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A Year in Reading: 2024
Welcome to the 20th (!) installment of The Millions' annual Year in Reading series, which gathers together some of today's most exciting writers and thinkers to share the books that shaped their year. YIR is not a collection of yearend best-of lists; think of it, perhaps, as an assemblage of annotated bibliographies. We've invited contributors to reflect on the books they read this year—an intentionally vague prompt—and encouraged them to approach the assignment however they choose.
In writing about our reading lives, as YIR contributors are asked to do, we inevitably write about our personal lives, our inner lives. This year, a number of contributors read their way through profound grief and serious illness, through new parenthood and cross-country moves. Some found escape in frothy romances, mooring in works of theology, comfort in ancient epic poetry. More than one turned to the wisdom of Ursula K. Le Guin. Many describe a book finding them just when they needed it.
Interpretations of the assignment were wonderfully varied. One contributor, a music critic, considered the musical analogs to the books she read, while another mapped her reads from this year onto constellations. Most people's reading was guided purely by pleasure, or else a desire to better understand events unfolding in their lives or larger the world. Yet others centered their reading around a certain sense of duty: this year one contributor committed to finishing the six Philip Roth novels he had yet to read, an undertaking that he likens to “eating a six-pack of paper towels.” (Lucky for us, he included in his essay his final ranking of Roth's oeuvre.)
The books that populate these essays range widely, though the most commonly noted title this year was Tony Tulathimutte’s story collection Rejection. The work of newly minted National Book Award winner Percival Everett, particularly his acclaimed novel James, was also widely read and written about. And as the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza enters its second year, many contributors sought out Isabella Hammad’s searing, clear-eyed essay Recognizing the Stranger.
Like so many endeavors in our chronically under-resourced literary community, Year in Reading is a labor of love. The Millions is a one-person editorial operation (with an invaluable assist from SEO maven Dani Fishman), and producing YIR—and witnessing the joy it brings contributors and readers alike—has been the highlight of my tenure as editor. I’m profoundly grateful for the generosity of this year’s contributors, whose names and entries will be revealed below over the next three weeks, concluding on Wednesday, December 18. Be sure to subscribe to The Millions’ free newsletter to get the week’s entries sent straight to your inbox each Friday.
—Sophia Stewart, editor
Becca Rothfeld, author of All Things Are Too Small
Carvell Wallace, author of Another Word for Love
Charlotte Shane, author of An Honest Woman
Brianna Di Monda, writer and editor
Nell Irvin Painter, author of I Just Keep Talking
Carrie Courogen, author of Miss May Does Not Exist
Ayşegül Savaş, author of The Anthropologists
Zachary Issenberg, writer
Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection
Ann Powers, author of Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell
Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Reading the Waves
Nicholas Russell, writer and critic
Daniel Saldaña París, author of Planes Flying Over a Monster
Lili Anolik, author of Didion and Babitz
Deborah Ghim, editor
Emily Witt, author of Health and Safety
Nathan Thrall, author of A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
Lena Moses-Schmitt, author of True Mistakes
Jeremy Gordon, author of See Friendship
John Lee Clark, author of Touch the Future
Ellen Wayland-Smith, author of The Science of Last Things
Edwin Frank, publisher and author of Stranger Than Fiction
Sophia Stewart, editor of The Millions
A Year in Reading Archives: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005
The Great Fall 2024 Book Preview
With the arrival of autumn comes a deluge of great books. Here you'll find a sampling of new and forthcoming titles that caught our eye here at The Millions, and that we think might catch yours, too. Some we’ve already perused in galley form; others we’re eager to devour based on their authors, plots, or subject matters. We hope your next fall read is among them.
—Sophia Stewart, editor
October
Season of the Swamp by Yuri Herrera, tr. Lisa Dillman [F]
What it is: An epic, speculative account of the 18 months that Benito Juárez spent in New Orleans in 1853-54, years before he became the first and only Indigenous president of Mexico.
Who it's for: Fans of speculative history; readers who appreciate the magic that swirls around any novel set in New Orleans. —Claire Kirch
The Black Utopians by Aaron Robertson [NF]
What it is: An exploration of Black Americans' pursuit and visions of utopia—both ideological and physical—that spans the Reconstruction era to the present day and combines history, memoir, and reportage.
Who it's for: Fans of Saidiya Hartman's Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments and Kristen R. Ghodsee's Everyday Utopia. —Sophia M. Stewart
The Third Realm by Karl Ove Knausgaard, tr. Martin Aitken [F]
What it is: The third installment in Knausgaard's Morning Star series, centered on the appearance of a mysterious new star in the skies above Norway.
Who it's for: Real Knausgaard heads only—The Wolves of Eternity and Morning Star are required reading for this one. —SMS
Brown Women Have Everything by Sayantani Dasgupta [NF]
What it is: Essays on the contradictions and complexities of life as an Indian woman in America, probing everything from hair to family to the joys of travel.
Who it's for: Readers of Durga Chew-Bose, Erika L. Sánchez, and Tajja Isen. —SMS
The Plot Against Native America by Bill Vaughn [F]
What it is: The first narrative history of Native American boarding schools— which aimed "civilize" Indigenous children by violently severing them from their culture— and their enduring, horrifying legacy.
