Maddi Chilton is an internet footprint.

2024 Year in Review

A few days into the year, but not quite a week yet, so we'll say we're doing good! It's time for my 2024 roundup. I used to do these on Medium, but we're all into blogs now, so it's as good a time as any to move over. I've abandoned top ten lists. Set numbers feel constricting; I'd rather just talk about things that I liked.

First, let's talk about books. I had a lazy reading year: my final total on Goodreads was 54, which is an absolutely pathetic number for me. Here's the full list. The big deal of the year was War and Peace, which I read, one chapter a day, for the entire year. I don't know if I'd recommend this tactic for tackling the mammoth of world literature, really. I was buddy reading with a friend for a while, and that went really well because we'd be talking about it as we went, but after she fell off I felt myself getting lazy and skimming, or skipping days and then playing disinterested catch-up. There's a lot of War and Peace that I really liked: I think Tolstoy has written some exceptional characters, and the inner machinations of Moscow and Petersburg society were very fun to follow. I love Natasha Rostova and her soap opera life, and I'm desperately upset she and Andrei never got married, because girl I was invested. However, the war parts…. listen. If I was reading this with more historical context, or reading it in a class where we were discussing as we go, I think I would have appreciated it more. As it was, though, I just got kinda lost and bored. That was a recurring feeling through the experience, and why I probably wouldn't advise anyone else to read War and Peace the same way — if you want to do it, do it across a month, maybe, and dedicate some real time to it instead of stretching it out like this.

tolstoy

I read a couple more books by Christopher Buehlman, a favorite of mine whose back catalog I'm getting through at a decent pace. The Necromancer's House had aspects that I'd say didn't age well, but I think about the main character every time I wander around in public in a flowy flowered robe. Those Across The River is similar; it definitely feels like an earlier work, but it's still so undeniably good, the product of a creative and interesting author who's trying to do something new within his genre. His most recent book, The Blacktongue Thief, is an absolutely excellent fantasy, and it breaks away from the curse of the proper noun that I'm always raging on about. Next year I'm excited to get to the rest of his work, especially The Suicide Motor Club.

I read the International Booker Prize longlist as well, and wrote about it for Unwinnable in a couple parts. Out of those, The House on Via Gemito was the undeniable standout, an impressive and lyrical family saga that was so dense I couldn't drag myself out of it for a week. The other one I'd like to mention was The Silver Bone, an interesting detour for the Bookers as it's pretty transparently a genre mystery: I think the book is a good read, but what I really loved was the minor subplot about the main character's severed ear overhearing conversations in other rooms of his house. It's a very casual instance of magical realism and it bowled me over when I realized what was happening. And then the rest of the book is just like, crime! Great stuff.

There were two other pretty tremendous books I read this year. One I'd known about for ages, and only got to because of the repeated pestering of a good friend: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, the behemoth of contemporary fantasy, an absolute tour de force. It is insane that a human being with the same grey matter and nervous system and bone structure as myself wrote this book. It is insane that any one person could contain within their head the deeply established, self-referential, heavily historical but also entirely fictional world Susanna Clarke created and just casually dropped on the doorstep of her publisher after ten years of, I assume, doing some drug the rest of the world hasn't cottoned onto yet and automatic writing this thing as the spirit of guys she made up possessed her body. This is a hard book to get into. It is unforgiving. It is academic. It is big as fuck. It is, I cannot stress enough, so worth it. So is The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild, a book I picked up at random and read in its entirety during a two-day glamping weekend. There was more than one part in the book where I became furious that I was in a house with other people, that my real life was demanding my time when I just wanted to sink further and further into Mathias Enard's gorgeous achronology, spinning out across rural France, across time and space, across death. I have a hard time understanding how anyone could write that book, too. Can't recommend it enough.

I didn't read much nonfiction this year, which is quite weird for me. From what I did, I loved Zito Madu's memoir The Minotaur at Calle Lanza, which articulated something I've found hard to express about my own travel, about how it's such a privileged and enlightening experience but also so distancing, and how when you're alone in a place where you know no one and no one knows you you are both more yourself than you've ever been and also a different person entirely. I also enjoyed Paper Talk: Charlie Russell's American West because pretty pictures and touching correspondence and I'm so into Westerns right now.

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Other books I loved this year were Sarah Waters' Tipping the Velvet, a lush historical lesbian saga, Coy Hall's Colossus with a Poison Tongue, an deeply inventive occult fantasy, Rex Stout's Murder by the Book, perhaps my favorite so far of my comfort food Nero Wolfe series, and the Mad Max novelizations, which are, I must stress, not good, but still brought me joy.

The next thing that took up a lot of time this year was adaptations. I watched a lot of movies and then read a lot of books that those movies were based on, and vice versa. I've decided this is something I think is really fun! This interest was instigated almost entirely on New Year's Day, when I watched the movie Sleuth, from 1972, starring Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, and then immediately after watched the movie Sleuth, from 2007, starring Michael Caine and Jude Law. They're based on the same play, they're incredibly fun, and they do strikingly different things with basically the exact same material. For a while I was an adaptational purist; now I think I'm not anymore. This year I watched and read:

I had fun with all of those and would recommend them. I think Crash and True Grit are the standout pairs, and The Sympathizer is easily one of the best books I've ever read, but I think Park Chan-Wook's miniseries has its ups and downs. I want to point out The Set because it's something I never would have heard of were I not on Roger Ward's wikipedia page after my Mad Max freakout, and it's a fascinating little segment of queer history that's basically forgotten now — according to Goodreads I am the eighteenth person ever to log the book. A shame, because I love that guy! (Read my blog post about him sexually harassing Mel Gibson in the first Mad Max movie.)

