Things I Read/Played/Watched In 2024
BOOKS
Silver Nitrate (Silvia Moreno-Garcia) - fun Mexican haunting/witchcraft romp set in the early nineties.
Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy) - this is probably the great American novel. Can't help but think about the throughline from McCarthy's bloodsoaked frontier to an America in decline today. We've always been this bloodthirsty, had this same death drive - we just went so far west that we ended up eating ourselves.
Exhalation (Ted Chiang) - finally got around to reading the book for tech people/new media artists. Chiang is clever and he tackles technical and philosophical problems well. Definitely some solid inspiration here for my own writing and creative practice. Not sure what the real standout here was - I enjoyed The Lifecycle of Software Objects, and I suppose the idea of "parenting" AI comes the closest to how I think it ought to be treated in an agentic context, but a lot of his writing about alternate timelines and time travel speaks to some of my oldest interests. The message from the parrots is pretty nice too.
Mote in God's Eye (Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle) - 9/24. Can see how it was so influential (1974!) and a fun little thriller, but I think people like Peter Hamilton built on their space operatic/first encounter model to better effect down the line. Still worth the read.
The Long Way To A Small, Angry, Planet (series, Becky Chambers) - 9/24. Fun lil' space romp. You, uh, can tell the author worked at The Mary Sue. Gets a little too cute and has the lack of nuance that a lot of mid-tier queer SF/F suffers from - everything's a chosen family, everyone gets to be in love, right and wrong is never in question - but it was an enjoyable enough way to kill a few hours on the train. (Update: I finished the whole series and it really grew on me! Last three books are a bit less cutesy and the general vibe of "people just trying to get by in space", no opera included, is kind of a breath of fresh air).
Starfish (series, Peter Watts) - started 8/24, finished 9/24. God, I just love Watts' whole deal. This one is a bit less mind-blowing than Blindsight but has plenty of fun with consciousness and Watts' weird obsession with vampires. The first book is definitely the best of the series, but I enjoyed it the whole way through: he manages to paint a simultaneously believable and batshit series of unexpected consequences. I think responsibility was the most interesting aspect here for me: no one's really evil, people are just acting based on actions taken upon them. If you genetically remove the capacity for guilt, is acting in your best interest still "evil"?
The Rift (Nina Allan) - 9/24. Really interesting read. Black holes, interdimensional travel, and trauma. Mostly the last one.
Kaiju Preservation Society (John Scalzi) - 9/24. Meh. Heart is in the right place, I guess, but clearly trying to exist somewhere on the Snow Crash to Ready Player One spectrum of "quippy, breezy books with very little of substance to say." I have plenty of issues with it, but least Snow Crash had some novel ideas for its time - this, sadly, falls a lot closer to the Ernest Cline end of that spectrum. This is just begging to be made into an extremely mid monster movie. Scalzi admits in the afterword that this was intended to be lighthearted fare, but man there just wasn't any nutritional value here at all.
How To Do Nothing (Jenny Odell) - 9/24. This seemed very profound as I was reading it but kind of slipped through my brain afterwards. There's some thread of something important here, Odell's idea of attention as a resource and the value of reclaiming attention for ourselves, but I don't know that the whole offered much of a coherent program beyond "find something like birdwatching and do it". But maybe that's a big enough point, I'm not sure.
A Place Of Greater Safety (Hilary Mantel) -10/24. Absolutely delightful. A fascinating take on the major players of the Paris Commune and reign of terror, and Mantel is absolutely vicious (and hilarious) in her asides. Desmoulins finally gets the screen time he deserves as the gadabout and fly on the wall who played such an important role without being a leader. As far as these things go, both deeply sympathetic and fairly unsparing in its treatment of some of history's giants. ROBESPIERRE INNOCENT!!!
Broken Earth (series, NK Jemisin) - 10/24. I tried these as an audiobook a while ago and they didn't do much for me, but I definitely get it now. Engaging, brutal, manages to avoid easy outs while diving deep into the effects of oppression and dehumanization.
