Everything I read in 2024 - part 1
Horror, sci-fi... real vampires?
Hi there!
Welcome to an exciting new year which is guaranteed* not to fill us with abject horror about inadequate geopolitical choices and destruction of the climate, biodiversity, and/or civil rights!
*terms and conditions may apply.
While fighting for the good things and kindness, it’s good to unwind with some brilliant stories, so here’s what I was reading through 2024. Perhaps they’ll inspire you to check them out too.
My 2023 list is here, part 2, 3, and 4.
(Note: this post contains Amazon affiliate links. Feel free to use them to support my writing, but by all means find these titles in independent bookstores instead (e.g. PoC and/or queer owned businesses.))
Credible Witness: Paranormal Police Stories
by Andy Gilbert
Real stories from police and emergency service workers about odd and uncanny happenings they’ve experienced.
I loved how the language choices make these sound like a court statement, it’s all very ‘At approximately 11:45pm I was proceeding in a southerly direction down the High Street when I saw a person moving towards the locked gates of St. George’s Church’. It’s a little bit scrappy in the writing style, but that adds to the sense of strangeness about these true tales.
If you like your spookiness to be bite-sized and real-life, this is highly recommended!
The Lord Of The Ring Roads
by Robert Rankin
I’ve been reading Robert Rankin’s books since I was a teenager. He’s a comedic fantasy writer, using real-world settings that take peculiar turns. He describes his style as ‘far-fetched fiction’, and has the authorial voice of an eloquent storyteller you might meet in a cosy pub.
The books walk a somewhat outdated line regarding gender politics, with more recent books having a greater awareness of issues related to equality and some deference to this, but it’s more often written in the tone that’s old-fashioned than downright abhorrent. If you can turn a bit of a blind eye to that, there are plenty of great things to enjoy here.
With that noted, what we’ve got in The Lord of the Ring Roads is yet another yarn from a writer who is supremely comfortable with his style. He’s had running jokes going for forty years, and his books get better the more you read. In this one, elves (the evil, trickster kind) are trying to take over the world via a London suburb, leading to an amusing quest to fend them off before heading to the pub.
Funny, occasionally touching, and overall a jolly good romp.
The Vampire: His Kith and Kin (1928)
by Montague Summers
So… This is an odd one. The writer appears to believe in the literal reality of vampires, and this is ostensibly a true history of real vampires around Europe and the world.
He lists in exhaustive detail a large number of historic vampire events, such as stories of people rising from their grave, evidence of scratch marks inside coffin lids, and blood on corpse’s mouths. Most of these are from hundreds of years ago, almost certainly exaggerated, and quite possibly didn’t happen at all, but they’re treated as if they are all absolutely true. In amongst these, there are fascinating snatches of European folklore about vampires, which is the reason I picked this up.
Alongside these ‘real’ events, there’s a good selection of descriptions of vampires in fiction, including the theatre, which was interesting given the book is over 100 years old. It serves as a nice picture of how vampires were growing in western storytelling in the early 20th century.
The writing style is quite dated, and is quite hard-going and I must give due warning: there are more than a couple of outright antisemitic passages, which is particularly gloomy in the light of both current events now and the WWII Holocaust.
It’s a strange book by a very strange person.
How To Exit Your Body and other strange tales
by Christopher Maxim
I thought it might be interesting to check out the style of an author who’s done well on Reddit ‘creepy pasta’ forums.
How To Exit Your Body is a collection of short horror and sci-fi stories by Christopher Maxim that have some wild ideas. There are patterns that develop in the stories (e.g. seemingly arbitrary rules which the protagonist fails to follow), but the twists and turns were entertaining throughout.
If you want a collection of stories that step outside of the typical haunted-house/ghost tropes, this is a quick and easy read worth checking out.
The Mimicking of Known Successes
by Malka Older
One of the best books I read this year. This novella is deep into sci-fi and detective territory.
Set on enormous rings balanced around a gaseous planet, the protagonists dive into a mystery tied to scientists who are trying to understand how to restart life on Earth. When a scientist dies by stepping off a ring and falling into the crushing gasses below, it triggers an investigation that may change the course of humanity.
This has big sci-fi ideas, culture, sapphic romance, murder, and great writing. Highly recommended if any of those tickle your fancy.
How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub
by P. Djèlí Clark
A short story in a alternative-Victorian/Steampunk-esque setting about a chap who, striving to be interesting and intriguing in society, decides to raise a Kraken. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t go well.
There’s a nice undercurrent of social justice here. The plot is a little predictable, but the writing style is great, the central idea is fun, and overall it’s worth your time.
Starter Villain
by John Scalzi
This is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, with brilliantly ridiculous plot twists and escalations throughout.
When a Bond-style villain dies, he leaves his empire to an unambitious relative who has no clue about the business. Pretty much every chapter ends with some over-the-top rug-pull and it’s incredibly fun to ride along and see where the plot goes next.
I don’t want to say more and spoil any of it, but it’s very entertaining. Read it!
Horror Movie
by Paul Tremblay
US link (that’s a very fancy-looking paperback edition!)
This is the book I was most excited for in 2024 and it didn’t disappoint.
Tremblay is probably my favourite horror author. He’s got a habit of taking horror tropes (like possession, zombies, home invasions, vampires, etc.) and finding new, soulful twists on them. His stories always teeter on the edge between reality and the supernatural, always leaving you doubting the true nature of the story.
This time, Tremblay approached a trope I love: cursed footage. A legendary cult horror film is being remade in the present day, and we know things will go badly, but how?
One of the reasons I like Tremblay’s books is how they play with the medium, such as using annotations for a second character’s commentary in The Pallbearer’s Club. In Horror Movie, chapters skip between description of the original filming, the film’s script, and an interview in the modern day with one of the surviving actors from the film.
We’ve got possibly supernatural things, an unreliable narrator, and a genuinely creepy sense that something terrible is going to unfold, but we don’t know what. I loved it.
Have you read any of these? Got any recommendations for what I should read in 2025? Drop a comment below!
I’ll be back next week with the second half of my 2024 reading list, and after that I’ll be sharing my audiobook listens from 2024, then, in February, we’ll be back to the usual schedule of horror micro-fiction, articles about writing (craft, tips, and exercises), and other fun things.
Happy new year, let’s make it a good one however we can.
Go be kind and spooky,
Mata
xxx
I've read (and own) a lot of Robert Rankin, and always considered him an especially silly Terry Pratchett (which, in itself, is a silly comparison). It's a shame - in some ways - that he's had to self publish his later works, because it's meant I've probably missed out on owning many of them, but I still have many to go back to. Always good to know another Rankin fan!