5. Dear 2024

A mini-letter to the year gone by, a round-up of my favourite reads, and of my published writing

Dear reader,

By the time you get this you’ve probably already switched off for the year and are enjoying some time with your loved ones (to let you in on a secret, I’m writing the bulk of this way in advance of its publish date for the same reason). Regardless of when you read this, I’m sending my best, sparkly wishes your way.

PSA. This is one of my lengthier posts so you might have to read it in your browser to be able to read it in full (the Substack editor tells me that the issue is too long for email).

So, wrapping up yet another year.

StoryGraph 2024

If you’re still unaware of my preferred app for logging my reading, it’s The StoryGraph. One of the many perks is these cool (yes, nerdy, too) graphics that give you an overview of your monthly and yearly reading.

This is what my reading year looked like.

I read more from my physical shelves, some books a while pending (a special hello to the Poppy War trilogy). I started a readalong of War and Peace and was immediately engrossed before almost as immediately falling out of love with it a month or so in. Despite not reading anything at all in the month of October (a very rare occurrence) and some of my reads being of the doorstopper variety, I read a bit more than I did last year, not that I’m about the quantity.

I’ve become much more choosy about the books I give my time to—the more I read and the more years I spend in the larger industry, I definitely have a more defined sense of what I’m likely to enjoy and what the elasticity of my tastes is (it also helps that I’ve embraced not reading further if a book’s not grabbing me beyond a fairly generous point, and knowing when or not it’s a case of wrong timing).

2024: A writing and editing year in review

2024 was the year I resumed writing for HT Brunch under a new editor (shoutout to the awesome Rachel), the year I made my debut for Hindustan Times Books (thank you, Manjula), the year I was the editor for an Arsenal poetry anthology (love, as always, to my dear friend Dave), the year I interviewed the Sunil Chhetri for Football Paradise, the year I copyedited the concluding book in Dave’s and Jacob’s (Poorly Drawn Arsenal) Magic Hat trilogy, and, among others, the year I finished copyedits on my debut kids book (Ladderworks, ftw, along with my inspiring theme originators, illustrator, editor, art director and more).

Of course, as you all know, this year is also the year I made my happy way back to the fiction fold—I hope that a year from now I’ll be able to include some new stories in the 2025 wrap up.

HT Brunch

10 short reads to add to your list (February 16, 2024)

10 holidays that immerse you into your favourite novels (March 15, 2024)

10 must-reads for a dose of comic relief (April 5, 2024)

Why the meet-cute is the ultimate test of movie romance (June 7, 2024)

Why it’s okay to not have all the answers (August 9, 2024)

Hindustan Times Books

Book review: The Continents Between by Bani Basu (November 6, 2024)

Football Paradise

Martin Ødegaard and Arsenal: A Perfect Fit (March 12, 2024)

Arsenal 1-1 Porto (4-2 pens): This is Where We Want to Be (March 28, 2024)

Breaching the Golden Glass Ceiling: Arsenal and the Invincibles (May 15, 2024)

On Football and India: A Conversation with Sunil Chhetri (July 2, 2024)

Write or Die

Author Interview: Andrés N. Ordorica: On the Collaborative Nature of Novel Writing, Giving Voice to Black & Brown Queer Elders in Fiction, and His Debut Novel ‘How We Named the Stars’ (January 16, 2024)

Author Interview: Amy Lin: On Starting Where it Hurts Most, Writing About the Death of a Spouse, Creative Constraints for Revision, and Her Debut Memoir ‘Here After’ (April 23, 2024)

The Rumpus

The Mini Interview with Daniel A. Olivas, which I was asked to conduct by Rumpus for their member newsletter, went out with their March 21, 2024 issue. They kindly gave me permission to reprint it in full, which I did in issue #49. Read here.

Welcome to the Goonerverse

I’ve written about it here, a few issues ago.

Wilderness to Thrillderness: The Return of the Magic Hat

Buy link and more info here.

Ready, Set, Bubble!

You can read everything in issue #50, which also has the preorder links.

Anu Recommends: 2024 favourites

Now we come to the books.

I’ve written before about how personal and subjective reading is; why I don’t believe in ranking or rating books, and prefer to tell you why I loved something or didn’t so you can make an informed decision about whether a story would suit you.

