2024 Gift Guide - Part 2, Book Stuff

Hi all! I’m back with Part 2 of my two-part 2024 gift guide. You can view Part 1, a guide to non-literary gifts, below:

Now, though, I’m really in my element, rounding up micro-lists of books for an array of specific types of gift recipient.

All of these links will be to Bookshop, which, alongside directly from presses and/or small bookstores, is where I always recommend buying books. Between now and the new year is when indie bookstores earn the majority of their income, and margins are tight. Don’t capitulate to tyranny of amazonified convenience. Support authors and booksellers –– we, and our work, are worth it.

Speaking of which, you can buy my book, Failure to Comply, from Bookshop, and I’ve made a Bookshop list of all of the books listed in this newsletter that can be purchased on the site. When you buy from my links, I get a small commission from Bookshop, which is extra nice.

Now, without further ado, the list!

Literary Stuff

For the hot they/them you met at that one action:

• Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto by Legacy Russell

• Salt Fish Girl by Larissa Lai

• The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell

For the funniest feminist you know:

• Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body by Megan Milks

• A Map of Home by Randa Jarrar

• Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen

For the Baby Trans™

Give them a hug, too.

• Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by

• Nevada by Imogen Binnie

• Time is the Thing a Body Moves Through by T. Fleischmann

For the 28-year-old burnout with no health insurance:

First and foremost: GIVE THEM MONEY

• Neotenica by Joon Oluchi Lee

• Yolk by Mary H.K. Choi

• Zazen by Vanessa Veselka

• The Coin by Yasmin Zaher

[Non-nonfiction] For the nonfiction reader:

• My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki

• Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli

• The City & The City by China Miéville

For the art & craft lover:

• Ethel Press - Chapbooks & Pamphlets

Ethels are individual works of art containing truly innovative independent writing. My chapbook, Out of Mind and Into Body, is sold-out in print but free to read online at Ethel’s site; another chap, how we sheep, co-written with ulysses/constance bougie, is forthcoming with Ethel in 2025.

Here are some Ethel highlights that are currently in-stock and ripe for gifting!

• Child Lucia and Other Literary Fabula by Nick Perilli

• Wild Apples: A Flash Memoir Collection With Writing Prompts by Joanna Penn Cooper

• Scrap Paper Journals

For the graphic novel connoisseur:

• The Last Delivery by Evan Dahm

• Team Photograph by Lauren Haldeman

• The Girl Who Was Convinced Beyond All Reason That She Could Fly by Sybil Lamb

For the cool teenager in your life:

• Fat Girl Dances With Rocks by Susan Stinson

This incredible, fat, queercrip novel is tragically (it seems) out of print, and not available on Bookshop. The above is a link to several eBay listings for the book. I know many people don’t think about used books/things as “gift-worthy” but I’d encourage you to 1) expand your notion of gifting and reduce waste while doing so! and 2) consider making an exception. Your giftee will thank you.

• Scythe by Neal Shusterman

• Good Kings, Bad Kings by Susan Nussbaum

Stocking-stuffer-sized books:

• Tiny by Mairead Case

• Small Beauty by jia qing wilson-yang

• Corrupted Vessels by Briar Ripley Page

For the daydreamer-philosopher:

• Event Factory by Renee Gladman

• Inversion by Aric McBay

• The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

For your mom, her book club, and all the people said book club members are inevitably going to recommend it to because it’s great:

• True Biz by

• Chouette by Claire Oshetsky

• Little Fish by Casey Plett

For their (or your) bedside table:

• Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

• Love after the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, ed. Joshua Whitehead

• Wild Peach by S*an D. Henry-Smith

For those who know –– or need to know –– that “nature” is political

• Palestinian Walks: Forays Into a Vanishing Landscape by Raja Shehadeh

• Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation by Sunaura Taylor

• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

• Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

For the avid podcast listener:

• Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant

• Raw Dog: The Naked Truth About Hot Dogs by Jamie Loftus

• Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman

(queercrip & transMad politics) For the theory-newbies:

• Exile and Pride by Eli Clare

• Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex by Eric Stanley and Nat Smith, eds.

• Capitalism and Disability by Marta Russell

For the poetry-curious:

• Not Here by Hieu Minh Nguyen

• Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara

• A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us by Carla Sofia Ferreira

• Life on Mars by Tracy K Smith

For the one who loves to have their heart ripped to shreds:

• Betty by Tiffany McDaniel

• Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison (of blessed memory)

• Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

For the globetrotting reader (one from each continent) (except Antarctica; if you have an Antarctica-written book to recommend, hmu!):

• Trans(re)lating House One by Poupeh Missaghi (Asia - Iran)

• Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi (Africa - Nigeria)

• The Story of My Teeth by Valeria Luiselli (North America - Mexico)

• Bad Girls by Camila Sosa Villada (South America - Argentina)

• Milkman by Anna Burns (Europe - Ireland)

• Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn (Oceania - Hawai’i)

For the principled escapist:

• The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty

• The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett (cc: all of Discworld)

• Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee

and finally

For the politically-awakened, recently or not:

• Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia by Sabrina Strings

• Mad World: The Politics of Mental Health by Micha Frazer-Carroll

• Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism by Harsha Walia

• Viral Justice: How We Build the World We Want by Ruha Benjamin

Whew, that was a lot of books. I hope you can find something you or the person on your list might enjoy. Happy reading and shopping!