sleuth

I watched a ton of fucking movies this year. Here's my Letterboxd: I have no idea how to filter to 2024. I need to be brief, because otherwise I won't be brief. Strange Days (1995) is my new New Years tradition, a grimy and violent showpiece of voyeuristic longing, an absolutely beautiful piece of craft. No one's ever been as captivating as Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett circling each other, certain in love but uncertain in the world, trying to take care of each other and figure it out as society collapses around them and still somehow carries on. Rollerball (1975) is a dull project that wastes James Caan but Rollerball (2002) is a delicious surprise and a shameless critique of the capitalist collar around the neck of professional athletics. Instinct (2019) is a movie I tried to hunt down for ages and it didn't disappoint; it approaches sexual assault with an unflinching frankness, and a respect for nuance, that means I can't imagine it ever being made in the US. Monkey Man (2024) was a fucking delight and I dragged everyone I know to go see it — I don't want to talk about how hot Rana Singh batting that firecracker out of the air is. Naked (1993) and Sexy Beast (2000) made me think of The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover and I want to watch as many more variants of "horrible man monologues horribly" as I can possibly find. I'm in the middle of an Alien/Predator marathon with some friends and so far Predator (1987) and Alien 3 (1992) are the standouts: I love The Most Dangerous Game, and I love David Fincher getting to make a big deal science fiction franchise into basically a paperwork movie. The Dollars trilogy was good but For A Few Dollars More (1965), specifically, is one of the best movies I've ever seen, containing the best dick measuring contest ever put to film. Lee van Cleef…. his gun is so big, listen.

There were a couple marathon days in there. One day I watched the Treasure Island miniseries (2012) with Eddie Izzard, Treasure Planet (2002), Muppet Treasure Island (1996), and the first episode of Black Sails: you really only need to watch Treasure Planet and Black Sails out of those. Another day I watched Frankenstein Unbound (1990), Mary Shelly's Frankenstein (1994), Hallmark's Frankenstein miniseries (2004), and another Frankenstein (2004) starring Parker Posey for some reason. Out of those, the Hallmark Frankenstein is far and away the best and I need one other human person to watch it so I know I didn't hallucinate Luke Goss and Donald Sutherland duking it out on that ship.

pitchblack

On January 19th I watched Pitch Black (2000), the goddamn Chronicles of Riddick movie. I have spent all year thinking about that goddamn Chronicles of Riddick movie. Pitch Black is dangerously close to the perfect science fiction film. It's so tight, a concept and a protagonist built to perfectly match that concept and all of the little satellites around him. It's kinda a western, and kinda a slasher, and the vehicle of the plot is just…. human fear, and human fallibility, buoyed only a bit by bad things out in the night. I was heavily influenced on my first watch by a recent conversation I'd had with a coworker about his time in prison, and so much of what Riddick became to me is that aspect of his character: his ruthless and societally accepted dehumanization, the way the fear of what he might do is weaponized by Johns against the civilians on the ship to keep them in line against him, and how Riddick leans into his reputation as human-but-not-human to keep himself alive. "There's gotta be some part of you that wants to rejoin the human race." Also, "You were one brave fuck before." That's a goddamn motherfucking movie.

And, of course, you knew it was coming: Mad Max. I watched Mad Max this year. Have you heard that I watched Mad Max this year? There's really not much more I can say about this. I watched The Road Warrior nine times in two weeks. I love those movies. I think they're perfect. I have a massive crush on Mel Gibson as Max Rockatansky that is not going to get me into heaven. I want to hit someone with my car. I can't believe I've been alive this long and grew up on Borderlands and Fallout and no one told me there were gay people in these movies. Everyone has been lying to me. I am the only one who can be trusted with the apocalyptic wasteland. If you took a drill to my skull and peeked in the hole you'd see Humungus with his elbow around Wez's neck hissing be still, my dog of war. These movies fucked up my life! Thanks, 2024.

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Other movies I liked this year: Babette's Feast (1987), Helter Skelter (2012), Magnolia (1999), Men in Black (1997), The Nest (2020), The Graduate (1967), eXistenZ (1999), American Fiction (2023), The Zone of Interest (2023), The Night of the Hunter (1955), Cradle will Rock (1999), The Iron Giant (1999), La Chimera (2023), Hundreds of Beavers (2022), Challengers (2024), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), High Art (1998), Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of the World (2023), The Vourdalak (2023), Caligula: The Ultimate Cut (2023), Häxan (1922), The Leopard (1963), Viy (1967), The Proposition (2005), The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994), House (1977), Tequila Sunrise (1988), Miller's Crossing (1990), Stone (1974), Apocalypto (2006), The Grand Duel (1972).

As far as games go, I did not play a lot besides what I reviewed for PC Gamer: The Thaumaturge (2024 GOTY!), Little Kitty, Big City, Dungeons of Hinterberg, Keylocker, and Shadows of the Damned: Hella Remastered. Otherwise, I played Rollerdrome, a triumphant entry in my personal future bloodsport canon, Dread Delusion, which is a great Morrowind-like, and Mad Max (2015), which has excellent moments and is full to the brim with stupid bullshit. I swear I'm going to play more games next year! I say this every year but this time I swear it.

rollerdrome

Writing this made me realize just how much I took in this year, despite the fact that I had kinda written 2024 off as a hectic and unproductive year for myself. I've really turned into a movie freak! I'd like to get back to my roots next (this, lol) year. Wanna read more books, wanna play a couple video games that aren't for review. I've just moved into a bigger place with a proper office space so hopefully that'll make those things easier. Otherwise, I'd like to start watching more movies pre-seventies, and I'd really really really like to play one game a month. Twelve games sounds manageable, right? Just twelve of them! They can be short! We'll see, though, lol. If summer rolls around and I haven't played a video game someone yell at me.

Hope y'all are doing well; hope 2025 treats you better than 2024 did. Onward!