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This may seem a bit unhinged, but here are the books I'm looking forward to in 2025! To stop myself from looking for more books I decided to post this a month earlier than I did last year. I'm sure I'm forgetting things and there are plenty of books I don't know about (what secret announcements are we yet to hear 👀), but these are the titles I've been eyeing for the last few months that have US release dates. Some are authors I've loved, some are favorite publishers, and some we're just going off vibes. Look, you compare something to Franzen or Luster or print a Batuman blurb on the cover and I'm there. Which books are you looking forward to? And what should I add to my ridiculous list? To read blurbs: https://bookshop.org/lists/2025-releases-bitterpurl

I'm calling it! My top reads of 2024!! No rankings! No set number! No rules! Just vibes! These are the books that stayed with me. The ones that made my brain fizz (iykyk). The ones where the writing was 👌🏼and the authors were doing their own thing. There's some pretty amazing stuff here (and in my underrated gems post) which is telling me that I should keep reading what I want and what sounds fun to me. Any time I don't listen to my gut I end up regretting it. Did any of these make your lists?

There are so many books I've read this year that I feel are criminally underrated - where's that bookstacop when you need him? (Please tell me I'm not the only one who remembers that!). These seem to have gone under the radar on IG and on Goodreads, but I think they're all worth checking out! Five that I want to highlight: Vivienne by Emmalea Russo - one of my most memorable reads of the year (that ending still has me questioning everything). This one is for all the unhinged art girlies with Moshfegh vibes. It's a satire on art, creation, cancelation, and the hive-mind. It was pretty surreal at times. Devil is Fine by John Vercher - I love how comedy and tragedy are balanced in this novel. I posted before about how grief is handled here: reality is skewed, memory is shaky, our narrator is questioning who he is, things are literally and figuratively unburied. Meanwhile we get hilarious banter at a bar, where the honor and one of the patrons take potshots at the narrator. It reads so natural and real. I Heard Her Call My Name by Lucy Sante - how does transitioning at 67 change how you look back on your life? I would almost call this a double memoir as we shift in time between post-transition and all the years that came before it. There's some gorgeous writing here and not only personal, but cultural history that I loved reading about. Blue Light Hours by Bruna Dantas Lovato - this hits that melancholic/nostalgic vibe I'm looking for. It's a tender look back at a first year in college, through almost daily Skype calls between the narrator in Vermont and her mom back in Brazil. Like a lot of the books I recommend, you're coming here for the writing and not necessarily the plot. This is observant and delicate. Living Things by Munir Hachemi and Julia Sanches - you knew I had to include a translated book here. I've posted about this one before, but reading Bolaño's Antwerp brought it back to mind with its similar energy found. It includes writing, misfits, and campgrounds, but a different sort of crime. Living Things deals more with the idea of 'experience' or being 'real' for writing's sake and how that butts up to class consciousness.

We Do Not Part by Han Kang and translated by E. Yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris Thank you @hogarthbooks While I thought The Vegetarian started off interesting enough, the reading experience became almost suffocating. I had to force myself to finish. Greek Lessons was so distant and cold that I failed to connect to anything in it. We Do Not Part grabbed me from the first page and didn't let me go. This is why I usually don't give up on an author, you never know when a work is going to mesh with you, or in this case grab your heart and just squeeze it. The plot sounds simple enough on the surface: Kyungha, an author living in Seoul, has pretty much isolated herself and barely sleeps suffering from both chronic pain and (living) nightmares based on research from her last book. Her friend Inseon cuts her fingertips off in a woodworking accident and asks her to go to her home in Jeju to feed her bird. There's a big snowstorm on the island which makes this favor almost impossible. It's funny to say I couldn't put this book down since it's very slow and deliberate at the beginning, a little repetitive even. But I almost feel like Kang is doing this to lull you in before slowly unleashing the horrors of the Jeju 4.3 massacre. Just as Inseon’s fingertips need to be pricked with a needle to keep the nerves alive, we need to be continually reminded to keep this memory alive. It's Kang's writing- disorienting, hallucinatory, and poetic- that keeps you going. Somehow, even with the heavy subject, this had a feeling of lightness. I can't pinpoint how exactly she did this, but the snow, the birds and their feathers, and candlelight flame reflect this. Her mixing of timelines is masterful, with the dead and alive, past and present blending on the page. Trauma is made fresh as each generation uncovers the truth; Inseon’s mother is a survivor of the massacre who researched for years trying to find her family. Inseon continued the research, going even deeper, and now it's in our hands to try and keep it alive. It's not easy to stop suffering or reckon with loss, but we need to work together and take care of each other no matter what to keep our humanity intact.

