Matt's Books and Music

Yesterday I undertook the first half of my 2024 Bookish Superlatives. That post focused on questions of format, style, and readerly expectation. Today in Part 2, I’ll turn to genre and authors representing specific communities. (For the previous two years: 2022, 2023)

Genres

Best Romance

Not All Himbos Wear Capes (Villainous Things 1), by C. Rochelle (2022)

This is a title that feels like it should be more of a guilty pleasure than my favourite romance of the year, but it far exceeded any expectations its superhero/villain genre might elicit. It introduces a superhero/villain universe that is unexpected and complex, while being hilarious, spicy, and offering us two great protagonists whose relationship helps them to unravel some hard truths about their lives and society. While this series was hit or miss for me (I loved books 1 and 3, liked books 2 and 5, and hated book 4), this is a fantastic and swoon-worthy romance.

Honourable mentions: Canadian Boyfriend (Jenny Holiday), Funny Story (Emily Henry), Just for the Summer (Abby Jimenez), This Could Be Us (Kennedy Ryan), Pole Position (Rebecca J. Caffery)

Best Science Fiction / Speculative Fiction

A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers 2) by Becky Chambers (2016)

For the second straight year, I’ve been blown away by science fiction offerings. There’s no better example of this than Becky Chambers’ wonderful Wayfarers series, which I devoured early this Summer, and in particular book 2, A Closed and Common Orbit, which explores themes of artificial intelligence and individual autonomy that are all the more relevant today than when the book was written close to a decade ago. It’s science fiction that makes you feel and think in equal measure.

Honourable Mentions: Aside from the rest of Chambers’ oeuvre, The Other Valley (Scott Alexander Howard 🇨🇦), Redshirts (John Scalzi), Africa Risen (multiple), Service Model (Adrian Tchaikovsky)

Best Fantasy / Alternative History

The Bright Sword, by Lev Grossman (2024)

It seems like with every passing year, fantasy becomes less and less a part of my reading life. But when the genre hits, it really hits, and I definitely had some big wins this year. The best of the bunch this year was Lev Grossman’s Arthurian novel, The Bright Sword. Not only was it a great story, but it also engaged contemporary themes and concerns in a way that felt natural to the world of these legends — a world that was itself cobbled together from various late Roman, early Medieval, and high Medieval traditions and so is well-disposed to such cultural play. I really loved it.

Honourable Mentions: The Tainted Cup (Robert Jackson Bennett), A Natural History of Dragons (Marie Brennan), The Emperor and the Endless Palace (Justinian Huang), Silver in the Wood (Emily Tesh)

Best Historical Fiction

In Winter I Get Up at Night, by Jane Urquhart (2024 🇨🇦)

Stories of settler life on the Prairie are a mainstay of Canadian literature, but fit increasingly uncomfortably in this time when we are just beginning to come to grips with the less savoury aspects of our national history, and struggling to find new and more truthful ways of telling that story. This recent release by Can-Lit icon Jane Urquhart, which was long-listed for the 2024 Giller Prize, is, I think, a helpful step in that process of reassessing our national mythology. It is still very much a story of proud and brave, and isolated, pioneer life, but it’s also a story of the tension between Canadian nation-building policies and those settlers who came seeking safety for their unique ways of life and had no interest in being assimilated into Anglo-Canadian society. As such, the country’s forced removal and assimilation of Indigenous peoples stands throughout the novel as an ominous and stark warning of the possibilities of cultural erasure. The fact that the story is mostly told from the protagonist’s childhood reflections — and so the reader understands far more than she does for quite a while — only heightens the foreboding atmosphere, particularly as she befriends children from many of the threatened communities.

