Books I Read in 2024 (So Far), Ranked

THE BEST BOOKS (I READ IN) 2024

Good morning. It is December 9, 2024, which can only mean one thing: it’s time for my annual braggadocious reminder that I am literate. Yes, ‘tis the season of year-end content designed—like social media feeds, but more sophisticated—to enrage you. I don’t loathe year-end listicles because they all say Charli XcX’s BRAT is the album of the year. I also loathe them because they judge art based on an arbitrary timeframe and they neglect to include the month of December. But I also love them.

So I will mb be writing soon with more rankings of other things that I consumed this year: albums, movies, italian beefs. I’ve also been meaning to send you an essay about what the ideal time length is to consider an album “a classic” (I have a highly controversial opinion about this). And I’d really like to use this newsletter as an opportunity to dump out a diary of my experience working on a book about ‘Midwest Emo’ (a term I don’t necessarily like). But I’m not sure if anyone would be interested in that. Also, I’ve become addicted to a phone poker game called Balatro, so I might not send any of these newsletters

I’m pretty sure no one reads, so I can’t imagine you’ll be interested in my Ranked List Of Every Book I Read This Year, but maybe it will encourage you to make a New Year’s Resolution to read for 15 minutes a day or something. I should take my own advice. I like reading but I don’t do it enough, even though it feels like this year I read more books than ever before.

Books are cool in that it would be nearly impossible to read all the major releases, even within a given genre, each year, like you can with albums. For me the impactfulness of books within a calendar year are less about the year they’re released than the year in which you read them, if that makes any sense. The same could be true for albums, but a 2023 LP feels more outdated than a 2023 book, when it comes to this sort of exercise, for whatever reason.

And without further ado here is the list of Books I Read in 2024 (So Far), Ranked (in reverse order of when I read them).

Play Like a Man: My Life in Poster Children by Rose Marshack

Oh, wow. A chance to plug my forthcoming (in like 2026) book ‘Midwest Emo.’ And to give you an idea of what this newsletter would be like if I just made it a diary about my writing & research process. This book is a collection of diaries, too. It consists of Poster Children bassist Rose Marshack’s tour diaries from the ‘90s that she would publish on an early version of the internet, along with some added new writing for context and background.

Steve Lamos, drummer for the band American Football, recommended the book to me when I interviewed him, claiming it did a good job of documenting the 90s Champaign-Urbana music scene. This is the scene I’ve been most heavily researching, because I grew up in Champaign and I’m biased toward the “Midwest Emo” from there, like Braid and American Football and Polyvinyl Records.

Poster Children were predecessors to those bands but also connected to them in many ways. They played DIY shows in many local basements. They performed in 1991 with everyone’s heroes Fugazi, & Dischord Records’ digital archive of that show includes a promotional flyer from a zine written by local Braid members Todd Bell (like me, of Central High School fame) and Roy Ewing. Their second drummer was Brendan Gamble, who went on to engineer American Football (LP1).

Like peers of the scene Hum, Poster Children got swept into the ‘college rock’ craze and signed to a major label. They never experienced the widespread success or name recognition of other bands of their style and era, but their early embrace of technology and relentless touring schedule built them a community of passionate and dedicated fans. This book does a great job of explaining how that happened.

Last month I was at a bar in Burbank, California and I heard their music playing. The bartender told me he was from Mattoon, IL (about 15 min south of Champaign), and that Poster Children were the best band ever. When I recounted this story to Rose, she laughed and said that I should correct him: Didjits (a late 80s/early 90s hardcore band from Mattoon) is the best band ever.

Beyond my research reasons for reading this book, it was astounding to read about a band who was so ahead of the curve technologically. I had a great conversation with Rose and Rick Posterchild about how the Midwest informed their musical sensibilities, their access to the internet and programming knowledge, and their touring work ethic. Even if you have no idea where Champaign is, this is still a great read.

The Chronicles of DOOM: Unraveling Rap’s Masked Iconoclast by SH Fernando

I was skeptical about this book when I first heard about it, because I also happened to be writing a book kinda about MF DOOM. Obviously Skiz is a legend and this book is far more encompassing than a 33 1/3 about Madvillainy, but I had become pretentious about my own idea of “writing about DOOM in a DOOM-esque manner,” so I scoffed at the idea of a straightforward biography.

When I visited Exile in Bookville in Chicago this summer (shout out to Exile in Bookville, a bookstore with a great selection of titles that also happens to have been the most supportive bookstore in the world so far for me personally) - the co-owner Javier gave me an advanced reader’s copy of this book & asked if I wanted to come back in November to be “in conversation” with the author. I’ve always wanted to be “in conversation” with someone, even though I don’t really know what that means and I think it’s kind of weird that author events always frame discussions in that way. But there goes my hating ass for no reason again.