Who it's for: Readers of Ned Blackhawk and Kathleen DuVal. —SMS
The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich [F]
What it is: Erdrich's latest novel set in North Dakota's Red River Valley is a tale of the intertwined lives of ordinary people striving to survive and even thrive in their rural community, despite environmental upheavals, the 2008 financial crisis, and other obstacles.
Who it's for: Readers of cli-fi; fans of Linda LeGarde Grover and William Faulkner. —CK
The Position of Spoons by Deborah Levy [NF]
What it is: The second book from Levy in as many years, diverging from a recent streak of surrealist fiction with a collection of essays marked by exceptional observance and style.
Who it's for: Close lookers and the perennially curious. —John H. Maher
The Bog Wife by Kay Chronister [F]
What it's about: The Haddesley family has lived on the same West Virginia bog for centuries, making a supernatural bargain with the land—a generational blood sacrifice—in order to do so—until an uncovered secret changes everything.
Who it's for: Readers of Karen Russell and Jeff VanderMeer; anyone who has ever used the phrase "girl moss." —SMS
The Great When by Alan Moore [F]
What it's about: When an 18-year old book reseller comes across a copy of a book that shouldn’t exist, it threatens to upend not just an already post-war-torn London, but reality as we know it.
Who it's for: Anyone looking for a Sherlock Holmes-style mystery dipped in thaumaturgical psychedelia. —Daniella Fishman
The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates [NF]
What it's about: One of our sharpest critical thinkers on social justice returns to nonfiction, nearly a decade after Between the World and Me, visiting Dakar, to contemplate enslavement and the Middle Passage; Columbia, S.C., as a backdrop for his thoughts on Jim Crow and book bans; and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where he sees contemporary segregation in the treatment of Palestinians.
Who it’s for: Fans of James Baldwin, George Orwell, and Angela Y. Davis; readers of Nikole Hannah-Jones’s The 1619 Project and Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste, to name just a few engagements with national and racial identity. —Nathalie op de Beeck
Abortion by Jessica Valenti [NF]
What it is: Columnist and memoirist Valenti, who tracks pro-choice advocacy and attacks on the right to choose in her Substack, channels feminist rage into a guide for freedom of choice advocacy.
Who it’s for: Readers of Robin Marty’s The New Handbook for a Post-Roe America, #ShoutYourAbortion proponents, and followers of Jennifer Baumgartner’s [I Had an Abortion] project. —NodB
Gifted by Suzuki Suzumi, tr. Allison Markin Powell [F]
What it's about: A young sex worker in Tokyo's red-light district muses on her life and recounts her abusive mother's final days, in what is Suzuki's first novel to be translated into English.
Who it's for: Readers of Susan Boyt and Mieko Kanai; fans of moody, introspective fiction; anyone with a fraught relationship to their mother. —SMS
Childish Literature by Alejandro Zambra, tr. Megan McDowell [F]
What it is: A wide-ranging collection of stories, essays, and poems that explore childhood, fatherhood, and family.
Who it's for: Fans of dad lit (see: Lucas Mann's Attachments, Keith Gessen's Raising Raffi, Karl Ove Knausgaard's seasons quartet, et al). —SMS
Books Are Made Out of Books ed. Michael Lynn Crews [NF]
What it is: A mining of the archives of the late Cormac McCarthy with a focus on the famously tight-lipped author's literary influences.
Who it's for: Anyone whose commonplace book contains the words "arquebus," "cordillera," or "vinegaroon." —JHM
Slaveroad by John Edgar Wideman [F]
What it is: A blend of memoir, fiction, and history that charts the "slaveroad" that runs through American history, spanning the Atlantic slave trade to the criminal justice system, from the celebrated author of Brothers and Keepers.
Who it's for: Fans of Clint Smith and Ta-Nehisi Coates. —SMS
Linguaphile by Julie Sedivy [NF]
What it's about: Linguist Sedivy reflects on a life spent loving language—its beauty, its mystery, and the essential role it plays in human existence.
Who it's for: Amateur (or professional) linguists; fans of the podcast A Way with Words (me). —SMS
An Image of My Name Enters America by Lucy Ives [NF]
What it is: A collection of interrelated essays that connect moments from Ives's life to larger questions of history, identity, and national fantasy,
Who it's for: Fans of Ives, one of our weirdest and most wondrous living writers—duh; anyone with a passing interest in My Little Pony, Cold War–era musicals, or The Three Body Problem, all of which are mined here for great effect. —SMS
Women's Hotel by Daniel Lavery [F]
What it is: A novel set in 1960s New York City, about the adventures of the residents of a hotel providing housing for young women that is very much evocative of the real-life legendary Barbizon Hotel.
Who it's for: Readers of Mary McCarthy's The Group and Rona Jaffe's The Best of Everything. —CK
The World in Books by Kenneth C. Davis [NF]
What it is: A guide to 52 of the most influential works of nonfiction ever published, spanning works from Plato to Ida B. Wells, bell hooks to Barbara Ehrenreich, and Sun Tzu to Joan Didion.
Who it's for: Lovers of nonfiction looking to cover their canonical bases. —SMS
Blue Light Hours by Bruna Dantas Lobato [F]
What it's about: Through the emanating blue-glow of their computer screens, a mother and daughter, four-thousand miles apart, find solace and loneliness in their nightly Skype chats in this heartstring-pulling debut.
Who it's for: Someone who needs to be reminded to CALL YOUR MOTHER! —DF
Riding Like the Wind by Iris Jamahl Dunkle [NF]
What it is: The biography of Sanora Babb, a contemporary of John Steinbeck's whose field notes and interviews with Dust Bowl migrants Steinbeck relied upon to write The Grapes of Wrath.
Who it's for: Steinbeck fans and haters alike; readers of Kristin Hannah's The Four Winds and the New York Times Overlooked column; anyone interested in learning more about the Dust Bowl migrants who fled to California hoping for a better life. —CK
Innie Shadows by Olivia M. Coetzee [F]
What it is: a work of crime fiction set on the outskirts of Cape Town, where a community marred by violence seeks justice and connection; also the first novel to be translated from Kaaps, a dialect of Afrikaans that was until recently only a spoken language.
Who it's for: fans of sprawling, socioeconomically-attuned crime dramas a la The Wire. —SMS
Dorothy Parker in Hollywood by Gail Crowther [NF]
What it is: A history of the famous wit—and famous New Yorker—in her L.A. era, post–Algonquin Round Table and mid–Red Scare.
Who it's for: Owners of a stack of hopelessly dog-eared Joan Didion paperbacks. —JHM
The Myth of American Idealism by Noam Chomsky and Nathan J. Robinson [NF]
What it is: A potent critique of the ideology behind America's foreign interventions and its status as a global power, and an treatise on how the nation's hubristic pursuit of "spreading democracy" threatens not only the delicate balance of global peace, but the already-declining health of our planet.
Who it's for: Chomskyites; policy wonks and casual critics of American recklessness alike. —DF
Mysticism by Simon Critchley [NF]
What it is: A study of mysticism—defined as an experience, rather than religious practice—by the great British philosopher Critchley, who mines music, poetry, and literature along the way.
Who it's for: Readers of John Gray, Jorge Luis Borges, and Simone Weil. —SMS
Q&A by Adrian Tomine [NF]
What it is: The Japanese American creator of the Optic Nerve comic book series for D&Q, and of many a New Yorker cover, shares his personal history and his creative process in this illustrated unburdening.
Who it’s for: Readers of Tomine’s melancholic, sometimes cringey, and occasionally brutal collections of comics short stories including Summer Blonde, Shortcomings, and Killing and Dying. —NodB
Sonny Boy by Al Pacino [NF]
What it is: Al Pacino's memoir—end of description.
Who it's for: Cinephiles; anyone curious how he's gonna spin fumbling Diane Keaton. —SMS
Seeing Baya by Alice Kaplan [NF]
What it is: The first biography of the enigmatic and largely-forgotten Algerian artist Baya Mahieddine, who first enchanted midcentury Paris as a teenager.
Who it's for: Admirers of Leonora Carrington, Hilma af Klint, Frida Kahlo, and other belatedly-celebrated women painters. —SMS
Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer [F]
What it is: A surprise return to the Area X, the stretch of unforbidding and uncanny coastline in the hit Southern Reach trilogy.
Who it's for: Anyone who's heard this song and got the reference without Googling it. —JHM
The Four Horsemen by Nick Curtola [NF]
What it is: The much-anticipated cookbook from the team behind Brooklyn's hottest restaurant (which also happens to be co-owned by James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem).
Who it's for: Oenophiles; thirty-somethings who live in north Williamsburg (derogatory). —SMS
Seeing Further by Esther Kinsky, tr. Caroline Schmidt [F]
What it's about: An unnamed German woman embarks on the colossal task of reviving a cinema in a small Hungarian village.
Who it's for: Fans of Jenny Erpenbeck; anyone charmed by Cinema Paradiso (not derogatory!). —SMS
Ripcord by Nate Lippens [NF]
What it's about: A novel of class, sex, friendship, and queer intimacy, written in delicious prose and narrated by a gay man adrift in Milwaukee.
Who it's for: Fans of Brontez Purnell, Garth Greenwell, Alexander Chee, and Wayne Koestenbaum. —SMS
The Use of Photography by Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie, tr. Alison L. Strayer [NF]
What it's about: Ernaux's love affair with Marie, a journalist, while she was undergoing treatment for cancer, and their joint project to document their romance.
Who it's for: The Ernaux hive, obviously; readers of Sontag's On Photography and Janet Malcolm's Still Pictures. —SMS
Nora Ephron at the Movies by Ilana Kaplan [NF]
What it is: Kaplan revisits Nora Ephron's cinematic watersheds—Silkwood, Heartburn, When Harry Met Sally, You've Got Mail, and Sleepless in Seattle—in this illustrated book. Have these iconic stories, and Ephron’s humor, weathered more than 40 years?
Who it’s for: Film history buffs who don’t mind a heteronormative HEA; listeners of the Hot and Bothered podcast; your coastal grandma. —NodB
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The Philosophy of Translation by Damion Searls [NF]
What it is: A meditation on the act and art of translation by one of today's most acclaimed practitioners, best known for his translations of Fosse, Proust, et al.