Honourable Mentions: James (Percival Everett), Alias Grace (Margaret Atwood 🇨🇦), Curiosities (Anne Fleming 🇨🇦)

Best Non-Fiction

How Music Works, by John Powell (2010)

My non-fiction reading tends to ebb and flow depending if I’m doing a deep-dive research project in a given year. But even in a year when I’m not doing such projects, I still always like to have a non-fiction title on the go at any given time. The best for me this year was so good that it pretty much single-handedly stopped a deep-dive just as it was getting going. That’s How Music Works, by John Powell. Music has always been a huge part of my life, but I’ve always struggled a bit with music theory because I didn’t understand the science that lies behind it: What even is music? What is pitch? How is it we can differentiate one voice or instrument from another? This book answered all of these questions and more in an accessible and entertaining way. I felt like I learned more about music from this book in a week than I had in the previous decades of my life combined. I’m sure folk more informed than me will quibble with the details, as with any introductory text, but this was just what I was looking for, and was so effective that I haven’t touched any of the other music science books I found at the time.

Honourable mentions: The Rise and Reign of Mammals (Steve Brusatte), Weavers, Scribes and Kings (Amanda H. Podany), The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt (Moby Wilkinson)

Best Memoir

I’d Rather Not, by Robert Skinner (2023)

Memoir is a genre that I just barely dabbled in this year, but there were still some standouts. Most notable was Australian writer Robert Skinner’s hilarious look at making one’s way (or not) in the literary world, I’d Rather Not. When I think about this book, I can’t help but think of the Fool card in the Tarot, famously pictured as a young man with a jaunty cap and a smile on his face, blissfully unaware he’s about to step off a ledge. This memoir is about the often laugh-out-loud funny misadventures of a postmodern Fool — the kind of person who loses money in money-saving schemes, who fails out of unemployment as often as employment, and who somehow manages to run a critically (if not commercially) successful literary magazine while homeless. I couldn’t help but cheer him on, even while it was always clear his plans were going to come to ruin. Overall, I really enjoyed this and highly recommend it, even if I do wish there was some semblance of growth or wisdom gained along the way.

Honourable mentions: The House of Hidden Meanings (RuPaul Charles), Wired for Music (Adriana Barton)

Best Literary Fiction

My Friends, Hisham Matar (2024)

Literary fiction took up a huge proportion of my reading this year — more than ever — helped by the fact that this year’s major award long lists were filled with books with premises compelling enough for me to want to read them. My favourite in this category was Hisham Matar’s magnificent My Friends, which explores life in exile through the stories of a man and two of his friends, all of whom were forced to live as political exiles from their native Libya. It’s literary without being pretentious, and the writing drew me in from the first page. It perfectly bridges the gap between the particular — a very specific story of political exile — and the universal — the longing for a place to call home. While the story covers some very difficult territory, it never felt like it was piling on the trauma and in fact always remained hopeful. This novel is a gift and not only is it among my top reads of the year, it’s also now among my all-time favourites.

Honourable mentions: <redacted so as not to spoil my top reads list!>

Best Short Story Collection

TIE: Table for Two, by Amor Towles (2024), and Peacocks of Instagram, by Deepa Rajagopalan (2024 🇨🇦)

I often say that I don’t enjoy short story collections. And yet, so many of my favourite reading experiences of 2024 fall into this category! I really struggled to pick one to highlight, and even with choosing two, I feel badly for the honourable mentions, all of which are amazing and deserve to be read! That said, I couldn’t not talk about Table for Two, by Amor Towles, arguably my favourite living author. The first half of the book is comprised of six, insightful and gently satirical tales set at least partially in New York City. (They are all excellent, but my standouts are “The Line”, about a Russian peasant who stumbles into individual success (and into America) under Communism, and “I Will Survive”, about a the surprising consequences of a harmless secret.) The second half is taken up by a novella, an expanded version of the previously KU-release Eve in Hollywood, which is a sequel to his Rules of Civility (2011). Though, at over 200 pages and with a robust set of characters, it could have easily been a novel of its own. In all of these stories, Towles demonstrates again and again his impeccable writing and grasp of place and character: No one can get me invested in a new situation as quickly or as deeply. My second selection is the Giller-short-listed Peacocks of Instagram by Deepa Rajagopalan. This tight collection of stories deals broadly with Keralan diaspora stories, set mostly in the United States and Canada. There’s not a dud in the bunch, but standouts for me were “A Thing with Many Legs,” “The Many Homes of Kanmani,” and the title story, “Peacocks of Instagram.” What shines in these stories is the point-of-view: months on and I can still not only remember most of the narrative voices, but also remain deeply invested in them. A triumph!

