The holiday season means different things for different people. For some it’s a time of reflection, to make resolutions and promise to stick to only clear liquors from now on. For others, it’s a time of sorrow, knowing that your family will call your bluff this time when you say you’re going to kill yourself.

For me, it’s a time for list making. Not gift lists, mind you. My three wives made me stop giving my children gifts after some of the knock off Furbies I bought one year started several small fires. No, it’s a time for year-end lists, when I can share the best things I experienced in 2024. Fans can go to my blog to read about the best movies, albums and brothels I discovered this year, but to keep this relevant to the channel, we’re just going to focus on books.

This list will contain some 2024 releases, some classics I had never gotten around to, and a lot of books that landed on the D&E label that I think all viewers should consider checking out.

I’m going to start this list with a book I had never heard of, but that was brought to my attention by a former writing partner. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, tells the story of Humbert Humbert, a French expatriate and literature professor living in New England who falls in love with and kidnaps the titular 12-year-old girl. I found this book to be one of literature’s finest examples of an unreliable narrator, a witty sendup of American culture and a sharp exploration on the nature of obsession. Nabokov’s prose is a delight: verbose, lyrical, and enviably clever. It’s just a shame the man who recommended the book to me ended going to prison and getting killed there.

RF Kuang’s Yellowface came out at the tail end of last year, but I didn’t get around to it until 2024. Yellowface starts with its narrator watching a fellow author die, stealing her manuscript and publishing it under her own name, so this was a book I could relate to on a personal level and seemed almost specifically written for me. But beyond being an exploration what authorship means and satirizing the publishing landscape of the current era, RF Kuang offers a brilliant critique of how social media is unfair to white authors like myself.

Here’s another book I had never heard of until recently. I always felt graphic novels were for children and grown men who couldn’t grow beards but tried anyway. I still think that, but it didn’t ruin my appreciation of Watchmen, a multi-faceted deconstruction of the superhero genre that I probably shouldn’t have read to my seven-year-old son.

If you have to pick one book this year that I won’t personally profit from, make it Miranda July’s All Fours. Centered on a middle-aged woman who abandons her family for a love affair, this was another book that I felt was written personally for me. July’s writing blends sex with humor in a way I haven’t seen since Porky’s II. Now, many readers might find the main character to be immature, sex-obsessed, impulsive, and hyper-privileged, but I would counter that that describes 90 percent of people who attend book clubs so it’s definitely a work that encourages self-reflection.  

Reagan. An icon as synonymous with the 80s as Tawny Kitaen and C. Thomas Howell. Now I’m not the most political person and probably fall somewhere in the middle of the political spectrum. On the one hand, I think trans women are women, trans men are men, but on the other, I think it’s ridiculous the State of New York won’t allow me to bring a few loaded pistols into a bookstore to protect myself at a book signing. Anyway, no matter how you feel about a guy who ignored the AIDS epidemic, but who also looked good on camera, this is a must read.

Now we’re going to look at some D&E Publishing titles I loved this year.

If I had to choose one avant-garde book to pick this year, it would be I Hope You Fucking Die, a book by anonymous released last May on D&E Publishing. Composed of nothing more than threatening tweets I’ve received for the past decade, the book was sent to our offices in an unmarked package. While some might’ve called their lawyer or the bomb squad, I instead went ahead and published it anyway. One reviewer called it a fascinating examination of a deranged mind, and while they seemed to incorrectly be referring to me, I couldn’t agree more.

The End of Us was one of the best thrillers I read all year. A harrowing account of a man who decides to kill his whole family, I was over the moon that Robin Fletcher decided to publish with D&E. Unfortunately, the deal fell through when police discovered the book was a confession and Robin had actually killed his family.   

Band Camp was the best young adult story I read in 2024. This coming-of-age story about a young immigrant from Iran who develops an unexpected friendship at the titular setting was moving and had wonderful insight into what it means to be an outsider. Unfortunately, D&E didn’t end up publishing this book either because author Daphne Laughton also killed her whole family.

But the best book I read this year had to be my own, Glossolalia and Other Stories, available now on Amazon. Unlike all of the other books on this list, this book never felt like a chore to read.