My Favorite Stuff of 2024 (plus a sale!)
Books! Games! Movies! Exclamation points!
Farewell, 2024! It’s been a surreal year for too many reasons. But not all of those surreal things have been unwelcome. I reunited with friends I hadn’t seen in years. I went on my first book tour. I gave a reading in the middle of a tornado warning.
And there’s that lifelong goal of publishing a novel. Someone You Can Build A Nest In found an amazing audience, one that keeps me alive with its kind words and fan art. I can’t thank you all enough for the enthusiasm you’ve showed me. The novel has since been chosen for many Years Best lists, including those of NPR, Library Journal, Polygon, and the Washington Post, and many more.
I have a whole other post brewing about my gratitude for all this. But I couldn’t let the year end without saying: thank you.
There’s a little more to say, though! Because there are a few End of Year sales afoot.
Barnes & Noble is having its 50% off sale, good through January 1st. Someone You Can Build A Nest In’s hardcover is half off, which is the lowest price the book has been to date.
Amazon U.S. promptly price-matched, in case that is your retailer of choice.
For my readers in the U.K., the Amazon Kindle version of Someone You Can Build A Nest In is Arcadia’s big present sale: it’s just 99p through the end of the month. Yes, less than a pound!
I had to tell y’all about that before any more time got away from us.
That’s not the only thing I want to discuss today. As 2024 comes to a close, I’ve been reflecting on the great media I’ve been consuming. I want to spotlight just a few of the great things I’ve read, played, and watched.
Maybe some of these titles are familiar to you?
The Book of Love by Kelly Link
For the whole time I read The Book of Love, I didn’t want to do anything else. Want to approach it through the lens of genre works like Gantz, Death Parade, and Battle Royale? Or how it’s a radical angle on a lot of Stephen King’s works, but not feeling one bit like a King book? Or how it’s several hundred pages of Kelly Link inhabiting characters so deeply that you forget a plot is coming, and then the plot smacks you across the jaw? It’s prose catnip.
The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed
From the opening where our hero swims from his bed to his front door, you know it’s going to be weird. It’s a summons into a fairy tale woods with missing children and monsters who probably won’t be your friends (much as I’d want to try to befriend them). The ending has a particular weight to it that’s distinct to Mohamed’s writing. A darned good novella.
Dreadful by Caitlin Rozakis
Even the premise is a blast with this one. On the eve of his master plan coming to fruition, the Dark Wizard gets amnesia. Why did he kidnap that princess? Why are all these other wizards coming to his fortress? The hardcover should come stained from his flop sweat. It’s punchy and genuinely funny, not just mocking tropes but reminding us why they’re fun.
Foul Days by Genoveva Dimova
Following the breakout success of The Witcher, English-language publishers have become more receptive to Fantasy that explores Eastern European folklore. Of these books, Foul Days is among my favorites. It follows a witch trying to get her shadow (and powers) back, going on an adventure about encroaching borders, weird creatures, and one suspicious man who seems immune to magic. I’m psyched to read the sequel.
The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo
This book is almost a companion to my own Someone You Can Build A Nest In, both in premise and in that they were published just weeks apart. This is Choo at her best, within the entwining narratives of a boy who can sense through anyone’s lies, and a girl who is secretly a fox spirit in disguise. It’s got plenty of intrigue, but the main attraction are all the juicy, complex bonds that get explored and tested.
Holly by Stephen King
One of those books that made it feel like an adult was finally in the room. Holly Gibney returns, our hypochondriac detective, in time to hunt down a missing person—during the height of COVID-19. King has always thrived in capturing zeitgeists, but I wasn’t prepared for him to nail all the uncertainty and doublethink of 2021 America. It’s refreshing in its honesty.
An Immense World by Ed Yong
The dozens of people who recommended this were all correct: I loved it. This is a book exploring how differing sense organs lead to different behaviors and views of the world across the myriad animals that share this planet with us. You can just flip through it for fun facts about whales smelling mountains and seals sensing prey with their scalps. But in aggregate, it gives me a sense of peace the way Oliver Sacks used to, by normalizing different ways of experiencing everything.
A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon, translated by Anton Hur
Be warned that as light and wholesome as this book can get, it opens with our would-be magical girl literally contemplating killing herself. It’s that she’s lost the will to go on that opens her up to possibilities of magic. It’s also her nearly dissociative perspective that lets her see how the world of magical girls is coming apart. It’s a great lens on familiar tropes, creating something emotional and fresh.
