These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things (of 2024)
I wasn’t too enthusiatic about things this year as I was last year, I felt flustered trying to find things that were “good” rather than finding what properly connected with me, ending up overwhelming myself and not reading or watching as much as last year. Lesson learned, embrace cringe and enjoy and be critical and all that comes with it. I’m including a couple things from December of last year that I watched/read after my 2023 favourites list was posted (which you can check out here).
That being said, I still found some gems. Some things already highly praised (I left out things super highly praised like Anatomy of a Fall & Zone of Interest because if you haven’t watched them yet I don’t know what to tell ya), and maybe some things less so. I don’t know how niche I get, probably not much, but I hope you find some new favourites.
Books:
Woodworm by Layla Martinez, translated by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott- “The house is visited by ghosts, by angels that line the roof like insects, and by saints that burn the bedsheets with their haloes. It was built by a small-time hustler as a means of controlling his wife, and even after so many years, their daughter and her granddaughter can’t leave. They may be witches or they may just be angry, but when the mysterious disappearance of a young boy draws unwanted attention, the two isolated women, already subjects of public scorn, combine forces with the spirits that haunt them in pursuit of something that resembles justice.”
Guilt, shame, those things bleed into everything. There is no moving on, there is no moving forward. A story of evenness. Not quite balance. No one wins because no one can win. We will eat each other until there’s no more meat to give.
Original review here: Sometimes modern gothic novels don’t work very well because they are too concerned with classic gothic imagery and it falls flat. Wormwood is no such novel, I don’t even know if the intention was to be a gothic novel but a haunted house, full of angry ghosts, is difficult to define without the term. The book is about women, labour, class, society, it’s everything without being too much. It never feels like the book left something behind but it is never totally upfront because the two narrators are both hiding something whilst trying to explain to the reader. I normally roll my eyes when I see the term “female rage” because it’s usually a vapid label, but this book is seething with resentment. It is a terrifying calm radiating. Some wrongs can never be made right, and sometimes an eye for eye wont cure anything but damn does it feel good pulling the sucker out.
Brat by Gabriel Smith- “Left alone, Gabriel becomes convinced something strange is afoot; he feels as though he is constantly being watched, strange figures lurk outside his window, and the pieces of his parents' life, their manuscripts and video tapes, continue to change with each viewing.”
Original review here: I tried to explain this book to someone and felt like I was grabbing random strings in the air, I kept forgetting plot points and thought how the hell did it all flow together so well? This is one of my favourite reads of the year, it took me two evenings before bed to finish it. There are some great body horror moments that made my skin crawl. It’s body horror and a haunted house, how those two types of stories and themes compliment one another, rather than set as a contrast. A haunted house is typically haunted by memory and memory is a huge aspect of the book. Who remembers correctly and who’s perspective is most fitting to narrative and conclusion. How life often does not play by those narrative rules which is why often the haunted house story ends in tragedy because the traditional arc does not fit. A tragedy is anti-resolution, the unknown remains unknown. But it is not always loss, sometimes it is just a shift.
Signs, music by Raymond Antrobus - “A book of poetry that captures imminent fatherhood and the arrival of a child.”
Original review here: I gifted this to a family member who just had their first child immediately after finishing this. I’ve always loved Antrobus’ work and this might be my favourite, but I’ll need to reread the others before making the final judgement. Some poetry I find clunky, like sort of falling into each word, but Antrobus creates a beautiful flow in the work and I quickly consumed the whole collection in an afternoon, trying hard to take my time with it. It’s an honest work, and I know it sounds a bit lazy to call something honest, but there is a particular line that struck me: “Please don’t die.” Rarely do I read anything about parenthood so blatant. Parenthood is mystified, a shiny sheen of self-fulfillment when the reality is much different. Not less. Just different. The confrontation of how one’s own parents raised us, seeing them creep through the cracks into our behaviours. Trying and wanting to be different. It is a book about hope, guilt, frustration, the past and future. But mainly love.
So Much For Life: Selected Poems by Mark Hyatt - “Scarcely published in his lifetime, Hyatt’s work survives thanks to the intervention of poets and friends who saved his manuscripts and kept his poems in circulation. Queer in the decades before Gay Liberation; Romani; incarcerated in prisons and asylums; illiterate into adulthood: it’s tempting to read Hyatt according to the familiar script of the doomed poet, resounding with loneliness and isolation.”