Who it's for: Regular readers of Words Without Borders and Asymptote; professional and amateur literary translators alike. —SMS
Salvage by Dionne Brand
What it is: A penetrating reevaluation of the British literary canon and the tropes once shaped Brand's reading life and sense of self—and Brand’s first major work of nonfiction since her landmark A Map to the Door of No Return.
Who it's for: Readers of Christina Sharpe's Ordinary Notes and Elizabeth Hardwick's Seduction and Betrayal. —SMS
Masquerade by Mike Fu [F]
What it's about: Housesitting for an artist friend in present-day New York, Meadow Liu stumbles on a novel whose author shares his name—the first of many strange, haunting happenings that lead up to the mysterious disappearance of Meadow's friend.
Who it's for: fans of Ed Park and Alexander Chee. —SMS
November
The Beggar Student by Osamu Dazai, tr. Sam Bett [F]
What it is: A novella in the moody vein of Dazai’s acclaimed No Longer Human, following the 30-something “fictional” Dazai into another misadventure spawned from a hubristic spat with a high schooler.
Who it's for: Longtime readers of Dazai, or new fans who discovered the midcentury Japanese novelist via TikTok and the Bungo Stray Dogs anime. —DF
In Thrall by Jane DeLynn [F]
What it is: A landmark lesbian bildungsroman about 16-year-old Lynn's love affair with her English teacher, originally published in 1982.
Who it's for: Fans of Joanna Russ's On Strike Against God and Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story —SMS
Washita Love Child by Douglas Kent Miller [NF]
What it is: The story of Jesse Ed Davis, the Indigenous musician who became on of the most sought after guitarists of the late '60s and '70s, playing alongside B.B. King, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and more.
Who it's for: readers of music history and/or Indigenous history; fans of Joy Harjo, who wrote the foreword. —SMS
Set My Heart on Fire by Izumi Suzuki, tr. Helen O'Horan [F]
What it is: Gritty, sexy, and wholly rock ’n’ roll, Suzuki’s first novel translated into English (following her story collection, Hit Parade of Tears) follows 20-year-old Izumi navigating life, love, and music in the underground scene in '70s Japan.
Who it's for: Fans of Meiko Kawakami, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Marlowe Granados's Happy Hour. —DF
Didion & Babitz by Lili Anolik [NF]
What it is: A dual portrait of Joan Didion and Eve Babitz, who are so often compared to—and pitted against—each other on the basis of their mutual Los Angeles milieu.
Who it's for: Fans or haters of either writer (the book is fairly pro-Babitz, often at Didion's expense); anyone who has the Lit Hub Didion tote bag. —SMS
The Endless Refrain by David Rowell [NF]
What it's about: How the rise of music streaming, demonitizing of artist revenue, and industry tendency toward nostalgia have laid waste to the musical landscape, and the future of music culture.
Who it's for: Fans of Kyle Chayka, Spence Kornhaber, and Lindsay Zoladz. —SMS
Every Arc Bends Its Radian by Sergio De La Pava [F]
What it is: A mind- and genre-bending detective story set in Cali, Colombia, that blends high-stakes suspense with rigorous philosophy.
Who it's for: Readers of Raymond Chandler, Thomas Pynchon, and Jules Verne. —SMS
Something Close to Nothing by Tom Pyun [F]
What it’s about: At the airport with his white husband Jared, awaiting a flight to Cambodia to meet the surrogate mother carrying their adoptive child-to-be, Korean American Wynn decides parenthood isn't for him, and bad behavior ensues.
Who it’s for: Pyun’s debut is calculated to cut through saccharine depictions of queer parenthood—could pair well with Torrey Peters’s Detransition, Baby. —NodB
Rosenfeld by Maya Kessler [F]
What it is: Kessler's debut—rated R for Rosenfeld—follows one Noa Simmons through the tumultuous and ultimately profound power play that is courting (and having a lot of sex with) the titular older man who soon becomes her boss.
Who it's for: Fans of Sex and the City, Raven Leilani’s Luster, and Coco Mellor’s Cleopatra and Frankenstein. —DF
Lazarus Man by Richard Price [F]
What it is: The former The Wire writer offers yet another astute chronicle of urban life, this time of an ever-changing Harlem.
Who it's for: Fans of Colson Whitehead's Crook Manifesto and Paul Murray's The Bee Sting—and, of course, The Wire. —SMS
Stranger Than Fiction by Edwin Frank [NF]
What it is: An astute curveball of a read on the development and many manifestations of the novel throughout the tumultuous 20th century.
Who it's for: Readers who look at a book's colophon before its title. —JHM
Letters to His Neighbor by Marcel Proust, tr. Lydia Davis
What it is: A collection of Proust’s tormented—and frequently hilarious—letters to his noisy neighbor which, in a diligent translation from Davis, stand the test of time.
Who it's for: Proust lovers; people who live below heavy-steppers. —DF
Context Collapse by Ryan Ruby [NF]
What it is: A self-proclaimed "poem containing a history of poetry," from ancient Greece to the Iowa Workshop, from your favorite literary critic's favorite literary critic.