The Hyperion Cantos (series, Dan Simmons) - 10/24. Somehow blazed through all 2,000 pages of this in a few weeks. The first book is absolutely incredible - probably the best of the various attempts at Space Chaucer. The quality drops off over the course of the series, and the second book's conclusion about love as a fundamental force of the universe made me roll my eyes out of my skull, but still an overall fun experience. The first book is just so transcendent that the others feel frustrating.
Blue Ant Trilogy (series, William Gibson) - 11/24-12/24. Gibson's still got it, baby! Maybe less of a shot of adrenaline straight to the neocortex than Neuromancer was, but it manages, 20 years after its writing, to feel extremely relevant to the sense of post-globalist malaise and internet flattening I feel now. Final book was maybe a bit too neat of a wrap-up but all of them still felt fresh and important to me.
The Aeronaut's Windlass (Jim Butcher) - 12/24, audiobook. extremely goofy steampunk adventure. There's a talking cat.
Dropped
Sleeping Giants (series, Sylvain Neuvel) - listened to the audiobooks in the gym. The first was an enjoyable little sci-fi romp, second one expanded its world a bit too quickly, killed off the two best chracters, and I ended up losing interest and not finishing.
The Passage (series, Justin Cronin) - Gym audiobook. The Stand for Millenials, I guess? Dropped around the middle of the last book - timeskip of 30 years made a lot of the unresolved threads less compelling, kind of annoying when authors get out over their skis like this.
Nation (Terry Pratchett) - audiobook. Pratchett's take on colonialism and god, or something. I keep falling asleep during it (it's not bad I just use it to fall asleep). Audiobook loan lapsed and never finished, but someday.
Corpsemouth (John Langan) - enjoyed a few of the stories but didn't hit for me enough to want to finish it. Childhood is the real horror, I get it.
Moby Dick (Herman Melville) - started 7/24. Someday I'll finish it.
The Possessed (Fyodor Dostoevsky) - started 6/24. Felt a bit out over my skis on this one. Dostoevsky writing a comedy of errors wasn't terribly entertaining for me.
The Book Of The New Sun (series, Gene Wolfe) - started 7/24. Enjoyed the first two books but didn't feel like slogging through all of it. Apparently this and the Time Machine are the originators of the dead Earth genre, and this one is kind of a wild ride. The most medieval sci-fi book you'll read, replete with Latin as well as constructed language. Kind of like reading Chaucer.
2666 (Roberto Bolano) - started 8/24. Good, but caused me a bit of an existential crisis. I suppose this is about what I should have expected.
City of Quartz (Mike Davis) - started 11/24. Good, but my ability to make myself finish nonfiction remains poor.
Red Rising (series, Pierce Brown) - working my way through the audiobooks with K. Very fun, very dumb sci-fi. Dropped but will probably pick up again at some point.
Wool (series, Hugh Howie) - audiobook. Another fun dystopian one: after some sort of apocalypse, the last of humanity lives in an underground silo, and those who break the rules are sent out to clean the cameras they use to survey the wasteland around them, dying in the process. Would you believe me if I told you all is not as it seems? Apparently this sparked the self-publishing revolution, which I can buy! Enjoyed the first and second books, waiting for the third to be available at the library.
The Peripheral (William Gibson). This one is hitting a bit less than Blue Ant for me, I think - not sure if he's lost a bit of his touch on gonzo cyberpunk style or if I've just aged out of it. Still interesting but I moved on to greener pastures.
GAMES
Persona 4 (1/24) - My first time replaying a game that isn't grand strategy or co-op in quite some time. Still a delight! Simultaneously the most laid-back, slice-of-life story of the three Persona games I've played, while still having a lot of interesting stuff to say about how to live in a seemingly cruel and indifferent world. Adachi is my favorite Persona villain - just a bored guy who feels like he got ripped off by life. The Gamer Dungeon is such an amazing roast of the player. One of my favorite games of all time, still.
Manor Lords (3/24ish) - Really interesting solo dev city builder. Kind of lost interest after ~10-15 hours, but it's still in alpha and there's a lot of promise here.
Helldivers 2 - Just a direct ripoff of Starship Troopers but fun as hell to play with friends.
