Books I Finished in 2024

I am not cleaning my son's pet lizard's cage. I am doing this.

Last year when I detailed all my 2023 reads the project stretched into February. I don’t have that kind of time! I’m going to really endeavor to move through this, keeping all seductive asides and tangents and associations to a MINIMUM. I swear.

Rather than link every individual book, which will give me a nervous breakdown, I will leave a single link here. It’s to DOPAMINE’s shop at Bookshop.org, and every time you purchase a book through here, some cash goes to DOPAMINE. And we need it! We had a big, gorgeous year finally seeing our first works come into print and out into the world - Clement Goldberg’s New Mistakes, which dazzled everyone it touched with its horny, otherworldly queer optimism. SLUTS was sort of the beach read of the summer, and I see it taking its hot pink place among sex writing classics. Vera Blossom is probably still coming down from the massive high of her How to Fuck Like a Girl book tour, which culminated in Los Angeles at the Institute of Contemporary Art, with a Doll Stars reading from the work by a stellar group of trans femme artists and writers - Page Person, Young Joon Kwak, Pau Pescador, Jaclyn Moore, Amelia Ada and Zackary Drucker. I stood at the back of the venue, and watched the audience murmur and nod their heads throughout, and then give Vera a fucking standing ovation when she finished the night with her own reading of her own text. A standing ovation at a book launch! I think this is the first I’ve ever seen, and I am a million years old.

Next year, which is practically this year, we hit the ground running with Shawn Stuart Ruff’s powerful novel Days Running. Our spring anthology, WITCH, not only has a fucking incredible cover with art by Edgar Fabián Frías and a piece of his writing on the inside, joining pieces by Rachel Yoder, Myriam Gurba, CA Conrad, aaaaaah, so many witchy geniuses. Expect some great big fun shows about it this spring and summer. Come fall, we will publish Self-Romancing by L. Scully, a book that showed up unannounced in DOPAMINE’s email and blew us away with it’s steely yet unhinged, TMI yet elegantly controlled verse. So excited to share this book with the world - as well as the yummy cover from Cate White, one of my favorite artists. We’ll close out 2025 with the eagerly awaited Bargain Witch by Brooke Palmieri - who has become DOPAMINE’s Artistic Director, it’s a freaking family business! - a collection of essays about living the witch lyfe as well as the trans lyfe, the broke lyfe, the American scholar working at an esteemed occult bookstore in London lyfe. So smart and funny. Peeking around the corner to 2026, we just acquired a poetry collection from Kelsey L. Smoot, Black, queer trans masculine non-binary PhD candidate and, of course, poet. His book, Soulmate as a Verb will drop in February 2026.

Now for books I did not have a hand in publishing.

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams. Black, British chick-lit I found in a little free library and really enjoyed. Have not watched the TV show, but - maybe? I also enjoyed Elana Finkelstein’s comic zine, Clam Juice - and will be sad to relinquish my 2024 planner with one of Finkelstein’s happy clams assuring me that it’s gonna be hard, but you’re gonna do great! That seems to have been the case.

ElanaFinkelstein.com

All Fours was the fucking literary triumph of life, was it not? Admittedly, as an artsy, queer, horny, perimenopausal mother obsessed with finding a balance between autonomy and family, I am certainly its target audience - so much so that I am like, what, that book didn’t make you sob???? when anyone makes it through the pages without weeping with validation and overwhelm at being so SEEN. We all have known Miranda July is a true genius for a very long time, but I still gasped my way through this book, gobsmacked by her mastery at humor, tone, truth, all of it.

