Your hold is ready! (12. 27. 24)

December 27, 2024

Hello everyone, and welcome to the last post of 2024! I’m writing from my childhood home in chilly Connecticut. I’ve been enjoying my “break” –– heavy scare quotes between wrapping up my teaching this semester, grading, working on revisions for novel #2 (!!), reading (still open!) submissions for manywor(l)ds, and evil, evil job applications –– but am at the point where I’m a bit anxious to return to Davis, if only to have a flatter and more temperate place to run!

(I have been running here amid the chill and the hills, but the difference is significant!)

As for other news/happenings: Earlier this month, I had a fantastic Failure to Comply event with t4t readings in Boston. Great turnout in an odd, delightful location: a dive bar whose patronage seemed half weird trans people and/or furries, half the most normie straight white Boston guys you’ve ever met. I have to wonder what the latter group thought about our reading (before me, there was an open mic), but perhaps it’s good ~enrichment~. Either way, it was one of the most well-attended events I’ve ever sone –– standing/squatting room only in a packed area! –– and I’m so grateful to everyone for coming and for supporting Failure to Comply.

I also celebrated my 26th birthday on Dec. 19. I spent it the way I’ve spent the last eleven birthdays –– at Barnes and Noble, browsing, buying, and reading. I’m excited to share these books with you, hopefully this coming year –– I’m actually doing a pretty big Goodreads overhaul right now and deleting a lot of the books on my TBR that I’m no longer interested in; I’m also thinking about doing a separate (probably paid) book-related resolutions post, because after completing (and resenting) my 300 book yearly reading goal, I feel like it’s time for a change.

I think I’ll stop this intro here –– I hope you all had a great Christmas and/or are having a great Hanukkah. Add Failure to Comply on Goodreads and Storygraph, and request it at your local bookstores and libraries. Find inspo/similar reads/books that fed Failure to Comply at my Bookshop affiliate page, where each of your orders gives me a dollar.

Now, onto the recommendations!

Today’s Recs:

My December hasn’t yielded any five star books :( But fear not! Below are my top ten reviewed books of 2024, as well as some honorable mentions not listed on any of my newsletters this year but still worth a read.

Top 10 Books of 2024 (no order):

  1. Rivers Solomon, Model Home 

  2. Seth Dickinson, The Traitor Baru Cormorant

  3. Evan Dahm, The Last Delivery

  4. Karin Tidbeck, Amatka 

  5. Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine

  6. John Wiswell, Someone You Can Build a Nest In 

  7. Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot

  8. Dorothy Allison (z”l), Bastard Out of Carolina

  9. Megan Milks, Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body

  10. Hiromi Goto, Chorus of Mushrooms

Honorable Mentions of 2024 (no order):

  1. Yelena Moskovitch, Virtuoso

  2. Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Blue Talk and Love

  3. Margaret Price, Crip Spacetime

  4. Pirkko Saisio, Lowest Common Denominator

  5. Maggie Smith, You Could Make This Place Beautiful

  6. George Abraham, Birthright

  7. Qiu Maojin, Notes of a Crocodile

  8. Hoa Nguyen, Red Juice: Poems 1998-2008

  9. Lina Wolff, Carnality

  10. Brom, The Child Thief

Albums:

Poetry & Prose & In-Between:

Essays and Articles:

My Recent Work: