December 2024 Reading Round-Up
The best and worst of my reading month
Happy new year and welcome to the December 2024 Reading Round-Up. Each month I write about the books I’ve read and rank them from worst to best.
I had only finished one of the books on this list in time to include it in my Silver Medalist runners-up list, but two others may have been contenders if I had read them earlier in the year. Read through for an anthropologist’s account of migrant smugglers, a beautiful and heartbreaking rendering of the Scottish Clearances, some of the best food writing I’ve ever encountered, and more.
9. Scrap - Calla Henkel
Fiction/Mystery, 302 pages
Esther, a disgraced former painter, meets the incredibly wealthy Naomi Duncan at a gallery opening for a friend in New York. Recently single and in need of money to pay her mortgage, Esther accepts an unconventional job to turn the receipts of Naomi’s family life into a collection of scrapbooks to be presented to Naomi’s husband for his sixtieth birthday. The project is shrouded in mystery. Esther must sign an NDA and can only contact Naomi through a burner phone. As she works, Esther becomes increasingly interested in the unusual contents of the books. Her interest turns to obsession when Naomi stops responding and Esther convinces herself she’s the only one who can find out what happened.
I was a fan of Henkel’s 2021 debut, Other People’s Clothes, and was therefore excited to read Scrap, but unfortunately it did not match its predecessor’s quality. It’s hard to make a mystery boring, but this one somehow is. Scrap was rushed, disjointed, and contained stilted dialogue. A generous interpretation of the writing might be that Henkel’s intention was to create an unlikeable, sanctimonious anti-hero as the protagonist. Unfortunately, the rest of the plot defies this notion, and the result is a plodding story that could have been improved with a few more drafts and rounds of editing.
Rating: 5/10
8. The Extinction of Irena Rey - Jennifer Croft
Fiction, 309 pages
The eight translators for world-renowned author Irena Rey each believe they are engaged in a task of utmost importance: translating the genius of their author to the wider world. Every time Irena writes a new novel, the eight translators travel to her home in a primeval Polish forest on the border of Belarus and translate together, only ever referring to one another by the language that the individual writes in. This time, however, a few days after they arrive, Irena disappears. In the absence of their collective hero, the boundaries between them quickly crumble as does their collective reverence for the author. Without the protection of their author in an increasingly nationalistic country, the group of foreigners becomes paranoid and ever conscious of their profession, which is seen by some as an effort to dilute the purity of the original.
As a translator herself, most famously to Nobel Prize winner Olga Tokarczuk, Jennifer Croft lends an interesting perspective and quasi-meta element to a book about a group of translators. The Extinction of Irena Rey is written from the perspective of Irena Rey’s Spanish translator and then translated into English by Irena’s English translator who is present throughout the events of the book. These layers (and the plot that follows Irena’s disappearance) can sometimes be confusing, but also serve to advance Croft’s goal of showing how easy it is for words, phrases, observations, and sentiments to get distorted in translation.
Rating: 7.5/10
7. Same as it Ever Was - Claire Lombardo
Fiction, 498 pages
In middle-age, Julia’s life is fairly uneventful. She has two near-adult kids, a loving husband, and a nice house in the suburbs. But during an impromptu trip to a grocery store Julia runs into an older woman who she promised her husband twenty years ago she would never see again. The benign interaction sparks a torrent of memories of past indiscretion at the same time that slight tears begin to appear in her placid home-life. This book makes for an easy listen, but it still felt too long. Some of the pages could have been trimmed if Lombardo used less similes and stopped commenting on every emotion. It’s also possible 100 pages could have been cut from the middle without sacrificing the overall point that Lombardo was making. However, no part of the book was objectionable, and I enjoyed listening while I cooked, walked the dogs, and started a post-finals puzzle.
Rating: 7.5/10
6. One Nation Under Guns - Dominic Erdozain
Non-Fiction, 194 pages
One Nation Under Guns traces historical interpretations of the Second Amendment from the United States’ founding to the present. Beginning with the drafting of the Constitution, historian Dominic Erdozain makes an argument that the founders never intended for the Second Amendment to confer a universal right to bear arms on private individuals, but rather was limited to the realm of state militias as befitted the revolutionary context of its drafting. Citing Supreme Court cases of the early 1800s that seem to confirm this argument, Erdozain argues that the interpretation only shifted after the Civil War and into the early 1900s with the advent of the NRA, when white individuals attempted to lay claim to notions of individual freedom and security against those they considered to be “inferior” and “dangerous.” The final portion of this book is dedicated to dismantling the logic of the 2008 Supreme Court case District of Columbia v. Heller, which granted an individual right to carry and possess weapons and disassociated the “militia” clause from common interpretation. Read this book if you are interested in a brief historical overview of how we have reached our current political understanding of firearms and the challenges in achieving comprehensive gun safety legislation.
Rating: 8/10
5. Clear - Carys Davies
Historical Fiction, 188 pages
It is 1843 in Scotland. John Ferguson, a poor Scottish minister, has recently joined nearly 500 other ministers and broken from the Church of Scotland in protest over the patronage system. Without funds to build a new parish, John accepts a job evicting the lone remaining occupant of an island north of Scotland belonging to a noble estate. The eviction request was common for the era, as landlords sought to clear their land of tenants for the more profitable business of rearing sheep and livestock. Shortly after John arrives on the island and before he can give news of the eviction, he becomes badly injured after falling down a cliff. He is rescued by Ivar, the island’s occupant, who takes him into his home and nurses him back to health. While the two men do not share a common language, over the course of a month the two find ways to communicate. The one thing John can not communicate, however, is Ivar’s impending eviction and the guilt he feels acting as the messenger.