Frostpunk - revisited with DLC. Still a fun dystopia simulator.
Suzerain - revisited with DLC but ended up just replaying the main campaign again. Book-ass game but I love it - had forgotten how much influence this and a few others like it had on my own game design philosophy.
Yog-Sothoth's Yard (5/24) - God, I wish this were better-localized, but it hits a lot of different types of dopamine rush (anime babes, crafting, hotel optimization). I also actually liked the story, bad translation aside.
Storyteller (4/24) - Fun little word puzzler. Wish it were a bit longer, but I'm guessing DLC will be coming - they've definitely built a solid proof of concept.
Danganronpa (7/24)- I can see how this gave a certain set of millenials brain worms, but I enjoyed it! Never tried a Phoenix Wright game so the trial mechanics were entertaining, and the story was compelling enough.
Elden Ring (started DLC 6/24, finished 8/24) -hard to get quite as invested as I did when the base game came out, nevermind, I got very invested. Still an incredible game - some of the boss design was a bit frustrating, and I think some of the characters got shafted even by From's standards, but still love it! Spent a week trying to beat PCR then gave up and used the Fingerprint Shield cheese, which took me about 3 tries.
NBA 2k24 (started 6/24) - figured I'd get some value out of my Xbox sub. I still enjoy pretending I can dunk, but damn, the microtransactions/MyCareer "quest" bullshit really brought the game experience down.
Yes, Your Grace (8/24) - not the worst management sim I've played, not the best. Felt a bit railroaded but the art and vibes were good.
Crusader Kings 3 (9/24) - I got sick and I decided to start a full-length campaign of a game I've already sunk almost 400 hours into. This game remains the single thing most perfectly crafted for my whole deal.
Potionomics (10/24) - Cute little crafter/dating sim. Didn't stick in my brain too much but it was nice to play a crafting/management sim that wasn't quite so punishing.
Volcano Princess (10/24) - Poorly-translated Chinese game in the same vein of Yog-Sothoth's Yard - throwing WAAAAAY too many mechanics at the wall and not really explaining any of them that well (some of this probably due to the aforementioned bad translation). This one is a Dad simulator instead of a hotel management/eldritch dating sim, though. I wonder if this is just what game dev studios in China are doing right now - trying a million resource management minigames inside in one kind of clunky visual novel - but there's something weirdly charming about these. I've beaten it once and will probably play through again since it only took about 5 hours. Like, these are objectively Not Good: Yog-Sothoth could have been decent on the visual novel front if the translation was a bit better, but as it stands it's not great, and Volcano Princess isn't really landing on any front. Still, I still really enjoy playing them. Is this what they call a guilty pleasure?
Disco Elysium (replayed 10/24) - Still delightful, I think maybe hit a bit less hard for me than the first time since, well, I've played it already. The general sense of "our chance for a better world is already dead and all we can do is bumble along in its ashes" is, uh, still pretty resonant for me. I'd like to do a non-communist playthrough at some point but it's very hard for me to play against type.
Stardew Valley (played 11-12/24) - this game fuckin' ate me for a few weeks. I've always hated playbor games but the combination of escapism and a pretty brilliantly designed, deeply crunchy game loop had me down bad. I didn't 100% it (Walnut Island just didn't grab me, more of a feeling of "oh great now I have to do another 40 hours of chores"), but it certainly got me good while it lasted.
Dropped
Banner Saga (started 2/24) - Interesting! Kind of just makes me want to play a Fire Emblem game - I like all the component parts here, but the UI, at least for the first game, leaves a lot to be desired. Dropped halfway through the second game.
Darkest Dungeon (3/24-ish) - really solid roguelike. Late-game grind got to be too much for me.
Lobotomy Corporation (started 5/24, dropped 6/24) - followed Yog-Sothoth's yard with an SCP-inspired roguelite management sim. Absolutely delightful, and the flavor text on the various monsters is A+. Early-game grind was a bit of a turnoff and it didn't seem worth spending the time to beat, though.
Persona 3 Reload (started 9/24) - thought I'd revisit this now that the remaster is out. Kinda been plodding through it - it's still mechanically clunkier than 4 and 5, and even though it has maybe the coolest interpretation of the Persona/Tartarus thing out of all the games I've never found its story as compelling. Gave up before really getting past the intro.