#sundaystack I had an amazing week of reading, starting with Sad Tiger (review posted) and ending with We Do Not Part (review soon!). I feel like we could see one of both of these on next month's International Booker longlist (can you all believe it's next month?! If January ever ends) I just started Overstaying by Ariane Koch and Damion Searls (and newly longlisted on the US Republic of Consciousness Prize) making for a little Searls moment in my reading. I'm only 40 pages in and I'm already loving it. all this here, now by Anna Stern and Damion Searls is a look at grief among a group of friends. Two timelines run in parallel, the left pages start when one dies and the effect this has while the right pages are different memories from their lifelong friendship. Towards the end the novel becomes one as the friends come together to enact a plan. Sterns does something interesting with pronouns, quickly changing from I to We and using nicknames throughout. Because of this you're never quite sure how to judge some of the tensions and closeness amongst the group. I would call this melancholic without being overly sentimental. (Another one I could see on IB 👀) The Butterfly Lampshade by Aimee Bender - I feel like this is one of those books that got lost in 2020. I really enjoyed The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, but this one didn't feel as magical. I'm not sure what was missing for me but if you'd like a character study on memory, mental health, and belonging there's something here for you. It did immediately lose a star once it confused crocheting with knitting though 😑

Sad Tiger by Neige Sinno and Natasha Lehrer Thank you @7storiespress I don’t feel like I can put into words how this book affected me. This is me trying and failing. This is raw, urgent, full of rage and contradictions. This is also highly intellectual, asking questions about literature and of society. How do you transform trauma into something aesthetic? How do you remove the silence that further harms victims? How is language used as a form of manipulation? Sinno forgoes the standard memoir approach and instead creates a multi-layered, non-linear work. Through a fragmented form that mirrors her fragmented childhood, Sinno writes about the s.a. she suffered at the hands of her stepfather for seven years, the time from when she told her mom to the trial where he pleaded guilty, and now, decades later, as she navigates motherhood. Interspersed are explorations of literary criticism and theory that try to get to the root of abuse and evil. She asks questions, wonders at her answers, and sometimes backtracks. You feel like you’re working through this along with her while still being kept at an arm’s length from her. This isn’t writing as therapy as she likes to remind you (literature isn’t a saviour!) and she constantly questions writing this book and even what she’s getting out of writing it. This narrative structure really worked for me since it felt true to how your memory works; jumping around through an unfixed timeline, making connections, some things feeling crystal clear while others are fuzzy. I loved how her mind works, especially when she looks at how language changes our reading. Could she distance herself from her own story by simply using “she” instead of “I”? How would our reading change? Why do some people fall for the trap of reading Lolita as a romance? How does Morrison create something beautiful out of something so ugly? Silence itself is a form of language (and violence), by either obscuring details or changing meaning (see Lolita again) we’re able to set aside abuse. Are there different levels of evil? Sinno created a beautiful piece of literature, one that will make you read differently and ask new questions.