I read the book and I appreciated that SH Fernando wrote in a more classic biographical style, especially because he didn’t hold back at revealing details about Daniel Dumile’s hustling, womanizing and drinking. People told me a lot of not-so-positive things about DOOM that I didn’t include in the book, but I’m glad that there is a book out there that humanizes him, even if I didn’t want to write it.

There’s also a part about DOOM’s exile in London, with some analysis about why it was a particularly sad and yet artistically fruitful time of his life. Because SH also wrote a book about Wu-Tang, I had the epiphany while reading this that by recording albums with whatever labels would pay him, under multiple aliases, he was a one-man Wu-Tang. I told this to Skiz “in conversation” and he said it was a good point.

To add to the narcissism going on in this blurb, I also want to mention that my name is specifically mentioned in the Madvillainy section of this book. SH writes something about how he doesn’t want to focus like I did on the drama surrounding that album’s creation (I didn’t either, I swear), but it’s not condescending and I still feel like I learned something new just by reading about the album from someone else’s perspective. I obviously have zero claim over “the story of MF DOOM” (which is kinda what my book was about, that his & Madlib’s artistries encourage fans to share their own legends), so I’m glad that there’s another book out on a similar topic. I was pretty bitter recently, though, when I landed at the Champaign airport and the bookstore had this book on display and not mine. Either my city has forgotten about me or the thickness and prestigious publisher of this one give it more legitimacy. Damnit, I’m griping again.

I wholeheartedly recommend that anyone who enjoyed my book check this one out. I especially encourage anyone who hated the narrative conceit of my book to read this one instead. You’ll like it way more. At the “conversation” event SH told the audience that he’s thinking about writing a book about Bad Brains next. I’ll be looking forward to that and planning on reading his Wu-Tang book eventually. Bonus recommendation: read RZA’s books. The Tao of the Wu changed my life.

Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis

This is the best book I read this year and I hate myself for saying that because I think Bret Easton Ellis is an asshole now or always has been. And I know that’s an insufferable way to live so I looked past it because this book idea was fascinating and related directly to some ideas I have for the ‘Midwest Emo’ book.

Lunar Park is a fictional memoir. The main character is Bret Easton Ellis, author of American Psycho and heavy drinker / drug user. The book diverges from Bret Easton Ellis’ real life in that the fictional character is married to a woman, has two children and lives in suburban New York. When a slew of copycat American Psycho killings break out in the town, Bret Easton Ellis either begins to lose his mind or finds out that his house is haunted. There’s some trauma drama surrounding his dad.

I read this book because John Milas, author of another haunted house book called The Militia House, recommended it. It’s really good and unique and not just because my ‘Midwest Emo’ book will be centered around the American Football House at 704 W. High Street in Urbana, Illinois, which after a recent one-night writing retreat I can confirm is either haunted or I’m losing my mind.

The Cipher by Kathe Koja

This is a horror book that came highly recommended from horror book aficionado Will (not me, the other Will in my group chat). Other Will brought it up when I consulted the wisdom of the chat on “suspenseful but atypical haunted house books.” This followed a conversation with, again, John Milas (cut from our Smile Politely interview) in which we discussed what “haunting” means. I think the American Football House could be haunted in some way, because it influences people’s behavior. But the connotation of that haunting isn’t necessarily negative, like most haunted houses. It’s more haunted with nostalgia.

I don’t typically like horror but The Cipher was awesome. It’s pretty scary, kinda. I fell asleep one night reading it in a cabin in northern Minnesota and I woke up in the middle of the night screaming. That happens a lot, though, whether or not I fall asleep reading about a crew of alcoholic crust punks who become enamored with a mysterious evil hole that appears in their apartment complex. There are so many metaphors or analogies you can draw from the plot and all of them inevitably reflect the reader’s own psyche. That’s good horror.

I think this book is somewhat of a cult classic. It’s an easy read. It got me excited about writing again, because the writing made me feel captivated and creeped out.

Sandinista! (33 ⅓) by Micajah Henley

Micajah Henley was nice enough to invite me on his podcast You Forgot One to discuss Madvillainy around when my book came out. He invited me back to talk about Cap’n Jazz for another episode, when he heard I was writing about Midwest Emo. He then guested on my podcast Music Town USA, which may never be released. He talked about Orlando - the city’s history, geography, and culture, and how it relates to the music. He played in a Christian hardcore band there and had a lot of interesting stuff to say about that scene.

I’m a basic Clash fan in that I know London Calling from front-to-back but I never really got into Sandinista! Still, I enjoyed reading about the album in this book. I liked the angle Micajah took - examining the double LP and exploring whether it would be better or worse if the tracklist were different. That’s a fun way to think about any album, no matter how long it is. There’s also some cool historical context in the book that I never would have known about if I didn’t actually read it, and just told Micajah that I read it or something. Plus, like my book, it looks good on a shelf. Makes you look literate.