The very hard question for me this year, as a reader, was what to read after All Fours. It felt like the entire library of literature would disappoint. Not so! I devoured Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder, a book with similar themes - motherhood, the primal wildness of having a female body, sacrifice, pleasure - rendered in a uniquely different voice, tone, humor, with a whopping side of the supernatural, which I heartily appreciated. I am not the only reader who read All Fours and Nightbitch back to back; I spoke to other femme readers this year who did the same and found them perfect compliments. I love Nightbitch so much I took a fucking Lyft to Burbank to see the movie - after a long night slinging tarot at a company holiday party! - because, as an AMC A-Lister (not to brag) I have to see my movies at AMCs lest the corporation get over on me, financially. And my local, walking-distance AMC had leant all their theaters to fucking Wicked, which - it’s fine, Wicked was fine, am I not whimsical? Am I not a witch? Of course I enjoyed it. But, like, there are many other movies to see. And none of them were at my local AMC, due to the millions of screens earmarked for Wicked. So I took the Lyft to Burbank to see Nightbitch and this is what I will say: It’s legit one of my favorite books. And Marielle Heller is one of my favorite directors, as she created the phenomenal adaptation of Phoebe Gloeckner’s classic Diary of a Teenage Girl, as well as perhaps my most favorite movie, Can You Ever Forgive Me? in which both Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant make strong cases for straights playing gay, and we get a cameo of Justin Vivian Bond singing a Lou Reed song. But back to Nightbitch - who was that little toddler who plays the little toddler? That kid is a STAR. I also appreciated Amy Adams’ mom-bod, as a mom-bod haver.

This is what I was afraid would happen. These kind of asides will keep me here til February. I must continue. Journal of a Queer Black Nurse by Britney Daniels details the daily racism and homophobia one Black, queer nurse experiences on the job. Super personal an engaging, not to mention infuriating. Everybody: A Book About Freedom by Olivia Laing was one of my favorites, a deep dive into Wilhelm Reich, whose story is part inspiring part tragic and totally fascinating. Laing is great at weaving their own history into the biography in a way that elevates both lives. This was scrumptious. Love is a Burning Thing: A Memoir is a stunning debut from the writer Nina St. Pierre, about reckoning with a mother’s mental illness, a childhood spent in its confusing shadow. I still feel this book in my chest. Love the World or Die Trying by Alvina Chamberland illustrates the real horrors of moving through the world as a trans femme, by a woman who will not allow the slugs and losers of the universe to keep her from exploring our fabulous world, even if it does keep her from getting out of bed sometimes. Story of a Poem: A Memoir by Matthew Zapruder, was incredible to read. I’m a huge fan of Zapruder’s poetry, and his memoir is every bit as deep and intimate. This story smartly uses a poem in progress as a vehicle for talking about what it is like to parent his young, autistic son. I read a lot of books about being a mom in 2024, and this vulnerable and honest book by a dad was just so, so great.

I spent a bit of 2024 in weekly writing group at the remarkable home of the remarkable writer Veronica Gonzalez Pena. And I had known her for some weeks before realizing she is the author of the great, moody Semiotext(e) book twin time: or, how death befell me. I got so excited when I realized - it was like finding a wad of cash in the street or something! I then inhaled her novel The Sad Passions, set in Mexico, about sisters and fathers and lovers, I love her somewhat melancholy yet detached voice, and am so psyched about the very goth story she gave me for the WITCH anthology. Like Anais Nin, Veronica has gone and become a psychoanalyst, isn’t that amazing? I love when people add careers to their careers. I also want to lie on her couch.

I had to read Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries in a jiffy, in order to be in conversation with her at the LA Public Library, but I would have scarfed it up quickly regardless because it is such a fun, self-gossipy, compulsively readable work. Also impressed when people find a way to play with form in order to allow something like an actual diary to find an artful home in the world. Also, Anais Nin again comes to mind - how did Heti find all this time to keep a diary and be a prolific writer and have a full social life? How did Anais? How do people do it? I just know that adding a diary to my own mix will be the one final card that brings this shambling house down.

