I like setting myself little reading goals. It's low stakes, nobody really cares, and if I fail I'm reading books regardless. For 2024 I decided I wanted to read at least 50% stuff published pre-2000. After comprehensively failing to manage this I moved the goal posts: 50% pre-2004, twenty years or older. Surely that’s doable. Apparently not.
Does it actually fucking matter? No. It worked out great nevertheless, because even attempting this ‘challenge’ led me to be more intentional with seeking out older books I’m interested in when perusing the charity shops. I had my eyes peeled and I found some gems.
An additional benefit is I actually want to talk about them. I often want to talk more about older books than newer ones, saying things like ‘can you believe this was written in [xyz]’ or ‘it’s like it was written yesterday’ or ‘it’s saying [x] so much better than [new book] did!’ and a litany of similarly banal things. More than that, I want to write them down.
So! I’m blowing the dust off this newsletter to bring you a few book reviews. Here are ten of my favourite older titles I read this year:
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (1847-48)
Was absolutely gobsmacked by the voice in this. Really funny, did some fascinating and pretty audacious stuff with limited narration vs omniscience. Just a rollicking good time, extremely pacy for a behemoth. I’m glad I didn’t read this for study but it seems so much of what I loved about it has to do with narratology that maybe I should seek out some essays. How embarrassing for me. Worth mentioning that I read this one after reading Sarah May’s Becky last year and thinking it fell a bit flat. Sometimes the best thing a retelling can do for you is lead you back to the excellent source material. [1]
Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delaney (1966)
The best science-fiction is always about language, isn’t it? I loved this. Short but so rich and layered. Following Rydra was a blast, wrapping my head around all that phenomenology was a blast. I read this pretty early on in the year and I know it’ll reward a reread or several. Babel-17 tied with Flowers for Algernon for the 1967 Nebula, which is very funny if you’ve read both (I think).
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (1970)
What Morrison has to say about beauty and ugliness in this book is all the more cutting for how current it feels. A facile thing to say, maybe. While reading I found myself remarking (as I always do with Morrison) on how beautiful the writing was, which in turn made me consider different kinds of beauty and value, and aesthetic appreciation, and art, and the pervasion of racism therein.
All the President’s Men by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (1974)
Wildcard, this one. I keep coming across newer Woodward books in charity shops and thinking man, what happened… But this was really great. It read like a thriller, which I’m sure you’d expect had you seen the film first, but I hadn’t. I watched it straight away after finishing and loved that too. Just a really gripping story if you love reading about paperwork, which I do. Always looking for recommendations for more books like this – they’ve gotta feel like that kind of Mark Ruffalo film.
The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector (1977)
My first Lispector! It sparkled and danced and fizzed across my consciousness from the jump i.e. the absolutely incredible title page. I love a ‘but I digress’ narrator, especially if they’re annoying and/or morally objectionable. I love a narrator-who-is-a-character-focusing-on-a-non-perspective-character. I love to Realise What The Title Means [2]. Made me want to read everything else she’s written. A great place to start with her is my two cents.
Solar Storms by Linda Hogan (1994)
Read this instead of whatever buzzy ‘climate fiction’ novel the Big 5 are pushing right now. Solar Storms ripped me apart with its tenderness and its devastation. Set in the Boundary Waters in the 1970s, this book is a coming of age story following an indigenous teenager returning home after leaving foster care. Angela and her elders eventually journey North in part to prevent the construction of a hydroelectric dam. Hogan’s writing is stunning in her exploration of land and people and in Angela’s reconnection with both. In parts reminded me of Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night, another book interested in multigenerational care and ageing. If I could make you all read one book on this list it would be this one.
Kiss an Angel by Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1996)
I read this with friends after hearing it recommended on Fated Mates, a romance novel podcast. The hosts cited it as a good example of a Grovel, proper noun-ed for Romance Jargon Importance. I love a Grovel in a romance novel, so I was primed to take many recommendations from this episode. This one did not immediately pique my interest – I prefer historical romance, shocker – but a few things made me take this to the group chat in a state of near-madness: ‘high concept’, ‘Romanovs’, ‘set at the circus’, ‘there’s ~tiger magic~’, plus it’s a contemporary romance published in 1996. Well we read it. We then went on to read another Phillips about a runaway First Lady on a road trip in fake-baby-bump disguise.
Lion’s Blood by Steven Barnes (2002)
This was really something. An alternate history in which Africa colonises ‘America’ following the thought experiment ‘what if Alexander the Great lived to old age?’ It’s difficult, provocative, and a really good story. There are plenty of people who don’t like this book with good reason. There are plenty of people who don’t like this book with bad reason. I thought it was great but I spend a lot of time on r/AlternateHistory. I’m excited to read more Steven Barnes (who is married to Tananarive Due!)
The Sluts by Dennis Cooper (2004)
I don’t really know what to say about this one. 2004 isn’t so long ago but it’s still hard to believe The Sluts is twenty years old. It’s violent, it’s disorientating, it’s timely. A lot of the reviews of this book focus on desire, fantasy, etc. Obviously it would be dishonest to say I wasn’t thinking about those things while reading but oh boy was I also thinking about hypercontemporary information distribution, anonymity, power and surveillance… It’s also very very funny.
The Farseer Trilogy by Robin Hobb (1995-97)
Pipping everything else I’ve read this year to the post at this late late stage in the year (I read all three in the first week of December) is Hobb’s first trilogy in the Realm of the Elderlings, which I’m counting as a single book because I want to and because that’s essentially how I consumed it. Should I have wolfed this down like so much all-you-can-eat Sunday carvery? Perhaps not. Perhaps I should have savoured it, lingered at moments of reunion and separation, let myself lean into the swoon, emphatically not read the final few chapters on the fucking train. But I did, and I am still ravenous. Luckily there are thirteen other books to read, six of them even featuring Fitz and the Fool, who have bewitched me body and soul. I’ve known I would love these for years. If I get into the habit of writing this newsletter thing perhaps I’ll say more sometime about why I was so correct. There’s a lot I want to think through here to do with bodies and duty and agency and loss and names… and also the dragons are cool as hell.
That’s it for now, though.
I’ll finish with a list of twelve books I want to get to in 2025, if I can:
Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (1842)
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann (1924)
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees (1926)
The Magus by John Fowles (1965)
Ada, or Ardor by Vladimir Nabokov (1969)
Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delaney (1974)
The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams (1988)
Possession by A. S. Byatt (1990)
Curse of the Mistwraith by Janny Wurts (1993)
The Between by Tananarive Due (1995)
The Gods Are Thirsty by Tanith Lee (1996)
1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (2009)
More soon,
Kat x
[1] This year I read The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk this year and adored it so much The Magic Mountain has moved even higher up my list of priorities. Hope it’s not an inverse Becky situation.
[2] My Brilliant Friend still the GOAT, of course.
love this, Kat <3 I'm so glad you read and loved Solar Storms also!!! That's a book that can travel with a person for decades, I feel.
Lispector <333