Books of 2024

Here are the books I read in 2024.

In lieu of more thoughtful reflection, I present a table. I have written paragraph-length comments or summaries for about half of these entries, but I want to proofread, revise, and complete those notes before publishing them. I’ll update this post once I do. (Don’t hold your breath; waiting for myself to get around to completing those notes is the only thing that delayed this post until November 2025, when I finally decided to post it as a list sans commentary.)

Format

Books are sorted by default in the order I finished reading them. Click column headers to resort according to that data.
Annotations: Stars indicate books that struck a chord or simply stuck with me. Stars do not necessarily represent recommendations or even superior reviews.
Attribution: this column names the author or editor (for collections or anthologies). In the case of fully illustrated works the illustrated is also named.
Category: Books are loosely categorized as novels, nonfiction, collections, or anthologies. I use collection to refer to publications containing multiple works by one author and anthology more specifically to refer to publications containing multiple works by multiple authors. I use those terms here to encompass works like magazines and books of nonfiction essays as well as short stories.
Links: Title links go to various sources. In some cases, I like to the author or publisher’s promotional page for the book. In other cases, I link to longer reviews, bibliographic entries, or the text itself. Attribution links for most writers of genre fiction go to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, which blends biography with literary context and opinionated criticism. Otherwise, links to go to the writer’s web site, Wikipedia entry, or whatever reference I can find.

What’s Not Included

Short stories, essays, or articles. For simplicity, I’m only keeping track of complete books.
Podcasts. I do listen to a lot of short fiction in podcast form, which merits its own post, but I have not [yet] kept track of episodes.
Comics. I am including comics in my 2025 list, but I did not track them in 2024.

Books of 2024

#	★	Title	Attribution	Category	Format	Library	Year
1		Bibliognost: The Lynd Ward Issue	Denis Carbonneau	Anthology	Print		1976
2		Afterglow	Grist	Anthology	Print		2023
3	★	The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015	Joe Hill & John Joseph Adams	Anthology	Print		2015
4		The Tusks of Extinction	Ray Nayler	Novel	Print	✓	2024
5		A People's Future of the United States	Victor LaValle & John Joseph Adams	Anthology	Print		2019
6		Field Notes on Science & Nature	Michael R. Canfield	Nonfiction	Print		2011
7		Orbital	Samantha Harvey	Novel	Print	✓	2023
8	★	Open Throat	Henry Hoke	Novel	Print	✓	2024
9		The Dreams our Stuff is Made Of	Thomas Disch	Nonfiction	Print		1998
10		Infomocracy	Malka Older	Novel	Ebook		2016
11	★	Gideon the Ninth	Tamsyn Muir	Novel	Print	✓	2019
12		Ancillary Justice	Ann Leckie	Novel	Ebook		2013
13	★	The Knight	Gene Wolfe	Novel	Print	✓	2004
14		Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine #1	Isaac Asimov, George H. Scithers, & Gardner Dozois	Anthology	Print		1977
15		Old Babes in the Woods	Margaret Atwood	Collection	Print		2023
16		New Worlds Quarterly #1	Michael Moorcock	Anthology	Print		1971
17		The Riddles of the Sphinx	Anna Schectman	Nonfiction	Print	✓	2024
18		The Empress of Dreams	Tanith Lee	Collection	Ebook		2021
19		I Am Providence	Nick Mamatas	Novel	Ebook		2016
20		The Wizard	Gene Wolfe	Novel	Print	✓	2004
21		Is Math Real?	Eugenia Cheng	Nonfiction	Print	✓	2024
22		The Book of Flaco	David Gessner	Nonfiction	Print		2025
23	★	Titus Groan	Mervyn Peake	Novel	Print		1968
24	★	A Memory Called Empire	Arkady Martine	Novel	Print		2019
25		The Nightwatchers	Angus Cameron, illustrated by Peter Parnall	Nonfiction	Print		1971
26	★	Children of Time	Adrian Tchaikovsky	Novel	Print		2015
27	★	Return of the Osprey	David Gessner	Nonfiction	Print		2001
28		The Three Body Problem	Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu	Novel	Print		2014
29	★	Brasyl	Ian McDonald	Novel	Print		2007
30		Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet #48	Kelly Link & Gavin Grant	Anthology	Print		2024
31		The Stars My Destination	Alfred Bester	Novel	Print		1956
32		The Book of Barely Imagined Beings	Caspar Henderson	Nonfiction	Print	✓	2013
33		Bones of the Earth	Michael Swanwick	Novel	Print		2002
34		Harrow the Ninth	Tamsyn Muir	Novel	Print	✓	2020
35		The Future of Life	E. O. Wilson	Nonfiction	Print		2002
36		Negative Girl	Libby Cudmore	Novel	Print		2024
37		Encounters with the Archdruid	John McPhee	Nonfiction	Print		1971
38		A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia	Rose McLarney, Laura-Gray Street, & L. L. Gaddy	Anthology	Print		2019
39	★	By Force Alone	Lavie Tidhar	Novel	Ebook	✓	2020
40	★	Some Desperate Glory	Emily Tesh	Novel	Ebook	✓	2023
41		The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling	John Muir Laws	Nonfiction	Ebook	✓	2016
42		The History of Science Fiction: A Graphic Novel Adventure	Xavier Dollo, illustrated by Djibril Morissette-Phan	Nonfiction	Ebook	✓	2020
43	★	Him	Geoff Ryman	Novel	Print	✓	2023
44	★	It Can't Happen Here	Sinclair Lewis	Novel	Ebook		1935

Posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2025. Tags: books, reviews.

Breeding Bird Survey Visualization

Here is a sample plot of Breeding Bird Survey data, embedded from an Observable notebook I wrote. View the complete notebook in context at Observable for interactive species filters, more explanation, and the ability to fiddle with the code.

Posted on Sunday, June 15th, 2025.

PICO-8

I recently discovered PICO-8, a fantasy console for making and sharing simple video games. It’s a big dose of nostalgia for the days of typing BASIC code into our Tandy or Chipmunk Basic (except the PICO-8 language is Lua). The “fantasy console” concept is clever: it presents as an emulator for a vintage arcade machine or microcomputer with very limited resources — except no such machine ever existed. It’s a great example of creative constraints which even has me tempted to dabble in making silly little games again.

The full console (complete with editor modes) is a commercial download, but you can play the cartridges online, too.

Posted on Sunday, May 25th, 2025.

Observable Plot

Observable Notebooks allow code to be interspersed with documentation, data tables, and visualization in an online interface. I’ve been learning a little bit about making charts with Plot, Observable’s JavaScript graphing toolkit. The Plot Gallery is worth a look for anyone interested in data and design.

(Plot is derived from d3, a more general-purpose JavaScript visualization toolkit. See also Jupyter Notebooks for a similar computational notebook interface to other languages, like Python or R.)

Posted on Sunday, May 25th, 2025.

Books of 2025

Here are the books I read in 2025. See also my list from 2024 and my visualization of this data.

Table Format

Books are sorted in the approximate order I started reading them. (Click column headers to sort according to those properties.)
The “Attribution” column identifies the author, editor, illustrator, and/or translator, depending on the category and nature of the work. There may be one or more name.
I categorize books containing multiple works by the same author as collections and multiple works by different authors as anthologies. I include complete issues of fiction magazines as anthologies.
Links are fairly random and subject to change. I link the author name to their website if active, otherwise to their SFE or Wikipedia entry. Some title links go to reviews, which may be more interesting than other references.
★ Starred entries indicate highlights I’d like to write more about. In some cases I’ve even scribbled some notes. These aren’t necessarily the “best” books or even my favorites of the year, but it’s a good approximation.
👓 Entries marked with a glasses emoji are still in progress. (Anything I started reading before Christmas 2025 appears on this list, even if I didn’t finish it by year’s end; likewise, anything I started on or after Christmas 2025 will appear on my 2026 list.)