Deadlock (started 8/24) - man, fuck Valve. This is, like, supposed to be pre-alpha and they've already crafted one of the most insanely addictive formulas I've ever seen. What if a MOBA was also a hero shooter? See y'all in ten years.
Post-playing update: like most competitive games, it became a cesspit after about two weeks of alpha. That and my lack of desire to learn another competitive playstyle after the amount of time I spent in Overwatch did it in for me.
Sekiro (started 10/24) - The mechanics are so cool, but this is my second attempt at playing the game and something still isn't clicking for me. Another three hours stuck on the Chained Ogre will do that, I guess.
Robotics;Notes (started 10/24) - Seems like the most lighthearted SciAdv game. Enjoyable thus far but I haven't really gotten into anything meaty. Dropped since it didn't grab me
TV
The Future Diary (1/24) - I am not too proud to admit that I see the appeal of Yuno Gasai. A little too edgy in parts for my taste, but I like death games and it was pretty entertaining.
Fruits Basket (1/24-2/24) - sweet little slice of life mostly about learning to love and forgive yourself. Maybe it'll fix me! (Ed.: It did not fix him.)
Darling In The Franxx (1/24) - Horny as all get out, but pretty sweet. Beautiful animation.
The Ancient Magus' Bride (1/24) - Weird, beautiful, slow and melancholy. Gives off some K-Mart Ghibli vibes, which is not meant as a dig. Another anime I wish didn't have weird age gap stuff, but manages to make it less weird than you'd think? Incredible soundtrack.
A Murder At The End Of The World (1/24) - Nice! Compelling little mystery and is mostly correct in its take on AI, billionaires, and technology writ large. The big reveal was a bit unsatisfying but could have been worse. Some slightly frustrating (to a nerd) moments - it clearly put a lot of effort into getting technical details right, which made it all the more noticeable when it gets them wrong or handwaves something. The overuse of the word "hack" made me cringe. Still, I am willing to admit this are personal issues. Worth the watch.
Lycoris Recoil (1/24) - "This has an extremely troubling position on state violence," I think before clapping my hands and barking like a seal as Chisato does gun kata.
Spy X Family (started 12/23) - nice little palate cleanser. The kid is cute and the show is fun.
~ didn't watch TV other than Lost for 4 months due to stress ~ Dungeon Meshi(started 5/24, finished 7/24) - hell yeah, brother. Hell yeah. Laios just like me fr. The worldbuilding in this is genuinely incredible! I thought this would just be a fantasy-coded slice of life, but this really blew my expectations out of the water.
Alone (9/24 - 10/24). Watched season 11, still the only reality show I can really stomach a full season of. Just a person fighting against themselves and the elements. What's not to love? I knew that William, the Newfie freak of the season, would win - he's a living example of David Foster-Wallace's thing about how champions have no inner monologue. Just casually commenting on how he's starving, never once going into a dark phase. Found myself rooting for Dub - a perpetually miserable Michigander - and Timber, the weird cult escapee who loved the camera too much, ended up growing on me despite myself.
From(ongoing) - It's Lost with skinwalkers. What's not to love?
Dropped
Pluto (started 1/24) - what if Astroboy but it was about trauma. The first episode's animation is unbelievably good - dropped after a couple less-compelling episodes but I'll come back to it eventually, I reckon.
Lost (started 12/23) - nice after-dinner show with K. Got to season 3 and K lost interest, so it's on the shelf for now.
Sunny (started 7/24) - first episode was intriguing but we just never really felt like picking it back up again.
Akudama Drive (started 8/24) - stylish and fun, four episodes ate an afternoon but it clearly didn't grab me enough to get through.
The Terror (started 8/24) - Jared Harris as an alcoholic scotsman stuck in the arctic and surrounded by idiots. This fucking rocks.
Psycho-Pass (started 8/24) - Nothing groundbreaking here, but fun, gross effects, and general Philip K. Dick sci-fi-noir thriller vibes. Enjoyable!