Yet Another End-of-Year Recommendations Post!

Here at The Flytrap, we don’t just love writing great feminist cultural criticism: We also love reading quality, thoughtful nonfiction books and articles, listening to killer podcasts, and curling up with a good novel. Supporting our fellow creatives, whether or not they’re at worker-owned cooperatives like ours, is very much our jam. So, like every other publication on the Goddess’s less and less green Earth (thanks, climate change), we’re rounding up our best reads and listens of 2024. We hope you find something new, something you love, or maybe just something that really pisses you off!

Without further ado…

Andrea’s 2024 recommendations

Two reads on internecine conflicts in academia feel spiritually, if not strictly topically, related: In New York, “The Asteroid-in-Spring Hypothesis” tackles competing claims in the field of paleontology, and in The Atlantic, “The Business School Scandal That Just Keeps Getting Bigger” exposes the shocking-not-shocking underbelly of questionable research practices in the Ted-Talky world of business psychology. 

I resisted the temptation to read much post-election coverage, preferring instead to nestle deep into a whiskey-fueled fugue state for much of early to mid-November. But Capital B’s report, “Rural Black Americans Brace for Racism, Neglect Under Trump” by Aallyah Wright, embodies the kind of political-cultural coverage that was and is absolutely essential in these sadly precedented times: a rebuke of the endless hand-wringing over the mythical white swing voter that instead takes seriously the experiences of people who are most harmed by the election results. 

ProPublica has been knocking it entirely out of the park this year: I cannot highly enough recommend their devastating and enraging “Life of the Mother” series on the preventable deaths of women under post-Roe abortion bans, and this longread on how Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks effectively remade the state’s — and in many ways, the nation’s — right-wing political apparatus.

I didn’t get to read as much fiction as I would have liked to this year, but Bookshops and Bonedust (Tor, 2023) (low-stakes Dungeons-and-Dragons-type fun), The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels (Atria Books, 2024) (epistolary British crime hijinx), and The Butcher of the Forest (Tordotcom, 2024) (a fantastically spooky journey through the woods) all had me hooked from jump. I also really loved this installment of Charlie Jane Anders’ newsletter about community and futurism and the urgency of art now. She writes: “Knowing that your art won't burn bright forever gives you permission to make something that speaks to a particular moment. You can create art that's foolish and strange, which is a longer way of saying, ‘You can make art.’”

Chrissy’s take-notice reads (and writes) of 2024:

As a former evangelical who writes often about the political power of right-wing Christians in the United States, I’ve watched with dismay as 2024 comes to a close with what feels like the country turning into the kind of authoritarian evangelical school I was sent to growing up. One thing that gives me hope, however, is that the American public finally seems to be interested in hearing exvangelical stories. Back in March, NPR journalist Sarah McCammon’s book The Exvangelicals: Loving, Living, and Leaving the White Evangelical Church (St. Martin’s Press) came out and quickly broke through as a New York Times bestseller.

To be perfectly frank, there are better books out there written by and/or about exvangelicals, but McCammon’s is a perfectly good introduction to the topic, even if I find its criticisms rather too milquetoast and its exploration of the intersections between queerness and leaving evangelicalism too shallow. Those caveats aside, the book breaking through to bestseller status and generating lots of media buzz was a very big deal. And McCammon’s book, which I hope will inspire readers to seek out related books, is part of a larger boom in exvangelical (and adjacent) literature that I hope will continue.

One of the most personally meaningful things I published this year is an essay for The Conversationalist in which I did a deep dive into this literary boom, including some history of the exvangelical movement as background. My top recommendations included in that essay (all recent books, but not all of which came out in 2024) are: R. Scott Okamoto, Asian American Apostate: Losing Religion and Finding Myself at an Evangelical University (Lake Drive Books, 2023); Amber Cantorna-Wylde, Out of Focus: My Story of Sexuality, Shame, and Toxic Evangelicalism (Westminster John Knox Press, 2023); Blake Chastain, Exvangelical and Beyond: How American Christianity Went Radical and the Movement that’s Fighting Back (TarcherPerigee, 2024). (Full disclosure: David Morris, who runs Lake Drive Books, is representing me in my current projects as an agent with Hyponymous Literary. Okamoto and Chastain are personal friends.) As a lover of essays and anthologies, I would add the just released Take the Fruit: An Anthology of Religious Trauma (Listen to Your Skin Press, 2024), edited by Stina French and Erica Hoffmeister, for which I was honored to write a foreword. The collection includes a diverse group of authors and poems as well as essays.