Omissions

Individual short stories, podcast episodes, essays, or articles. I’d like to keep track of the best stories I read online or by podcast, but I haven’t yet. Maybe next year.
Ongoing or random comics. I check out comics on Hoopla. In some cases I just read one or two sample issues to see if like it. In other cases, I’ll read through back issues and keep up with new issues as they become available – such as with Jim Zub’s various Conan series. I do include a few complete graphic novels in the listing below.

Books of 2025

#	★	Title	Attribution	Category	Format	Library	Year
1		Dinosaurs: New Visions of a Lost World	Michael J. Benton, illustrated by Bob Nicholls	Nonfiction	Print		2021
2	★	New Adventures in Space Opera	Jonathan Strahan	Anthology	Print	✓	2024
3		New Edge Sword & Sorcery #3	Oliver Brackenbury	Anthology	Digital		2024
4		New Edge Sword & Sorcery #4	Oliver Brackenbury	Anthology	Digital		2024
5		Paper Girls: The Complete Story	Brian K. Vaughan, illustrated by Cliff Chiang, Matt Wilson, and Jared K. Fletcher	Fiction	Digital	✓	2021
6		The Player of Games	Iain M. Banks	Fiction	Print		1988
7		The Profitable Artist	New York Foundation for the Arts	Nonfiction	Digital	✓	2018
8		Playing with Pop-Ups	Helen Hiebert	Nonfiction	Digital	✓	2014
9		Drawn Testimony: My Four Decades as a Courtroom Sketch Artist	Jane Rosenberg	Nonfiction	Print	✓	2024
10	★	The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024	Hugh Howey and John Joseph Adams	Anthology	Print		2024
11		The Mercy of Gods	James S. A. Corey	Fiction	Print	✓	2024
12	★	A Psalm for the Wild-Built	Becky Chambers	Fiction	Print	✓	2021
13	★	James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice Sheldon	Julie Phillips	Nonfiction	Print		2006
14		Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet #49	Kelly Link and Gavin Grant	Anthology	Print		2024
15		A Prayer for the Crown-Shy	Becky Chambers	Fiction	Print	✓	2022
16		Never Say You Can't Survive	Charlie Jane Anders	Nonfiction	Print	✓	2021
17		Where the Axe is Buried	Ray Nayler	Fiction	Print	✓	2025
18		Twelve Trees	Daniel Lewis	Nonfiction	Print	✓	2025
19	★	Suffrage Song: The Haunted History of Gender, Race, and Voting Rights in the US	Caitlin Cass	Nonfiction	Digital	✓	2024
20		Blacks on John Brown	Benjamin Quarles	Nonfiction	Print	✓	1972
21	★	Alpha 6	Robert Silverberg	Anthology	Print		1976
22	★	The Eternaut	Héctor Germán Oesterheld, illustrated by Francisco Solano López, translated by E. Rowan Mena and Martin Hadis	Fiction	Digital	✓	1957
23		The Kaiju Preservation Society	John Scalzi	Fiction	Print		2022
24		The Space Merchants	Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth	Fiction	Print		1953
25		Osama	Lavie Tidhar	Fiction	Digital	✓	2012
26		Nebula Award Showcase 60	Stephen Kotowych	Anthology	Digital	✓	2025
27	★	The Jerry Rescue	Angela Murphy	Nonfiction	Print		2014
28	★	Liberation Day	George Saunders	Collection	Print	✓	2022
29		Las batallas en el desierto	José Emilio Pacheco	Fiction	Print		1981
30		Galactic North	Alastair Reynolds	Collection	Print		2006
31		New Edge Sword & Sorcery #2	Oliver Brackenbury	Anthology	Digital		2023
32		There is No Antimemetics Division (v1)	Sam Hughes	Fiction	Print		2021
33		None So Blind	Joe Haldeman	Collection	Print		1996
34		The Devil in a Forest	Gene Wolfe	Fiction	Print	✓	1976
35		The Collapsing Empire	John Scalzi	Fiction	Digital		2017
36		Way Station	Clifford D. Simak	Fiction	Digital	✓	1963
37		Mexican Gothic	Silvia Moreno-Garcia	Fiction	Print		2020
38	👓	How to Read a Book	Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren	Nonfiction	Print		1940
39		The Adventures of Alyx	Joanna Russ	Collection	Print		1983
40		Infinite Worlds: The Fantastic Visions of Science Fiction Art	Vincent Di Fate	Nonfiction	Print	✓	1997
41	★	Nadar	Nigel Gosling	Nonfiction	Print	✓	1976
42		The City in the Middle of the Night	Charlie Jane Anders	Fiction	Print		2019
43	★	Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet #50	Kelly Link and Gavin Grant	Anthology	Print		2025
44	★	The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories	Lord Dunsany	Collection	Digital		1908
45	★	Kraken	China Miéville	Fiction	Print		2011
46	👓	The Buffalo Hunter Hunter	Stephen Graham Jones	Fiction	Print	✓	2025
47	👓	New Edge Sword & Sorcery #5	Oliver Brackenbury	Anthology	Digital		2025