Who it's for: Anyone who read and admired Ruby's titanic 2022 essay on The Waste Land; lovers of poetry looking for a challenge. —SMS
How Sondheim Can Change Your Life by Richard Schoch [NF]
What it's about: Drama professor Schoch's tribute to Stephen Sondheim and the life lessons to be gleaned from his music.
Who it's for: Sondheim heads, former theater kids, end of list. —SMS
The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer [NF]
What it is: 2022 MacArthur fellow and botanist Kimmerer, an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, (re)introduces audiences to a flowering, fruiting native plant beloved of foragers and gardeners.
Who it’s for: The restoration ecologist in your life, along with anyone who loved Braiding Sweetgrass and needs a nature-themed holiday gift. —NodB
My Heart Belongs in an Empty Big Mac Container Buried Beneath the Ocean Floor by Homeless [F]
What it is: A pseudonymous, tenderly comic novel of blue whales and Golden Arches, mental illness and recovery.
Who it's for: Anyone who finds Thomas Pynchon a bit too staid. —JHM
Yoke and Feather by Jessie van Eerden [NF]
What it's about: Van Eerden's braided essays explore the "everyday sacred" to tease out connections between ancient myth and contemporary life.
Who it's for: Readers of Courtney Zoffness's Spilt Milk and Jeanna Kadlec's Heretic. —SMS
Camp Jeff by Tova Reich [F]
What it's about: A "reeducation" center for sex pests in the Catskills, founded by one Jeffery Epstein (no, not that one), where the dual phenomena of #MeToo and therapyspeak collide.
Who it's for: Fans of Philip Roth and Nathan Englander; cancel culture skeptics. —SMS
Selected Amazon Reviews by Kevin Killian [NF]
What it is: A collection of 16 years of Killian’s funniest, wittiest, and most poetic Amazon reviews, the sheer number of which helped him earn the rarefied “Top 100” and “Hall of Fame” status on the site.
Who it's for: Fans of Wayne Koestenbaum and Dodie Bellamy, who wrote introduction and afterword, respectively; people who actually leave Amazon reviews. —DF
Cher by Cher [NF]
What it is: The first in a two-volume memoir, telling the story of Cher's early life and ascendent career as only she can tell it.
Who it's for: Anyone looking to fill the My Name Is Barbra–sized hole in their heart, or looking for something to tide them over until the Liza memoir drops. —SMS
The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami, tr. Philip Gabriel [F]
What it is: Murakami’s first novel in over six years returns to the high-walled city from his 1985 story "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" with one man's search for his lost love—and, simultaneously, an ode to libraries and literature itself.
Who it's for: Murakami fans who have long awaited his return to fiction. —DF
American Bulk by Emily Mester [NF]
What it's about: Reflecting on what it means to "live life to the fullest," Mester explores the cultural and personal impacts of America’s culture of overconsumption, from Costco hauls to hoarding to diet culture—oh my!
Who it's for: Lovers of sustainability; haters of excess; skeptics of the title essay of Becca Rothfeld's All Things Are Too Small. —DF
The Icon and the Idealist by Stephanie Gorton [NF]
What it is: A compelling look at the rivalry between Margaret Sanger, of Planned Parenthood fame, and Mary Ware Dennett, who each held radically different visions for the future of birth control.
Who it's for: Readers of Amy Sohn's The Man Who Hated Women and Katherine Turk's The Women of NOW; anyone interested in the history of reproductive rights. —SMS
December
Rental House by Weike Wang [F]
What it's about: Married college sweethearts invite their drastically different families on a Cape Code vacation, raising questions about marriage, intimacy, and kinship.
Who it's for: Fans of Wang's trademark wit and sly humor (see: Joan Is Okay and Chemistry); anyone with an in-law problem.
Woo Woo by Ella Baxter [F]
What it's about: A neurotic conceptual artist loses her shit in the months leading up to an exhibition that she hopes will be her big breakout, poking fun at the tropes of the "art monster" and the "woman of the verge" in one fell, stylish swoop.
Who it's for: Readers of Sheena Patel's I'm a Fan and Chris Kraus's I Love Dick; any woman who is grateful to but now also sort of begrudges Jenny Offil for introducing "art monster" into the lexicon (me). —SMS
Berlin Atomized by Julia Kornberg, tr. Jack Rockwell and Julia Kornberg [F]
What it's about: Spanning 2001 to 2034, three Jewish and downwardly mobile siblings come of age in various corners of the world against the backdrop of global crisis.
Who it's for: Fans of Catherine Lacey's Biography of X and Joshua Cohen's The Netanyahus. —SMS
Sand-Catcher by Omar Khalifah, tr. Barbara Romaine [F]
What it is: A suspenseful, dark satire of memory and nation, in which four young Palestinian journalists at a Jordanian newspaper are assigned to interview an elderly witness to the Nakba, the violent 1948 expulsion of native Palestinians from Israel—but to their surprise, the survivor doesn’t want to rehash his trauma for the media.
Who it’s for: Anyone looking insight—tinged with grim humor—into the years leading up to the present political crisis in the Middle East and the decades-long goal of Palestinian autonomy. —NodB
The Shutouts by Gabrielle Korn [F]
What it's about: In the dystopian future, mysteriously connected women fight to survive on the margins of society amid worsening climate collapse.
