Reading has become one of my biggest hobbies this year in 2024! As a way to celebrate and start a new tradition, I will be writing a round-up of my TOP TEN favourite books out of all the ones I read this year!
STATS
2024 TOTAL BOOKS READ: 28!!
Shortest Book: 24 pages
Longest Book: 512 pages
Average Book Length: 150 pages
Original Goal: 10 books
End: 280% of Goal Reached!
The initiation of my newly revitalized reading habit all started with the Trans Rights Readathon that took place from March 22nd to March 29th. The Readathon “is an annual call to action to readers and book lovers in support of Trans Day of Visibility (TDOV) on March 31st” as per the website. Many people who do this reading help drive fundraisers for transgender organizations or individuals that matter to them. I ended up starting late, but still was inspired to push and read the things I’ve been dying to read but could not focus on enough to get read. I kept telling myself I would “have time later” to read or whatever other excuse. This was the year I would read, though!
So, how did I manage to go from lacking a studious reading habit to reading 28 books in one year? AUDIOBOOKS! There’s nothing to be ashamed of when using an audio book. Audiobooks helped give me a way to engage with educational texts without having to spend 100% of my time IN the book physically. I love to annotate a book up, don’t get me wrong. Often I need to be drawing for my work and I have found it was much easier to parse through and digest knowledge while working on something that was not occupying the “language” part of my brain. As an ADHD’er too, I actively seek stimulation in all “areas” of my senses while working on art. So, filling the sound void with audiobooks when I’m not listening to music, radio or podcasts has greatly improved my life.
With visual art and my previous employment at a print shop, I could focus on the process of creation while ingesting the book I want to read. Sometimes – actually, very often – I would have the physical book on my shelf and keep it out to look at images within to accompany the audiobook, or to go back and forth reading from the book when I wanted to and continuing through audiobook from where I left off at. Audiobooks are ALL about ACCESSIBILITY! I’ll give some recommendations of where I get them at the end of the article too.
For now, let’s get started taking a look at all these awesome BOOKS!
List is created in chronological order, as touchstones that stood out to me on my reading journey throughout this year.
10. Transgender History [Second Edition: The Roots of Today’s Revolution]
by Susan Stryker
April 2024 for Trans Rights Readathon
A huge impactful book on me this year, Susan Stryker is such an important voice in our community bringing trans realities to the forefront in all her work. An American professor, historian, author, filmmaker and theorist, she brings us all the history about our kin that we missed growing up in ‘Transgender History.’
The omitted things, the stuff they don’t tell you in our society, but…
WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN HERE.
This book is not only important but will save lives as we face down fascism in 2025. It is physical proof that we have always existed. The covered years in this book span from the mid-twentieth century up to today’s world. We have left our mark on history as transgender queer people, and we won’t be forgotten as tomorrow brings us the future for us to continue to inhabit.
9. Doom Patrol issues 70 – 79 (Coagula Arc) written
by Rachel Pollack
April 2024 for Trans Rights Readathon
Rachel Pollack is a blessing and this was my very first work of hers I have read. Rachel Pollack was a Jewish trans woman who worked as a science fiction author, comic book writer, and expert on divinatory tarot. Her writing is phenomenal and brings to light the lives that were once thought of as mysteries to the public eye. After writing fan letters to Grant Morrison, she took over the Doom Patrol comics as a writer from 1993 to 1995, spanning issues 64 – 87. Over the course of her time writing Doom Patrol, she approached rarely spoken of topics like menstruation, sexual identity and being transgender otherwise known at the time and equally still today as transsexuality.
Through the 10 issue run of Coagula’s story, she introduces the very first transgender superhero in any mainstream comic. Coagula is a trans woman and a lesbian who has a superpower making her able to change the state of matter of things, turning them from solid state to liquid, or liquid to solid, “coagulating” things or to “dissolve” things. It’s pretty whacky, but works so well in unique ways throughout the story. In the first issue she “dissolves” a misogynistic villainous man’s giant crotch cannon weapon, emasculating and embarrassing him to boot! Her power has great comedic value and coolness factor.
What was a highlight of the run for me was her relationship to her new comrade Cliff Steele. She encounters his struggles with identity, aiding and comforting him by recounting personal experiences from being trans. She relates it to his identity crisis, which was brought upon by a malicious thief downloading his data and creating mass copies of Cliff’s robot selves to serve as an army to take over the world with. Through Coagula’s insightful wisdom shared, Cliff overcomes his uncertainty of who the REAL Cliff Steele in versus the duplicates.
