On Dumb Hobbies and My Favorite Books of 2024

Everyone should have a Dumb Hobby.

Let me explain. In 2025, it’s never been easier to follow the minutia of your chosen industries/scenes/spheres/etc. and find the details of what’s being released and when, who was rude to someone online, or what microtrend is happening, and a Dumb Hobby is one where you just engage in the hobby for enjoyment without keeping up with the rat race. For me, that means being plugged into indie music for so long I don’t know how to turn it off, and after a year of becoming Big Picture-pilled, I know enough about movies to have bitched for months about having no way to see Nickel Boys (which is so good! go see it!). 

Books are my Dumb Hobby: I keep up enough to know which authors suck or have been outted as monsters, but my reading tastes are less up to the minute than they are a mosaic of “oh, that looks fun,” what’s been recommended to me by friends, and what lies in and around my interests. It’s a hobby I’m less plugged into and more one I just do because I like it. It’s worth having at least one thing you love that you don’t let get fandom-ized.

This means that my favorite books of the year weren’t strictly speaking released last year, but were first time reads. I’ll also say that the library and Libby have been great for getting back into reading in the last couple of years, never a better time to check things out.

If you're into the whole Storygraph thing, you can find me there.

10. Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones

I read this for a book club with my friends, and described it there as the type of novel you’d read in school, and I mean that as a compliment. This story about two half-sisters (one from her dad’s secret family, one from his main one) is a great read of characters just doing things without spelling out for you why they do; simply that one person acted, and it is up to the others around them to handle that action as they choose to. That sort of understated family drama really works.

9. Space Struck by Paige Lewis

Conversely, this was my pick for the same book club. Poetry, I find, rewards rereads the same way that repeating hiking trails or parks does; you get more familiar with the path each time, and thus find something new to appreciate. Space Struck, a cerebral collection with evocative images and themes you feel before you can articulate them, was one of my favorites to come back to time and time again.

8. The Strange Case of Harleen and Harley by Melissa Marr, illustrated by Jenn St-Onge

Cool cover! I ended last year on a surprise YA graphic novel bender started by Teen Titans: Starfire, and The Strange Case… was my favorite of the bunch. The concept is exactly what it says on the tin–a standalone story of Harley Quinn as the Mr. Hyde to teenager Harleen Quinzel’s Dr. Jekyll–but delivers with rich characters, fun twists on Batman iconography, and absolutely stunning art. The book does a great job blending the IP with the story it’s telling, and I’d happily read a continuation.

7. There’s Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib

Abdurraqib’s last few titles (Go Ahead in the Rain, A Little Devil in America) have walked a line between essays and poetry, and his newest is no exception. It’s about Ohio and about Hanif in Ohio and Columbus and basketball and aging and who does and does not get the luxury of age; part memoir, part history book, part sports book. It’s hard to pin down exactly what TATY is, but I never questioned what it was doing.

6. The Iliad (Emily Wilson translation) by Homer

Perfect example of the virtue of a Dumb Hobby: I’d never known a damn thing about the discourse surrounding Emily Wilson’s Iliad and Odyssey translations, just that I saw her give a talk where I spilled red wine all over a romper, and that flipping The Iliad into iambic pentameter rules.

5. The Star & The Strange Moon by Constance Sayers

Found out about this one when the library didn’t have the book I was looking up, but suggested this fantastical, lightly gothic horror novel in its place. I’d describe The Star & The Strange Moon as what I thought I Saw the TV Glow would be from the trailer: a story about someone looking to fill the empty middle of themselves by obsessing over a piece of cult media that, for them, feels more real than real life. There’s a few twists and turns that keep the stories of the star and The Strange Moon fresh over the novel, and I found it very clever in its execution.

4. A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon

BIG BOOK 2. At the start of 2023, I read The Priory of the Orange Tree purely because when I saw it at the bookstore, my brain went into lizard mode and said “Big Book is here, we must own Big Book because it’s big,” and the enthused staff recommendation sent me over the edge, so I made it my January read. Last year, I read Priory’s prequel A Day of Fallen Night as January’s Big Book, and I found it an improved second outting with richer characters and deeper concepts. Shannon can write the daylights out of this stuff, and I just love this as a sapphic fantasy epic. This year’s Big Book is The Spear Cuts Through Water.

3. Deed by torrin a. greathouse

greathouse’s poetry collection Deed fucking slaps. She describes herself as “a transgender cripple-punk poet and essayist,” and I love that rundown for both her and Deed, a treatise on trans bodies, desire, sex work, illness, incarceration, and love. While these poems open with the force of a shotgun blast, they’re also well-constructed enough to deftly move between multiple ideas and then make your heart ache by tying them together. This is some of the best of the best, in my eyes. I found this off someone sharing it on IG–proof that it’s always worth sharing what you’re reading.

2. Hortus Animarum: A new herbal for the queer heart by Sienna Tristen

Stumbled upon Hortus Animarum while Tristen was Kickstarting a new printing of it, praise be to serendipity. This chapbook dedicates each poem to a plant–tulips, marigolds, aloe veras, etc. and it’s a book I’ve gone back to time and time again just to appreciate how Tristen puts their lines together and what things they say about these flowers. It’s a playful read that I probably read more times than anything else last year (you can read it in one sitting), and like mentioned above, truly got something new from it each time; my copy’s all marked up with notes.

1. Meet Me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey

A friend of mine recommended Meet Me in Another Life because it seemed like my thing, and reader, he was correct. This type of soft sci-fi, “I will always find you,” multiple lives story will play me every time; this book is so much my thing, that I used a chapter title from it in a tattoo. This would be an instant recommendation for anyone, but especially fans of the last couple seasons of Lost will find similar concepts and explorations of life philosophies between two characters. I’d say it’s close in feel to The Midnight Library and This Is How You Lose the Time War, as well. An instant favorite, and a good, humane story that I can go back to when I need that.