john green – ricardo reading

The very best I can say for 2024 is that it was a good reading year. Personal? Not so much. But this blog, despite all my rantings and diatribes, is about the more literary aspect of my precious little life, so we’re going to focus on that, instead of… the rest.

(The one great thing that happens to overlap both aspects of my life is the fact that I started writing for Booklist, something that makes me incredibly happy and proud. It’s been a great experience thus far, and I think I’ve already learned a lot in the few months I’ve been with them. Exciting!)

I read some really fine books this year. These are some of them:

CHRISTMAS DAYS by Jeanette Winterson

This is, so far, the only Jeanette Winterson book I’ve read, but I was ready to call her a favorite author upon finishing it. I fell absolutely head-over-heels in love with her writing—so much so that I found the vignettes written before the recipes she’s included here almost as beautiful as the short stories themselves. (It’s a true testament to her skill that she took what was essentially a meme in the online culinary world—the drawn-out preambles before cooking instructions—and made wonderful art with it.)⠀

A true Christmas collection, in the purest sense of the term, as Winterson runs through the absolute gamut of wintry tales: from unsettling ghost stories down to charming, sickly-sweet romances—all written with sublime grace and aplomb. Christmas Days quickly became synonymous with the holiday season for me, and I may just make it an annual tradition to read it. Wonderful stuff.

THE WEE FREE MEN by Terry Pratchett

Genuinely don’t know why I torture myself by depriving myself of these wonderful books for such long intervals. This was my first Pratchett book in a handful of years, and reading it felt like coming back to a home full of love and understanding that was also, maybe, just a tiny bit disappointed in me.⠀

Because The Wee Free Men is a brilliant showcase of Pratchett’s famous righteous anger. Tiffany Aching, like her creator, is an angry person, positively full of rage. She just uses that rage to make the world a better, more compassionate place—if only to spite the darkness. Beautiful and necessary.

MY FATHER, THE PORNOGRAPHER by Chris Offutt

Chris Offutt’s less-than-flattering portrait of his flawed father is a challenging, thought-provoking, and undoubtedly fascinating read. I flew through this in a day, despite the difficult subject matter. It helps that Offutt writes a hell of a sentence, crafting with them a tale of obsession, melancholy, and forgiveness that’s equal parts insightful and heartbreaking. A hell of a read.

DUNE by Frank Herbert

A mesmerizing reading experience through and through. What really drew me in was the writing, which I found to be the complete opposite of its reputation for being dense and dry. “Organic” was the word that kept coming to mind. This book felt like a living, breathing thing. It helped that Herbert’s world-building was downright virtuosic—the sheer scope of the thing is truly staggering, and I was captivated throughout its countless psychedelic pages.

Also, once again: big worms!

TRIGGER MORTIS by Anthony Horowitz

While I genuinely adore Ian Fleming’s writing (in particular his exceptional eye for detail), I find Anthony Horowitz’s Bond books, in general, much better constructed. Which is probably a sacrilegious thing to say. But where Fleming was a brilliant stylist, Horowitz is a master craftsman. The man simply lives and breathes thrillers.

Enjoyed this one a little less than Forever and a Day, his first Bond outing, but found it brilliant all the same. Can’t wait to read his final 007 story.

MOONBOUND by Robin Sloan

I loved Moonbound in a way I haven’t loved a book since probably Becky Chambers’s A Psalm for the Wild-Built. Which is apt, seeing as how they’re both stories that are inherently optimistic about humanity and what the future holds in store for us. Despite my deep-rooted cynicism, stories about radical optimism always resonate with me in profound and lasting ways.⠀

This is also a story about stories, which have always been my favorite kind of stories. Sloan plays around with a lot of tropes and archetypes here, and the fun he has with it all is palpable and infectious.⠀

Also, this book has the literary equivalent of a cinematic needle-drop, and it is, without hyperbole, one of the raddest moments I’ve ever read.⠀

My favorite book of the year.

THE ANTHROPOCENE REVIEWED by John Green

That pesky radical optimism again (hi Dua Lipa was my top artist on Spotify Wrapped this year). John Green delivers a wonderful collection of essays reviewing the myriad ways humans have–for better or worse–made an impact on this planet–and then proceeds to rank them on a five-star scale. The premise may be slightly facetious, but Green never fails to consider his subjects in a thoughtful, measured, and inherently hopeful manner. ⠀

A humorous and heartfelt celebration of humanity, I give The Anthropocene Reviewed five out of five stars.⠀

DIAVOLA by Jennifer Thorne

My favorite Hallowe’en read not actually read during the Hallowe’en season. A Gothic and thoroughly modern ghost story that explores family dynamics in a more visceral and brutally honest manner than most high-brow contemporary novels. ⠀

I loved a lot of things about Diavola, but mainly I adored its Dumpster-fire protagonist, a veritable harbinger of chaos, and how the story proceeded to validate her nature rather than condemn it, making this an exceedingly fun and cathartic read.⠀

THE BLACK SLIDE by J.W. Ocker

There are few things I respect more than children’s horror novels that aren’t afraid to go dark and still remain full of heart. J.W. Ocker’s middle grade work is characterized by this trait, but he took it up a few considerable notches with The Black Slide, and it’s all the better for it. Harrowing, haunting, and heartfelt. More children’s horror like this, please.