Who it's for: Fans of Korn's Yours for the Taking, which takes place in the same universe; readers of Becky Chambers and queer-inflected sci-fi. —SMS
What in Me Is Dark by Orlando Reade [NF]
What it's about: The enduring, evolving influence of Milton's Paradise Lost on political history—and particularly on the work of 12 revolutionary readers, including Malcom X and Hannah Arendt.
Who it's for: English majors and fans of Ryan Ruby and Sarah Bakewell—but I repeat myself. —SMS
The Afterlife Is Letting Go by Brandon Shimoda [NF]
What it's about: Shimoda researches the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII, and speaks with descendants of those imprisoned, for this essay collection about the “afterlife” of cruelty and xenophobia in the U.S.
Who it’s for: Anyone to ever visit a monument, museum, or designated site of hallowed ground where traumatic events have taken place. —NodB
No Place to Bury the Dead by Karina Sainz Borgo, tr. Elizabeth Bryer [F]
What it's about: When Angustias Romero loses both her children while fleeing a mysterious disease in her unnamed Latin American country, she finds herself in a surreal, purgatorial borderland where she's soon caught in a power struggle.
Who it's for: Fans of Maríana Enriquez and Mohsin Hamid. —SMS
The Rest Is Silence by Augusto Monterroso, tr. Aaron Kerner [F]
What it is: The author of some of the shortest, and tightest, stories in Latin American literature goes long with a metafictional skewering of literary criticism in his only novel.
Who it's for: Anyone who prefers the term "palm-of-the-hand stories" to "flash fiction." —JHM
Tali Girls by Siamak Herawi, tr. Sara Khalili [F]
What it is: An intimate, harrowing, and vital look at the lives of girls and women in an Afghan mountain village under Taliban rule, based on true stories.
Who it's for: Readers of Nadia Hashimi, Akwaeke Emezi, and Maria Stepanova. —SMS
Sun City by Tove Jansson, tr. Thomas Teal [F]
What it's about: During her travels through the U.S. in the 1970s, Jansson became interested in the retirement home as a peculiarly American institution—here, she imagines the tightly knit community within one of them.
Who it's for: Fans of Jansson's other fiction for adults, much of which explores the lives of elderly folks; anyone who watched that documentary about The Villages in Florida. —SMS
Editor's note: We're always looking to make our seasonal book previews more useful to the readers, writers, and critics they're meant to serve. Got an idea for how we can improve our coverage? Tell me about it at sophia@themillions.com.
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B.J. Hollars Explores the Midwest’s Strangest Corners
During his yearlong trek spent researching paranormal claims throughout the Midwest, B.J. Hollars admits “whether discussing the mundane or a monster sighting, it’s hard to know who to trust.” Everyone, it seems, has a story.
“The irony,” Hollars writes in Midwestern Strange, “is that much of the research conducted by cryptozoologists, ufologists, anomalists, paranormal investigators, and the like undergo the same processes employed within academia’s hallowed halls—namely, hypothesizing and theorizing toward a greater understanding of truth.” He often returns to this sentiment: Strange tales demand our attention, but such research is met with skepticism.
Midwestern Strange is a fun and fascinating romp through those
tales—delivered with Hollars’s talent for connecting dots while remaining
comfortable with unanswered questions. The author of Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence and the Last Lynching in America, The Road South: Personal Stories of the Freedom Riders, and other books, he is an associate professor of English at
the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
We spoke about Goosebumps, folklore, and the hidden strangeness of “flyover country.”
The Millions: I like to hear of other
writers who were born wandering library stacks. You said the books of your
childhood were “part pulp, part peculiarity.” Why—and how—did books about
creatures and the paranormal especially capture your imagination?
B.J. Hollars: I think what fascinated me most about books on creatures and the paranormal were that these books were shelved in the nonfiction section of our library. I was probably nine or 10 when I fell headlong into strange and spooky tales, but prior to wandering toward the nonfiction shelves, I’d only known these subjects in their fictional forms.
I admit it: I was a Goosebumps kid. By which I mean I mowed as many lawns as I could to earn the four bucks I needed to pick up R.L. Stine’s monthly addition to his wildly popular series. I devoured the earlier books faster than Stine could write them, and once I ran dry, I travelled a little deeper into the library. Imagine my surprise when I learned that there were shelves overflowing with nonfiction books on subjects as strange as Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, werewolves, and the Bermuda Triangle. I gathered them up by the armful, then spent more than a few weekend nights sidling up to the kitchen table, notepad in hand, anxious to get to the bottom of these mysteries.
Prior to venturing to the nonfiction side of those library shelves, I felt I had a pretty clear understanding of the demarcation lines between fact and fiction. But books on Bigfoot and the like dramatically complicated my understanding. Suddenly I wasn’t sure what to think. I was 10 years old and the world had doubled in size for me. There was so much to see, so much to learn, and the widening of my world was revelatory.
TM: What is particularly
Midwestern about these cases and stories—other than that they are located in
the region?