Mess, beauty, love. So much love. One could argue loniless is the prominent emotion of the book but what is loniless without love? It’s love displaced is it not? I love the way Hyatt sees the world, a matter of factness mixed with humor, I think he would have been fun at the pub. There is an earnestness as well that seems harder and harder to find. A lack of self-seriousness and more concern with honesty, even when it’s not pretty. Hyatt’s wonderful Love, Leda was on my list last year and here he is again!
Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood - “Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves the big city to return to the area where she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of New South Wales. She doesn't believe in God, yet finds herself living a strange, reclusive existence almost by accident.”
This book makes me think of water lapping on a lake. It manages to convey quiet and stillness so well whilst filling out the page, never boring. I, like the protagonist, wanted to stay in this world, to escape, only for reality to slam its palms down. It reminds me of the title of a book by Matthieu Simard: The Country Will Bring Us No Peace. You cannot escape the enevitable, only bow your head and pretend it’s not coming.
Blackouts by Justin Torres: “Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly but who has haunted the edges of his life: Juan Gay. Playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized, Juan has a project to pass along, one built around a true artifact of a book―Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns―and its devastating history. This book contains accounts collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried. The voices of these subjects have been filtered, muted, but it is possible to hear them from within and beyond the text, which, in Juan’s tattered volumes, has been redacted with black marker on nearly every page. As Juan waits for his end, he and the narrator recount for each other moments of joy and oblivion; they resurrect loves, lives, mothers, fathers, minor heroes. In telling their own stories and the story of the book, they resist the ravages of memory and time. The past is with us, beside us, ahead of us; what are we to create from its gaps and erasures?”
Original review here: Had I read this sooner, it would be my book of 2023! Bit late to the party but at least we got here. I read it in less than 12 hours, telling myself just a couple more pages until I had to force myself to go to bed at 1am and finish the last 10 pages in the morning. It’s so well written, it felt like butter. Cutting through with ease. The description above basically tells you everything you need to know. It’s a fantastic book that I will be thinking about for a long time and recommending to everyone.
Special Mentions:
Ponyboy by Eliot Duncan
The Eight Mountains by Paolo Cognetti
Cassandra At The Wedding by Dorothy Baker
The Employees by Olga Ravn
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Music:
Youtube playlist of this year’s favourite’s HERE, inlcuding songs not included in favourite albums (either because they’re B-sides, singles for albums to come in 2025 or I didn’t connect with the whole album).
I Got Heaven by Mannequin Pussy, March 1st 2024
I had initially taken this album to be angry just because it was loud. It does contain that emotion,a lot of it, but it’s mainly about desire. Not love letters, watching through the window yearning, but that feeling of wanting someone so much you want to tear out your hair and yell into a pillow because you can’t sleep. It’s like you’re frustrated with yourself for your wanting.
Silence Is Loud by Nia Archives, April 12th 2024
Maybe because I miss living in England so much this album has been on constant rotation for me. It’s incredibly British. It feels like summers long gone but not nostalgic, it’s a reminder that you are still here. Still alive and able. It makes me want to go sit in someone’s back garden, take a nap then have a night out.
Your Day Will Come by Chanel Beads, April 19th 2024
A sleeper hit. I wasn’t super into this album when it first came out, but I keep coming back to it. I find myself craving it, wander and hearing the song “Police Scanner” in my head. I imagine myself listening to this album for years to come, I won’t think much, I will simply put it on because it is right.
Um by Martha Skye Murphy, June 14th 2024
Dreamy Nine Inch Nails but also nothing of the sort. There are elements that remind me a lot of other musicians whilst being totally unique, vaguely folk to experimental with a rock flare. It’s transformative and sincinct.
Endlessness by Nala Sinephro, September 6th 2024
Rainy days. Pull the shutters. Find yourself in piles of people. There is so much beauty to be found in between the noise. Let Sinephro be your guide into the middle moments. Kind of record you put on and lay on the floor so you can take it all in and smooth out your edges.
My Method Actor by Nilufer Yanya, September 13th 2024
I have been a big fan of Yanya since the EP days so I’m bias but this album is an instant classic. She’s got a great mix of ruggedness with a proper production. An amazing combination of lyricism and melody, which I find rarer and rarer. Themes of a second-coming of age, feeling like time is running out and unsure of what you even want. An artist you’d want to show off to your kids that you knew back in the day and change their lives. In an age of singer-songer writers who all sound like copies of copies, Yanya is totally her own.