LUCY UNDYING by Kiersten White

My favorite Hallowe’en read actually read during the Hallowe’en season. I just loved the hell out of this. Very much a spiritual companion to Kiersten White’s previous novel, The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein. Lucy Undying is likewise gloriously Gothic, unreservedly feminist, and meandering in the most interesting, fascinating ways. A hell of a read.

I hope you all had a great year, and I hope the next one treats us well.

See you on the other side.

📖

August was my birthday month. I reached my Memento Mori Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 37 books just as I turned 37, which was very apt. That it also turned out to be one of the best reading months I’ve had in a while was just a nice little bonus. I got through a fair bit, so let’s dive in.

The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. The Green brothers have shaped and influenced my life in immeasurable ways. I love them both, but have always had a soft spot for John. Partly because, as a fellow anxious and bookish older brother who is often dealing with one existential crisis or another, I relate to him a lot. Mostly though, I’ve just always admired how he consistently chooses to tell his stories — from his books to the best of his video essays — through the fractured lenses of humanism and hope. The “Thoughts from Places” videos, which were my favorites during their Brotherhood 2.0 era, are excellent representations of John’s reflective style, and this collection of essays is essentially a continuation and expansion of that format. I took my time with this one — I started it back in January — and it’s been a delightful companion throughout this stressful, hectic year. I give The Anthropocene Reviewed five out of five stars.

Keep Going by Austin Kleon. A re-read. I first picked this up during the pandemic, and it made that oppressive year feel a little less heavy. This book’s focus is on the creative life, but I find that it’s infinitely more helpful to my personal life. A lovely book that I think everyone should read. Kleon, by the way, is one of the most interesting people you could ever follow online.

It Came from the Trees by Ally Russell. Already wrote about this one, of course. Let’s hear it for rad friends doing rad things.

The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers by Maxwell King. To be perfectly candid I picked this up because I was tired of reading about disappointing men. I wanted to read about someone decent, who did infinitely more good than harm, and I couldn’t think of anyone better and more appropriate than Mister Rogers. But also I just wanted to read more about this amazing man, particularly after watching A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood at the start of the year. I didn’t grow up with Mister Rogers (to be perfectly honest, I think my younger self would have found him perfectly boring), but he’s someone who I’ve come to deeply admire the more I’ve learned about him through the years. The man was practically a saint, yes, but he was also a flawed individual who, through rigorous discipline and profound courage, tried his damnedest to be a force for good in the world. This expansive, engaging biography does an admirable job portraying this most human of humans.

I also read a bunch of short stories.

“Judge Dee and the Mystery of the Missing Manuscript” / “The Locked Coffin: A Judge Dee Mystery” by Lavie Tidhar. I really enjoy these clever, irreverent short stories. “The Mystery of the Missing Manuscript” is set in an ancient library, and Tidhar has a blast affectionately mocking obsessive bookish types. And I think “The Locked Coffin” might just be my favorite of the Judge Dee stories so far? It’s certainly the funniest — I laughed out loud multiple times. It just felt like a livelier story, with Dee himself seeming downright whimsical. Delightful stuff.

“Randomize” by Andy Weir. Super interesting premise and fun execution. Like a lot of these Kindle Single stories, though, it reads very much like the beginning of a larger, far more interesting story, rather than a thing that stands on its own.

“Emergency Skin” by N.K. Jemisin. Now this was far more like it. Much more complete and infinitely more narratively satisfying than Weir’s effort for this collection of Kindle Singles. Not necessarily the most original concept, but it was perfectly compelling and executed in an effortlessly stylish way, which goes a long way in terms of my enjoyment of a thing.

“The Penthouse” by Helen Phillips. Very effective piece of flash fiction. Enjoyed how downright sinister it felt. The closing line is a veritable banger.

“The Year Without Sunshine” / “Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer. Kritzer may have turned into one of my favorite short story writers with these two offerings. Both absolutely wonderful in their own unique ways. “The Year Without Sunshine” in particular is one of those stories that fill you with hope and leave you thinking that, contrary to all current evidence, humanity’s going to be just fine, in the end. She deserves every damn Hugo she gets.

“The Particles of Order” by Yiyun Li. Loved the atmosphere and writing here, but found the ending entirely unsatisfactory.

“A Pretty Place” by E.M. Carroll. I was looking to see if Carroll had any new work coming out. As big a fan as I am of their work, I still somehow managed to miss not only the name and pronoun change, but also this utterly unsettling and gorgeous story from last year. Obscenely good, as per usual.

“Obituary for a Quiet Life” / “The Coded Life of William Thomas Prestwood” by Jeremy B. Jones. These are narrative essays, which I never cover in these wrap-ups, but I was so struck by Jones’s writing that I had to include them. “Obituary for a Quiet Life” is a beautifully poignant piece, and “The Coded Life of William Thomas Prestwood” is just a stunning story that’s simply staggering in scope and so unlike anything I’ve read before. Wonderful, wonderful writer.

Tag: john green

YEAR IN REVIEW ○ 2024