My favorite read of 2024 was actually my re-read of The Lord of the Rings. But sticking to new works as usual: I read 28 works of fiction and nonfiction for the first time in ’24, and of those I’ve picked out again my favorite ten.
For each book, I’ve listed some excerpts, not necessarily the “best”, but just a few that made deep impressions.
1. The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri (translated by John Ciardi)
Here let dead poetry rise once more to life
* * *
I came to a place stripped bare of every light
and roaring on the naked dark like seas
wracked by a war of winds.
* * *
“I will not leave you
to wander in this underworld alone.”
* * *
Verse after verse they made the air rejoice
* * *
for I delayed the good sighs till the last.
* * *
Raising his hands, he joined his palms in prayer
and turned his rapt eyes east, as if to say:
“I have no thought except that Thou art there.”
* * *
Virgil said: “No, brother. Shade you are,
and shade am I. You must not kneel to me.”
* * *
the ice, which hard about my heart had pressed,
turned into breath and water, and flowed out
through eyes and throat in anguish from my breast.
* * *
she raised her eyes—and gave my soul a star.
* * *
He first, I second, without thought of rest
we climbed the dark until we reached the point
where a round opening brought in sight the blest
and beauteous shining of the Heavenly cars.
And we walked out once more beneath the Stars.
That last quote describes the moment when Dante and Virgil emerge from Hell at a point on the Earth’s surface farthest away from Jerusalem. It reminded me of that moment when Miriam and Tirzah are released from the Roman dungeons in Lew Wallace’s “Ben-Hur”, one of my favorite reads a year ago:
“About the middle of the first watch, the two were conducted to the gate, and turned into the street… and in the city of their fathers they were once more free. Up to the stars, twinkling merrily as of old, they looked; then they asked themselves, ‘What next? and where to?'”
2. The Aeneid, by Virgil (translated by Shadi Bartsch)
“What race is this? What land’s so barbaric that it
sanctions this behavior? We’re kept away from shore
by threats of war. We can’t set foot on land.
If you scorn humans and their weapons, at least
assume the gods know justice and injustice!”
* * *
I’d have shared your fate:
one pain, one sword, one instant should have taken us.
* * *
They shared one mind, one heart; they rushed to battle
side by side. Now they shared watch at the gate.
Nisus asked: “Do gods enflame our hearts,
Euryalus, or do our fierce desires become
our gods?"
* * *
The gods are not against us; we’re humans chased by
humans. We all have one soul, two hands. Look,
Ocean circles us, an endless obstacle.
Land’s gone.
3. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
‘I am not an angel,’ I asserted; ‘and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.... you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me – for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.’
* * *
‘I’ll be preparing myself to go out as a missionary to preach liberty to them that are enslaved – your harem inmates amongst the rest.'
* * *
‘Sir,’ I answered, ‘a wanderer’s repose or a sinner’s reformation should never depend on a fellow-creature. Men and women die; philosophers falter in wisdom, and Christians in goodness: if anyone you know has suffered and erred, let him look higher than his equals for strength to amend and solace to heal.’
* * *
her eyes . . . had suddenly acquired a beauty . . . neither of fine colour nor long eyelash, nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance. Then her soul sat on her lips, and language flowed, from what source I cannot tell.
* * *
We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence. I had risen to my knees to pray .... Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky Way. Remembering what it was – what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light – I felt the might and strength of God. Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured. I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits.
4. Children of the Sea, a short story by Edwidge Danticat
There are no borderlines on the sea. The whole thing looks like one. I cannot even tell if we are about to drop off the face of the earth. Maybe the world is flat and we are going to find out, like the navigators of old. As you know, I am not very religious. Still I pray every night that we won’t hit a storm. When I do manage to sleep, I dream that we are caught in one hurricane after another. I dream that the winds come of the sky and claim us for the sea. We go under and no one hears from us again.
* * *
At times I wonder if there is really land on the other side of the sea.
5. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas, a short story by Ursula K. LeGuin
They all know it [the child] is there, all the people of Omelas. Some of them have come to see it, others are content merely to know it is there. They all know that it has to be there. Some of them understand why, and some do not, but they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers, even the abundance of their harvest and the kindly weathers of their skies, depend wholly on this child's abominable misery.
* * *
The people at the door never say anything, but the child, who has not always lived in the tool room, and can remember sunlight and its mother's voice, sometimes speaks. "I will be good," it says. "Please let me out. I will be good!" They never answer.
6. A Christian Case Against Donald Trump, by Patrick Kahnke
"I don’t want some meek and mild leader or somebody who’s going to turn the other cheek. I want the meanest, toughest SOB I can find to protect this nation."
I wish we could write this off as a one-time, ill-considered turn of phrase. But Jeffress makes it clear, again and again, that he believes this. Alberta interviewed Jeffress at length, and many others like him. This quote captures a mindset that runs deep in the Christian world.
* * *
The crowd chose the way of Barabbas. They didn’t reject Jesus, the man. They rejected his way. They wanted the bruiser, the killer, “the meanest, toughest SOB” they could find to demolish their oppressors.
7. ADHD is Awesome: A Guide to (Mostly) Thriving with ADHD, by Penn and Kim Holderness
My dad was a preacher, beloved throughout the community. Everyone in our congregation loved his sermons. Each week, he would kick things off with a good story. Then he would spend fifteen minutes connecting that story to the Bible, followed by applying the lesson to day-to-day life. No matter how inspiring the sermon was, I never heard most of it. I would get stuck on the initial story. I would start thinking about how it reminded me of something that had happened to me or how it related to a recent episode of MacGyver. As my dad talked about humility and loving your neighbor, I’d be thinking about how to fix my Pogo Bal with chewing gum and a lighter.
* * *
You are fully busted. The jig is up. Everyone can tell you were out on your own adventure, and someone calls you on it, asking, “... Do you even know what I’m talking about?” Then . . . The final recourse is honesty. “No. I’m sorry. I wasn’t listening.”
* * *
During our most recent visit with his mom, he was sitting on her bed and holding her hand when he ripped a huge fart. His mother raised two boys, so she’s used to these antics. Though she can no longer speak, and though she spends more time asleep than awake, she mustered a grin and a grunt. We could see she was trying to laugh. His pain instantly became comedy. There’s something wonderful about being able to find lightness so close to the darkness.
8. The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig
After all, this was definitely a bit shit. There were surely lives where she was sitting beside a swimming pool in the sunshine right now. Lives where she was playing music, or lying in a warm lavender-scented bath, or having incredible third-date sex, or reading on a beach in Mexico, or eating in a Michelin-starred restaurant, or strolling the streets of Paris, or getting lost in Rome, or tranquilly gazing at a temple near Kyoto, or feeling the warm cocoon of a happy relationship.
* * *
Was this what fame was like? Like a permanent bittersweet cocktail of worship and assault? It was no wonder so many famous people went off the rails when the rails veered in every direction. It was like being slapped and kissed at the same time.
* * *
‘It seems impossible to live without hurting people.’
‘That’s because it is.’
* * *
‘You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.’
9. The Penguin Book of Migration Literature: Departures, Arrivals, Generations, Returns, a collection of short stories, edited by Dohra Ahmad
Some of us on the boat were from Kyoto, and were delicate and fair, and had lived our entire lives in darkened rooms at the back of the house.
* * *
I have a special ticket to another planet beyond this Earth. A comfortable world, and beautiful: a world without much smoke, not too hot and not too cold. The creatures are gentler there, and the governments have no secrets.
* * *
Walking next to Janet, who so femme dat she redundant, tend to make me look like a gender dey forget to classify.
* * *
"Sonnet 127, please.”
“In the old age black was not counted fair,”
* * *
“By William Shakespeare: ODE TO LETITIA AND ALL MY KINKY-HAIRED BIG-ASS BITCHEZ.”
* * *
“I came here, and I’m going to die here.”
10. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare
Be as thou wast wont to be.
See as thou wast wont to see.