Here’s one of my favourite excerpts about knowing who you really are versus what others say you are or will be:
“You’re right, Cliff, you CAN’T prove who you are. None of us can. If we try to PROVE we exist, we’re just suckers. And if we ask OTHER PEOPLE to tell us we’re real, we’ve lost everything. Cliff, listen to me, all you can do…all any of us can do — is make a decision. You’ve got to say from all the way down “THIS is who I am. I’m Cliff Steele, and I’M A HUMAN BEING.”
A basic lesson in autonomy over your identity, free will, and the choice we have to make on determining who we want to be in this world. Although it is a science fiction aspect of the story to be literally fighting against clones of yourself, hoping they aren’t replacing you…it sounds pretty 1-for-1 compared to the trans experience of facing down your socially known “clone” of the “assigned gender” your possibly unsupportive family wants to keep you as and continues to see you as, replacing the real you that stands before them begging for them to see you as you see yourself. How it feels to be inhabiting a hollow, false identity, very much relates to this far-fetched idea of clones replacing the real you and losing sense of WHO you are and WHAT you are in the process (repression, being stuck in the closet for safety, etc.)
Later on in the run, Cliff’s body is completely destroyed sending him through a worsening identity crisis issues where he now has lost his bodily autonomy after not having much to begin with in regards to his robotic body. Keep in mind this is a man’s consciousness in a brain loaded into a machine form by the genius leader of the Doom Patrol, Niles Caulder. Cliff uncovers and discusses some trauma around the body Niles shoved his consciousness in to begin with, because there was never much choice he had in the matter. He eventually gets to decide his remade body, and feels right in it thereafter in the story.
There’s a lot of transhumanist aspects to this run, and it dares to face head-on issues transgender people experience through a science fiction lens using Cliff Steele, a cisgender man, as a subject to show that even though he is not transgender, we share experiences with people all the same when it comes to bodily autonomy, choice, and identity. From “passing” politics to understanding that it is YOU who decides who YOU are and what YOU get to look like, Pollack shows us how all of that is very important to the core aspects of self and understanding who we are innately no matter if you are cisgender or transgender.
8. Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir
by Kai Cheng Thom
June 2024 – Pride Month and Summer Reading Challenge
In June of 2024 I started the Summer Reading Challenge at one of the libraries I frequented. One of my favourite parts of that was listening to the author-read audiobook of ‘Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars’!
Kai recalls her past through a lens of a semi-fictional world where a runaway “boy” leaves to become a girl full time in the city of Lights and Smoke. There is so many tributes to trans feminine experiences through her experiences knowing and loving trans women in the city and in the only places they could call home: The Street of Miracles. In this world, trans feminine people are the most frequently targeting demographic in the queer community. Especially trans women of colour. This book is by trans femmes for trans femmes. She is imperfect as well as an embodiment of never ending change. Her search for happiness is all about becoming the greatest escape artist known to mankind. She is a light in this world I hope never goes out. Read. This. Book.
7. All Boys Aren’t Blue
by George M. Johnson
June 2024 Pride Month and Summer Reading Challenge
A phenomenal memoir and manifesto combined, an important story of Black queer life and upbringing from a 33 year old. As a 33 year old now when I write this, I understood exactly the world that George M. Johnson grew up in (the 90’s). George educates the reader on the growing up experience of Black queer folk throughout his life going from a predominantly Black school system to a primarily white one where he had to code switch, back to a predominantly Black college experience. When within community of fellow Black students, he was able to feel at home with his Black identity, but still fought with his queerness as he stated his community was not welcoming to “that gay shit” etc.
He wrestles for most of his life with his secrecy about being gay in a time and in communities where it was not accepted, even if people tended to get the feeling he was and often directly asked him. He ran from these accusations, and proclaimed straightness to protect himself. Living in the closet is NEVER easy. It is not something we do with joy. It is painful to lead almost a double life.
Growing up, he experienced sexual abuse at the hands of older queer men/boys. This caused him extra difficulty in coming out, but through college experiences with queer sex that was consensual, he was able to navigate his sexuality more.
George also goes through the very queer and gender non-conforming experience of changing his names. He originally went by Matthew, but learned later his real name was George. He didn’t adopt it until later, when he was able to be reborn in a way. George also had a cousin who is a transgender woman, and through his young life her experiences made him consider “am I trans because I do feminine things?” as his gender expression was much different than your typical cis boys too.
