Wow, great list! Added a few to my wishlist. A Song in the Night is one of my faves this year as well. My first Mills, but won't be the last. "When you encounter certain writers you know that over time you'll read everything they've written." That's my exact reaction to discovering Quentin S. Crisp - IRIH was my introduction to his writing and I've managed to get almost all of his books now. I haven't even finished that book, been too busy bouncing around the others. I finished Out There last week. You might enjoy Eclipse by Keiichiro Hirano, his first book but recently translated into English for the first time.
Your videos calm me, inform me, and fill me with a sense of wonder and awe. I always check out every book you recommend in your year end list. Thanks for another beautiful video and list!
My Top 5 of 2024: 1) A Short History of Decay - Emil Cioran 2) Suttree - Cormac McCarthy 3) A School for Fools - Sasha Sokolov 4) The Sot-Weed Factor - John Barth 5) Candy - Luke Davies
Really appreciate the style of your videos. They don't allow for quick consumption (and equally quick discarding) of information, and the experience is a more meaningful one as a result. Good luck for 2025!
I love your videos. This is such a respite from the pace of the rest of the internet, especially one that seems to go into overdrive during the end-of-year period. Angela Carter is stunning, I had a similar experience with 'Heroes & Villains', the set-up seems to solve itself: the civilised world in a walled city raided by savages in a surrounding jungle, but any assumptions you might have about how it plays out are put through that same kaleidoscope of her language you mentioned. It's such a great read. Thanks for the video! Added a ton to my list.
Just love your relaxing and calming manner with the melancholic touch to it. I guess I'll watch this video a bunch of times more. Hopeful Monsters really caught my attention! That sounds like such an interesting read. And you might get me back into Fantasy and SciFi with your first one. The atmosphere of Glister also got me. And Cannibals of West Papua is added to my list as well My top three reads of last year are without a doubt Solenoid, Schattenfroh and Infinite Jest. I had many good reads, but those are always on the top of my mind.
Superb presentation, sir. My top 5 for 2024 - Scenes from the Life of a Faun - Arno Schmidt; Blue Lard - Vladimir Sorokin; Zone - Mathias Énard; Quarantine - Greg Egan; On Heroes and Tombs - Ernesto Sabato.
@@feanor7080 Thanks! I had a blast writing my Sabato review. You might enjoy - glenncolerussell.blogspot.com/2024/04/on-angels-and-tombs-by-ernesto-sabato.html
Your videos are what I aspire for mine to be one day: you're so eloquent about what you've read. It's a breath of fresh air compared to other booktubers. My favourite read this past year was Agape Agape by Gaddis
Dear Sam, It was my pleasure to have encountered your extremely engaging and always refreshing channel this year. What draws me, I think, is not a particular topic but the way in which you deliver your craft. Namely, with an extreme care and respect, and always with a sort of an open-ended attitude. Great thanks to you! As for my year’s favourites, I would outline three positions here: 1. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak 2. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 3. The Portrait of The Lady by Henry James Kindly, Said
Happy New Year! My favorite book of 2024 is Bernardo Esquinca's The Secret Life of Insects. I participated in a rereading of Laird Barron's fiction in anticipation of his new collection Not a Speck of Light - I'm only halfway though, otherwise I would have included it on my listt of 2024 favorites. I also look forward to catching up with Brendan Connell's work.
Happy New Year to you, too! The Secret Life of Insects sounds really interesting. It's new to me. Glad to hear you're enjoying Not a Speck of Light - I want to pick it up, but for some reason it has been really expensive to get where I live. Maybe I'll just bite the bullet soon. :)
Amazing video Sam, my top 10 of 2024 are: 1. Morbid Tales by Quentin S. Crisp 2. The Solid Mandala by Patrick White 3. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath 4. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky 5. Landscape with Landscape by Gerald Murnane 6. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov 7. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf 8. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy 9. Greener Pastures by Michael Wehunt 10. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner Also currently reading Lord of the Rings for the first time and absolutely loving it!
Great video as ever. I enjoy the ambience of your videos as well as your evocative descriptions, would very much like to check out the Daniel Mills book! Happy new year.
Wow, you chose Viriconium as your number 1 book of the year! I knew you'd enjoyed it, but am still pleasantly surprised. Harrison always deserves more love.
Yes! Just a superb book. Also read 'Light' this year, which I really enjoyed, too, but not quite as much. Curious to hear about some of your highlights, Mandel!