With that caveat, here are the books that kept me joyful company this year, aka books that I will most certainly be revisiting in the future, that left an impact, and many of whom are already among my favourites. It was difficult to narrow down given the range of excellent books I’m lucky to have read (such a first-world problem to have, I know).

Me posing with a copy of one of my 2024 favourites in the Königsallee branch of the Thalia Mayersche bookstore chain in Düsseldorf this summer.

If you enjoy cozy fantasy with a splash of darkness (grey academia) and an endearing cast of characters—Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India only) | Bookshop.org (US)

If you enjoy inventive, pacey, breath-capturing, emotional tales about young adults combating their fates and narratives in worlds where the myths are alive (or they are the myths taking charge of their stories)—Hearts That Cut by Kika Hatzopoulou and The End Crowns All by Bea Fitzgerald

Hearts That Cut*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India only) | Bookshop.org (US)

The End Crowns All*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India only) | Bookshop.org (US)

If quiet, measured, rich but not ornamental stories are your vibe—Long Island by Colm Toibin

Long Island*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India) | Bookshop.org (US)

Or if more literary philosophising experimental space fiction is a better fit—Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Orbital*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India) | Bookshop.org (US)

If you enjoy sparkling, fizzy, witty, heartwarming, nerdy, utterly bonkers but equally sweet historical fantasy romcoms with the most wonderful characters—The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love by India Holton

The Ornithologist’s Field Guide to Love*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India only) | Bookshop.org (US)

If you’re searching for a quiet, tender, luminous memoir about grief and love—Here After by Amy Lin

Here After*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India only) | Bookshop.org (US)

If dark, haunting, hopeful WWI historical fiction with shades of the supernatural is your jam—The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden

The Warm Hands of Ghosts*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India only) | Bookshop.org (US)

Equally, if you prefer a more magical, more brutal, more wrenching historical grimdark epic—The Poppy War trilogy by R.F. Kuang

The Poppy War*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India only) | Bookshop.org (US)

The Dragon Republic*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India only) | Bookshop.org (US)

The Burning God*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India only) | Bookshop.org (US)

The Poppy War trilogy*
Buy print (India only)

If whimsical adjacent fairytales for grown-ups have your whole heart—Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson

Tress of the Emerald Sea*
Buy print | Buy ebook | Bookshop.org (US)

If you enjoy emotional, almost poetry-like, narratives dealing with the themes of love, loss, beauty, art, grief—Tin Man by Sarah Winman

Tin Man*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India only) | Bookshop.org (US)

If you want a slow-burn, character-driven, emotional, mid-century queer romcom that feels like a lived-in warm hug—You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian

You Should Be So Lucky*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India only) | Bookshop.org (US)

Special mentions

• Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino: a tender, earnest, funny, and quietly hopeful sci-fi-undertoned nostalgic literary fiction about Adina Giorno, the alien born in the human body of a baby in 1977 northeastern Philadelphia.

• This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune: as much a narrative about place, belonging, found family, and home, as it is about the romantic love that unfolds over five summers.

• Even if it Breaks Your Heart by Erin Hahn: Erin’s softest, tenderest, messiest-in-the-best-way YA book to date featuring complex, human, teens in a story of friendship, love, family, going after one’s dreams, and coming of age.

• Colton Gentry’s Third Act by Jeff Zentner: a lyrical story about second and third chances, small-town Kentucky, childhood sweethearts, music, food, healing, and redemption.

• Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade by Janet Skeslien Charles: a WWI historical fiction story inspired by real-life ordinary women who did quiet, brave, consistently extraordinary things at an unprecedented time against all odds.

• Her Radiant Curse by Elizabeth Lim: Asian folklore inspired adventure-fantasy prequel to Six Crimson Cranes centered around love, sacrifice, belonging, the darker side of beauty, and sisterhood

• Ace: What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen: An honest, thoughtful, and engaging exploration of what it means to be asexual in a world that is centered around sexual attraction, what desire, love, relationships, and family look like in this context, and how everyone can benefit from a broadening of the socially accepted definitions of many of these words.