As a feminine queer man myself, I was able to really understand and connect to George’s experiences with gender and femininity.
George’s experiences are incredible and eye-opening for the queer experience of Black cis gay men growing up in the 90’s, who are also gender non-conforming.
I highly recommend reading this or listening to the audiobook from Libby like I did – he even narrates it himself, and it is wonderful. Really important memoir for queer history.
Thank you to George M. Johnson for being so vulnerable in this book.
6. Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring
by Brad Gooch
June 2024 – July 2024 End of Pride Month into my Birth Month and listened to while Moving (Summer Reading Challenge)
(CW: NSFW / 18+ art subjects discussed in regards to Keith Haring’s work below & drug mention)
One memoir that touched me in many deep ways, providing a view into the turbulent and short life of Keith Haring. The biography took me about one month of listening through an audiobook over the course of time that I moved cities over the Summer.
Keith Haring is the originator of the term and practice of ‘artivism‘ as a gay man living through the 60’s – 90’s, seeing and being afflicted by the AIDS crisis, and eventually passing from AIDS Related Complications later in his life after being told he no longer had AIDS.
He grew up in a suburb to a simple family in a rural area, learning art from the get go and practicing shared creativity with his father. He was defiant in youth, and remained so throughout his entire life. He never wanted to blend in, and wanted to stand out – having SOMETHING to SAY! Keith Haring also loved kids, and led a lot of child-friendly art events and invited children to draw on his murals with him, down to the very somber and heartfelt end.
Once Haring made it to New York City, he began being a subway and street graffiti artist. He was enamored with a tagger who he later found out was Jean-Michel Basquiat. He became close friends throughout his entire life with him. He also knew Andy Warhol closely. These American artists were some of the greats. Keith Haring was widely known for his staunch support of public health education and touched on AIDS in a lot of his work. It changed his entire life. However, long before his diagnosis, he was also reinventing the wheel so to speak in the world of design.
With his iconic symbols – characters you could call them, as they took on a life of their own and became repeated imagery in his lexicon of graphics and parts of his identity to choose from. He also often reflected the world in his world. From crawling newborn babies, to barking dogs, to giant penises forcibly turned into “snakes” after the local French authorities took offense to the mural of two queer men jacking each other off. Keith Haring left a huge impact wherever he went, always leaving murals in his wake. He did them for free, sometimes for pay, sometimes for a meal, sometimes for a story, or a favor. Or for an activist’s cause. He also fought back against the “war on drugs” from a personal position of losing friends to crack cocaine.
Although the “war on drugs” became a pipeline to forced prison labor for communities of colour enacted by the Reagan administration, some of the efforts had the right idea and that idea is what Keith drew upon when making his technically illegal mural – his mural being where the term “CRACK IS WHACK” originated from during the Reagan era. After being jailed for painting the mural, he was recognized for the efforts to fight back against cocaine addiction and death and the mural was made into a historical marker. There’s so many other big moments too.
Above all to understand Keith Haring is to understand his ideas on “ART IS FOR EVERYBODY” which was represented in how he supported and uplifted fellow artists around himself. He also eventually opened a “pop shop” that brought his art down from the galleries in to the masses’ hands for an affordable cost on t-shirts, stickers, tote bags, etc.
There is so many layers to Keith Haring’s brief life that he spent on this world. He did not live past the beginning of his 30’s. He died lovingly surrounded by family and those who loved him in his life and knew him. His parents held him close as he passed from AIDS related complications in 1990.
As an artist, Keith Haring is now a phenomenal and needed example that inspires me to work harder and be kinder and get the message out today about our current pandemic – the COVID-19 pandemic. Along with this pandemic, we face heightened transphobia and queerphobia unrelated to the illness but still pervasive in today’s environment nonetheless. I want to fight back against that too, inspired by him. I want to take the same passion Keith had to the world of ‘artivism’ in modern day. May Keith’s memory always be a blessing to everyone who thinks of him, I know his work and existence does so for me. <3
Thank you Keith Haring.
5. The Will To Change
by bell hooks
June 2024 (Summer Reading Challenge)
bell hooks continues to impress me at every turn. This year I have been delving more into her books, and trying to get through as many as possible as if hungry for the solutions to the universe’s wrongdoings. In ‘The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love” it is a powerful deconstruction of the entire workings of the patriarchy and how it has effects on men too. Although the men discussed in this book were obviously cisgender men, I gained a lot from this as a trans man too as it delves mostly into the social workings of being a man in society and answering the question of “what is patriarchy” and how do we help dismantle it by being men who love.