As always, a wonderfully in-depth video from my favorite Booktube channel with great recommendations and comments. So inspiring. Thank you very much. PS: My own top 7 in 2024: 1. D.M. Thomas - The White Hotel 2. Robert Aickman - Cold Hand in Mine 3. Felix Timmermans - Intimations of Death 4. JG Ballard - Crash 5. Gabrielle Wittkop - The Necrophiliac 6. Edogawa Rampo - Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination 7. Christopher Slatsky - Alectryomancer & Other Weird Tales
Ah you're very kind. It's my pleasure! Really cool list - 3 & 7 are completely new to me. Have been thinking about making an Aickman reading diary at some point this year. I hope I get to it. Thanks for sharing. :)
@@SherdsTube Hope you' ll find time to make it. I deeply admire the works of Aickman. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on these stories. Intimations of Death is a treasure to discover. Very uncanny, but beautiful impressive writing. Comes close to Poe at his finest.
Thank you for another lovely video. And thank you for this list. Not a fantasy fan but many of these titles are not at all familiar to me--part of the beauty of your list is I must seek out some of these for my own reading pleasure. Oh yes, I need more and more books. Thank you again.
My reading year, too, was unpredictable. Following your rubric -- the work had to be newly read and one that I anticipate re-reading -- my favorite books from 2024 are Kent Anderson's semi-autobiographical "Hanson" trilogy (1987-2018). Thank you as always for sharing some of the furnishings of your "exterior brain".
Thanks for making another beautiful video and giving your unique perspective on literature. I'm going to seek out several of the books you mentioned. My own favourite reads of this year were Napalm in the Heart by Pol Guasch, translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem and Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter, which I know you liked too.
It's my pleasure - thanks for the kind words. Napalm in the Heart is new to me - I'll have a look! Yes, I absolutely adored Solenoid - really glad to see you liked it so much, too.
beautiful beautiful video and list....Townseng Warner is a great, under-read writer...and i love Carter and i too was heartbroken when Jacques Roubaud died.....i've read 3, including great fire of london...lovely to hear ya mention Infinite Jest too and Crisp......and the writers i was not aware of.......thank you and happy new year
@@SherdsTube i'd like to recommend the following, the american Lance Olsen....the brilliant Swiss Fleur Jaeggy, the towering Krasznahorkai, and others....happy 2025
Found your channel some weeks ago, and have since watched almost all of your videos. It is rare to find something that seems to be exactly what you were looking for without knowing what it was you were looking for, but that is how finding your channel has felt. You talk about books exactly the way I want to hear about books, and moreover, your videos are absolutely gorgeous to look at. Even if your literary preferences seem to lie a bit more in the darker corners that I generally leave unexplored, hearing you describe them is still an absolute pleasure, and very educating. Thank you for all your work and I hope to see much more of it in the future now that I'm almost caught up. As for my readings of 2024, some of my favorites were: László Krasznahorkai - Satantango Jorge Luis Borges - The Aleph and Other Stories Joris-Karl Huysmans - Against Nature Honorée Fannone Jeffers - The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois Olivia Laing - The Lonely City Robert Caro - The Power Broker (especially seeing Megalopolis soon after) Gerard Reve - The Evenings Also reread Nescio's stories (I believe published in English as Amsterdam Stories) and started rereading Proust. I think Nescio, Reve, Laing, Huysmans and of course Krasznahorkai and Borges might be up your alley as far as you haven't read them yet. Would have loved to recommend you some more women here too, but unfortunately I horribly failed in reading more women this year.
Ah I really appreciate your very kind comments. Thanks so much - really glad you found the channel! Interesting list! I've read Borges and Huysmans, but not the others. Have a few Krasznahorkai books waiting for me here. Hoping to try him soon. :)
As a fellow South African, I am rather interested in Hardy’s work. For a country as large and diverse as ours, the literary scene is resoundingly…quiet. Thanks for making me aware of her!
Again some new books to read. I've had a terrible year of reading. Not enough for a top ten. I desire to read, but i have things to do that stop me from doing that. Hopefully i'll be able to read properly again.
Sounds like a good plan for your 2025. My big 3 for 2025: 1) Schattenfroh (pubs in August); 2) New edition of Bomarzo published by NYRB in July; 3) reread Hopscotch (Rayuela) in Spanish.