The Night Guest by Hildur Knutsdottir, translated by Mary Robinette Kowal
Most of The Night Guest is written in short, bite-sized chapters. At first, this makes the heroine’s plight digestible: she can’t get a diagnosis for why she’s so exhausted. But gradually that gives way to intrigue as we realize she’s been doing things in her sleep—and not just walking. All those men who won’t call her back become question marks. It’s such a fun ride.
The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler
If we resurrected the woolly mammoths, on that day, it would feel like a scientific miracle. But years afterward, how would the world treat them? Nayler probes at how grim it could get, without dispensing sympathy or that people would feel compelled to intervene. This book stuck with me for months afterward.
Animal Well, developed by Billy Basso
Animal Well asks you to get lost and then discover your way out of being lost. There isn’t one word of text to help you with all the puzzles in its interconnected world. Finding an item, like the ‘laser’ that is not a laser at all, is just the beginning. Uncovering what you can do with it opens the possibilities of the world around you. It’s a game about the intrigues and joys of discovery. There are so many secrets in Animal Well that I wouldn’t be surprised if players still haven’t found the true ending.
Astro Bot, developed by Team ASOBI
Confession: I’ve never liked the 3D Mario platformers. There’s something clunky and cumbersome to them, even in Odyssey. I always preferred 2D platformers. And yet somewhere between all the tactile feedback and Astro Bot’s jets letting you float post-jump, this game sucked me in. It is a candy store of colors and heavenly sound design. I enjoyed it all the way to the platinum trophy.
Balatro, developed by Local Thunk
Imagine if several unhinged teenagers tried to recreate poker using four decks of cards, a Tarot set, and whatever baseball cards they could find. The result is this engrossing singleplayer roguelike, where instead of bluffing and competing against others, you’re trying to combine odd hands for a high score. Maybe you’ll get lucky and find a limited edition holographic ace of hearts.
Botany Manor, developed by Balloon Studios
A low-key puzzle game about an abandoned manor that is utterly overgrown by mysterious plants. By finding old notes and botanical journals, you figure out how to shrink, move, and transplant these plants, so that you can pass through. But also in doing so you figure out the mysteries behind where everyone went—and what they plan to do in the manor next.
Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, developed by Nintendo
Having grown up on the Zelda game format, it was refreshing to play a top-down game like this where I had all the tools to solve puzzles and could create my own solutions, rather than following a narrow set of solutions using the one new item in the dungeon. This often meant leaving a long staircase of beds behind me to climb somewhere I didn’t belong, but I loved every single mattress.
Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, developed by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
The most fun I’ve ever had with a JRPG battle system thanks to one thing: a physics system that means anybody you knock over can hit other people and knock them over, turning every attack into a possible bowling ball. The bad guys? They’re bowling pins.
Nine Sols, developed by Red Candle Games
I’ll disclose that I contributed to the crowdfund for this game, as I believed in the Taiwanese developers based on their earlier Horror games. But this is a remorseless, tight action game that stands among the best Metroidvanias. Its world is Cyberpunk through the lens of Taoism. Furious as the boss fights were, my favorite part was seeing my home populate with survivors who grew together and made the space their own.
Silent Hill 2 Remake, developed by Bloober Team
Probably the most daunting Horror remake, since everyone is nostalgic for Silent Hill 2, which its graphics, traversal, and combat have all aged terribly. I know this because I am one of those weirdos who still loves it. I thought there was no way Bloober Team could pull this off, and yet it is a fascinating and dreadful experience all the way to the end credits. Perhaps my favorite part is Akira Yamaoka returns to do the soundtrack, and rather than remastering it, he rearranged and touched up every single track so that the game sounds familiar and fresh at the same time.
Tactical Breach Wizards, developed by Suspicious Developments
At first blush, Tactical Breach Wizards looks like a military squad game where all your mercenaries are wizards. One unit is literally just Gandalf in urban camouflage, with his staff carved to look like a sniper rifle. But the game has two surprises. First, it’s actually a puzzle game, not a shooter, but a game about getting through impossible frays alive. Equally great is the second surprise: a clever script that is genuinely one of the funniest in gaming this decade. It knows it’s absurd, and it goes places with that.
UFO 50, developed by Mossmouth
UFO 50 is like visiting a rich kid’s house and being overwhelmed by how many videogames they own. You could dig around in their bucket for hours and not be close to seeing everything. In this case, UFO 50 pretends to be a collection of fifty games for an imaginary 1980s console, spanning many genres, getting more graphically complex with time. So many of these games are better than actual NES classics. But the real achievement is when you get far enough along that you feel pangs of nostalgia—for things you played a couple days ago.