BH: One of the things I love most about the Midwest is its chameleonlike ability to blend in with its surroundings. The downside, of course, is that as a result, we Midwesterners are often overlooked. We are, for many, merely “flyover country”—just a swath of land you pass through en route to another place. But the upside is that in being overlooked, we’ve got a lot left to explore, especially in terms of the strange. I’m a firm believer that every place has something unique, but in the Midwest, it’s not always so apparent. We don’t have a coast, we don’t have mountains, and so, our “uniqueness” sometimes requires a little digging. Many of the “case files” within the book discuss how small Midwestern towns often take it upon themselves to employ creatures or stories or legends to serve as proof of their uniqueness. As I’ve learned, those towns that embrace the strange—rather than shy away from it—often benefit both economically and culturally. In the Midwest, it’s cool to be weird. We’re humble about our oddities, of course, but we’re a little proud of them, too.
TM: Other than Project
ELF—the Navy’s creation of “a one-way communication system to relay messages to
America’s nuclear submarines by way of extremely low frequency waves”—which of
these cases do you think is the most likely to be true, and why?
BH: Throughout the book, I try to steer clear of making too many definitive statements about my own feelings toward these subjects. For reasons of trying to preserve at least a little credibility, I let the narrative and the research do the work. As the various case files thickened, I tried to take an Occam’s Razor approach to the truth, assuring myself that the obvious solution was likely the correct one. But some of these events and creatures and phenomena seemed to defy any and all rational explanations. One interviewee said, and I’m paraphrasing here, that she likes to “keep an open mind without my mind falling out of the back of my head.” I really appreciated that candor. And I suppose I feel similarly. If you fess up to believing in phenomena such as UFOs or cryptozoological creatures, the general public dismisses you pretty quickly. But I’m always surprised by how many thoughtful and logical and rationale people come up to me in private to share their own encounters with the strange. Oftentimes folks begin by saying something like, “I know this sounds crazy but…” I just listen. And I try to do everything I can to intimate that I’m not judging them. That’s important, I think—just listening without offering an explanation. And I think that applies to most of our interactions with our fellow humans, too. Sometimes people don’t need an answer, just an ear.
Having said all that, the case that gives me the most pause is the Minot Air Force Base Sighting of 1968. It’s one thing when a single witness comes forward claiming to have seen a UFO, but what do we do when dozens of highly-trained military personnel claim to have seen something? Further, what are we to think when radarscope prints confirm that something strange was bolting through the sky? One answer, of course, is that the “UFO” seen over the Minot skies was an “unidentified flying object” of terrestrial origin. We tend to link UFO sightings with extraterrestrials, but we can’t forget the likelier explanation: that the technology is human made. That the strangeness in the skies is of our own making. Which is scarier: acknowledging intelligent life in the universe with technology far more advanced than our own, or that we ourselves possess such technology and refuse to speak of it?
TM: You reference journalist and ufologist John Keel several times in the book. Keel is best known for The Mothman Prophecies, but my favorites of his are The Eighth Tower, and “The Flying Saucer Subculture,” a 1975 essay that appeared in the Journal of Popular Culture. “Ufology has been a propaganda movement rather than a scientific movement,” he argued. “The ufologists began stumping for a myth in the late 1940s before the sighting evidence was empirical.” You include a few UFO cases and encounters in this book, and speak with several researchers. Do you think Keel’s assessment is correct?
BH: One lesson I learned throughout this book is that everyone has a motive. As I sought out interviews with folks who had stories to share, I was always leery of those who were a little too willing to talk. Most of the interviewees that made it into the book were people who were a bit hesitant. They needed to know more about me and the project before they signed on. And I appreciated that vetting process immensely; mostly because it provided me the opportunity to get to know them better, too. So much trust goes into writing a book based primarily from firsthand accounts. At every turn, I was acutely aware that I might be played for a fool. In most interviews, I tried to tease out what the interviewer might get out of the process. On occasion, people said things like, “Look, nothing good came from this incident in my life, and I don’t expect anything good to come from it now.” Their hesitancy is what solidified my trust toward them. And I hope my willingness to listen without judgment allowed me to reciprocate that trust.
I haven’t read John Keel’s work widely enough to make a proper assessment in any definitive way. But speaking directly to the quote, my gut tells me that a good chunk of the population would likely agree. And that many Ufologists would, too. Carl Sagan famously told Ufologist J. Allen Hynek, “I predict that if and when you ever get a really good case that involves hard evidence, there will be no lack of federal funds.” It’s not that Sagan was dismissive about other intelligent life in the universe; rather, he just needed science to support such a claim. All serious-minded Ufologists likely share that sentiment. Because without the scientific backing, it’s even easier to dismiss the claims. An eyewitness account always proves insufficient. But unaltered photos and videos and radarscope prints, those are the building blocks of proof.
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TM: The story of Oscar the Turtle—an alleged giant turtle spotted in Indiana during the 1940s—leads you to discover a folklorist who wrote his dissertation on the subject. “For a folklorist like [John] Gutkowski, it was never a question of whether or not Oscar ‘existed’: what mattered most were the stories surrounding the creature.” You’re a professor and writer; what did you learn about storytelling from spending a year steeped in folklore?