Honourable mentions: Black Boy Joy (Kwame Mbalia, ed.), Love in Colour (Bolu Babalola), Africa Risen (multiple authors), God’s Children are Little Broken Things (Arinze Ifeakandu)

Creepiest Paranormal-Horror

Don’t Let the Forest In, by C.G. Drews (2024)

After a banner year in 2023, I struggled finding creepy novels that worked for me this year. At the end of November, however, C.G. Drews’s Don’t Let the Forest In, fell into my hands and it was exactly the book my spooky season had been missing. This queer, young-adult horror story was so creepy, disturbing and unsettling, and it kept me on my toes until the end.

Honourable mentions: What Moves the Dead (T. Kingfisher), Bad Cree (Jessica Johns 🇨🇦), Something Is Killing the Children (Vols 1-3, James Tynion IV)

Most Mysterious Mystery or Thrilling Thriller

Confessions, by Kanae Minato (2008)

After devouring most of Louise Penny’s Chief Inspector Armand Gamache series in 2023, I struggled to find my footing with mystery or thriller novels in 2024. But one absolute standout was Confessions, a thriller my Japanese author Kanae Minato. I was absolutely hooked from the first pages and could not put it down. Each chapter, told from a different perspective, reveals a further layer of the story, each of which genuinely surprised me. And the ending blew my mind. In addition to being a good story well-told, it explores some interesting themes, such as motherhood, responsibility, reputation, and isolation, all of which are given a greater weight in the novel’s Japanese context.

Honourable mentions: The God of the Woods (Liz Moore), Tokyo Express (Seicho Matsumoto), A World of Curiosities (Louise Penny 🇨🇦), The Hanged Man of Saint-Pholien (Georges Simenon)

Coziest Cozy / Comfiest Comfort Read

The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle, by Matt Cain (2021)

In a world that feels increasingly chaotic and frightening, cozy reads are becoming a needful staple in many people’s reading diets, and I’m no exception to this. The one I keep thinking about from this year was The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle, by Matt Cain. This is a giant hug of a book that holds out hope that everyone can be truly seen and loved if only they’re brave enough to reveal their true self. The writing isn’t great, and the message is a bit naive, but there was so much joy and delight in this book that I didn’t care. Albert is a wonderful main character, and he’s surrounded by some compelling secondary and even tertiary characters. While at times a bit manipulative, the portrayal of loneliness was very effective, and Albert’s slow engagement with gay subculture was charming. The book also did a remarkable job of showing the changing face of life in the UK over the decades — not always for the better — while never falling into nostalgia or a knee-jerk rejection of the present. All this to say, this is far from one of the best novels I read this year, but it was among my favourites.

Honourable mentions: The Spellshop (Sarah Beth Durst), You Are Here (David Nicholls)

Best Spirituality or Theology

Dayspring, by Anthony Oliveira (2024 🇨🇦)

In recent years, I’ve increasingly struggled to find good books in this genre that move the needle for me. And so, for the second year in a row, my top read in the spirituality genre is a work of fiction, Anthony Oliveira’s Dayspring, which is a queer, poetic retelling of the story of Jesus. This is definitely not for everyone. This is high literary, queer, Jesus fan fiction, and as much as any of these words are likely to turn off some readers, it unabashedly delights in every single one of them. It is literary both in its poetic language and form and its intimate familiarity with the Western literary canon. Yet I still found it very accessible and the literary references felt earned and not just an exercise in showing off. It is queer both in that it unapologetically puts Jesus in a sexual relationship with another man, and in its joy in sharing stories of people of faith from across the spectrum of queer identities, throughout history. The sex, while explicit, is not there to titillate or scandalize, but to reinforce the beautiful-and-kinda gross realities of embodied life, which is one of the book’s major themes. The book is also unbelievably Jesus-y, quoting much of his teaching in literal red letters, tweaked only for reasons of poetry or to allow Jesus’ snarky humour—which often gets lost, as much in devotion as in translation—to shine through. The author also writes as a ‘fan’, someone who knows these texts inside and out, and has an extensive knowledge of the Christian mystical tradition, from which he quotes liberally. So this is theology as much as it is of literature, and it succeeds on both fronts. (As a side note, I have a graduate degree in theology, focusing on Eastern Christian mysticism, so I say this from an informed perspective.) Needless to say, this was a huge win for me. I laughed, I cried, I gave thanks, but mostly I just stood in awe at this incredible accomplishment.