My favorites range in genres. Perhaps my top book of the year was of literary criticism called "The Number and the Siren: A Decipherment of Mallarmé's Coup de Dés" by Quentin Meillassoux. I have always struggled with Mallarmé's Coup de Dés, but Meillassoux's book helped me grasp the various threads of the poem and stitch a quilt of meaning that allows me to see the poem somewhat more coherently. There's still remains plenty of mystery, of course. I've been meaning to read Virginia Woolf's family saga "The Years" for years, and it was a great pleasure. The book, particularly the dialogue, demonstrates painfully how poor language can be as a conduit of interpersonal communication. Finally, I read Erik Erikson's "Identify and the Life Cycle," which explained the true meaning of the identify crisis, at least as I understand it. This was a great help for me because I teach high school students, and now I can place some of their avoidance behaviors into my interpretation of identify crisis.
I read Paul Austers bio of Stephen Crane, which was really good. That led me to read Cranes lesser known short fiction I hadnt yet read and another writer of the Civil War era, namely Ambrose Bierce; a great short story writer as well. I also read Kindred by Octavia Butler which was really good. Foe by J.M Coetzee is another memorable novel I read last year. Also read The iliad and Odyssey. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe. The Cannibal by John Hawkes. The Histories by Herodotus. Vanity Fair by Thackery. The Manuscript Found at Saragossa by Jan Potocki. Boccaccios Decameron. The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal. And many more, I am sure, that are escaping me at the moment. Thank you for the great video and reviews; much appreciated!
That biography really appealed to me, too. I listened to Auster talking about Crane in an interview - for some reason I never picked it up. Have to try it soon. Great bunch of books! Also loved 'Foe' when I read it long ago! Thanks for the kind words. :)
Just found your channel - I love the production of your videos. Where do you get a lot of your archival footage? I’ve been looking for some new historical programs to watch that show old videography of regions outside the U.S. - are there any that you yourself are familiar with?
This was a wonderful video. I feel the pulse of Faustian beauty within it. Many thanks and subbed. 2024: 1. Berzerk - Kentaro Miura 2. Beasts, Men and Gods - Ferdinand Ossendowski 3. The Fall of Hyperion - Dan Simmons 4. Stoner - John Williams 5. Hitler, Born at Versailles - Leon DeGrelle HMs: The Last Samurai - Helen Dewitt The Secret History - Donna Tartt Vineland - Thomas Pynchon The New Media Invasion - John David Ebert Knife Party at the Hotel Europa - Mark Anthony Jarman
@@feanor7080 You're in for some fun reading ;) Mileage for FoH seems to vary but many consider it superior to Hyperion and I count myself among them. It's really the second half of the story and he takes the themes and characters further. Those who dislike it tend to react badly to the changed narrative structure (no more short tales) or don't get what he's doing with John Keats (who becomes even more significant, along with the influence of Teilhard de Chardin and John Muir). But we finally get to the Time Tombs and the Shrike does not disappoint! I'm excited to read the Endymion books and complete the Cantos this year
Your reflections on Viriconium has inspired me to re-read it. I loved the larger works in the volume, but he lost me with the shorter pieces for some reason.
I really liked them - they felt almost like little satellites orbiting the longer books. In my edition they were interspersed between the other books, rather than being presented as a collection. Really worked for me.
Books I liked in 2024: The man who sleeps by Georges Perec Earthquake in Chili by Heinrich von Kleist The Wild Ass's skin by Honore de Balzac Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata The Sermons of John Tauler
My top 5 of 2024: 1. Book of the Long Sun #2 - Gene Wolfe 2. Hyperion - Dan Simmons 3. Going After Cacciato - Tim O’ Brien 4. A Heart so White - Javier Marais 5. Viriconium- M. John Harris
Looks like a solid list! Really like Javier Marias - need to read more of his stuff. Never got to the Long or Short Sun books - have to correct that soon. Thanks for sharing these! Amazing to see Viriconium on your list, too!
To be honest, this is the only 'best books of the year's video I will watch the whole way through.
You're very kind. Thank you!
You're most definitely missing out then 🤔
Wow, great list! Added a few to my wishlist. A Song in the Night is one of my faves this year as well. My first Mills, but won't be the last.
"When you encounter certain writers you know that over time you'll read everything they've written." That's my exact reaction to discovering Quentin S. Crisp - IRIH was my introduction to his writing and I've managed to get almost all of his books now. I haven't even finished that book, been too busy bouncing around the others. I finished Out There last week.