Posted on Sunday, January 12th, 2025. Tags: books, reviews.

Word Roundup

Here’s a corral of words I gathered in my travels the latter half of this year.

Continuing from previous word alert entries, here are some words from the remainder of Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groans:

plaice: a type of fish.
escutcheon: a nameplate or surface bearing symbols of heraldry.
querail: quarrelsome? A Peake-ism.
gelid: cold.
gateau: cake.
glacid: from context, describing a deep clear sky — glassy (or maybe glacé) + placid? Another Peake-ism, I think.
palliasse: straw mattress or similar bedding.
benison: benediction or blessing.

I set the rest of Gormenghast aside to sample bite by bite at a later date.

From Gideon the Ninth, book one of Tamsyn Muir’s Locked Tomb series:

uncanorous: unpleasant to the ear; not canorous.
parclose: a screen or railing that separates part of a church or tomb from a more public area. (This definition lead me to read about hagioscopes and anchorites — yeesh.)
complaisant: obliging and compliant; eager to serve (to be complacent is similar but perhaps more passive).
catarrh: a phlegmy inflammation of mucous membranes.
folderol: nonsense!
cavil: to raise frivolous objections. To cite a lot of folderol.
deliquesce: to dissolve, perhaps specifically in a slimy fungal sort of way.
lahar: volcanic mudslide.
tergiversation: wishy-washiness; evasive flip-flopping. (I think this one came from book two, Harrow the Ninth.)

From The Knight, book one of Gene Wolfe’s Wizard Knight duology:

purling: gold embroidery or the swirling motion and babbling sound of a brook.
chary: wary and prudent.
raddle: a rod woven into the structure of a fence, or something so woven.
merlon: the raised parts of a battlement; the gaps between them are crenels. Used as an adjective: merloned.

There were more (it was Wolfe, after all), but I think I took a break from noting new words around the time I read this book.

From other books I’ve read in recent months:

yclept (from Nick Mamatas’ fandom pastiche I Am Providence): named or called.
agnate (from an Ann Leckie story auxiliary to Ancillary Justice): paternal lineage; in-universe, a matriarchal clan.
cynosure (from the forthcoming Book of Flaco): a focal attraction, or a guide to such a point of attraction.
abseil (from Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time): to rappel up or down a rope (or spiderweb).
condottiere (from the illustrated owl book The Nightwatchers by Angus Cameron and Peter Parnnall): a mercenary.
cyma (also from The Nightwatchers): the “S” shape where a convex and concave curve meet. Bonus term: ogee, a pointed arch formed from a pair of cyma curves.
refulgent (from Return of the Osprey by David Gessner): radiant.
quincunx (from The Book of Barely Imagined Beings by Caspar Henderson): an arrangement of five points, as on the five-pipped face of a die.
irenic (from The Future of Life by E. O. Wilson): conducive to peace or reconciliation.
pettifogging (from Encounter with the Archdruid by John McPhee): quibbling or posing petty objections.
plebiscite (from Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh) a referendum or vote among the whole electorate.

