. I definitely need to be smarter about choosing the right moments to worry, and to act, and to rest.
And in the interest of not ending on a down note, I do have some fun comics projects coming up next year, including one I should be able to write about in the January edition of this newsletter—February at the very latest.
I hope your 2024 was filled with fun and art and that you got to share it with people you love. And I hope that 2025 is full of more art and sharing and people we love.
Happy holidays,
Paul