Honourable mentions: Genesis 1-11 (International Exegetical Commentary on the Old Testament, David M. Carr), Gay Girl Prayers (Emily Austin 🇨🇦), Stone Yard Devotional (Charlotte Wood)

Communities

Best Children’s or Middle Grade Fiction

The Eyes & the Impossible, by Dave Eggers (2023)

To my mind, the best fiction for children is ‘age-appropriate’ but doesn’t shy away from hard, real-life themes and language. It doesn’t talk down to kids, but meets where they are and helps them to grow up. I think this type of middle grade fiction was more common in the 1970s and 80s than it is now, unfortunately, but there are still some absolutely fantastic examples. My favourite for 2024 is Dave Eggers’ absolutely delightful The Eyes & the Impossible. The story is hilarious and smart, but the real star of this is the narrative voice of Johannes, the dog at the heart of the story. Eggers manages to capture the point-of-view of a dog perfectly, in all its exuberance, joy, curiosity, and mischief; it comes off great in print, but the audiobook performance, by none other than Ethan Hawke, adds even more fun. There is just so much to love here and I’d heartily recommend it for any grown up or middle grader who is ready for a read with a big vocabulary and some mature themes, such as thoughts about what makes life worth living, inter-cultural respect, and discussion of cultural practices and beliefs surrounding death and the nature of God.

Honourable mentions: Finn Jones Was Here (Simon James Green), Black Boy Joy (Kwame Mbalia, ed.), Small Spaces (Katherine Arden), The Polter-Ghost Problem (Betsy Uhrig)

Best Young Adult / New Adult Fiction

Picture Us in the Light, by Kelly Loy Gilbert (2018)

YA literature is often derided for being overly angsty and melodramatic, but that’s a silly stereotype. In my experience, it’s often far more open and honest about life’s complexities than literary fiction. My favourite YA title of the year, Kelly Loy Gilbert’s Picture Us in the Light, is a great example of this. It’s about an ordinary California teenager, dealing with the normal teenage things like navigating shifting friend groups, high school tragedies, college applications, and unrequited love, when everything is thrown into chaos with the resurfacing of secrets from his parents’ past — secrets kept hidden even from him. There’s a lot going on here, yet Gilbert crafts the story so well that it never felt too much. The high school drama felt real and not overwrought, and the relationships reminded me of the best of youthful friendship. The mystery surrounding the protagonist’s parents was compelling and the book’s shocking conclusion is one I’ll be thinking about for a long time. Absolutely one of the best YA books I’ve ever read.

Honourable mentions: My Fair Brady (Brian D. Kennedy), Desert Echoes (Abdi Nazemian), Dungeons and Drama (Kristy Boyce), Don’t Let the Forest In (C. G. Drews)

Best Queer Fiction

God’s Children Are Little Broken Things, by Arinze Ifeakandu (2022)

There are queer titles that I enjoyed more than the one I’ve chosen here, but none that captured the breadth and meaning of queerness, and the importance of telling queer stories, more than Arinze Ifeakandu’s powerful collection of stories about a diverse selection of queer men in Nigeria. The stories are exquisitely crafted, beautifully written, and tell often very difficult stories with empathy for all of the characters. All these stories are great, but the particular standouts for me were “Where the Heart Sleeps,” about a difficult rapprochement between a young woman and her late father’s male lover, “Good Intentions,” about the fallout for a closeted professor when he stands up against injustice on his campus, and “What the Singers Say about Love,” about a couple pulled apart when one of them becomes famous.