Beautyland*
Bookshop.org (US)

This Summer Will Be Different*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India only) | Bookshop.org (US)

Even If It Breaks Your Heart*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India only) | Bookshop.org (US)

Colton Gentry’s Third Act*
Bookshop.org (US)

Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade*
Buy print (India only) | Bookshop.org (US)

Her Radiant Curse*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India only) | Bookshop.org (US)

Ace*
Buy ebook | Buy print (India only) | Bookshop.org (US)

Dear 2024

There are times when the words flow with ease, when the only reason to write it all down is for cherished posterity; good memories to sit with and reminisce over years later. In other times, the words have to be wrung from the depths. In others still, you can’t not write because it is the only thing holding you together.

2024, for large swathes, has felt like the kind of year you survive, finding moments of joy, peace, and, sometimes, respite when you can.

A demanding year of unavoidable transition born out of the grief of losing loved ones you’ve never known your life or story without—and now you have to adjust to their physical absence—and a year of change born out of a certain necessity. A year when you doubt and question without having many answers, just more questions, more perhaps, more maybes.

It has, sadly, also been a year of losing a favourite author and not in the way you think; a year, equally, of readjusting perceptions about others.

This year has plummeted and plunged to intensities either entirely new or those not experienced in a long time and half forgotten until the reunion. A year of more unknowns than ever before, and of learning how not to press pause on life regardless, because all of this is the living. This has been a year of being grateful for one’s many privileges and blessings, while despairing at the world and its state of (in)humanity. Of prioritising courage, kindness, and rest, in equal measure.

This has been a year of shaping new routines, of sculpting new terrains of familiarity; while learning to be better and more spontaneously embrace flexibility. A year of letting go and of bathing in the relief that follows. A year of burnout and decluttering. One of continuing to shape and evolve your definitions of home, community, belonging, and purpose.

2024 has been a year of Big Emotions™, amidst feeling like, perhaps, your emotional senses are too overloaded to feel much or deeply of anything. A year that forced you to re-evaluate your relationship with faith and hope; one of learning how much is in our control (not much, but still enough) and when to sit back and conserve precious energies. A year to sit with yourself and find your way out, trusting your deepest instincts.

This will also always be the year that my first writing love (fiction) was returned to me after a long break in the wilderness, along with its subsequent sense of sparkling creativity that spreads into everything else. It returned after nearly two years; the second of which, until its final months, felt like I was back at square one, perhaps even further back—before realising that this is what change, evolution, and reacquaintance feels like. This waiting period taught me, among many other things, that sometimes you need a break even from the things you love and draw strength and comfort from.

A year, then, of discovery and surprise; of progress, incremental and otherwise; of learning for the joy of it; of writing for myself and for the sake of the story. A year of online and offline moments with the ones who matter to sustain you through the rest of it. A year of learning how to be truly present in a moment and trusting that I will be and am exactly where I need to be, while simultaneously making time to plant seeds, to look ahead and wait.

2024, for large swathes, has felt like the kind of year you survive, finding moments of joy, peace, and, sometimes, respite when you can.

I cannot wait to see what 2025 brings.

From the archives

Last year’s reading and writing wrap-up

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If you’ve enjoyed today’s issue, here’s a few things you can do:

• click on the heart to like it

• turn this into a conversation by leaving a comment below or dropping me a line via email, even just to say hi—I always love hearing from you 😊

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And of course, send me your recommendations and tell me what you’d like me to write about next! Let me know what you’re currently reading and watching, send me rants/ramblings/excited monologues, GIFs and memes (especially them). 🤓

This time of year can be hard and overwhelming for many reasons, as much as it is also joyous, so I’m sending everyone restful wishes for the holidays and for the remainder of 2024. I hope you can find pockets of calm, of cheer, of good health, of community, of love, and of peace. Thank you to each and every one of you for your company and support this year, for your continued enthusiasm and encouragement; I cannot wait to share another year with you ❤️

Take care and I’ll see you next in the new year on January 12!

Anu

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You can find me on Bluesky at @anushreenande (yep I finally created an account and I’m really enjoying it—my Twitter remains online so far but I’m not actively posting on there anymore) and on Instagram at @anushreenande. You can support my work at https://buymeacoffee.com/anushreenande.

*the book buying links I share on here are affiliate links, which means that if you make any purchases through those links, I will receive a small commission from the sale at no additional cost to you.