The Curator: end of year book lists, book FOMO, and learning the hard way

James, Martyr!, and the 2024 titles I might pick up before the end of the year

It is officially the reason for the season - book list mania!

I love a list. A list is a heuristic technique for calming the noise of a world that prefers chaos. It’s a slice of life distilled into meaningful pieces. A list says, of all the things I could have written down, this is what is important to me. A list is doing something!

And yet sometimes the “best of” lists drive me into a FOMO frenzy, wondering what I’ve missed out on. Shouldn’t I be soothed by the best books of the year lists? I now have zero thinking to do for my next read! What freedom from the perils of decision-making. But alas, we know that these lists usually just add to our ever-growing piles of books shuffling closer out of the corner of our eyes.

I have had several minor epiphanies of late¹, which I will share with you in the hopes that any end-of-year overwhelm you might be feeling is dispersed because ain’t nobody got time for that².

reading lessons

👻Lesson #1: Every good book is not for me.

Of all the 2024 new releases, I’ve read James and Martyr!, which are both on every best-of list (and almost every award list). I loved James, and I liked Marytr! To see both everywhere reminds me that these lists are generic in that they try to encapsulate many tastes, but they may not all be my taste. If I do not feel more well-read, more intelligent, or happier having read two of the most talked about books of the year, well then do any of the others really matter³? With this mind shift, I can appreciate the lists more. They are just books, after all.

👻Lesson #2: Your TRB is a gift that ensures you will never run out of reading material, even in your own personal winter.

My husband recently lost his job (we're ok!), but there is not a lot of extra cash for books right now. At first, it felt like loss - like lack, like scarcity - until I took one glance at the hordes on my shelf (and my Kindle and the public library) and realized I am flush with options. Now, instead of seeing my unread shelves as a burden, it is a GIFT that I will literally never run out of books before he finds full-time work again. Who knew my obsessive book-buying would one day come in handy? I was simply stockpiling before winter.

👻Lesson #3: Excessive planning does not lead to happy reading.

I read best when I am not constantly thinking about what is next. This is not a radical statement, but it is radical when I put it into action. As a self-proclaimed list lover, I found myself stuck in a book shuffle loop, adding new ones to some mental pile that followed me around like a bad decision. When I took the opposite route and outlined my eight weeks of spooky season reads, I raced through them and burnt out badly. Since then, I have only allowed myself five books in rotation at any time. Just five! This includes books I am actively reading, plan to start next, or just finished and need to write about. That’s it; there is no other planning. None!⁴

I am sure that I need to learn these lessons over and over again, but that’s ok. Just 1% weirder every day, remember??

so, what books am I contemplating for the end of the year?

Of the books published this year, I’ve read James, Martyr!, You Like It Darker, Entitlement, The Third Gilmore Girl, William, The Ministry of Time, The God of the Woods, and now Orbital. After perusing all of the best-of lists and awards, there are really only a few I seriously considered getting to before the end of the year. Here is my process for narrowing it down.

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

An intensely polarizing novel! The themes and plot sound like my taste - “a propulsive page-turner filled with dark humor” about an American secret Agent in France. This one was shortlisted for the Booker, longlisted for the National Book Award, is an NYT notable book, and an Atlantic top ten. Yet I’ve read a few convincing arguments about how the novel is quite - bad! And then another that says it’s quite - good! This feels like a novel I need to approach after all the other opinions have died down.

• This one that I linked last week from Brandon Taylor in the London Review of Books argues that it’s a “sloppy book whose careless construction and totalising cynicism come to feel downright hostile.”

• Celine at

  personal canon
  wrote a very insightful review that really convinces me I might hate it.

• And then

  Maris Kreizman
  goes ahead and convinces me it might be “beautiful and crafty and cunning”. Help!

My Friends by Hisham Matar

Many people I trust have given this one rave reviews - a few bookstagrammers and bookstackers including Ms.

Martha

. It won the Orwell Prize for fiction, was longlisted for the Booker, and was nominated for the National Book Award (I was surprised not to see it on the NYT 100 Notable list!). The thing holding me back? The paperback publishes on January 7th, so your paperback queen wants to wait until then.