Static by Brendan Gillen

This was an unexpected treat. Brendan Gillen contacted me after reading my Madvillainy book and asked me to write a blurb for his book, Static, released via Vine Leaves Press.

No one else has ever asked me to write a blurb before, and that feels like a real official author-y thing to do, so I agreed. Luckily, I thought the book was awesome. It focuses on the relationships between members of a band in NYC, and truly is one of the best examples of music-driven fiction that I’ve ever read. It’s clear Brendan loves music and is capable of translating it into a fictional form. It captures the excited yet uncertain energy of being a young adult. Whatever I wrote in the blurb, which is actually printed in the book, was better than what I’ve written here.

Before the book came out Brendan’s agent messaged me about the blurb. I thought it was funny because Static is similar in some ways to a novel I’ve been working on since 2016, in terms of the type of music discussed and the relationships between the characters. I had submitted that manuscript to the same agent who was now reaching out to me, asking if I’d promote the book. For several years I’ve been trying to get a literary agent for my novel. Brendan’s agent read the full manuscript before ultimately passing on it, but she gave me some of the best feedback and encouragement I’ve received on it.

The publishing industry is funny. I still want to get a literary agent and submit my book to traditional publishers. Like, that’s still a dream of mine, for some reason, because of my age probably. And yet MF DOOM and Madlib and the Midwest Emo artists I’m writing about all released music in a much more independent manner. I could just post a novel online. I could do it myself. Yet I still seek the approval of institutions. I’m doing it wrong, I know.

I also share that story in case anyone out there happens to be jealous of me for having published a book. The jealousy and feelings of inadequacy or imposter syndrome never end. I don’t feel successful and likely never will from career accomplishments. I have to constantly remind myself that it’s okay to write for an audience of one. Ideally I’d want everyone in the world to read my thoughts, but I’ll take my measly substack subscriber count instead. On the topic of writerly jealousy, I recommend reading RF Kuang’s Yellowface or watching the Robin Williams movie World’s Greatest Dad.

Anyways I’m definitely jealous of this book because Brendan Gillen is a talented writer and the book is good.

Baldur’s Gate II by Matt Bell

I like this guy’s newsletter about writing. This book came out on Boss Fight Books, which is kinda like the 33 ⅓ of video games, in 2015. It’s a quick and easy read that gets into the dynamics of Dungeons & Dragons (which I played for the first time somewhere within the past year or so), and his own personal connection to it.

Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes by Moshe Kasher

I read Moshe Kasher’s first book, Kasher in the Rye, a while ago. He’s a funny dude who happens to be a talented writer as well. I liked it.

The Accidental Ecosystem by Peter Alagona

This year I tried to start a series about urban wildlife. I interviewed some people and put a couple of videos out, but I found it too time-consuming and I couldn’t figure out how to approach it, really. I might still bring it back someday. But this book was awesome based on my interest in urban wildlife. It talks about how cities are a relatively recent phenomenon, and animals have adapted to live in our human habitat. Coyotes are crazy, man.

I also interviewed Peter Alagona for like an hour but never put that episode out. I should.

Less (Arthur Less #1) - Andrew Sean Greer

Someone recommended this book as an easy read. It’s about a middle aged gay writer traveling around Europe. It didn’t convince me to keep reading the series, but it was entertaining enough.

A Separation by Katie Kitamura

This book was great and I barely remember what it was about. My friend Thammika Songkaoe, a writer who lives in Singapore, recommended it to me when she was visiting LA and we went to that book on Larchmont. Later she asked me what my biggest takeaway was from it and I said, “I feel like she did a great job of making it compelling even when not much was happening. Like a small scene without much going on but then she goes deep in the character’s mind. Not sure if that makes sense but that’s what I enjoyed. Like simple but profound.” Thammika also recommended a book called Breast & Eggs, which I haven’t read yet and probably won’t.

Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfar

I read this book because it’s Czech and set in Prague and based on the Adam Sandler movie Spaceman, which came out on Netflix earlier this year to no acclaim but is pretty well-done. I pitched an article to LA Review of Books and Paul Thompson commissioned me, but the piece never came out. I saw him at a birthday party and he told me he was thinking they’d still publish it, but I told him not to. I actually think my review was pretty cringey, and no one cared about the movie really, so I’m not too worried about it.

Murder Your Employer by Rupert Holmes

This book was nuts. Harry Potter but morbid. I felt icky reading it but I liked it a lot, even though it’s not my genre. Really interesting world.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Lovely slop.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers

Cozy fantasy. Not my genre, but it is cozy.