I wrote this before 2024 started and never got around to put it anywhere, though I spent a couple of hours on it. I made a little award show for the books I read this year.
I selected 5 books from a list of 22 that I read this year. You can find the list of all the books I read in the description. Although I only picked 5, I would recommend every single book I read this year actually, I honestly think people should read everything they can get their hands on. You never know what you might like! Anyways, here are my 5 selections of books. Each selection corresponds with a categories that I made up sort of arbitrarily. They are:
If you want to see the full list of books I read in 2023, see here.
Let's move on to our first category
This category is dedicated to books that are about 1000 pages or more, but I also think I will include just thick books in general. Some book that are 500 pages feel like they are a thousand pages because they are dense, and just very thick in terms of how the reading experience feels.
That being said, I actually didn't read many Big Fat Books this year. In a way, I learned not to burden myself with reading big books so much, which is something I did in the past. When I was a bit younger I used to want to read all the classics, all the impenetrable books, and although I commend myself for doing that, I also think I could have burnt myself out (and I did burn myself out) by reading so many of them back to back. So this year, this category is only populated by two books, which are:
This is actually my second time reading 2666, which I reread a couple of years ago and I think it's probably one of my all-time favorite books, but I still have to give this year's Big Fat Book Prize to Middlemarch by George Eliot.
I'm not sure how or why I read this book, as in, why I picked it out at the bookstore and actually bought it, but I am very grateful that I did. A book set in England during the years of 1829 is not usually my kind of book, but I loved this book and I am 100% sure that I will reread it in the future. George Eliot, who is really Mary Anne Evans, pulls off something truly amazing in this book. The third person narration in this book is phenomenal, the way that the narrator interjects and contextualizes what is going on is some of the best writing I have ever seen.
In my opinion, masterpieces showcase the unique possibilities of a given medium: certain things can only be expressed in a videogame, or a movie, or a song. And when I read Middlemarch, I felt like I was reading the pinnacle of realist fiction, and on top of that, it manages to express a deep wisdom about human relations that I deeply resonated with. This book is not only a good story, it also works as an work on moral philosophy. So, congrats to George Eliot (a.k.a Mary Anne Evans), you killed it!
This category might seem a bit corny to some, especially those who see books as primarily works of entertainment. There is nothing wrong with that, in fact I probably agree with those people, however my approach to reading always seems to extract something that I can apply to how I live and how I think of things. To me it adds another layer of analysis, where you try to tease out the ethical or moral philosophy.
Anyways, this category is for the books I read this year that provided the most compelling moral/ethical outlook, either explicitly as a work of ethical fiction, or implicitly in it's authors way of writing. The nominees are:
If you have read any of these books, some of the nominations might seem a bit weird. And I get it, I mean, I think none of these are advertised as "Self Help Books", but each of them, in their own way, taught me something about myself and/or my relationship to others, which is to say it taught me something about ethics.
I realize that it's a bit weird to call Stone Butch Blue by Leslie Feinberg a book that teaches me how to live. The gist of that book are the struggles of the main character to establish themselves and their queer identity. They had to suffer through a lot of traumatic events and experience the feeling of alienation from their community. I think the ways in which the main character despairs but ultimately succeeds in affirming themselves and building connections on their own terms is genuinely inspiring and teaches some important lessons about authenticity.
I could so a similar justification for the other books in the list, but I figured I didn't want to make this article too long, so I will just say which book won: Ross Gay's *Book of Delights*. It was a very close competition for this one, as the other books are equally unique and compelling in their moral philosophy. However, this one wins because it is a short and easy read, and is the one book in this list that is better if you read it bit by bit instead of in one sitting. I read a chapter a day and allowed each lesson or reflection from the author to marinate a bit before I jumped into the next one.
If anything, this book made me thankful that there are people out there who are able to do two difficult things at the same time: reflect on the deep questions that pop out of everyday life, and have the ability to write those reflections down in beautiful language. We are lucky to have Ross Gay among us and this book, I would recommend to absolutely everyone, doesn't matter if they are readers or not.
This category is for books that can be read in a day or in a couple of sessions. Short books are very unique in that they can be consumed quickly and discarded, because the commitment level isn't high, but they can also be reread more frequently than a longer book, which can significantly change one's perspective of a book. The nominees for this category are:
Picking the winner for this one was a bit hard because I think all of these books should be read by everyone, but I think that the one that stuck with me the most was Factotum, by Charles Bukowski. A close second is A Life for Sale by Yukio Mishima, which was a wild trip of a book. Factotum I actually read twice this year, and I did go through a bit of a Bukowski rabbit hole this year.
The reason I picked Factotum is because Bukowski is pound for pound one of the best short story writers that I've read, not only because he is a meticulous writer at the syntax level, but also because of how the book can depress you while also having a lot of humor in it. Bukowski and his characters are usually huge assholes, alcoholics, mysogynists, but somehow, the fact that he doesn't hide it, and in fact at some points seems interested in interrogating why, makes for a very rewarding read for those of us who can separate themselves from what they are reading. I think a lot of people write off Bukowski as an attempt to write off authors who are openly assholes, but I think it is much more fruitful to read and interrogate them. Plus, Moshfegh has praised him in the past so he can't be that bad, right?
In recent years I actually stopped reading a lot of non-fiction books, to the point where I only have one nominee for this year, but don't let that fool you! I read a lot of non-fiction in the past, usually around politics and leftist history, and I still think that ˆBullshit Jobsˆby David Graeber is one of the best non-fiction books I have read this year, if not in recent memory.
This book will have you hating your job, or even jobs in general. I think that there are a lot of valid reasons why people are starting to reevaluate their relationships to work, and I think this book provides you with the conceptual tools and the language to speak about it other than just be mad at the system, or capitalism in the abstract. I'm planning on rereading it at some point and maybe writing something longer on it, as hating your job is an art unto itself.