It’s hard to believe it’s already July. As in every year around this time, it feels like I haven’t done half the things I planned to do, but still, I’m pretty content with how 2024 has treated me so far. I’ve read a lot, and I even started reading comics, which I had been meaning to do for years. It’s been a fun journey, and I’ve been blessed with lots of help from friends who know more about the medium than I do. I haven’t gotten around to watching many movies, unfortunately, but I’m hoping to watch some more things in the second half of the year. Without further ado, here’s a list of the best things I’ve read and watched from January to June, in no specific order.
Favorite Books.
The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco.
A Sherlock Holmes mystery set in an Italian monastery back in the 1300s, with deep discussions of faith and our relationship with literature, amongst other things. There are a lot of complex subjects in here, but it never feels dense or hard to follow, and even if you aren’t interested in the more philosophical side of the story, the mystery and the characters are very entertaining. The comedy is also quite good (wink wink).
Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar.
From the very first sentence to the last, this book completely absorbed me. The main story around Cyrus and his relationship with grief and death was extremely compelling, just like the little side stories following the people that made him who he is. I also respect how Akbar is not afraid of talking about the gross and complicated parts of life, it makes the story feel even more intimate and personal. A modern classic, in my opinion.
Tehanu, by Ursula K. Le Guin
This book focuses on my favorite character, Tenar, which was great. I really appreciate having an older woman as the main character, and I love the female relationships in this book. I think the feminist themes are done pretty well, and there’s a lot of care and tenderness put into Therru’s story. Earthsea is a wonderful series overall, and Le Guin is one of the greatest fantasy authors of all time.
Go Tell It on the Mountain, by James Baldwin.
Baldwin is one of my favorite authors, I love his style and the themes he talks about in his work. Go Tell It has almost no “plot”, it’s mostly made up of lengthy flashbacks and internal monologues, and I personally enjoy that kind of book. The way that the characters intertwine and influence each other is so natural and realistic that you get tangled up in the psyche of this family, and their love and hatred for each other is written in a really beautiful way. I’m a fan of stories that focus on family dynamics, so this book has everything that I like reading about.
The Cyberiad, by Stanislaw Lem.
If you have read Solaris you know that Lem is a master at creating deep and soul-wrenching sci-fi stories. This is him showing that he’s just as good at being funny and ridiculous, and the best part is how Lem flexes his capabilities by having complicated narrative structures and beautiful prose in a book that amounts to a collection of overtly long jokes.
Favorite Manga & Comics.
Blame! by Tsutomu Nihei.
This manga is very quiet. There’s very little dialogue, and a lot of times you are just seeing the main character explore the City’s megastructure in silence, looking for something that can fix this dying and grim world. It’s a little confusing, but the strangeness of the setting is part of the appeal. Despite how bleak the story gets, there’s an undercurrent of hope that makes it very impactful. And I’m also a fan of cyberpunk angels with massive guns.
Watchmen, by Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons and John Higgins.
This was a really enjoyable series, a genuine criticism of the vigilante archetype made with clear love for the genre. I liked the hopeful but bittersweet ending and how it lets you draw your own conclusions about the future of this world, and I loved the theme around human connection—people trying to make bonds with others and how hard it is, what happens when you lose your connection with the rest of humanity. That stuck with me.
Skip and Loafer, by Misaki Takamatsu.
Peak slice-of-life. Great art, great characters, great story—this series is simply perfect. It takes me back to being an awkward teenager, and it captures the fears and anxieties of those years in incredible detail, just as it captures the joy of spending time with your high school friends.
Run Away With Me, Girl, by Battan.
A sweet little romance with flawed but endearing characters that you want to root for. The series discusses some hard topics like homophobia and domestic violence, but these moments only give the happy ending even more weight, it feels like you have been following these characters for much longer, and seeing them get together really hits.
Hellboy, by Mike Mignola.
I love Mignola’s art style and the way he combines different myths and folklore into Hellboy’s universe. The world-building is amazing, and the characters are incredibly charming. I will always fall in love with tragic characters, so Hellboy quickly became one of my favorite characters of all time, but besides being doomed by fate, he’s just really funny. Perfect balance.
Favorite TV Shows & Movies.
Pluto.
This was my first Urazawa work, and it didn’t disappoint. The story is sadly very relevant today, and that may have influenced my feelings when watching. I think robots are an interesting tool to write about prejudice, but here the robot-as-minorities metaphor isn’t the main source of conflict, it’s the horrors of war and its very real human victims, and I think that’s a more respectful approach to the topics discussed in the show. It’s short, but it says what it has to say.
The Green Knight, directed by David Lowery.
1) I love Dev Patel; 2) I love a weird little story; and 3) I love when characters have to confront the consequences of their actions and are sad and tortured about it the whole time.
The Boy and the Heron, directed by Hayao Miyazaki.
I was only able to watch it once in theaters, so my memory is not super detailed, but it really moved me, and it felt like the culmination of everything about Miyazaki’s work that I enjoy. There’s whimsy, magic, and a deep love for the world and the medium of animation that can be felt in every scene. I’m not sure if this is Miyazaki’s best movie, but it certainly feels worthy of being his final work (even if it probably isn’t).
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End.
This started last year, but I need to mention it. There have been a lot of good fantasy shows this year, but Frieren has a special place in my heart. Having a female main character is always a plus for me, but all the characters are really charming. It also helps that the animation and the soundtrack are beautiful.
Interview With the Vampire.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, IWTV is the best show of the year! I’m a big fan of stories that focus on storytelling itself, and unreliable narrators are something that we need to see more of on TV, in my opinion. There are so many layers to the writing that you can spend days picking apart every aspect of the show. It’s deep and complex, and extremely tragic, but also so funny and campy. The way Jacob Anderson says “picking lint off the sofa?” in S2E5 is the funniest thing in the world. This show contains multitudes, so please just go watch it already.
So, that’s my list. A lot more diverse than I expected it to be, there’s a little bit of everything—historical fiction, high fantasy, contemporary, horror, sci-fi… I think I’ve done a pretty good job at getting out of my confort zone this year. I do need to get better at keeping up with recent releases, most of the time I get into something months or years after it’s relevant, but there’s only so much one person can do. What have you enjoyed this year?