Christine’s thought-provoking 2024 reads:

Your Ombudsmom is (always) going to be honest with you: 2024 has been a hell of a year, emphasis on “hell,” for my mental health. “We are living in a world that is testing all of our limits,” one of my kindest friends replied after I shared how I cyclically self-isolate, weeks after leaving him on read. This was the first full year my toddler was in daycare. Stopping to breathe allowed our world and my world – the all-consuming growing, birthing, caregiving for, and parenting of a small human – to catch up with me. 

I share my year-end reading recommendations in the context of my mental health to say, first and foremost, I see you, Flytrap readers, even when the world doesn’t. When my brilliant colleagues proposed this 2024 wrapup, I didn’t think I had anything to contribute besides my household’s well-loved children’s books: Cozbi A. Cabrera, Me & Mama (Denene Millner Books, 2020); Bruce Degan, Jamberry (HarperFestival, 2017); and Margaret Wise Brown, Goodnight, Moon (HarperCollins, 1947). 

Then I remembered I had read profound work that reached me through and despite this year.

I urge you to read “Coming to America”, Rhana Natour’s Atavist Magazine story about a Palestinian child who lost her legs as a result of an Israeli air strike in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Pair the story with Ayelet Waldman’s honesty in “My Father and the Withering of Liberal Zionism” for New York magazine. Sandy Ernest Allen is a “drop everything” byline for me and should be for you, too. Drop everything to read about his experience at “a sleepaway camp for grownups just like me” in his Esquire essay, “Into the Woods with 150 Trans Men.” I leave you with Rolling Stone’s “The Invisible Man,” Patrick Fealy’s self-portrait of an unhoused journalist living with mental illness in a country that could well afford to feed, clothe, house, and care for him – for all of us. Instead, in the U.S. tradition of insufficient bandages, here is Patrick’s GoFundMe. I believe in the importance of telling stories and especially in the power of these pieces to work toward a better world than what we’ve left behind in 2024. I see hope – I see you.

Reads that turned Evette’s head in 2024:

We’ve (barely) made it to the end of 2024, but alas, as Glorilla beautifully summed up on CNN, “at the end of the day, the day’s gotta end.” When the world is as chaotic and cruel as it has been and promises to be for the foreseeable future, I have a tendency to either hyperfocus on everything going wrong or escape into the warmth of pop culture. During this hellscape of a year, pop culture kept me grounded and tethered to joy, even when there were very few reasons to smile.

Between grad school and running a feminist publication focused on pop culture, reading books felt like a chore for a very long time. But over the past two years, I’ve reclaimed my love for it. I’m especially drawn to books that feel like a warm hug – funny, earnest, honest, and sometimes thought-provoking. Reading remains one of the few things in my life that still belongs just to me, so I am glad to share some of my faves of the year:

If you’re into memoir, I highly recommend Sara Glass’s Kissing Girls on Shabbat (Atria/One Signal, 2024) and Glynnis MacNicol’s I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman’s Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris (Penguin Life, 2024). While both books deal with wildly different subject matter – leaving Orthodox Judaism versus exploring Paris and eating as much cheese as you possibly can – both memoirs also do an amazing job of displaying the importance of not repressing pleasure. What if we were to lean into our pleasure instead?

Yes, I am often the adult checking out YA books from my local library, and no, I am not ashamed. This year, I spent a lot of time with YA books that beautifully reconsidered complex issues: Hearts Still Beating by Brooke Archer (G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, 2024) follows a recovering zombie (it’s complicated) as she reintegrates into a society that is torn about whether zombies should be welcomed back into their families or used as pawns in an ongoing political war. Sound familiar? 

I also really enjoyed Celestial Monsters by Aiden Thomas (Feiwel & Friends, 2024), the second book in the Sunbearer duology, which follows an incredible trans protagonist forced to save the world after the powers that be – in this case, ancient gods – decide to pit children against one another in a grueling competition that results in one of the competitors being sacrificed. A mess. Into the Sunken City by Dinesh Thiru (HarperTeen, 2024) was another one of my favorite 2024 reads because it tackles two issues I am thinking about all the time: capitalism and climate change. I’m also a lover of books set in or around large bodies of water, so this one was right up my alley. 