The topics covered within this breakdown of patriarchy from the male perspective include asking where are the men who love, introducing patriarchy and how to understand it, assigned male childhood upbringing, how to stop male violence, male sexual being, the working world, feminist manhood, pop culture and “media masculinity,” healing male spirit, reclaiming male integrity and thoughts on loving men.
Ultimately this book creates a vision of hope for men in a society that wants us to choose violence. When faced with the choice, choose love. Men who love are needed.
4. All About Love
by bell hooks
October 2024 (Read during my job at a print shop via audiobook, on my long commutes to and from work)
‘All About Love’ struck me as something so necessary, yet so often goes untaught in our society: how to love. How do we LOVE? Properly? Healthily? Our media does us a disservice in over-simplifying if not giving direct misinformation on how romance works. Love does not happen in a moment’s notice, it is something we actively choose to work on over a long period of time. We are always loving. “Love is an act of will.” Love is a verb.
Not only is love all of these things, but there are various different types of love outside of romantic love that bell hooks covers chapter-by-chapter in this book. The types of love include…
- Grace, to be touched by love
- Clarity, to give love words
- Justice, childhood love lessons
- Honesty, being true to love
- Commitment, letting love be love in me
- Spirituality, divine love
- Values, living by a “love ethic”
- Greed, simply love
- Community, loving communion
- Mutuality, the heart of love
- Romance, sweet love
- Loss, loving into life AND death
- Healing, redemptive love
- Destiny, when angels speak of love
These are the chapters, but they also delineate the array of love types we experience and produce as human beings in this society. This was written in the year 2000, so bell hooks has lived and loved a lot to get to these lessons and this way to distill the information about love into something comprehensive by anyone. Something bell hooks does that I look up to a lot is she takes complex things and makes them understandable by everyone, she makes harder concepts about life very accessible for the common man to approach. Although she is an academic, she never positions herself above others in a way that alienates those of us in society who lacked access to education. She welcomes everyone in and through relating to her own life in anecdotes, she delivers expertly the meaning of life basically in this book all about love. It changed me and inspired me to continue my work in art and activism, for I am inspired by great love to do so. Pick up this book too if you’re curious on how to love on purpose. This book is life-changing, and life-saving.
3. Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future
by Jason Stanley
November 2024 (Read while working at the print shop on commutes to and from, specifically during my post-election grief and feverish beginnings of seeking info about fascism and how to survive it)
‘Erasing History’ serves as an urgent warning to all who live in America facing the uprising of fascism starting in our schools and going well beyond everything. A Yale professor, Jason F. Stanley wrote ‘How Fascism Works’ the predecessor to this book, but I dived right into the 2nd in the series and it stands alone just fine. Stanley discusses throughout this book the how the authoritarian right is working very hard and efficiently to annihilate public education, silence teachers, and use taxpayer money to undo a century of work to advance social justice action on race, gender, sexuality and class. He uses history and compares it to his research on the modern right’s actions against society and humanity.
I read this as a considerably essential text on figuring out how the right is working in hopes of disrupting their attempts to harm society. I am just one person but I hope I can be of aid to stop fascism with my artwork. This book provides an infuriating look at the reality of what they are doing to roll back the clock on rights for everyone, but urges us to act and lays out how to act too! Essential reading for current times we face!
2. Real Queer America
by Samantha Allen
December 2024 (post-election and post-layoff from my print shop job)
Nothing short of a blessing, this book I immediately found home in as I related a lot to the predicaments the trans and queer people interviewed experienced. The fact many chose to stay in their hometowns, or the rural areas they moved to and call home now, is fascinating and brave. As someone who is deeply conflicted on if I should flee to a blue state or not (or let’s be honest, if I can afford to), this book provides insight and a look into the valid reasons why many people choose NOT to run. Not that running is bad, but a lot of these brave souls decided they wanted to look the problem in the face and tell it to “go f*** itself and to fix its heart or die.“ They want to make space for queer lives especially in the South but also any red state in the USA.