You might enjoy Eclipse by Keiichiro Hirano, his first book but recently translated into English for the first time.
Your videos calm me, inform me, and fill me with a sense of wonder and awe. I always check out every book you recommend in your year end list. Thanks for another beautiful video and list!
Ah! Means a lot to hear that - thanks so much for saying so. :)
My Top 5 of 2024:
1) A Short History of Decay - Emil Cioran
2) Suttree - Cormac McCarthy
3) A School for Fools - Sasha Sokolov
4) The Sot-Weed Factor - John Barth
5) Candy - Luke Davies
Great list! Thanks for sharing! :)
@@luke_-co8dq great list. Suttree is the best piece of prose I think I’ve ever read! Need to get into Barth too.
Really appreciate the style of your videos. They don't allow for quick consumption (and equally quick discarding) of information, and the experience is a more meaningful one as a result. Good luck for 2025!
Ah thanks for these very kind comments! Happy New Year! :)
The Rings of Saturn is easily my favourite book of 2024 and I read that as a direct result of you talking about it.
After I read Austerlitz I immediately read everything I could by Sebald. I was really sad when I realised there would never be any more from him.
Oh! Really glad you liked it so much - it's such a special book. Really glad to be able to bring it to your attention.
Yes, you really wonder about all the future work we lost with his passing.
I love your videos. This is such a respite from the pace of the rest of the internet, especially one that seems to go into overdrive during the end-of-year period. Angela Carter is stunning, I had a similar experience with 'Heroes & Villains', the set-up seems to solve itself: the civilised world in a walled city raided by savages in a surrounding jungle, but any assumptions you might have about how it plays out are put through that same kaleidoscope of her language you mentioned. It's such a great read. Thanks for the video! Added a ton to my list.
best book channel on this dang website
Ah you're very kind! Thanks ever so much.
Yes. I miss the podcast.
Just love your relaxing and calming manner with the melancholic touch to it. I guess I'll watch this video a bunch of times more.
Hopeful Monsters really caught my attention! That sounds like such an interesting read. And you might get me back into Fantasy and SciFi with your first one.
The atmosphere of Glister also got me. And Cannibals of West Papua is added to my list as well
My top three reads of last year are without a doubt Solenoid, Schattenfroh and Infinite Jest. I had many good reads, but those are always on the top of my mind.
Thanks so much for your kindness and support! Wow - looks like you had a chunky reading year! Looking forward to that Schattenfroh translation!
What a truly unique year end list full of books I’ve never heard of. Excellent job man. Love your setup too.
Very nice to hear that - hope you found a few new books to read! Thanks ever so much. :)
Superb presentation, sir. My top 5 for 2024 - Scenes from the Life of a Faun - Arno Schmidt; Blue Lard - Vladimir Sorokin; Zone - Mathias Énard; Quarantine - Greg Egan; On Heroes and Tombs - Ernesto Sabato.
@@glennrussell575 good to see Sabato mentioned here!
@@feanor7080 Thanks! I had a blast writing my Sabato review. You might enjoy - glenncolerussell.blogspot.com/2024/04/on-angels-and-tombs-by-ernesto-sabato.html
@@feanor7080 Thanks. I had a blast writing my Sabato review - glenncolerussell.blogspot.com/2024/04/on-angels-and-tombs-by-ernesto-sabato.html
Awesome! A list of quite demanding stuff here. Love Arno Schmidt - must read more. :)
I've only read 'The Tunnel' - loved it at the time.
This video really nails the promise of booktube. Subscribed!
Kind of you to say! Thanks for subscribing. :)
You have such a way with words :) You've convinced me to add The Corner That Held Them to my TBR. That shot at 35:00 is incredible ❤
Thank you! Lovely to hear that. Oh I really hope you'll like The Corner That Held Them - such a unique book. :)
Your videos are what I aspire for mine to be one day: you're so eloquent about what you've read. It's a breath of fresh air compared to other booktubers. My favourite read this past year was Agape Agape by Gaddis
Thanks so much for saying so! Really kind of you. Gaddis is still ahead of me for the moment. Have The Recognitions waiting patiently on my shelf. :)
@@SherdsTube Agapē Agape is a sliver of a novel comprised of 10 to 20 millipedic sentences. Could finish it in an hour or two, I'd bet
So awesome that you uploaded 🌞🌞
Thrilled I could manage it this year.