#sundaystack : what I've finished this week I've been trying to keep track of what I'm reading, along with some quick thoughts, in my stories this year and I'm already three books behind 🥴 we had a good run! Waiting for Eden by Elliot Ackerman (thanks again @jcgrenn_reads) - a maddening look at an impossible situation. The way Ackerman moves through time and characters is 👌🏼 What Kingdom by Fine Gråbol and Martin Aitken - a realistic look at a psychiatric hospital stay told through vignettes. Time stands still or it rushes by as both the mundane and the extreme are experienced. Community is formed, but with relationships that aren't always equal. While there's some criticism on the system, as an American I'm shocked people have access to this level of care! I'll Come To You by Rebecca Kauffman - each chapter covers a month in a family's life leading to the birth of a baby and the next Christmas gathering. The pov changes throughout as the chapters focus on specific moments, sometimes so specific that I'm not sure why they're there since it didn't usually come up again. I never wanted to stop reading, which says something about the writing, but I also never connected with it. I was finally getting hooked in the last few chapters, but then it just ended. On the Clock by Claire Baglin and Jordan Stump - on the other hand, this exploration of the working class really worked for me. There are two narratives intertwined, one on the narrator working at a fast food restaurant and the other on her childhood as her dad worked in a factory for decades. Both story lines show the toll these jobs have on the body and the mind. Lightning Rods by Helen Dewitt - a feminist satire on office and American politics, self-help books, capitalism ,and even religion. I finally let myself read this one after @dalkeyarchive announced their upcoming release of Your Name Here (hint: I'm ready for it now though). This is my third Dewitt and my third win with her. While it's totally different from The Last Samurai it still has that same sharpness and wit. It's also interested in language, but this time in how it forms our identities. Somehow the sales speak never gets tiring.

I’ve been wanting to share this one since I read it last month. So we're going back to 2024! The Degenerates by Raeden Richardson (I think this comes out in March, but it’s already out in Australia/NZ) I knew this was going to be something special when a man starts breastfeeding a newborn and there’s just no commentary on it. Let me backtrack a bit, the book opens in Bombay during the 1975 Emergency. Somnath is a Dalit man who dreams of family and legacy, but gets ensnared in a raid and undergoes forced sterilization. Moments later he finds his friend's orphaned newborn, names her Maha, feeds her, and gets on a boat to Australia (we never worry about the how here). We eventually realize that Maha is writing the story we’re reading, or at least part of it, as she becomes almost a medium to the lost and unheard- calling herself Mother Pulse and posting flyers around town letting everyone know she’s ready to ‘listen’. I thought Somnath and then Maha would be the main characters, but we quickly move forward in time and expand to include Titch and Ginny - two Australians who feel abandoned and dream of more. Titch is grieving a friend's suicide, Ginny lives with her emotionally abusive family; both are seeking drastic changes and both end up with different obsessions. I expected a typical millennial novel dealing with loneliness, connectedness, and even gentrification in Melbourne, but with its touch of magical realism, wobbly time and reality, and experimental format -the words cascade over you, there are empty spaces for you to fill in, language eventually breaks down- this goes beyond that. The heart of this novel is storytelling: its need and its limits, the writer as a god and creator, the empathy and understanding needed to put a life on paper, the little things that are going to be missed. With its immersive writing, control of voice, and such a specific sense of place, well, this is nothing short of impressive. I still can’t believe it’s a debut. While reading this, Zadie Smith’s White Teeth kept coming to mind; just that same feeling of discovery. I’m already champing at the bit to read Richardson’s next work.

Eurotrash by Christian Kracht and Daniel Boules Thank you @swamikiran for my Xmas gift! I need to start this review by stating that I don't know this man. Reading a meta/auto fictional novel that is a sequel to a book without an English translation is pretty risky, it's giving madlad energy really. I'm sure things went over my head or jokes flew by compared to a German language reader, but there's enough here for those of us in the anglosphere to hold onto (the Borges references were a helpful hint). With no context it all magically worked out. This book is about Christian Kracht, the author of Faserland, going on a circular road trip through Switzerland with his ailing mother. She's in her 80s, has a stoma he didn't know about, uses a walker, is in and out of the psych hospital (she calls it a spa), has a high tolerance to painkillers and alcohol (I honestly don't remember when she was sober), and yet is one of the feistiest characters I've read. While there’s a lot of heavy personal and world history hovering over this book - nazism, reunification, national guilt, intergenerational trauma, the rise of Europe and new money, abuse, nazism again, the slow decline of old Europe - what I cared most about was the relationship between Christian and his mom. Their relationship was written in this very real way - the whole book has a very cool ironic voice to it- where you can tell they love each other, but old resentments and dislikes still bubble up between them. They bicker and argue, but they’re a team against the world. Not knowing what’s true or not, I just assumed everything was both true and not; or, better said, the things we find out about Christian and his family - the Nazi grandfather, the social climbing father, the abused mother, and later the abused Christian- are true to Christian within the book, the ‘real’ Christian never coming to mind. The book itself plays with fact and fiction as characters mention being written into a book, shared memories don’t line up, and we aren’t ever sure if the mom is pretending or not to be losing her mental faculties. A novel that balances silly and serious to end up with tenderness.

