I started off the year reading The Kingdom of Sand by Andrew Holleran. I’d put it on my gift wish list for my family Secret Santa, and I was psyched to receive it. I spent those dark January evenings reading it in my local Starbucks and eavesdropping on men at other tables and feeling gorgeously melancholy about gay male loneliness. When I got to the end, I closed the book and stared into space fantasizing about becoming Andrew Holleran’s boyfriend. I would make sure that he (and his characters) would never feel lonely again.
Later in January, while staving off gay male loneliness, I caught strep. For a week I was mostly bedridden and it hurt my eyes to look at a screen; I craved a gentle book with large print, and I realized it was the perfect time to read the oeuvre of my friend Kyle Lukoff, a children’s book author. First I read Too Bright to See, his Newbery-winning middle grade novel, and it instantly became my new favorite trans coming-out novel in any genre; I’m surprised it doesn’t get talked about more often in the context of trans lit, but people can be so snobby about children’s lit. Then I read his second middle grade novel, Different Kinds of Fruit, which is sunnier and satirical in tone. I loved that one too.
In February I visited Philadelphia and got to tell Kyle in person how much I admired his work. In return, he took me to a used bookstore in Philly and insisted I buy two of his favorite lesser-known works of gay literature. One was Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir, by Paul Monette: a devastating read. The other was Eighty-Sixed by David B. Feinberg, a novel published in 1989 and a fascinating artifact of gay life in New York City in the 80s. Since Kyle is a former children’s librarian, I asked him to recommend some board books for my friend Abigail’s baby. On his advice I went with Not a Box by Antoinette Portis and Everywhere Babies by Susan Meyers (illustrated by Marla Frazee). I’m told the latter one was especially well received; apparently the baby loves to chew on it.
Those board books were the least I could do, because Abigail consistently gives me the best book recommendations of anyone I know. In March I read Vladimir by Julia May Jonas, which Abigail rhapsodized about, although I didn’t get around to it until another friend told me they interpreted the narrator as a thwarted gay trans man. I devoured the novel in a state of blissed-out hypnosis, and it immediately became one of my all-time favorites; I think I’ve mentioned it in every interview I’ve done this year. In May, Abigail lent me her copy of X by Davey Davis (its cover in tatters because the baby had chewed on it), which is absolutely required reading for anyone into kink, noir, or queer lit. After I returned X, Abigail lent me Darryl by Jackie Ess, and now I’m so fanatically Darryl-pilled I’ve already taught it to students as an example of first person narration, the possibilities of summary, and how a really good writer can get away with breaking every writing rule. It’s the weirdest, funniest novel I’ve ever read and I’m obsessed with it.
In June I read the wonderful, witty graphic novel Boys Weekend by the wonderful, witty Mattie Lubchansky. I also read Pageboy, even though I’ll never forgive Elliot Page for coming out as trans the day after I did and stealing my thunder.
In July, Kyle Lukoff lent me his beloved copy of Fellow Travelers by Thomas Mallon. I read it while on vacation in Provincetown. At the time, I didn’t even know it was being adapted into a miniseries, which I’m now greatly enjoying. (I also didn’t know until just yesterday that Thomas Mallon was a lifelong Republican until Trump got elected, and now I want to reread the novel in light of this perplexing fact.) After I finished Fellow Travelers I read Mrs. S by K Patrick, and then Dykette by Jenny Fran Davis, and then We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. That was a great month of reading.
In August I had dinner with my grad school friend Alexa Frank, who’s an editor at HarperVia, and she gave me a copy of People Collide by Isle McElroy. I was so obsessed from page one, I decided not to look at the author photo or bio because I wanted the reading experience to be untainted by any knowledge of the author. Then I had my own book launch, and a nice person came up to me in the book signing line and told me their name was Isle. Like an idiot, I actually thought to myself, “What a funny coincidence, that’s also the name of the author of that novel I’m loving,” and signed their book without realizing I was talking to the Isle McElroy. I haven’t stopped kicking myself since I figured it out.
Alexa also gave me a Japanese novella called Idol, Burning by Rin Usami. It’s about fandom, so of course I loved it. I’m sorry it hasn’t received more attention; I think it fell through the cracks a little because it came out during the Harper strike. The same unfortunate timing befell Vintage Contemporaries by Dan Kois, a lovely, wry, bighearted novel about a friendship between two women, both named Emily, in New York City in the 1990s—it’s so lovable, and I wish more people had the chance to love it. I feel the same way about We Were Once a Family: A Story of Love, Death, and Child Removal in America by Roxana Asgarian. That one wasn’t affected by the strike, so it did get promoted, but no amount of promotion could be enough for this book, a heart-shattering work of reported nonfiction about the Hart family murder-suicide and the failures of the American child welfare system. It should be mandatory reading for everyone everywhere.
In September my own book came out. One thing that happens when your book comes out is that people give you advance copies of forthcoming books, either for blurbing purposes or just as a perk, so that’s been my entire reading life over the last few months. So far, my favorite books of 2024 are Eli Harpo’s Adventure to the Afterlife by Eric Schlich, Just Happy to Be Here by Naomi Kanakia, Here in Avalon by Tara Isabella Burton, and Come and Get It by Kiley Reid.
I confess that I don’t log or track the books I read, so I’m going on pure memory here. If any of my author friends are reading this: I read your book too, I swear. And if Andrew Holleran is reading this: Hi. I’m still single.
More from A Year in Reading 2023
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