Just trust me on this: Every Time You Hear That Song by Jenna Voris (Viking Books for Young Readers, 2024) is an incredible book that I can’t stop raving about months after I read it. I won’t even give away pieces of the plot. Just read it. You won’t regret it. 

If romance, especially queer romance, is your jam, there is so much to choose from (finally!) that I struggled to narrow this list, but these might be my top three of 2024: I’ll Have What He’s Having by Adib Khorram (Forever, 2024); Make the Season Bright by Ashley Herring Blake (Berkley, 2024); and At Her Service by Amy Spalding (Kensington, 2024). Ashley Herring Blake and Amy Spalding are two auto-buy authors for me, so I would also recommend checking out the other romance books they’ve penned. 

As we face down an uncertain future, I hope these books and others find you when you need them and put a smile on your face. 

From Katelyn’s ears to yours in 2024:

As one of the official podcasters for The Flytrap, I wanted to share a couple pod recommendations that helped me get through the year. Friend of the Cancel Me, Daddy pod, the Cancel Gunkle himself, Michael Hobbes co-hosts the If Books Could Kill podcast and it’s a must listen on release day for me. Together with Peter Shamshiri, the two thoroughly break down and skewer some of the “foundational” self-help and political theory books of the past 20 years. Listening to this show makes me feel sane again.

Another podcast I thoroughly recommend is the Tested podcast from NPR. Hosted by journalist Rose Eveleth, the show goes deep on the persecution of marginalized intersex athletes by the officials in charge of track and field. This pod dispels so many myths about sex and gender in sports and unveils the sinister and evil repercussions to the TERF worldview of women’s sports.

For reading recs, I wanted to share Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment (Grand Central Publishing, 2024) by Jason Schrier. The book is ultimately a tale of how corporate greed and mismanagement killed a once beloved game development studio. It also digs deep on Blizzard’s infamous and horrible sexual harassment scandal.

Nicole’s best reads and listens of 2024:

In the midst of watching a genocide unfold in the Gaza strip – as well as watching social fractures in my circles over whether or not we are witnessing a genocide – reading Marina Magloire’s LA Review of Books deep-dive into June Jordan and Audre Lorde’s correspondence about Israel and Palestine was fascinating and necessary. 

This devastating testimony on homelessness in America by Patrick Fealy in Esquire made me weep, especially while knowing it would be way easier to house people on the streets than just leave them unhoused.

Chappell Roan’s music hit me hard in June, so I was all too happy to read this incredibly well-constructed profile on the rising pop star by Brittany Spanos in Rolling Stone. Spanos got to spend some time with Roan, exploring the singer-songwriter’s sudden and unsettling rise to virality and fame. 

Reading Martyr! (Knopf, 2024) by Kaveh Akbar, a stunningly written story about martyrdom and death with a purpose, was the literary highlight of my year. The writing is thoughtful, funny and made me reflective about the real meaning of freedom and liberation. 

Rommy’s break-through read of 2024: 

Disclaimer: This comes from a non-writer who has trouble reading and buys books (sometimes for their cover, because art) but struggles to read more than 3 a year (usually I’m lucky if I finish one). This was the lucky one that made the cut and enriched my brain. 

In the Dream House (Graywolf, 2020) by Carmen Maria Machado: I picked up this book as a recommendation from a friend who knew I was wanting to read more, specifically from queer writers. The book felt like a compilation of vignettes that wove in and out of dream and reality. Machado tackles themes about power, memory, love, shame, and abuse (subtle and overt), and how these show up within her queer relationship with an abusive partner. The title of the book is the imagery that is carried throughout to symbolize a place of safety and comfort as well as isolation and terror. In the Dream House is an emotionally charged and haunting book (I cried several times) that feels like an important slice of queerness that’s not often talked about. A short but heavy read.

What s.e. loved in 2024: 

An absolutely incredible read from Kevin Nguyen at The Verge on the future of tennis; what I really love about this piece is that it is visually stunning as well, with an engaging design that sucks me in and keeps me there. 

Kate Wagner’s expose and exploration of the grotesque wealth behind Formula 1 was an instant hit, and mysteriously disappeared from Road and Track almost immediately; apparently it was too hot to handle. Luckily, there’s the Wayback Machine. 

