Story come to me in many different formats: books, audiobooks, podcasts, games, plays, movies, etc. etc. For the sake of finishing this blog in a timely way, I won’t dig into visual media (maybe in the future), so this piece is about stories I read, heard, or told aloud cooperatively.
Use the comments to talk about your favorite reads and other stories for the past year. Friend me on Goodreads so we can really discuss best books! I’m also on Storygraph.
Book Data
I like to keep records, and I list all books and audiobooks I consume on Goodreads as part of the yearly reading challenge. I sometimes note my books, games, and podcasts in my daily commonplace book entries, but could likely tweak that a bit for better data mining.
On Goodreads I recorded that I read or listened to thirty-one published books or audiobooks, cover to cover. I read many of these because I review books for Independent Book Reviews.
More and more I realize that tabletop roleplaying games provide me with many awesome stories. As best I can tell, last year I experiences eleven new (to me) storytelling games. And I enjoyed new scenarios in several systems that I’d played before, in addition to the long-running campaign setting I’ve been in for years. I won’t be including those in my tabulation; just too crazy-making.
I didn’t start listening to any new podcasts last year, although I continued with stories already underway.
So, a total of the forty-two new story experiences; nine of those were non-fiction and five were graphics format.
What Media are Eligible for My Best Stories?
- For this retrospective, I’m going with narratives I experienced in 2024, regardless of when they were published.
- The story’s format could be e-book, print, or audiobook/podcast. Games could be independent or conventionally published, in zine or book format. For ease of sentence structure, I declare the word “read” to mean “consumed the media.”
- The work was available to the public in 2024.
- While I love all story forms, by “book” I mean a length of at least 7500 words (novelette length). (No, I don’t count the words in graphic novels.)
How The Books Found Me
Mostly I learn about books for my job, either as a book reviewer, beta reader, or part of the Montag Press community. A few audiobooks popped up for me on Libby, the library audiobook app. I hear about games on social media, through friends, or when they are offer at gaming conventions.
Of the forty-two published stories I experienced last year:
- Five were from large, medium, or university publishers. (This category would include companies like DC Comics, Tordotcom, Chaosium Inc, etc.)
- Thirty-seven were from small press/author’s own imprint or zine format games.
I consumed one of the stories during my walks via audiobooks. I check the library’s random array of whatever-is-available when I need a book to listen to. These tend to be “Big Five” publications.
The Stories That Most Touched Me in 2024
I’m not comfortable with stars, rankings, and the like. (I love both apples and oranges as well as blueberries. No need to compare them.) So, this list is ordered quasi-inverse-sequentially, if any system at all can be determined.
Mythmakers: The Remarkable Fellowship of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien
John Hendrix. Abrams Books
Mythmakers is a lovely treat (I bought it for myself as a Christmas present), both in its fabulous illustrations and its bittersweet story of friendship and creativity.
From the website, “The Mythmakers, a graphic novel biography of two literary lions—C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien—following the remarkable story of their friendship and creative fellowship, and how each came to write their masterworks.”
A Sense for Memory: Part One
R.H. Stevens. Zirona Works.
A Sense for Memory is an unforgettable immersion into smart science fiction at its very best. Two stories compose the book, which treats the reader to a pair of engaging protagonists, each showcased in her own science fiction novella. This volume is the first in the Z-verse series.
See my review, here.
Who Killed Leanne?
Mira Gibson. Mystery Royalty
Who Killed Leeanne? delivers a twisty mystery but also takes a deep dive into psychological thriller territory as the reader follows aspiring writer Leeanne Hessinger through the last year of her life. As we learn about Leeanne, her past, and the string of bad decisions that define her relations with the Liberty community, the picture of her ultimate demise slowly shifts into focus. Check out my review, here.
The Eyre Affair: Thursday Next #1
Jasper Fforde. Penguin Random House
From the Goodreads blurb: Thursday Next is a literary detective who goes inside books from her futuristic time-travel world.”
I started tumulus 2024 listening to The Eyre Affair on walks. I really enjoyed it. Imaginative alternative history worldbuilding; fun, cool characters; and so many English-major in-jokes and Easter eggs. My heart is full.
Tabletop Roleplaying Cooperative Storytelling Experiences
I had a lot of fun playing games in 2024. Choosing a few as the best was difficult. Below are two standouts, but I must honorably mention (and link) a few others: Low Stakes, CHEW, and Good Soup. Read my Good Soup review, here.
The Wassailing of Claus Manor
Mike Martens, Michael Van Vleet, and Brian Sago. Clear Keep.
From the website, “A tabletop roleplay game of horrific holiday servitude.” The time is the Gilded Age (think Remains of the Day and Upstairs, Downstairs), and the place is the North Pole. The players as harried servants, aiming to keep the Claus family on task despite the eldritch horrors rattling the windows and tapping at the door.
Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern
Takuma Okada. Evil Hat Productions.
How many Dungeons and Dragons adventures start out in a tavern run by a retired adventurer? A lot. In Stewpot your character, tired of sleeping rough, perhaps, or just burned out from dragon slaying, retires. But as any retired person can tell you, life becomes busy and complicated quite soon.
See my previous best reads of 2020, here. 2021, here. 2022, here. 2023, here.
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