2024 reading rankings
100 little bookerinos in a tier list!
As was promised, I am back to be a hater! Getting back to my roots as a Chinese woman obsessed with ranking things according to a strict and subjective yet objective hierarchy, I have come up with a light and casual ranking of the 100 books I read in 2024, with some data analysis of my own reading habits. I think it’s going to be impossible for me to actually write a proper review for every single book, but I’ll try to do at least one sentence each, with more in depth reviews for standouts in response to certain reading prompts that I’ve found from the interwebs.
In general, I won’t review poetry, because I personally feel that I don’t have enough expertise to read poetry in the way that it was intended.
Rankings:
These categories are loosely, but not fully based on the quality of the texts themselves. I did give many of these texts a numeric ranking re: my Instagram Stories, but these categories do not correlate with those numbers. Obviously, I’m just one subjective opinion, so what I enjoyed may not be for you etc etc!
I have prepared a handy little graphic in the way of Youtubers as a way to signal that my dream in life is to be a Booktuber, actually. You may perceive it:
A brief explanation of each category:
i’m… obsessed - My new ultimates, will love them for life and DO. This category really speaks more to how these books met my emotional needs - some of these needs are lifelong, some of them are Of The Moment. Almost all of these books are about women having feelings in some way because I am just a girl!! I just have feelings!! Go away!!
honestly… slay - Very good, thoroughly enjoyed, both aesthetically and intellectually. The vibes are great and I had a great little time reading all of them. The reading experience for these was very zoom zoom let’s go I am seated and rapt!
respectfully… I am Thinking - Intellectually stimulating but did not necessarily resonate with my heart and soul. Snippets of the writing may come to my mind unbidden when I am roaming about the world freely. Obviously most of the non-fiction I read will be here, but so is much of the poetry because I am emotionally repressed and thus unable to access the True Meaning of poetry despite giving my students long lectures about how poetry is about Feeling not Thinking.
perceived… I guess - Interesting reads that I found valuable in some form, be it in its language, creativity, ideas and/or cultural impact, but we know that value does not equal enjoyment! I shan’t be revisiting, but I have Perceived and gained something in the process of doing so.
it’s giving timothee - The most vibes-based category. Books in this tier are titles that I know make some people go absolutely FERAL, whether they be in another demographic in terms of age, race, mental state, or even myself at a different point in time!! However, at this moment, these books have a tiny little rat moustache with Kylie Jenner pregnancy rumours… Very deeply Not For Me.
The Numbers:
Any titles that aren’t accompanied with a blurb will be reviewed deeply in a separate post.
i'm… Obsessed
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton - I did not hee-hee but I ha-ha-ed.
Ghosts by Dolly Alderton
The Rachel Incident by Caroline O'Donoghue
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
Anne of the Island by L. M. Montgomery
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton - Two people fall in love and try to scam all their rich friends. I approve!
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
Babette's Feast by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) - I think every day about what to do with the squandered potential of being bred to excel within oppression but trying to hold on to values counter to these aims.
The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery - Thee original cancer-bucket list story about a woman who decides to have a good time if she’s going to die anyway.
Arrangements in Blue: Notes in Loving and Living Alone by Amy Key - Will destroy you but it will be worth it. Read this if you are a woman afraid of being alone.
honestly… slay
The List by Yomi Adegoke
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame - Toad is a maniac, please take his driving license away!
Little Weirds by Jenny Slate - “Who will come into my kitchen and be hungry for me”? Jenny is a poet, really.
You, Again by Kate Goldbeck - I don’t know if I can read this again after knowing it’s basically ReyLo fanfic… However, before I knew the main character was supposed to look like Adam Driver, I enjoyed it very much.
The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw - Gothic retelling of a fairytale in which the prince is evil and there’s a non-binary plague doctor who is rly mysterious. Love happens while they wait to be disembowelled by some random village.
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan - You can really see how Rick converted an entire generation of youths into pagan theology with these books… None of the screen adaptations are good because the source material is too elite.
All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O'Donoghue
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë - Bronte really thought Rochester was ugly AF and made sure we knew all about his “deficient forehead,” which is really benevolent of her. Ugly people deserve representation too!
Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke - Does anyone want to know if the young poet in question was any good? Would be embarrassing if Rilke did all that only to find out that the poet was just writing stuff like “a b c, I love thee.”
Erasure by Percival Everett - Excellent and incomparable feat, / Everett can’t be beat. / He put a book into another book, / didn’t let racism off the hook. / Now it’s a movie starring Jeffrey Wright, / won an Oscar, I know that’s right!
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier - I, too, disappear into vivid and neurotic delusions in the middle of conversation with people who don’t care that much about me.
Milkman by Anna Burns - None of this will make sense if you don’t know anything about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, so I think you should watch Belfast and come back to read this.
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune - Wholesome fanfiction that made it into a book.
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers - For the burnt-out and depressed girlies.
Self Help by Lorrie Moore
The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón - Poetry, N/A
Check, please! Book 1 by Ngozi Ukazu
Check, please! Book 2 by Ngozi Ukazu
Her First Palestinian by Saeed Teebi
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis - Ok and if you haven’t read this yet what am I supposed to say? That you’ve escaped the most successful Christian propaganda of our time?
