Neil Serven

1. The Tailor of Panama, John Le Carré
2. Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm, Laura Warrell
3. The Last Thing He Wanted, Joan Didion*
4. Bonjour Tristesse, Françoise Sagan
5. Wayward, Dana Spiotta
6. The Waste Land and Other Writings, T.S. Eliot
7. Lit, Mary Karr
8. Manhood for Amateurs, Michael Chabon
9. The Cartographers, Peng Shepherd
10. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl, Carrie Brownstein
11. Liquid, Fragile, Perishable, Carolyn Kuebler**
12. Varieties of Exile, Mavis Gallant*
13. The Great American Novel, Philip Roth
14. It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth, Zoë Thorogood
15. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald*
16. Minor Characters, Joyce Johnson
17. In Universes, Emet North**
18. Olga Dies Dreaming, Xochitl Gonzalez
19. Finding a Likeness, Nicholson Baker
20. The Insides, Jeremy S. Bushnell
21. The Guest, Emma Cline
22. The Hydrogen Jukebox, Peter Schjeldahl
23. The Night Guest, Hildur Knútsdóttir** 
24. Mostly Dead Things, Kristen Arnett
25. Crook Manifesto, Colson Whitehead
26. Blood at the Root, Patrick Phillips
27. Creation Lake, Rachel Kushner**
28. Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov
29. See Friendship, Jeremy Gordon**
30. Always Happy Hour, Mary Miller
31. There Is Happiness, Brad Watson
32. The Seas, Samantha Hunt
33. The Complete Novels, Jean Rhys*
34. The Best American Short Stories 2024, Lauren Groff, ed.
35. The Name of This Band Is R.E.M., Peter Ames Carlin
36. The Ice Storm, Rick Moody*

*reread
**read as galley

Thirty-six is a steep drop from the 50 books I read last year, and I can’t account for what happened there. I didn’t vacation this year, and I took on greater responsibilities at work, which may have left me with less headspace. There was also, of course, the lingering specter of returning fascism. It was all over everything, prompting so much doomscrolling over engagement. They say that book sales see a decline in presidential election years.

Among these, a few of my favorites were galleys. Creation Lake was genuine Kushner, a cool narrator roaming around in a loose plot with space to do damage. The Night Guest was fast-moving horror that gave a window into Icelandic culture, while the similarly-named The Guest was smart and knowing around its coy young narrator. Emma Cline and Rachel Kushner remain two of my favorite writers working today. One thing that slowed me down was re-reading the novels of Jean Rhys—five in all, though I count them as one here—as I wanted to make my way around the cafes of gloomy foreign cities. Was glad to find Bonjour Tristesse out in the wild, finally.

I turn fifty this year. I am trying to make the novel make sense against a world of shifting threat, where people seem starved to make noise rather than add something. A short story got pushed back but is still due to come out in Post Road. I was fortunate to have a flash-fiction story treated with great editorial care by The Cincinnati Review. And one of the most personal pieces I’ve ever written, about the resentment I felt from growing up with chronically ill parents, appears in the current issue of The Pinch. All things equal, I can’t complain about where I am.