Dear Sam,
It was my pleasure to have encountered your extremely engaging and always refreshing channel this year. What draws me, I think, is not a particular topic but the way in which you deliver your craft. Namely, with an extreme care and respect, and always with a sort of an open-ended attitude.
Great thanks to you!
As for my year’s favourites, I would outline three positions here:
1. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3. The Portrait of The Lady by Henry James
Kindly,
Said
Happy New Year!
My favorite book of 2024 is Bernardo Esquinca's The Secret Life of Insects.
I participated in a rereading of Laird Barron's fiction in anticipation of his new collection Not a Speck of Light - I'm only halfway though, otherwise I would have included it on my listt of 2024 favorites. I also look forward to catching up with Brendan Connell's work.
Happy New Year to you, too! The Secret Life of Insects sounds really interesting. It's new to me. Glad to hear you're enjoying Not a Speck of Light - I want to pick it up, but for some reason it has been really expensive to get where I live. Maybe I'll just bite the bullet soon. :)
Amazing video Sam, my top 10 of 2024 are:
1. Morbid Tales by Quentin S. Crisp
2. The Solid Mandala by Patrick White
3. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
4. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
5. Landscape with Landscape by Gerald Murnane
6. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
7. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
8. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
9. Greener Pastures by Michael Wehunt
10. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Also currently reading Lord of the Rings for the first time and absolutely loving it!
Wow - bunch of stone cold classics here! :)
I will literally read anything you talk about omg your videos are aamzimg
You're very kind! :)
Great video as ever. I enjoy the ambience of your videos as well as your evocative descriptions, would very much like to check out the Daniel Mills book! Happy new year.
Thanks ever so much for saying so! Yes, he's a brilliant writer - pretty much everything I've read by him has been excellent. :)
Wow, you chose Viriconium as your number 1 book of the year! I knew you'd enjoyed it, but am still pleasantly surprised. Harrison always deserves more love.
Yes! Just a superb book. Also read 'Light' this year, which I really enjoyed, too, but not quite as much. Curious to hear about some of your highlights, Mandel!
As always, a wonderfully in-depth video from my favorite Booktube channel with great recommendations and comments. So inspiring. Thank you very much. PS: My own top 7 in 2024:
1. D.M. Thomas - The White Hotel
2. Robert Aickman - Cold Hand in Mine
3. Felix Timmermans - Intimations of Death
4. JG Ballard - Crash
5. Gabrielle Wittkop - The Necrophiliac
6. Edogawa Rampo - Japanese Tales of Mystery and Imagination
7. Christopher Slatsky - Alectryomancer & Other Weird Tales
Ah you're very kind. It's my pleasure! Really cool list - 3 & 7 are completely new to me. Have been thinking about making an Aickman reading diary at some point this year. I hope I get to it. Thanks for sharing. :)
@@SherdsTube Hope you' ll find time to make it. I deeply admire the works of Aickman. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on these stories. Intimations of Death is a treasure to discover. Very uncanny, but beautiful impressive writing. Comes close to Poe at his finest.
Thank you for another lovely video. And thank you for this list. Not a fantasy fan but many of these titles are not at all familiar to me--part of the beauty of your list is I must seek out some of these for my own reading pleasure. Oh yes, I need more and more books. Thank you again.
Thanks for the kind words! It's my absolutely pleasure - hope you like some of the books I covered. :)
My reading year, too, was unpredictable. Following your rubric -- the work had to be newly read and one that I anticipate re-reading -- my favorite books from 2024 are Kent Anderson's semi-autobiographical "Hanson" trilogy (1987-2018). Thank you as always for sharing some of the furnishings of your "exterior brain".
This writer is new to me - I'll have a look.
It's my pleasure. :)
Sigh, more books for the basket. Top notch stuff, as always.
Sorry - I've a habit of doing that! ;) Thanks so much!
Your presentations are always fascinating and inspiring.Thank you for sharing.
Very glad you think so!
very happy to see this update in my subscriptions this afternoon. my favorite first time read in 2024 was Don Carpenter's Hard Rain Falling.
I've seen this around, but know almost nothing about it. I'll have a proper look soon. Thanks for sharing!
Happy new year. So glad you’re posting. Please keep us informed with your recommendations as they are very much worth investigating. Thx!
Very happy you think so! I'll do my best to post more regularly, if I can. Happy New Year to you, too! :)
Thanks for making another beautiful video and giving your unique perspective on literature. I'm going to seek out several of the books you mentioned. My own favourite reads of this year were Napalm in the Heart by Pol Guasch, translated from the Catalan by Mara Faye Lethem and Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu, translated from the Romanian by Sean Cotter, which I know you liked too.