Cunning Folk: Life in the Era of Practical Magic, by Tabitha Stanmore, brings us back to the olden days when it was no big whoop to swing by your local cunning man or ma’am’s thatched cottage to ask for a cure for your cough or your straying husband or cow. How lucky to be a writer who writes about witchery and your name is Tabitha? A Last Supper of Queer Apostles: Selected Essays by Pedro Lemebel is fucking fantastic, such great, alive writing by the queer Chilean queen activist, performer, writer and queen. I re-read Thicker Than Water by Kathryn Harrison, after finding it secondhand. I read it in my early 20s when dealing with sexual abuse shit and it was the first piece of writing I’d found that really showed toxic family dynamics for what they are; that showed that writing about such stuff is literature, and that people do in fact cut off their family when it’s the healthy thing to do. It was instrumental for me in both life and writing. Unsex Me Here is another sort of narcotic work from the writer / priestess Aurora Mattia. Her work feels like something conjured; she’s creating new mythologies and they are lush and hard seductive. Similarly ensorcelled into existance is the feel of S. Fey’s poetry collection, Decompose. Fey is currently at work on a memoir, and I’ll have a piece of it? - or, a piece of personal narrative - in WITCH. And while we are on this witchy tip, I loved Brooke Palmieri’s self-published Witch Scripts: For Homosexuals and Trannsexuals, which fictionalizes true and inspiring moments in queer occult history. Link below!

Get it here! So mote it be!

Can’t stop/won’t stop reading about magic and the uncanny. Elissa Washuta’s White Magic mashes up abusive relationships, Twin Peaks, her Native heritage, and time itself in this engrossing and innovative read. I had the out-of-print The Lizard Club by Steve Abbot on loan from Brooke Palmieri’s formidable private library, and it was a wild read in many ways - I can’t believe I so narrowly missed sharing a city (San Francisco) with this underground icon, so much so that actual friends are mentioned in the book. What a phenomenal life he lived. I’m so happy to have discovered his writing, however late in the game. But writings find their way to you when it’s time, right?

I read Blackouts by Justin Torres, and I read Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt: A Memoir in Verse by Brontez Purnell - again, so psyched to see people toy with memoir/diary forms, it’s always such candy for me. People Change by Vivek Shraya is a pro-change, pro-reinvention manifesta by a real Aquarius. I read The Insufferable Gaucho by Roberto Bolano - hey, I read Roberto Bolano! Remember when everyone was lugging 2666 around? I was tickled to discover the graphic novel Niki de Saint Phalle: The Story of Her Life by Monica Foggia and Valeria Quattrocchi. I want to visit Niki de Saint Phalle’s tarot garden so bad. My friend the writer Daniel Handler once told me he would take me there, but I think he’s forgotten. Have you forgotten, Daniel? I remember! But seriously, I live in regret of having not purchased Niki de Saint Phalle’s out of print, hard to find tarot deck at a little magic store in Barcelona on my honeymoon. Frigging scarcity issues! It was 200 Euros which felt decadent but now I see it was nothing - nothing! And I can’t even go back to Barcelona to try to find it again because now all the locals are murdering and eating tourists. Just great. Anyway, not only do I want to go to the tarot garden, I also want to go to go to the abandoned Thelema Abbey in Cefalu - should I just do one of those writing workshops abroad that writers often do? Should I do a Writing for Witches Retreat in Europe and we all get arrested by the Italian police for trespassing? I’m half kidding, here. Let me know if you’d come.

I read Playboy by Constance Debre, the French author who is now spending part time in LA and so I got to hear her read, in a pin-striped suit, from Kevin Killian’s Selected Amazon Reviews at the book party here, which was great. I’m in the midst of Selected Amazon Reviews; hopefully it will be on this list next year. No One Knows Their Blood Type by Maya Abu Al-Hayyat was a sort of wrenching and intimate and very good memoir-feeling manuscript by the Palestinian author that arrived in the mail. I recommend it very much, its a lot about just being a girl, and I eat such narratives. Another wrenching story of girlhood is UK author Jenny Fagan’s Panopticon, about a bunch of abused and criminal children placed in a sort of juvenile detention home in Scotland. It’s written in Scottish dialect, it’s so touch and heartbreaking and is head-fucky in a great way, I think Fagan is amazing. The Works of Guillame Dustan Volume 1 Novels in My Room, I’m Going Out Tonight, Stronger Than Me is an excellent collection on Semiotext(e). I hadn’t known of Dustan - mentor and friend to Paul Preciado, whose work I do know - and I loved it, it’s dirty and detached, clubby and queer.