Special Mentions:
Non-2024 bonus list (idk why I stick to 2024 in music when I don’t do the same for books or films):
Tracey Denim by bar italia (2023)
Radio Red by Laura Groves (2023)
Dregs by Dregs (2023)
Euphoria by Insides (1993)
The 5 EPs by Disco Inferno (2011) [A compilation of their EPs from 1992, ‘93 & ‘94]
Film:
In A Violent Nature (2024), directed by Chris Nash - “When a group of teens takes a locket from a collapsed fire tower in the woods, they unwittingly resurrect the rotting corpse of Johnny, a vengeful spirit spurred on by a horrific 60-year old crime. The undead killer soon embarks on a bloody rampage to retrieve the stolen locket, methodically slaughtering anyone who gets in his way.”
I go back on myself a lot, in an end of the month round up I said Longlegs might be my favourite film of the year but in reality doesn’t even make the top 10. In A Violence Nature is the film I keep thinking about. It’s the one I go to on my day to day and remember something from, I delight in recollecting scenes. It is my favourite film of the year. A refreshment of a genre that should have died in the 80s but like Johnny, rises from the grave and can’t seem to be stopped. Its focus on brutality only highlights the Slasher genre, that has been time and time again bogged down by censorship and mass appeal. There’s no quick cut aways in this movie. Johnny is death, always making his way to you.
Good One (2024), directed by India Donaldson - “During a weekend backpacking trip in the Catskills, 17-year-old Sam navigates the clash of egos between her father and his oldest friend.”
A wonderful slow mediation, examining the intracacies of womanhood and how it clashes with ideas of manhood. What is considered and what is not. What is deemed acceptable. Who gets away with what. Notice who says thank you and who doesn’t even bother to look up. It is clear and concise without the need for speeches.
Sometimes I Think About Dying (2024), directed by Rachel Lambert - “A lonely and socially awkward woman tries to make a connection with a friendly new co-worker who takes her out on a date.”
Was a little surprised to put this on my favourites, given I was fairly lacklustre in my review of it back in January or February. But I haven’t stopped thinking about it since, the emptiness of isolation. The unbarable of silence. Having someone come into your life that makes you think maybe you don’t have to be that way. I included it my essay about The Loner Film (which is named after the film) and since then it has only grown on me.
Stopmotion (2024), directed by Robert Morgan - “A talented stop-motion animator becomes consumed by the grotesque world of her horrifying creations -- with deadly results.”
I keep thinking of a very particular scene in this film, which I cannot say because it would spoil it and I want you to watch it. The Brits have really been killing it with horror movies, I was going to say in the last 5 years, but I kind of think if you look over horror since the 60s, they always got some fantastic entries into the genre and this film is another one to log. Creepiest film of the year? Best stop-motion of the year for sure (and if you like this film I highly recommend 2021’s Mad God). Watch after dark with the lights off with a friend. Or alone if you’re like me and watch horror films solo because we have zero consideration for how our future selfs will sleep.
Afire (2023), directed by Christian Petzold - “Emotions run high for a group of friends in a holiday home by the Baltic Sea as the parched forest around them catches fire.”
I have a whole essay on this film here. I adore films with annoying and pathetic protagonists. I love them because, selfishly, I see a lot of myself in them. But they also offer hope, because they say maybe things can get better. But also maybe your pursuit of self-actualisation cannot be at the cost of ignoring what’s happening around you. You are in the world and there is no escape from that, even death is integral to living. Burying your head in the sand, preoccupied with looking like an artist, wont save you. I finally got this on DVD and a rewatch is imminent as my sister hasn’t seen it yet.
The Eight Mountains (2022), directed by Felix Van Groeningen & Charlotte Vandermeersch - “Two young Italian boys spend their childhoods together in a secluded alpine village roaming the surrounding peaks and valleys before their paths diverge.”
Another film that I have a whole essay on here. The film is like a thick wool blanket at your grandmothers house. It’s nostaglic, coming back to a place you were once a child but now as adult, it does not feel the same but you find yourself slip into old habits. The blanket over your head like a robe, moving from room to room. You can never go back, never recreate, but for a second maybe see it again. I got this on DVD along with Afire, perhaps a very good, existential double feature.
Special Mentions:
Amanda (2022), directed by Carolina Cavalli
Corpus Christi (2019), directed by Jan Komasa
The Holdovers (2023), directed by Alexander Payne
Fallen Leaves (2023), directed by Aki Kaurismäki
Perfect Days (2023), directed by Wim Wenders
I Saw The TV Glow (2024), directed by Jane Schoenbrun
Thank you for another great year of support of this substack! It means the world. I’m excited for another year of discovery and writing.
Much love <3
Thank you for reading,
Enya x