Challengers, directed by Luca Guadagnino
Instantly one of the best sports movies I’ve ever seen, up there with Rocky and A League of Their Own. Challengers understands both how to make a sport intensely stressful on film, and how to use sports as a crucible through which to examine bigger characters. In its case, it’s about a doomed (or damned) love triangle where nobody is innocent, everyone is more than a bit of a schemer, and everyone is going to develop in ways they aren’t prepared for.
Exhuma, directed by Jang Jae-hyun
Speaking of instant classics! Exhuma instantly joins Poltergeist and Lake Mungo as one of the best movies about hauntings I’ve ever seen. Here we follow a team of exorcists who help lay spirits to rest so that their bodies can be exhumed and moved. There’s a lot more in the ground this time than anyone expected. It’s such a long Horror movie because it has so many layers, both thematically and in terms of literal plot. Each act is wilder than the one before it. By the end I was swearing in delight.
The Fall, directed by Tarsem Singh
This originally came out when I was in college, but I never heard of it until Mubi did an HD restoration and put it on their streaming service this year. What a gorgeous movie! It’s all a tall tale told by an injured man to a child, but the movie spends its entire budget on the sumptuous vistas, costumes, and action scenes—making them as authentic to the little girl’s imagination as possible.
I Saw the TV Glow, directed by Jane Schoenbrun
A movie that’s particularly uncomfortable for those of us who are too attached to our chosen media. Those books, or games, or TV shows in which you saw yourself, that gave you a sense of community, but also stifled you. It’s a surreal movie about being afraid to be yourself in public, which is tragically only going to become more common a feeling going forward. But it’s also about how much it costs you to lie to yourself. Justice Smith’s screams at the end have replayed in my head all year.
Mars Express, directed by Jérémie Périn
If this had gotten an international release in its original year, I would’ve been banging pots and pans for it to get a Hugo nomination. This is Cyberpunk cinema that hangs with the very best of Ghost in the Shell, but through a very French lens. The civil unrest among the mechanized public is palpable, reminding us that these stories aren’t really about artificial intelligence, but about how we treat—and how it feels to be—The Other.
Misery, directed by Rob Reiner
Possibly better than its reputation. As a huge fan of Kathy Bates, I knew she’d be incredible—and she is, almost the evil equivalent of my own Homily. But James Khan shines equally as a man trapped in despair, and every scene in their paranoid tango sings. I don’t know how you’d make one part of it better. A classic for a reason.
Piano Lesson, directed by Malcolm Washington
One of those examples of how an ensemble is more important than a singular performance. We have too many Best Actor Awards and not enough Y’All Are Great Awards. This is a simple story about a family in conflict over what to do with their heirloom piano, a valuable relic that their ancestors stole from their enslavers. No matter how mad you get with somebody here, everybody has a point. Everybody is carrying baggage. And the ending is electric.
A Quiet Place: Day One, directed by Michael Sarnoski
A Quiet Place may have the best first three movies of any Horror franchise. Even Scream and Alien fall off by the third. But here, in a prequel, they find a different take on the extraterrestrial apocalypse: a woman who’s already dying of cancer, and so she isn’t running for safety. She’s thrown away her fear of death in order to hike across Manhattan for one last slice of pizza. And they get a lot of emotion out of that pizza.
Strange Darling, directed by J.T. Mollner
We don’t have enough Horror movies that are influenced by Pulp Fiction. Strange Darling jumps all over the place, which is something that normally annoys me because it’s just done to hide twists. But here, the twists are so unhinged that I was rooting for the next one to come around the corner. For as grim and bloody as it gets, it’s also playful. Masterfully directed.
Will & Harper, directed by Josh Greenbaum
The buddy road trip documentary that justifiably took the world by storm. You wish you’d be the friend Will Ferrell Is to Harper Steele, and you wish you’d have the guts Harper Steele does. Before transitioning, Steele had driven across the country countless times. Post-transition she was nervous—and so Ferrell went off on the road with her. It’s literally just the two of them being earnest, affable, sharp-witted, and vulnerable. I immediately made a list of friends who needed to see this.
Ahem.
And with that, I wish you all a peaceful end of the year, and a better 2025 than any of us imagine.
Personally, I’m heading back to my keyboard. You see, there’s this new book I need to write…