It's my pleasure - thanks for the kind words. Napalm in the Heart is new to me - I'll have a look! Yes, I absolutely adored Solenoid - really glad to see you liked it so much, too.
Happy New Year!
Great video.
Thank you! Happy New Year to you, too!
Brilliant and beautiful
Thank you, Rick. Means a lot coming from you! :)
I was waiting for this ✨
Hope it was worth the wait! :)
Count me as a new fan of your videos.
Ah very glad to have you here! Happy you found the channel! :)
beautiful beautiful video and list....Townseng Warner is a great, under-read writer...and i love Carter and i too was heartbroken when Jacques Roubaud died.....i've read 3, including great fire of london...lovely to hear ya mention Infinite Jest too and Crisp......and the writers i was not aware of.......thank you and happy new year
Thanks so much! Yes, she's an outstanding writer - going to read more of her work soon. Happy New Year to you, too! :)
@@SherdsTube i'd like to recommend the following, the american Lance Olsen....the brilliant Swiss Fleur Jaeggy, the towering Krasznahorkai, and others....happy 2025
Found your channel some weeks ago, and have since watched almost all of your videos. It is rare to find something that seems to be exactly what you were looking for without knowing what it was you were looking for, but that is how finding your channel has felt. You talk about books exactly the way I want to hear about books, and moreover, your videos are absolutely gorgeous to look at. Even if your literary preferences seem to lie a bit more in the darker corners that I generally leave unexplored, hearing you describe them is still an absolute pleasure, and very educating. Thank you for all your work and I hope to see much more of it in the future now that I'm almost caught up.
As for my readings of 2024, some of my favorites were:
László Krasznahorkai - Satantango
Jorge Luis Borges - The Aleph and Other Stories
Joris-Karl Huysmans - Against Nature
Honorée Fannone Jeffers - The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
Olivia Laing - The Lonely City
Robert Caro - The Power Broker (especially seeing Megalopolis soon after)
Gerard Reve - The Evenings
Also reread Nescio's stories (I believe published in English as Amsterdam Stories) and started rereading Proust.
I think Nescio, Reve, Laing, Huysmans and of course Krasznahorkai and Borges might be up your alley as far as you haven't read them yet. Would have loved to recommend you some more women here too, but unfortunately I horribly failed in reading more women this year.
Ah I really appreciate your very kind comments. Thanks so much - really glad you found the channel! Interesting list! I've read Borges and Huysmans, but not the others. Have a few Krasznahorkai books waiting for me here. Hoping to try him soon. :)
My Top 5:
Berlin Alexanderplatz
The Posthumous Memoirs Of Bras Cubas
Maldoror
The Sleepwalkers
Ice by Anna Kavan
Wow - excellent list. Love 'Ice'! Hoping to read both Berlin Alexanderplatz and The Sleepwalkers soon, too. Thanks for sharing! :)
Bras Cubas was astounding, as was Ice. Thinking this will be my year for Berlin Alexanderplatz.
As a fellow South African, I am rather interested in Hardy’s work. For a country as large and diverse as ours, the literary scene is resoundingly…quiet. Thanks for making me aware of her!
Ah it's my pleasure - you have Meghan Lamb to thank for that! Stacy Hardy really needs to be read by more people. Brilliant book!
harrison ftw
(definitely looking up the Archaeology of Holes now)
I really hope you'll dig it as much as I did.
Again some new books to read. I've had a terrible year of reading. Not enough for a top ten. I desire to read, but i have things to do that stop me from doing that. Hopefully i'll be able to read properly again.
Ah! that's a shame - really sorry to hear it! I hope your reading life gets back to normal soon.
Sounds like a good plan for your 2025. My big 3 for 2025: 1) Schattenfroh (pubs in August); 2) New edition of Bomarzo published by NYRB in July; 3) reread Hopscotch (Rayuela) in Spanish.
Wow - nice selection! Also excited about Schattenfroh being released. :)
My favorites range in genres. Perhaps my top book of the year was of literary criticism called "The Number and the Siren: A Decipherment of Mallarmé's Coup de Dés" by Quentin Meillassoux. I have always struggled with Mallarmé's Coup de Dés, but Meillassoux's book helped me grasp the various threads of the poem and stitch a quilt of meaning that allows me to see the poem somewhat more coherently. There's still remains plenty of mystery, of course.