Nicole Lipman dug in on the juggernaut that is Shein, and everything that goes along with it, in this rad piece for N+1. It’s a great read that connects fast fashion, trendsetting, and the world of excess and disposability that we all inhabit. 

This profile of women cyclists in Afghanistan by Kim Cross is a sensitive, sweeping read on life for women under the Taliban and the frenzied, terrible days of trying to escape after the withdrawal of U.S. troops. 

From the Ashes (Bold Type, 2024) by Sarah Jaffe: An absolutely essential read on grief and mourning as collective public enterprises, explicitly connecting grief to cultural experiences and phenomena and exploring how capitalism harms all of us. Grief is political, and Jaffe’s voice on the subject is one I keep returning to. 

Long Live Evil (Orbit, 2024) by Sarah Rees Brennan: It’s portal fantasy with a bite as our dying main character makes a devil’s bargain that transports her into the world of a wildly popular series of fantasy books. It’s Brennan at her best, with delightfully snarky and voicy characters and some serious underlying questions about what it means to be a villain. 

I wrote a lot of pieces I loved this year but my favorite may be my most recent, this piece for The Verge talking about the experience of watching myself being slowly erased from the internet thanks to the tyranny of link rot, shuttered media properties, and the inevitable passage of time. This piece started as an exploration of a frequent discussion amongst freelance journalists dismayed at how all our clips are disappearing, but it became something much deeper: If almost all things are ephemeral, who decides what lingers, and what does that say about society? 

What moved Tina in 2024: 

First, I’m going to start with a newsletter I subscribed to this year, because who doesn’t love a good newsletter? Paola Bri-González’s Fresca has become a bit of an obsession. She is a wildly talented cook from Puerto Vallarta, México who makes the most beautiful food: butternut squash tacos dorados with salsa verde cruda and feta, arroz con leche trifle, aguachile gravlax. Fuuuuuck. She also has impeccable taste. Mere moments after she posted her holiday gift guide, I placed an order for the pie Paola said she eats each year on her birthday. It’s not just any pie; it’s a $73 Macadamia graham crust, passion fruit custard, whipped crème fraîche, passion fruit pulp pie. (Please don’t send me hate mail for purchasing a $73 pie. Passion fruit is in season, and this is my Christmas present to myself!) 

I officially became an editor this year, and while I didn’t set out to plug my newsroom Prism, I could not forgive myself if I didn’t mention an essential piece of reporting I had the privilege of editing this year. This investigation from The Flytrap’s own Nicole Froio about Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s (PPFA) contract with Raytheon truly blew me away. Nicole is the queen of receiving reporting tips from repro workers, and when she learned from a source that PPFA contracted with an arms manufacturer that is currently profiting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza, there was no stopping her. Working with Nicole provides a glimpse into what journalism could be if more reporters were truly willing to speak truth to power — even when it’s unpopular or requires going toe-to-toe with a beloved liberal (and moneyed) institution. Nicole’s investigation is a must-read, and the impact of her reporting was immediate. Shortly after her investigation was published, repro workers demanded that Planned Parenthood divest from Raytheon.  

Journalist Gustavo Arellano is a California treasure. His groundbreaking Ask a Mexican column in OC Weekly was the first real glimpse I had of a Latino reporter playing by their own rules. It made sense to me that Gustavo eventually made his way to California’s paper of record, where his Los Angeles Times bio includes the line, “He’s the child of two Mexican immigrants, one of whom came to this country in the trunk of a Chevy.” It has always meant something to me that Gustavo uses his platform to uplift the undocumented immigrants who keep this shithole country afloat while also normalizing immigration. Because in many of our families, immigration is merely a fact of life. My dad also came to the U.S. without authorization. and, as Gustavo wrote in “A Thank You to the Undocumented on the Eve of Trump’s Deportation Storm,” I too “have lived a life where people without papers were the norm instead of a Fox News talking point, and I’m angry.” I know a thank you doesn’t go very far in the face of mass deportations, but some of y’all need a reminder that we should never forsake undocumented immigrants.

Obligatory engagement farming, but also genuine question: What did you read/listen/watch and love this year? Let’s talk about it!

This piece was edited by s.e. smith and copy edited by Chrissy Stroop.