BH: We twist ourselves into knots over the so-called “truth,” when in fact “truth”—for better or worse—seems to grow more relative with every passing day. In the introduction, I write that one of my primary motives for this book was to test “whether our grappling with such unanswerable subjects might fortify us against the onslaught of misinformation now embedded in our lives.” Following the 2016 election, I became terrified by the weaponization of misinformation. Which is to say: there are serious socio-political ramifications for how we spin a story. Whether or not Bigfoot exists is hardly the most pressing question of our time, but I’d argue that better understanding how and why some people believe fiercely in Bigfoot, while others refuse even to entertain the possibility, is a question worth considering. What information tips our belief scale? How can two people look at the same information and arrive at two diametrically opposed conclusions? Of course, it’s hardly as simple as that. But, indeed, exploring the strange might be a vehicle for testing our own critical thinking skills on an array of subjects.
Throughout the research process, I found plenty of pitfalls in my own thinking. How easy it is to get caught up in the lie. And how difficult to return to solid ground once your heart gets ahead of your head. If a story is good enough, it’s easy to suspend our disbelief. And when we do, sometimes we let down our guard. For me, that realization is both empowering and terrifying. In the right hands, stories can create positive change, but in the wrong hands, they can prove destructive to the world beyond the story.
TM: Midwestern Strange includes stories and legends that range from the bizarre to the silly to the violent. What led you to focus on these particular cases (and were there any interesting cases that you researched that you didn’t include in the book?)?
BH: About 35 miles due west of my home in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, is a village called Elmwood, which claims to be the UFO Capital of Wisconsin. No matter that a few other places in Wisconsin make the same claim, Elmwood totally claims it the hardest. Not only does Elmwood host an annual summer festival called UFO Days, but back in the 1970s, following a rash of UFO sightings, a few of the village’s citizens led a grassroots effort to raise $50 million to build a UFO landing strip. While surrounding towns were working on finding funding for the library and the school, a select group of folks in and around Elmwood set their sights a whole lot higher (pun totally intended—I couldn’t resist). The story is fascinating, yet I couldn’t track down enough of the key figures in the fundraising campaign to make the story worthwhile. And so, I had to let this particular case file. As far as I could tell, there was no new discoveries to be had.
As for the cases that are
included, I selected them for a variety of reasons. First, I think they
provided a nice range of “strange.” On one end, we’ve got wolves running about
Wisconsin on two legs, and on the other we’ve got a pre-Columbian stone with a
runic inscription dredged up in western Minnesota. One’s the kind of thing
you’d see in a horror movie, the other, something you’d see on an archeological
dig. In between, we’ve got creatures like Mothman, whose sole existence is
based on eyewitness reports, as well as Project ELF—a top secret military
operation with no shortage of documentation. Each of the cases provides a new
way to view our world. As you mentioned, some of the case files are scary,
others are a little goofy, but all of them, at least in my opinion, were
totally worthy of further exploration.
TM: In your epilogue to the
book, you write “Researcher be warned: when it comes to the strange, the work
never reaches its end.” Keel has written about this; the feeling that
existentially (or even psychically), paranormal researchers are trapped in
constant inquiry. You spent a year “living strangely”—what has happened since?
BH: I
spent a year leaping headlong down every rabbit hole I could, then another year
trying to dig myself out. Researching strange phenomena was like nothing I’d
done before. With this subject, the “written record” was always pretty thin. And
even when I did find written accounts, there were always questions of
credibility to consider. I began every case by calibrating myself toward
neutrality. I had to leave any and all preconceived notions at the door. Of
course, that’s virtually impossible to do. But I tried.
But the truth is, with few exceptions, the deeper I got into a case, the further from the truth I became. This was a wholly unexpected development. At the start of the project, the whole point was to let the evidence lead me toward explanations. Not necessarily to “debunk” any phenomena, but to provide additional possibilities. If I turned over enough stones, I figured, eventually I’d find something new. The problem, though, was that there were always stones beneath those stones. I turned over one and I found another.
The “Martian” section of the book was the most difficult in this regard. Information on UFOs and extraterrestrials is simply without end. I suppose this probably confirms Keel’s quote about UFOs being a “propaganda movement rather than a scientific movement.” One of the most startling moments of my research was when I tracked down a well-known Ufologist who’d been off the grid for some time. He made it clear to me that his UFO research had done real harm to his life. It ruined his career and his personal life. And he told me I ought to be careful if I insisted on going down this particular path, as he had. It really shook me.
Equally strange was the
moment when various interviewees from various case files began highlighting the
same specific detailed locations and mineral deposits, claiming that these locations
and mineral deposits seemed to attract strange phenomena. I figured this was
part of some larger theory, but not so. I searched every search engine and
found nothing. These folks, on their own accord and without prompting, were
simply mentioning a few details which they couldn’t make sense of. Having heard
these details again and again, suddenly I was in a place to try to make sense
of them, or at least look a bit closer. That was the moment I knew I needed to
either go deeper down that rabbit hole or begin to claw my way out. Coward that
I am, I chose to claw my way out. Things were becoming a little too strange,
even for me.
The biggest change in my own life is that now I view the world differently. Mysteries aren’t something to be solved, but something to be embraced. We don’t need to conquer; we just need to be curious. For me, that’s where the revelation lives—in the not-knowing.
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