A Damsel in Distress by P.G. Wodehouse - The most hee-hee haha of the hee-hee haha book list!! Persiflage sksksksks
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire - Cool girls to go heaven, emo girls go to an alternate fantastical universe where horrific and magical things happen.
Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household - Man lies in own poo for three weeks, this is funny to me for some reason.
Doraemon Koleksi Alam Fantasi by Fujiko F Fujio - Doraemon is a robot cat whose ears got eaten by mice and that’s why he is terrified of them. I know this because I am a woman of taste.
The Tragedy of Macbeth by William Shakespeare - My students don’t know why Macbeth’s wife is so unhinged and I think to myself that they have yet to experience the horrors of being an adult woman.
Funny Story by Emily Henry - Girl’s fiance leaves her for his best girl-space-friend the day before the wedding and she moves in with the girl-space-friend’s ex-boyfriend who has also been dumped unceremoniously. She is a children’s librarian and I think that’s very fun.
Mary Poppins in the Park by P.L. Travers - Mary Poppins goes to the park idk what you want me to say.
Gloria by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
respectfully… I am Thinking
Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation by David L. Eng and Shinhee Han - Being a Chinese person is depressing, if you didn’t know that by now then you should really read this book.
The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster - They stab someone because he’s an accountant… I’m not saying that it’s something I want to do, but I am saying that I laughed.
How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones - I listen to his podcast, Vibe Check, very religiously. Saeed’s critical eye and approach to community has brought so much wisdom to my life. Reading his memoir was like discovering a new room in a house you moved into.
We Were Once A Family by Roxanna Asgarian - A investigation into the conditions that led to the real life occurrence of two white lesbians who adopted six non-white children and drove them all off a cliff. It’s so heartbreaking to know how many people’s lives are destroyed in the project of bureaucracy that does not prioritise the lives of children and their care.
And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou - And still? She rose!
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado - Abuse and violence can also happen in queer relationships, maybe we should all think about this.
The Owl Service by Alan Garner - Colonial hangover and Welsh mythology in the form of three children. It’s not going to be for everyone, but I think about it all the time.
The Gifts That Bind Us by Caroline O'Donoghue
The Magicians by Lev Grossman - It must be said that it’s not very pleasant for me to occupy the mind of a straight teenage boy. The only exception is if he has magical powers and goes to a different dimension that resembles Narnia except that it’s kind of dark and twisted! Then I will do it loh…
The Country of the Blind by Andrew Leland
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice - More of a slay than the sequel. Homoerotic vibes abound and I want to go back to New Orleans now.
Be Holding by Ross Gay - I do not care at all about basketball. Ross Gay made me cry watching Dr. J’s reverse dunk in a grainy Youtube video.
There are more beautiful things than Beyoncé by Morgan Parker - Poetry, N/A
Psychopolitics by Han Byung Chul - Used this for one of the Malaysia Design Archive reading groups about statehood and statelessness… He was so right that late stage capitalism has indeed destroyed our psychic inner lives.
The Tradition by Jericho Brown - Poetry, N/A
Cold Enough for Snow by Jessica Au - Reading this was like entering a fever dream that was haunted by my mother, in a good way.
The Bridge by Peter Tomasi, illustrated by Sarah Duvall - Reminder to reopen the schools and put down the ring lights! We need architects and engineers to build bridges, not gym bros chugging pre-workout or fast fashion hauls!
The Best Man's Ghostwriter by Matthew Starr
The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson, translated by Agnes Broomé
Bride by Ali Hazelwood - The vampire x werewolf romance we have all been waiting for ever since Edward and Jacob’s sizzling sexual tension in the tent on the cliff outside the town of Forks, Washington, while Bella lay there between them like a cold fish.
Woman Without Shame by Sandra Cisneros - Poetry, N/A
The Odd Woman and the City by Vivian Gornick - New York WAS the fifth character in SATC, and also in Vivian Gornick’s life.
perceived… I guess
White Cat, Black Dog by Kelly Link - Would have gone into the “disappointments” category if I had more energy to be a hater.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by Simon Armitage - It’s so interesting to me that the cultural imagination of knighthood and Arthurian legend is about men waving swords at each other, because every medieval text I’ve ever read is about men riding off into the woods and falling into a psychedelic haze from being too horny.
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro - A novel about humanity by an author that has absolutely no interest in exploring the messy and chaotic consequences of being human.
Winner Take Nothing by Ernest Hemingway - The hype was not met… IDK!
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
Daisy Miller by Henry James - Nobody wants to admit this, but Italy is not so Call Me By Your Name-eating-gelato-in-the-sun as marketing has tried to convince us it is. It’s more like getting malaria from wandering about in the Colosseum, just like Daisy Miller.
Every Gift a Curse by Caroline O'Donoghue
Julia Hungry by Hannah Louise Poston - Poetry, N/A
Seven Famous One-Act Plays: Second Series, Edited by John Ferguson - I do live for drama. It’s interesting how many of these plays were about colonialism in some way, despite it not being themed as such. Maybe it’s just so that colonialism is like a radioactive substance that leaves a nuclear residue on everything it comes into contact with.