In 2024 I read The Flick by Annie Baker, which of course made me like, why don’t I always read plays? And, even more so, why don’t I write one? Sometimes I feel really lazy even though I know I’m not. I’m really not. And yet - I could do better. Creatively. However, this will not be my 2025 resolution. My 2025 resolution is, Think More Mystical Thoughts. Also, I saw Janet Planet in 2024, with Clement Goldberg and NOT at my local AMC because there must have been too many Marvel movies out that month for them to spare a screen for this tender and meandering bohemian New England summer coming-of-age movie. It was completely lovely and I have enjoyed the acting of Julianne Nicholson since she played that hard as nails Assistant US Attorney General on Boardwalk Empire.

Not tender but also somewhat meandering and coming-of-age is the brutal Notice by Heather Lewis, which Semiotext(e) brought back into print and goddexx bless Hedi El Kholti - for so many reasons, actually, but at the moment for bringing all of the work of so many important queer writers no longer with us into the world. It’s hard for a press to publish deceased authors who aren’t around to promote their work. Manic D Press does this as well. It’s super admirable and important. Notice made me think of the 90s when people were really writing viscerally challenging work if that was the point of literature, to go fearlessly into the true horrors of life. It’s the literature that shaped me, or at least the vibe, since there is much of it I still haven’t read, including this, and I was very glad to get to.

Yoga by Emmanuel Carrere is a strange book and of course I mean that as a compliment. It also does something with memoir, shifts somehow what it can be. A very cute person named Stella who I see often at events was reading before Eileen Myles took the stage at Stories - I think this was the event? - she (they?) was reading it, and telling me about it - a guy tries to write a book about yoga and has a nervous breakdown - and then some guy overheard us and he held up his copy, and I was like, I’ve got to get this, it’s too weird, I’m studying yogic philosophy and mysticism and also love a story about a nervous breakdown, so I got it, and yeah I did really like it but then the end was sort of strange. But I stayed with it. It did make me think that a man can write anything and get it published, gave me those kind of thoughts, but I did like it also.

It felt triumphant to make it through Gastro Obscura: A Food Adventurer’s Guide by Cecily Wong and Dylan Thuras. I’m a big fan of the whole Atlas Obscura franchise, as well as a fan of obscure and adventurous eating, despite not actually being super adventurous. I guess I more like to read and know about it all. I re-read A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon: New Somatics by CA Conrad, because CA Conrad is like a writer one should always be in the midst of reading, they are our mystical queer poetic treasure and they want you to cast spells upon yourself. I also re-read Like a Hole in the Head by Jen Banbury, which I first read in the 90s and it made me feel so jacked-up and inspired, because in the 90s there just weren’t that many stories about hard-drinking, snarky wisecracking females who worked in bookstores and made really bad choices. I remember reading this book aloud in the Sister Spit van. I got really excited when I saw it on the shelf of The Last Bookstore, and I grabbed it. It mostly has survived the cultural and social shifts since its publication. Mostly.

Bucky Sinister wrote a memoir about our mutual friend, To Fear and Love Bambi Lake. This year DOPAMINE did an event called Dead Writers in which we honored Bambi, and Bucky came and read, and cried while reading, and it’s not the first time I’ve seen him cry while reading and it always makes me cry, and I just think that people who cry in public are doing such community service, I always appreciate and am moved by it, and I’m always appreciated and moved by Bucky’s writing, in whatever form he’s working in. He’s a true gem.

Bucky’s Substack is excellent

I read two Natasha Stagg books in 2024, Artless: Stories 2019-2023 and Sleveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York 2011-2019. Yes I just want to roll around in Natasha Stagg’s glamorous life, which weirdly feels all the more glamorous the more she sort of works to take the piss out of the glamour. I respect both things, the glamour and shitting on the glamour. Anyway, I think if I had won that recent multi-billion Powerball jackpot I would cease writing myself and simply spend the rest of my life traveling internationally and reading people’s diaries. And publishing increasingly weird shit on DOPAMINE, until somewhere a straight, cisgendred white man typing a book review of one of our titles types yeah I did really like it but then the end was sort of strange. But I stayed with it. It did make me think that a queer person can write anything and get it published, gave me those kind of thoughts, but I did like it also.

I’m not done. I read more. I’m only done for now.