My Reading and Writing Summary: 2024
by Rich Horton
Last year I read a total of 102 novels, 6 collections, 3 works of non-fiction. Fifty-one of the novels were by men, and fifty-one by women, as close to even as you can get, mostly by accident. Nine of the novels were from 2024. Six novels were translations -- two from the Japanese, two from Russian, one from Italian, one from French.
The best novels I read last year were Anna Karenina, Harriet Hume, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, and The Last Samurai. The most sheerly enjoyable were the four Anthony Trollope novels I read. Other really good novels included Peace, by Gene Wolfe; The Lonely Girl, by Edna O'Brien; Leaping Man Hill, by Carol Emshwiller; Doting, by Henry Green; and Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch, by Rivka Galchen. The best SF novel was Orbital, by Samantha Harvey. The best SF/F novel from 2024 was The Ministry of Time, by Kaliane Bradley, with honorable mention to Aliya Whitely's Three Eight One, Kelly Link's The Book of Love, Paolo Bacigalupi's Navola, and Mark Rigney's Vinyl Wonderland. The best novellas from 2024 were A Mourning Coat, by Alex Jeffers; and The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, by Sofia Samatar; with The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler also a contender. My favorite non-fiction and favorite recent collection were both by E. Lily Yu: Break, Blow, Burn & Make; and Jewel Box, respectively.
I published reviews of almost all of those novels either here or at Black Gate, with a review of Cordwainer Smith's Norstrilia in Bruce Gillespie's SF Commentary #118, and a look at Frederik Pohl's SF from a labor perspective in a special issue of Journey Planet edited by Olav Rokne and Amanda Wakaruk, and a Curiosities piece for F&SF on Una Silberrad's 1911 novel The Affairs of John Bolsover. I also published a disheartening quantity of obituaries, all at Black Gate. And I did a few other posts, including lists of favorite SF novels, and of favorite short fiction, from roughly the last 30 years. Following are links to my favorite pieces:
General
"Iconic" SF novels of the 21st Century
Anthologies I Never Got to Publish
Hugo Novel Nominees, 2024: Review Summary
The Stories and Novels of T. L. Sherred
The Novels of Carol Emshwiller
Obituaries
Terry Bisson/Howard Waldrop/Tom Purdom
Reviews
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead
Everyone Knows Your Mother is a Witch
The City and Its Uncertain Walls
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
I came across an old copy of Nebula Awards 17- it contained a terrific story "Zeke" by Tim Sullivan, who I had never heard of. I looked the author up and found he had died just last month. The story reminded of me of the pastoral works of Simak.
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