Okay, here we go. I chose three of my favourite reads from last year, and three that I thought were… not my favourites. I would like to mention that I met my reading goal this year, 42 books in total, and most of those were pretty good. (Honourable mentions to Wilderness Tips, Big Swiss, Foe, and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, to name a few.) And I can’t resist being a hater, so I also included a bottom or worst three.
P.S. You can click on the titles for links to buy the books without supporting Amazon or Chapters “Kills Kids” Indigo :)
Best Books of the Year
In Third Place: Polyamorous Love Song by Jacob Wren. This novel unfurls as an investigation of what it means to create art and the nature of rebellion. It is delightfully funny and strange, and totally urgent in its subject matter. Mad, avant-garde, and compelling.
Second Place: The Honeyman Festival by Marian Engel. This book has some of the most striking imagery and stylistic choices I’ve ever come across; I was taking pictures of the pages like I was at a concert. Despairingly feminist. You’ve likely read or at least heard of her most famous novel, Bear, where a woman has sex with a bear. This is not very much like that, except for how visceral and evocative it is.
First Place: Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson. I could probably have written a whole post about this book alone, and how underappreciated it is as a seminal dark academia text. In classic Jackson fashion, Hangsaman centres an off-putting, lonely young woman, who copes with quirks; in this case, Natalie has a detective in her head, who interrogates her mercilessly about an imagined murder she has committed. We follow Natalie through her oppressive family home, meet her domineering father and alcoholic mother, and see her sexually assaulted just before she leaves for a girls’ college. On campus she is alienated and bullied by her peers, although she finds favour with a Professor who admires her father’s writing. Natalie falters between college and home, trying to cope with a strong suicidal drive and the aftermath of her assault (by a man who was reminiscent of her father and Professor). Near the end she makes a single friend, another weird girl like herself, and has a defamiliarized episode on a public bus that I can’t stop thinking about months later. This book is about Cartesian metaphysics and the existentialist struggle. It’s about class, and misogyny, and loneliness, and coming of age. It should be treated with the same regard as The Secret History and it was easily the best book I read last year.
Books That Were Not Good
NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes From the Field by Billy-Ray Belacourt. Now listen. I spent all of grad school hearing about how great this guy was. I had peers who called him their favourite writer and I felt ignorant for not having read him. Finally, this year, I tried one of his poetry collections, and I was very underwhelmed. Obviously his work is politically important. But with poetry, the only thing I’m really looking for is to be surprised by observations that ring true, about anything. Belcourt’s figurative language fell totally flat in that regard. The metaphors felt in-apt and forced. The premises for experimental forms were interesting, but executions were just not memorable beyond their concept. And there were so many juvenile, cringe moments, meant to make the work feel fresh but instead instead instantly dated it. I wanted to like this collection so much but honestly I think that some of you guys need to read another poet.
The Pisces by Melissa Broder. This one just bummed me out, and I love books about women freaking the fuck out. But the ending exhausted me with its nihilism. So many cool concepts in here that feel held together by sticks and spit. So many underdeveloped secondary characters. So few consequences for anything. A big let-down.
Fourth Wing and Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros. These are bad, guys, and I read them both anyways. If you need brain junk food and a heavy romance dopamine hit, they’re alright. But you’ll need a palate cleanser afterwards, or some Dostoyevsky or something, to resuscitate your brain cells.
In 2025, I’ve set my goal at 50 books, and I’ve already finished 2 as of January 8th. I think I have a good balance of literary merit and silliness ahead of me. I should also probably write more—we’ll see if I manage to make any progress on my little novel. I told myself I would try to publish at least once a month on here, too, so sorry if you get sick of me. If you upgrade to a paid subscription you can tell me to shut up and I will.
See u soon!
Shan