From other media, articles, and unrecorded sources:

suzerainty (from the comic adaptation of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser illustrated by Mike Mignola): the domain of a feudal lord.
sinecure (from Gary K Wolf’s review 0f a Sofia Samatar book): a cushy job or office with little responsibility.
welter (from a game of Words with Friends, and subsequently seen elsewhere): to be jumbled or tossed about, especially as on the waves.
embayment (from an article in NY DEC’s Conservationist magazine): a bay or the surrounding coastal landform
quiddity (from a China Miéville essay): an essential essence, perhaps found only in the details of a thing.
adumbrated (from David Langford’s Omega Point entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction [SFE], a reference that leans hard into esoteric terminology): foreshadowed.
afflatus (from a John Clute quote in the Wikipedia article on Gordon Dickson): divine inspiration.
empyrean (from a NYT Style article about Pat Sajak’s retirement): a heavenly region.
octavo: a book formed by folding (and perhaps cutting) printed sheets into eighths; compare to the more common folio.
mondegreen: a misheard lyric.
vastation: devastation.
factotum: a person or worker who performs many roles.

Are these words relics, raw materials, or highly refined terminological technology? Perhaps all of the above.

Posted on Thursday, December 12th, 2024. Tags: words.

December 2024 Art Update

Everything is on sale at my Etsy shop at the moment, thanks to a site-wide sale ending soon. I dropped three orders off at the post office this morning (herons; seashells; firetowers), so the promotion seems to be working. For me, Etsy is less a money-maker than a sort of public record of building a brand as a “professional artist” – and perhaps more importantly, as an outlet for my stacks of surplus prints and other art projects. So help me declutter and pick up some prints today!

I’m presently taking my first-ever hiatus from my Patreon since I started it in 2016. This is a two-month break for November and December 2024. Patron support is absolutely to credit for my growth as an artist over the past eight years, thanks of course to the modest financial incentive but also to the interrelated effect of regular practice and experimentation. As patrons and portfolio visitors know, portraiture and printmaking are my jam. In recent years, I’ve framed this work as part of various episodic projects for Patreon; sometimes implicitly and sometimes too ambitiously, but in retrospect always constructively. So, I look forward to conceiving new ways to refine my work and of course to sending out more art to patrons in 2025.

In the meantime: later this month Kelly and I will have a small diptych on display in the Tioga Arts Council’s Collaborations exhibit; I have a commissioned print to work on ASAP; and last but not least I hope to draw a few portraits as personal gifts.

Posted on Monday, December 2nd, 2024. Tags: art.

Meta Blogging

Here are some upcoming posts:

☑️ A massive new word alert post, possibly split into multiple posts by source. I gathered many more words from Titus Groan, as well as a wealth of words from other books and articles encountered in the past few months.
First impressions of my new-to-me Boox Tab Mini C e-Ink tablet, as well as some interesting example use cases, tips, and quibbles. (I’m writing this post by hand on it.) Spoiler: it’s not for everyone, but it is for me.
☑️ Art updates: Current projects; Etsy promotions; Patreon hiatus status and plans.
Books of 2024: something new to ease [back] in to “book blogging” here: an end-of-year recap of what I read in 2024. To keep this manageable, it may just be a list, but sooner or later I’d like to write a bit more about my reading, and/or integrate my art in this process even if not in the zine format I attempted in 2023.