Five Great Books to Open Up This New Year

December is one of those downtimes in terms of new releases. Everyone’s attention is focused on presents, and the best books of the year are the ones which tend to get a big boost (for our own list of the standouts in 2024, see here). But this doesn’t mean one can’t find gems if they are willing to look hard enough.

Here are five recommendations that might feel a little left of field but will leave you fascinated. 

THE REST IS SILENCE, Augusto Monterroso 

New York Review Books Classics, pp. 208

A lesser-known (but no less important) figure in what came to be known as the Latin American Boom, Monterroso is rightly considered one of the forebears of flash fiction, or mini-ficción in Spanish, as well as the author of what is customarily considered one of shortest (if not the shortest) stories ever written, “The Dinosaur”: “When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.” 

The Rest Is Silence, first published in 1978, happens to be his only novel, an exquisitely ironic send-up of Mexico’s literary scene, its cliquey mentality and vanities. I don’t mean this is for everybody but if you are a fan of Cortázar and Borges, you wonder where Bolaño’s The Savage Detectives draws inspiration from, and lately you have enjoyed Machado de Assis’ rediscovery, then this is the book for you.

Translated from Spanish by Aaron Kerner.

CABIN: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman, Patrick Hutchinson 

St. Martin’s Press, pp. 304

As a thirty-something would-be writer who has done very little manual labour, it might come as no surprise that I harbour a secret fantasy – one I am endlessly embarrassed by – to build my own cottage-cum-studio. 

Cabin: Off the Grid Adventures with a Clueless Craftsman by would-be Hunter S. Thompson turned carpenter Patrick Hutchinson tells the author’s own journey restoring a little cabin in the Pacific South-West. By turns earnest and self-deprecatingly funny, it reneges on any sort of Henry Thoreau’s high-minded romanticism and instead gently drives the point home that no matter what you do in life, what really makes the experience worthwhile are the friends you makes along the way. 

SELECTED AMAZON REVIEWS, Kevin Killian 

Semiotexte, pp. 664

Including around 2,500 entries and totalling more than a million words in length, Selected Amazon Reviews is a compendium of the reviews that poet Kevin Killian left on the ubiquitous e-commerce giant’s website during a period spanning 2004 and 2019, the year of his passing. Taken up as an exercise to ease back into writing after a heart attack left him unable to do so in 2003, it alternates between zany endorsements of everyday consumer products, heartfelt homages to old Hollywood stars whose ghostly presence survives on DVD, and spurious digressions about his personal biography.

As any such encyclopaedic book of its kind, it’s supposed to be sampled and perused slowly rather than read, but it’s full of gems such as when the author tells the (likely made up) story of when at a book signing he mistook Anthony Bourdain for French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu.

COL TEMPO: 1956-2024, Guido Guidi 

Mack Books, pp. 424

As a lover of art catalogues (which I would happily collect if I had the cash), I have long been meaning to include art books in these round-ups, but couldn’t quite find any that would fit. 

Accompanying a comprehensive retrospective at Maxxi in Rome and documenting the photographic practice of Guido Guidi’s, one of Italy’s foremost photographers – Col Tempo: 1956-2024, feels like the perfect place to start. 

It’s not just that the photographs are stunning – abstract, geometric paintings under the guise of everyday, peripheral landscapes. Guidi, together with Luigi Ghirri, was the part of a new generation of photographers that, in portraying the subtle yet pervasive ripple effects of industrialisation and consumerism, perfectly captured the changing face of postwar Italy. 

WHAT IN ME IS DARK: THE AFTERLIVES OF PARADISE LOST, Orlando Reade

Jonathan Cape, pp. 272

What is the impact of a book? In the age where a tweet by Elon Musk has more clout than a thousand pamphlets combined, books can appear as a negligible, even gratuitous thing. However, as Orlando Reade’s What In Me Is Dark shows, there are some classics that not only stand the test of time, but whose continuous re-reading in different times and different places have had a tangible effect on history. 

Not sure if this study on the revolutionary (and sometimes rabidly reactionary) fans of Paradise Lost will make you take the step and try your luck with Milton’s notoriously difficult epic poem, but still, it stands as a powerful example of what sharing literature can and should do. (The author draws on his own experience of teaching the text in New Jersey prisons while being a graduate student.)

Bartolomeo Sala is a writer and reader based in London. His writing has appeared in Frieze, Vittles, and The Brooklyn Rail.

Header image courtesy of Mack Books.