Good Material by Dolly Alderton

Good Material made the most coveted best-of list of the year - The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2024. I have discovered some of my most favorite novels from this list over the years, particularly before becoming a part of the Substack community (A Children’s Bible and No One is Talking About This). Last December, I listened to Dolly’s Everything I Know About Love while wrapping Christmas presents in my garage, and I want that feeling again this year. However, I tend to do better with nonfiction on audio. My last audiobook of the year will either be this or perhaps Ina Garten’s Be Ready When the Luck Happens.

The Book of Love by Kelly Link

Link is a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and her first novel - a contemporary fantasy about three high school students who mysteriously die and then fight their way back to the living - garnered this blurb:

“Imagine a ring of David Mitchell and Stephen King books dancing around a fire until something new, brave, and wonderful rose up from the flames."--Isaac Fitzgerald, Today

!!!!!!

The Book of Love is an NYT Notable, a Time 100 must-read (stop harassing us with this language Time!🙄), a Lit Hub favorite, a Publishers Weekly best, a Book Riot best, nominated for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, AND most important of all a Vulture by Maris Kreizman best book. This novel has garnered so much praise and so little award recognition! I must read it (before my library gold expires!!). This is the one.

Bonus: The Vegetarian by Han Kang

I tend to avoid books about food since I have unpleasant visceral reactions to most food descriptors. However, since Han Kang won the Nobel Prize and was also the first Korean writer to win the International Booker, interest has skyrocketed. I will read this one, mostly because I own this beautiful copy from Blackwell’s, and it’s only 183 pages long.

Have you read any of these books? Got any opinions? I always want to hear them!!

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reading 📖→

• I finally cracked open The Book of Love, thanks to a generous library renewal policy. I hear a lot of Bradbury in her narrative voice, and it’s slightly distracting. I’m giving it a solid chance, though, for the reasons noted above.

• Plodding along through Crime & Punishment on weekends only. It is too dense and dark to pick up after a long day of work, but I aim to see it through.

• I had to switch to the physical version of Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe because I just couldn’t keep up with the story without the text. My brain would start to wander on my walks, and I blame his soothing Irish accent.

consuming📽️🎧→

• Woman of the Hour - directed by and starring Anna Kendrick, this was a powerfully stylistic film about Rodney Alcala, the Gameshow Killer. I was highly impressed by the storytelling and suspense she managed to wring out of a well-known killer’s story. Highly highly recommend.

• The Intern - this 2015 movie starring Anne Hathaway as a start-up CEO and Robert DeNiro as her widower intern is everything I want in a comfort watch. Mr. Mark and I popped in on Saturday morning with coffee, and it was elite.

• Christmas Movie hot(ish) take: Love Actually is actually a terrible movie, and The Family Stone is actually excellent. Each time I watch Love Actually, I spot another plot hole or someone to hate, while each time I watch The Family Stone, I find something new to love or cry about (Luke Wilson gives the performance of a lifetime, I tell ya!).

book news and restacks📰→

• Use this very handy dandy Reddit shortcut for all the book awards and book lists this year (Reddit)

• I really loved Regan’s idea about the 5+ club instead of author completionism, and it meshes nicely with my 5-at-a-time rule (Substack)

• Laurel
  convincing me it’s going to be worth it to read classics outside of my century… (Substack)

• The real reason I am interested in reading My Friends thank you

  Martha
  (Substack)

and cats 🐈‍⬛→

not interested in letting me read

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let’s chat 👻→

• Do you pay attention to the book lists and awards?

• What book(s) are you hoping to finish before the end of the year?

• What are you reading currently, and is it any good?

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in case you missed it 🖤

The Curator: bookish gifts to get yourself this holiday season

The Curator: everything I read in Fall

The Curator: a book for remembering this is all made up

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See you around the bookshelf!

1. Thank you to the comments section of

Abra McAndrew

‘s recent post for inspiring this one.

2. Godbless Sweet Brown

3. “Matter” in the sense that we all die at the end of this, and not having read the Booker winner from 2020 will change nothing

4. Can you tell I am still working on this one?