Big Night by Katherine Lewin - It’s ok to take naps at your own party! I mean, I shan’t be doing it, but it would be ok for me to do, should I wish to do so!
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys - Poor Bertha… I read this after reading Jane Eyre. It reminded me of this ongoing critique of Bronte and Austen’s novels, that the material conditions reveal everything about colonialism that the characters themselves never acknowledge.
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Charkraborty - Pirates of the Caribbean with a middle-aged Middle Eastern woman as the protagonist sailing the Indian Ocean. Fun!
Glimpses of the Moon by Tavi Gevinson and Sam Freilich - A success more due to the universality of the themes from Wharton’s original, not so much Tavi’s ability at transposing them to a modern context.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck - Why are false sexual assault accusations such a huge part of the “classic” American canon taught to children? I really need to understand this pls email me if you know why.
Dreaming of You by Melissa Lozada-Oliva - Poetry, N/A
An Inspector Calls by J. B. Priestley - Read this for a kid who keeps talking to me about the evils of capitalism. Well, yes! Pop off, child!
Night Sky with Exit Wounds by Ocean Vuong
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell - So inventive, yet I couldn’t help think that there’s something missing. Everybody so creative there really wasn’t any sense of resolution to each of the stories. Maybe that’s on me with my conventional thoughts of fiction.
Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis - I stumbled down a rabbit hole and learned that this text serves as an on-ramp for white supremacist thought and religious fundamentalism… What do I think? I think there’s a lot to think.
A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers - The world of this universe is really nice, a little vacation from my own mind. At the same time, the language gets very self-help-y which does get grating.
it's giving… timothee
Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett - Not as slay as the first one. Academia about fairies is still academia, the main character is too logical to be fun and she has no flaws whatsoever which makes for a boring read.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern - The world-building is really great but it doesn’t leave much of an impact? Read for the vibes.
Eragon by Christopher Paolini
Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert - Let us all admit to ourselves that French toast is really not that good. Please stop moaning when you eat it! It makes things very uncomfortable for the rest of us.
A Hidden Magic by Vivian Van Velde - Maybe the hidden magic was within us all along.
The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White - Something actually quite dark when you think about the fact that this swan had to play the trumpet to make money in the human world because his family excluded him for being disabled.
When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson - I’ve now perceived the life cycle of formerly respected white women authors from second-wave feminism who make it big but get trapped in a strange limbo of simultaneously being convinced that their way of life is under attack while also only caring about very abstract and niche concerns.
Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher - Thirty year old woman discovers that patriarchy is bad and her sisters are suffering from being forced to push out sons to ensure the royal lineage. I’m so sorry, I can’t take her seriously.
The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden
We Are Never Meeting in Real Life by Samantha Irby
In Five Years by Rebecca Serle
The Serpents of Arakesh by V.M. Jones - I, too, dream about going into a computer game and solving a series of puzzles! I loved this series so much as a child and they are still really good. The only thing is that my adult brain now thinks that the riddles are childish… Which makes sense… As they are written for children…
Beyond the Shroud by V.M. Jones
Overview (From my Storygraph app)
Number of books read:
Huzzah for it is so done! My goal for the year was 100 books and I have indeed done so!
Genres:
29 Fantasy - This genre breakdown is so interesting to me, because as mentioned previously, I stepped away from Fantasy for a long time when I felt that it wasn’t giving me the social cache that I thought it would. As it turns out, I have returned to my roots of being desperate to escape the problems of my real life by disappearing into fantastical worlds.
26 Classics - The classics make sense, since those are the books that both appeal to my desperate need to be seen as a Serious and Intellectual Reader, while also being sold for cheap at any random second-hand bookstore. As I am now an educator of some youths, I’ve started going back in time to read all the “great books” they assign to high school English classes, hence the To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men of it all. The term “Classics” is also really dubious because would we classify Rogue Male as a Classic just because it was published in 1939s? Who is it Classic to? Classic is just one of those terms that they be slapping onto everything… Much to think about.
17 Romance - I think the only “pure” romance novels I read this year were Bride, Funny Story, Act Your Age, Eve Brown, and You, Again, which is a reminder to all of us that data is very easily manipulated to produce skewed results and not all quantitative research methods are created equal. I suspect that many of the books like The House in the Cerulean Sea, Rebecca, Seven Days in June and The Night Circus were also counted as romance, because romantic relationships were important to the plot, but they weren’t romance novels by the industry definition of the word. That said, I am a strong supporter of women’s rights and wrongs in the ongoing war against women reading romance novels. If women want to read about getting it on with a fairy king, let them be!! Real men are disappointing and depressing!!
17 LGBTQIA+ - Ally! ✊✊✊
16 Literary - I’m the most insufferable person you know who has ever read a Sally Rooney book, leave me alone!!
Other notable genres were: Contemporary (12), poetry (11), young adult (11), and memoir (9)
this list is so slay ... im obsessed