Honourable mentions from across the spectrum:

• Gay Male / MSM: Martyr! (Kaveh Akbar), The Foghorn Echoes (Danny Ramadan 🇨🇦), Dayspring (Anthony Oliveira 🇨🇦), Not All Himbos Wear Capes (C. Rochelle), The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle (Matt Cain), FInistère (Fritz Peters)
• Sapphic: Interesting Facts about Space (Emily Austin), Fly with Me (Andi Burke), Ours (Philip B. Williams)
• Bisexual / Pansexual: Greta & Valdin (Rebecca K. Reilly), The Happy Couple (Naoise Dolan)
• Trans: Some Strange Music Draws Me In (Griffn Hansbury)
• Asexual: Don’t Let the Forest In (C. G. Drews)

Best Indigenous Fiction

Bad Cree, by Jessica Johns (2023 🇨🇦)

After being an intentional focus of my reading the past two years, Indigenous fiction was a smaller piece of my reading pie this year. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t some amazing books in this category. One that I keep thinking about is Bad Cree, by Jessica Johns. It’s a successful horror story, but also has a lot to say about family, identity, and grief.

Honorary Mentions: Greta & Valdin (Rebecca K. Reilly), Betty (Tiffany McDaniel), Indian Burial Ground (Nick Medina)

Best Fiction by an Author of Asian Descent

Peacocks of Instagram, by Deepa Rajagopalan (2024 🇨🇦)

While I read a lot of Japanese and Korean fiction this year, my favourite book by an author of Asian heritage was a wonderful collection of interconnected short stories about life in the Keralan diaspora Peacocks of Instagram, by Indo-Canadian author Deepa Rajagopalan.

Honourable Mentions: Confessions (Kanae Minato), Almond (Won-Pyung Sohn)

Best Fiction by a Black Author

James, by Percival Everett (2024)

I’d be remiss if my bookish superlatives for 2024 didn’t include Percival Everett’s novel James. I often say that the only reason to retell a famous story is if there’s a perspective that the original misses. And I can think of few perspectives more deserving of this treatment than Jim, the enslaved man forced by circumstances to go along on Huck’s adventures — often at his great peril. While Twain’s Jim is a deeply sympathetic character, good natured and kindly, he’s also shown to be simple and without agency. In Everett’s hands, that simplicity and passivity is shown to be an act put on for White people’s comfort — an act he teaches to others to help them survive. He is intelligent, literate, compassionate, and driven. For much of the book, I was concerned at how Everett would mesh this with what happens to Jim towards the end of Huckleberry Finn, but he handled this well — (slight spoiler ahead) simply by re-imagining the whole second half of the book, sending James on different adventures and misadventures. I truly loved this book and thought it was a huge success and both a fitting tribute and necessary interrogation to Mark Twain’s iconic story.

Honourable mentions:

• African American: This Could be Us (Kennedy Ryan), Ours (Philip B. Williams), Black Boy Joy,
• African / Diaspora: A Broken People’s Playlist (Chimeka Garricks), *God’s Children Are Little Broken Things (*Arinze Ifeakandu), La Bastarda (Trifonia Melibea Obono), *Small Country (*Gael Faye), Love in Colour (Bolu Babalola), Africa Risen

Best Canadian Literature

In Winter I Get Up at Night, by Jane Urquhart (2024 🇨🇦)

When thinking about this category, or really any of the community-based categories, I always want to highlight a book that isn’t just written by someone in the community, but could really only have been written by someone in the community. So, when it comes to Canadian literature, I want it to explore themes like Canadian history and identity, immigration and displacement, and such. And so, I really couldn’t not pick In Winter I Get Up at Night by Jane Urquhart, for all of the reasons I gave in my discussion of it under ‘Best Historical Fiction.’ To my mind it’s the perfect Canadian novel for 2024, celebrating a classic aspect of Canadian history and well-known trope in Canadian literature, but also interrogating it and exposing different, often-ignored, facets of it to the light.

Honourable mentions: The Foghoron Echoes (Danny Ramadan 🇨🇦), A Jest of God (Margaret Laurence 🇨🇦), Malagash (Joey Comeau 🇨🇦), What I Know about You (Eric Chacour 🇨🇦), Alias Grace (Margaret Atwood 🇨🇦)