There are many lives that Samantha Allen interviews along a countrywide tour or just times she has traveled in her reliable old car. Some of the trips were deliberately for interviews, some were on the way to her gender-affirming bottom surgery. Over the course of 5 years – through much of the Trump administration and up to 2019 right before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, she talks to people and shines a light on their stories within this book. This not only provides proof that queerness does exist in the south, in red states, but also proves that our communities are going strong in many places one would consider too dangerous to live within as a queer person. While you might not see a queer person on every block in these places, the beauty of rural life is allowed and owed to trans and queer people too. The conservatives cannot have everything.
This book also provides real life stories about what kind of things each person does to help that queer community flourish in their areas. It’s a heartwarming book that really gets down to what makes queer community so important, and necessary in all places despite the opposition of fascist regimes. I read this as we look onwards to a “Take 2” of the Trump administration and it has brought me hope of surviving a modern fourth reich and providing queer community here in the south through my zines and my art. I hope I can manifest a queer southern reality like these people in the book did during the first Trump presidency. I hope I can survive the second Trump presidency. I hope I can live and make it known trans people can survive anything. Despite everything, I will hopefully remain still someday. Thank you to Samantha Allen for providing a light on red state queer and trans stories and lives. I felt so seen by this book and even know some of the people mentioned within (the Briggle family specifically being a Dentonite <3)
1. Let This Radicalize You
by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba
November 2024 (post-election, during my print shop job)
Finally, wrapping up this list is my number 1 book I recommend: Let This Radicalize You! Absolutely incredible collection of real-lived experiences from organizers for a better world is tied together with the wisdom from Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba. This book is an inspiring text that provides a valuable resource for organizing a revolution and resistance effort- an anti-fascist way of life. The life promoted in this book is one that prioritizes the lives of all those living not just a select few, especially holding space for those most marginalized among us. There are many things we CAN do to provide reciprocal care and assistance towards justice in this unjust world. Reciprocal care is one where we take care of each other and those most vulnerable while doing the work necessary to create a better tomorrow for those we leave the world behind for. It helped me figure out how I want to fit in to the anti-fascist community as an artist, too
The recounted stories and experiences in this too, show a lot of what it was like organizing for and within activist movements for change was like during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and after the murder of George Floyd. Covered are formations of mutual aid, a ways we can learn and apply those lessons to helping save the future through mass acts of care, resistance, defense and rescue of those in danger. The future shows us that we will face great challenges in the realm of climate change, environmental disasters, and oppressive state-led violence. This book helps and prepares one for providing reciprocal care to those in need, inspiring many to take action in some way, wherever you are.
As we have limited time before all hell breaks loose in the USA, this book is phenomenal and that is why I moved it to the #1 spot as a recommendation to all who took the time to read this article. Read this book and join the fight to continue existing despite the oppressive forces of the state working against us all! We will survive this together. Stay hopeful, and stay safe.
Thank you for reading all about my Top 10 2024 Reads!
WHERE I GET BOOKS TO READ:
Libby.app Library Access to 3 specific libraries, one being the North Texas Digital Consortium through my local North Texas libraries I visit and then these two which are virtual:
– Houston Public Library does free virtual library cards for ANY Texas resident near or far!
– The Queer Liberation Library does free virtual cards for anyone anywhere in the world! There is just a brief waiting period before you are distributed a card in e-mail, so sign up today!
I have some books from Audible, but only because I was not aware of the better counterpart to it and started a lot of audiobook reading through Audible first on a shared account with a family member. Some titles are exclusive to them too, but not very many.
Libro.fm is the best alternative to buying audiobooks comparable to Audible I’ve come to find out.
It’s better ethically speaking because you won’t be funding a billionaire like with Amazon stuff, and every sale you get either with credit or without benefits an independent bookstore of your choosing. Local choices are often the best! I am supporting Patchouli Joe’s of Denton, TX of course!
These resources might be available if your local library or one near you provides an access account to them. I am not sure if you can make a public solo account but it’s worth checking out!
- Freading – Another popular source for audio books, Freading has an expanding catalog of titles!
- Hoopla Digital – Audiobooks, a GREAT comics selection, ebooks, movies, music, and television!
- Lightbox Learning – interactive educational ebooks geared towards kids!
- Open Library App – a website too, this is another great resource for ebooks, and your library might have access to it through your library card.
And all of these small reviews of the books were all originally posted on my GoodReads, but I will actually be moving over and transferring my data to StoryGraph instead for 2025! Join me on StoryGraph and start a reading challenge for yourself for fun! Let us be able to read even more in 2025!
