my favourite books of 2024

salt, fat, pleasure, sensation, and multiple blizzards

agapantos (45 x 60 cm) by alejandro sintura castro

You can make the argument that all books end up being about the body, somehow, but what's the point. I put together a list of books I read this year that made the biggest marks on me (sometimes I define “biggest marks” as actual changes in my behaviour, sometimes I define it as a difference in how I experience the vibe of my life. Like, sometimes you finish reading a book and the quality of light in your living room changes.)

I'm on a slow upward trajectory of reading more since starting a full-time job two years ago, which is good. If I compare how I feel about myself now to how I felt about myself a year ago, I would describe myself as more rooted, more self-compassionate, and happier. All good things — which definitely correlate to how much reading and making things I did in the last year. And now onto the list, which I've divided into three sections based on what they seem to orbit around: practical pleasure & sensation, just experience, and how experience pushes us into wisdom.

practical pleasure & sensation

These were books that I felt propelled me formally towards joy. And the books themselves are teachers of pleasure — cooking, sex, and joy itself.

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat by Samin Nosrat was probably the most influential book of my year. I listened to the majority of it on morning runs without having eaten anything. Listening to the details of the Maillard reaction on an empty stomach will piss you off, but will also make your subsequent breakfast an hour later starkly stand out. I really tasted the butter on my toast after this book. And I'm a real salt head now.

Chef and writer Samin Nosrat distills the principles of cooking into four elements: salt, fat, acid, and heat, and how they work to make food delicious. This cookbook has many recipes, but starts with why and how to cook, so you can make the most with what you have, wherever you are. It is also illustrated instead of photographed, a deliberate choice by Nosrat so that you don't form any expectations about what your food SHOULD look like, just what it should taste like.

Wendy MacNaughton

did the illustrations, and they are gorgeous. I'm a sucker for good diagrams like these:

I listened to most of Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski while lifting weights at the gym or running, which I think probably affected my experience of the book. It's all about your unique sexuality, how important context is, what the research is actually saying. Nagoski argues that accepting the reality of your body, where it is now, and being grounded in sensations and pleasure will do much more for you than trying to attain a bodily ideal you think you should have or experience. And so I was running up a hill, exhausted and running quite poorly, listening to this audiobook and crying a little.

I will also gobble up anything by

Ross Gay

, who could write about eating cereal or finding a missing sock and I’d be blown apart by his penchant for wonder, meandering sentences, letting humour bloom, and hyper-focusing on the tiniest interactions that resonate joy, joy, joy. Inciting Joy is a collection of essays unearthing how joy comes out and hovers and hums when we connect with each other and when we sit with each other in sorrow, etc. etc. Definitely a favourite, but then again so is everything else he writes.

just experience

These were books, mainly poetry, which I read that made me feel like I was drowning in them, which I could not put down.

One was definitely Song of Songs by Sylvie Baumgartel. Technically a poetry collection, it is one long poem that pulls us into the speaker's desperate life, cooking at the stove with no clothes on, frantic in her submission, so much desire smeared all over. I read it compulsively!

Jorie Graham's To 2040 was strange, like walking through a blizzard that has been going on forever. Very spare lines like, "Are we / extinct yet. Who owns / the map." Glimpses of different, mechanical futures. Told partly from a hospital bed, as the speaker's head is lifted by a nurse. White all over. I talked more about it in my summer book roundup:

If you like hearing poems read out loud (video set to timestamp), Sarah Howe read some poems from To 2040 at the Griffin Prize this year and she has the most amazing voice. Like I said a few months ago — speaking straight into the blood of the audience:

On the plane home from Boston I read Sharon Olds' Stag's Leap, (named after her and her ex-husband's favourite wine), which takes us through the seasons of Olds' divorce with her husband of 30 years. The first poem takes us to the moment where he first asks for divorce. What's remarkable, I think, about Stag's Leap is that it takes us through this journey without judgment. She doesn't invite judgment from the reader, from anyone. It just is.

And a recommendation from my boyfriend, Berserk by Kentaro Miura, specifically, volume 13, which I also compulsively tore through. It's like, masculine despair on the page…panels of it! It was really cathartic to read. However challenging I felt this year was, I didn't have it like Guts and I never will. Berserk for radical optimism perhaps? And also Miura did things with an ink pen you can't even fathom.

have a look... thank you to J for these screenshots. the merits of intense archival tendencies

& wisdom

I laughed a lot when reading How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes by

Melinda Wenner Moyer

. It's clear and actionable. And it is a direct shining thing against a lot of the conversations I've had with friends about kids and about raising kids, how it will be impossible, how we have our work cut out for us. Certainly we do. How else to prepare for the task if not by learning?

things I’d like to read next year

I have a couple of books that I'd like to read next year, which are all borrowed from writers and readers I like. One of my resolutions is to read the books I've always been intimidated by. Here we go:

All that Glitters by Orlando Whitfield is Brandon Taylor's favourite book of 2024. I love

Brandon

Taylor, obviously. He knows exactly what to gatekeep. What TV show is he watching? Mind your business. But here’s 4 thousand words about why Maile Meloy rocks.

maile meloy rules

The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt has been floating around on my list of books to read. I trust all of Celine Nguyen’s favourites. Sometimes I read her writing and I’m like, you did such a tender & generous & focused reading of this book. If we could apply a little bit of

Celine Nguyen

's care with reading and writing about literature toward our daily work... we'd be in a good place.

Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Machado De Oliveira is a recommendation from

Chris Mohan

and breaks down how our habits and belief systems hold us back from the real change needed to save the planet.

The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki was recommended by

Brian Chang

. This is a long one! I've never read Ozeki and I've always wanted to. So this year I will.

Stay warm if you’ve got winter where you are. Talk to you next time 💗If you had any favourite books you read this year, I’d love to hear about them in the comments section :)