I've been meaning to read Virginia Woolf's family saga "The Years" for years, and it was a great pleasure. The book, particularly the dialogue, demonstrates painfully how poor language can be as a conduit of interpersonal communication.
Finally, I read Erik Erikson's "Identify and the Life Cycle," which explained the true meaning of the identify crisis, at least as I understand it. This was a great help for me because I teach high school students, and now I can place some of their avoidance behaviors into my interpretation of identify crisis.
Really interesting range of favourites - thanks for sharing!
This year feels as if it's been almost all rereads but my favourite of 2024 was probably "When We Cease to Understand the World" by Benjamín Labatut.
Ah I think I heard Chris from Leaf by Leaf talking about this one. I'll try to check it out this year. Thanks for sharing.
Great video. Thank you. I am curious on your favorite French Fiction writers; any specific books?
I read Paul Austers bio of Stephen Crane, which was really good. That led me to read Cranes lesser known short fiction I hadnt yet read and another writer of the Civil War era, namely Ambrose Bierce; a great short story writer as well. I also read Kindred by Octavia Butler which was really good. Foe by J.M Coetzee is another memorable novel I read last year. Also read The iliad and Odyssey. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe. The Cannibal by John Hawkes. The Histories by Herodotus. Vanity Fair by Thackery. The Manuscript Found at Saragossa by Jan Potocki. Boccaccios Decameron. The Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal. And many more, I am sure, that are escaping me at the moment. Thank you for the great video and reviews; much appreciated!
That biography really appealed to me, too. I listened to Auster talking about Crane in an interview - for some reason I never picked it up. Have to try it soon. Great bunch of books! Also loved 'Foe' when I read it long ago! Thanks for the kind words. :)
Just found your channel - I love the production of your videos. Where do you get a lot of your archival footage? I’ve been looking for some new historical programs to watch that show old videography of regions outside the U.S. - are there any that you yourself are familiar with?
This was a wonderful video. I feel the pulse of Faustian beauty within it. Many thanks and subbed.
2024:
1. Berzerk - Kentaro Miura
2. Beasts, Men and Gods - Ferdinand Ossendowski
3. The Fall of Hyperion - Dan Simmons
4. Stoner - John Williams
5. Hitler, Born at Versailles - Leon DeGrelle
HMs:
The Last Samurai - Helen Dewitt
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Vineland - Thomas Pynchon
The New Media Invasion - John David Ebert
Knife Party at the Hotel Europa - Mark Anthony Jarman
Ah thanks so much for saying such nice things! Much appreciated. Really interesting list - thank you for sharing! :)
@@mongolianqwerty123 started reading Fall of Hyperion today. How does it compare to the first book?
@@feanor7080 You're in for some fun reading ;)
Mileage for FoH seems to vary but many consider it superior to Hyperion and I count myself among them. It's really the second half of the story and he takes the themes and characters further.
Those who dislike it tend to react badly to the changed narrative structure (no more short tales) or don't get what he's doing with John Keats (who becomes even more significant, along with the influence of Teilhard de Chardin and John Muir).
But we finally get to the Time Tombs and the Shrike does not disappoint! I'm excited to read the Endymion books and complete the Cantos this year
Your reflections on Viriconium has inspired me to re-read it. I loved the larger works in the volume, but he lost me with the shorter pieces for some reason.
I really liked them - they felt almost like little satellites orbiting the longer books. In my edition they were interspersed between the other books, rather than being presented as a collection. Really worked for me.
@@SherdsTube I’ll go in with that advice. Thanks!
Books I liked in 2024:
The man who sleeps by Georges Perec
Earthquake in Chili by Heinrich von Kleist
The Wild Ass's skin by Honore de Balzac
Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata
The Sermons of John Tauler
Great list! Thanks for sharing. I still haven't read any Kawabata - I pretty much know I'm going to like him.
My top 5 of 2024:
1. Book of the Long Sun #2 - Gene Wolfe
2. Hyperion - Dan Simmons
3. Going After Cacciato - Tim O’ Brien
4. A Heart so White - Javier Marais
5. Viriconium- M. John Harris
Looks like a solid list! Really like Javier Marias - need to read more of his stuff. Never got to the Long or Short Sun books - have to correct that soon. Thanks for sharing these! Amazing to see Viriconium on your list, too!