#sundaystack the books I dragged into 2025 with me. Blue Lard by Vladimir Sorokin and Max Lawton @nyrbooks This poor book has been patiently waiting for almost a year for me to get back to it. I feel it in my bones that it's going to happen soon. SOON! A friend just started it and I'm going to tag along and make it a buddy read. I honestly think this book needs that; you really need someone constantly reminding you that you don't need to understand everything and just go with it. Will report SOON 🫡 Herscht 07769 by László Krasznahorkai and Ottilie Mulzet If I could be honest with myself, I would just call this one a DNF. I haven't picked it up in what feels like forever and I haven't missed it or thought about it (other than, man I should DNF that). It's not complicated or too hard to understand (and the translation is seamless), I've made it over the halfway mark and it hasn't grabbed me. I just don't care 🤣 There I said it. So of course that means it'll make it onto the IB longlist. My Heart Belongs in an.....by Homeless @clashbooks The only reason I haven't finished this one is because I didn't want to travel with it, so I put it on hold until I came back. I think this actually worked in its favor, I was already enjoying it but that has been heightened by the books I've read around it this week. Absurdist fiction about loneliness, mental health, and hope with a lot of heart seem to be the themes I'm working with this week so I love seeing how all of these are connecting (especially Mysterious Setting by Kazushige Abe and From the Shadows by Juan José Millás). I love a book that has me feel for the character but also laughing with them (or maybe just at them in this case). The way the narrator is describing things is so unserious and sometimes long-winded and yet so perfect. Tell me I'm not the only one still working ('working' being very loosely applied here) in books from last year.

#Decemberwrapup and thoughts for the new year I honestly didn’t expect to read this many books in December. It probably helped that I packed a bunch of shorties with me while traveling. I mostly went off vibes and excitement; when I didn’t listen to myself I ended up with a dud. Which brings me to thinking about this new year and some soft goals. Read LESS - I keep seeing others mention this as well, so I’m excited to see how, if in any way, that changes this space. I have my eyes on bigger books I want to take my time with. Read what I WANT- I pretty much already do this, but I need to go back to listening to my gut more and be freer with dnf’ing. I wonder how many future favorites are sitting ignored on my shelves because I’m slogging through midness. Which ties to: Read Smaller - be that smaller presses or underhyped books. Some of the books I loved I randomly found through looking at publishers’ websites or one of you reviewing something that fell through the cracks. Which reminds me that I love to Find my people: I’ve made some great friends on here or just found people whose tastes I trust. A lot of times I find them through searching for reviews of specific books which leads me to Sharing more: it’s easy to stay in an echo chamber, but it’s great to break out, find, and repost reviews from new to you accounts. I love finding someone else that likes the same weird little book as me. If they inspired me to read it even better! You lose nothing by spreading the love. Give credit: I need to get better about keeping track of where I saw a book mentioned. It’s too easy to blindly add a book to my GR shelf and completely forget which account I first saw it on. So many of you have influenced what’s on my shelves, it would be fun to see a stat with that list at the end of the year. Call outs: But also give credit if someone inspired a post. I’ve had people steal reviews or ideas from me (just this week!!) way too many times now. I’ve also seen it happen to a few friends. I’m not staying quiet any more, if i see this happen again I WILL say something. No more anonymous shit posting from me, I’m going PUBLIC. DO NOT MESS with me or my friends.

#topauthors I had fun going into some author deep dives this year: Restarted and went all in with the Southern Reach series. It was the summer of Vandermeer. Conquered 2666 only to be blown away by Bolaño's slimmer works. A new Piñeiro led me to an older Piñeiro. Having my mind melted by Parade inspired me to reread Outline (Kudos and Transit will be soon). Reading Rijneveld was a visceral experience while reading Balle was an emotional one. I can finally say I caught up with all the Rooney's I still have Augustus left to read, but after Stoner and Butcher's Crossing I am HYPED