This is a beautiful, slim novel about a slice of time that I previously knew nothing about. I loved the way that Davies used the interiority of her characters to explain a larger historical era within so few pages. Unfortunately the ending felt a bit unrealistic, but I savored the writing in the 180 pages leading to this conclusion.
Rating: 8.5/10
4. The Siege - Ben Macintyre
Non-Fiction/History, 400 pages
The Siege follows the six-day hostage crisis in the Iranian embassy in London, which happened to take place at the same time as the larger hostage crisis in the American embassy in Tehran. On April 30, 1980, six armed men stormed the embassy and took twenty-six people hostage. The gunmen, Iranian Arabs persecuted by the Ayatollah’s government, demanded the release of prisoners in Khuzestan and safe passage out of the United Kingdom. Unable to help the gunmen achieve either of these goals, the British government stalled while assembling a secretive special forces team to stage a rescue mission. Told in minute detail over the course of the six days, Macintyre explores the event through the complex relationships forming inside the embassy, the intelligence and rescue operation outside, and the larger geopolitical context. Ben Macintyre’s The Spy and the Traitor is one of the best works of narrative non-fiction I have ever read, and The Siege follows close behind. I’m continually impressed by the incredible amount of primary source detail seamlessly used by Macintyre to make his books read like fiction.
Rating: 9/10
3. Soldiers and Kings - Jason de Leòn
Non-Fiction/Immigration, 330 pages
Soldiers and Kings was the winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Nonfiction. If the award is granted based solely on sheer dedication to researching and reporting on its subject, this book is surely deserving of the prize. Jason de Leòn is an anthropologist who, over the course of seven years, periodically embedded himself with a group of smugglers moving migrants across Mexico to the United States to try to understand this massive industry. Smugglers, also known as coyotes or guides, are hired by migrants to shepherd them from their home countries through the complicated terrain of Mexico, which includes brush-ups with cartels, gangs, and immigration officials. The work and the journey are fast-paced, dangerous, and frequently violent. What de Leòn discovers, however, is that the line between migrant and smuggler is often very thin and that the same people who are hired to help people find new lives, often exploiting them along the way, are also frequently desperate for new lives of their own. Soldiers and Kings chronicles the lives of people at every level of the smuggler food chain. De Leòn does not shy away from smugglers’ misdeeds, but still makes a larger plea for the recognition of their humanity within the conditions that have created the circumstances for mass migration.
Rating: 9/10
2. Piglet - Lottie Hazell
Fiction, 308 pages
Piglet, a talented chef and rising cookbook editor at a London publishing house, is set to be married in a few short weeks. To the outside world, Piglet’s life is put together and close to perfect. Internally, however, Piglet feels herself cracking after her fiancé confesses to a horrible betrayal two weeks before their wedding day. Terrified of letting the façade crumble and returning to what she sees as undignified and classless roots, Piglet decides to move forward with the wedding, complete with her plan to construct three perfect croquembouches for her guests. As the days draw nearer, she struggles to balance the life she thinks she wants with an insatiable, sudden ravenousness. This ravenousness manifests itself in a desire to eat, but also relates to larger unfulfilled desires being unconsciously abandoned in the pursuit of an idealized mirage. This is a singular book about need, expectations, and family. It contains some of the most exquisite food writing that I have ever encountered; I could almost taste the dishes based on their descriptions and feel the messes as they were being made and cleaned up.
Rating: 9/10
1. On Beauty - Zadie Smith
Fiction, 443 pages
On Beauty is an expansive story about an interracial family living in a university town outside Boston amidst the culture wars of 2005, when this book was published. The father, Howard Belsey, is an art history professor who specializes in hating Rembrandt. His wife, Kiki, a hospital administrator, has recently discovered Howard’s three-week affair with a colleague, placing their marriage on the rocks. The couple does little to hide their martial strife from their three children: Jerome, a junior at Brown who spent the summer living with Howard’s academic nemesis in England; Zora, a sophomore at Howard’s college who worships her father and any cause that seems righteous; and Levi, a high-schooler who feels disconnected from his racial identity. The book follows the family throughout the academic year, in which conflict, culture, and politics define the personal lives of all five Belseys.
Although On Beauty was published 20 years ago and centered around culture wars of the time, the issues that were being debated then feel no less relevant now. The book is a perfect blend of campus politics, social politics, political correctness, and family drama. Zadie Smith is one of those rare and utterly talented writers that has the sharpest eye for detail and a wonderful clarity in her writing. After reading one chapter about Howard’s relationship with his father I had to put the book down because it made me too sad. A hundred pages later I was giggling out loud at a scene involving a glee club and uncontrollable public laugher. These polar opposite emotional reactions represent On Beauty in a nutshell: it is a masterclass in capturing the full range of human experiences within the microcosm of the individual, family, college, town, and, to some extent, wider world.
Rating: 9.5/10
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