2024 Reads
My year in books
Favourite fiction
My fiction pick is Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro - I read this in the spring and then came back to it this fall for one of my classes. It was really interesting considering the book from a futures lens, looking at how much technology has advanced even in the few years between when it was published and when I picked it up. I also want to give a shoutout to Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver and Starling House by Alix E. Harrow.
Favourite non-fiction
I read lots of interesting non-fiction this year but I want to highlight Places of the Heart by Colin Ellard. It explored the concept of psychogeography, how different spaces make us feel. Many of us understand intuitively that the design of our environment impacts how we feel, but I hadn’t read about the actual science behind that before.
Future Cities by Paul Dobraszczyk had the quote that resonated most with me, as someone who works in a creative industry seeking to transform spaces, brands, systems, etc:
At best, imagination is viewed as a kind of ornamental embellishment of the real, its products - the creative arts - a valuable, albeit unnecessary, way of softening the hard asperities of real life. Yet the human imagination also carries with it a much more serious intent, namely to overturn and rewrite the rules of what the real actually is, or rather, how it is defined. By moving beyond what is given in the world - the things we perceive - imagination reaches for the unforeseen and for what has not yet been experienced. Thus imagination can be said to prepare the ground for the 'real' and is always at work trying to transform it.
Strangest read
This one goes to Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti. The book captures ten years of journal entries, with the sentences rearranged in alphabetical order. It was a trip to read because everything was out of order yet somehow still coherent. I don’t know if it was enjoyable to read but I love the concept.
Most up-and-down
You know when one page seems resonant and important and timely despite being written 100 years ago and the next you’re cringing and wondering if you should just put it down? Lady Chatterly’s Lover was that one for me. The opening paragraph spoke about life after the first world war, but felt equally relevant to today’s polycrisis:
I spent the rest of the book waiting for more lines like this, and in some ways it delivered. But then I would have to spend three pages reading about her “sloping loins”. I’m still not sure I know what part of the body a loin is.
Best series
Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series is a set of cozy murder mysteries following a group of seniors in a retirement residence as they solve crimes. It’s light and entertaining and then suddenly I’m crying about a reflection on life and love that slips in between the hijinx:
They say that time softens the pain, but that's a fairy tale. Who would ever love again if anyone actually told the truth?
I'm afraid there are some days when I could still rip out my own heart and weep myself hollow for Gerry. Some days? Every day. That's the journey my best friend has just begun.
So forgive me if, for just a while longer, I choose to imagine that [she] is going to the Palace to see the King.
[name removed to avoid spoilers]
NYE update, two more finished to add to the list: Atlantis by Carlo & Renzo Piano, Monocle’s Fifty Ideas for Building Better Cities.
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