New Year's Retrospective: What Read Well in 2024
Failing emergency management systems, targeted sparrows, Muhammad Ali's disappearing opponent and more.
Right before bed, I try to jot down three things that well throughout the day in my journal. It’s a gratitude practice that’s supposed to improve your ability to fall asleep and the quality of the sleep you get.
The practice forces you to get specific about what you’re grateful for. After all, there are only so many times you can say “family” without abandoning the project as bullshit. My journal is filled with entries like I went for a good 5-mile run even though I forgot my shoes (not sure how I did that, but whatever) and walking with Emma to [hand out] Scouts’ flyers and seeing her react to hearing church bells for the first time.
What I Read
Here’s my reading equivalent of that daily journal exercise — or a small sampling of it, anyway. It’s a mix of the articles that hit hard and stayed with me long after I’d finished them.
“Please stop saying my generation will save the world.” Climate change, global warming, whatever you want to label it — it shouldn’t be up to a generation who had absolutely nothing to do with the existential crisis we’re currently facing to save us as Isabelle Drury eloquently points out in this
article. The Boomers — especially those greedy, Reagan-fetishizing, by-my-bootstrap-background-revising, free-hand-of-the-market worshipping pricks who caused this existential mess in the first place — probably should shoulder most of the blame. Maybe in their waning years, as a form of penance, we should send the Koch brothers and the Big Oil pricks who fought tooth-and-nail against impactful regulation up into the atmosphere with little straws to manually capture as much carbon as they could before they expire and visit an even hotter place.America’s Disaster Recovery System Is A Disaster. Dr.
’s newsletter was one of the very first newsletters I subscribed to, and I’ve been following her work ever since. The New York Times Opinion piece I cited here is filled with eye-opening statistics, but more importantly, it’s filled with personal stories of the lives of 12 individuals who were impacted by natural disasters throughout the country.“Bill Walton was My Rival, My Brother, and My Close Friend.” You don’t need to be a basketball fan to love and admire Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. In fact, I’ll bet a large segment of his fanbase knows about him solely through his writing, advocacy and/or martial arts skills (dude fought Bruce Lee … in a movie, but still). There’s a beauty, grace and strength to everything Kareem does, and this piece about losing his friend (Bill Walton) reminds me what to prioritize — being a good person, living in the moment, spending time with the people who matter and drowning out the garbage “content” we are bombarded with day and night in an effort to sell us shit we really don’t need. I came back to this one several times throughout the year.
“substack f***’d up and now we have to talk about it.” This post is a wild, exceptionally well-written ride that starts out by addressing this platform’s ‘nazi problem’ and why writers are leaving in droves. It then dives headfirst into some stuff about capitalism and the inherent ridiculousness of trying to “vote” with your dollar. From the author Jeanna Kadlec:
“Voting with our dollar” is an idea that very, very quickly crumbles when applied to many situations. And honestly, it’s a slogan I hate, because it sells people on the idea that there is any significant agency in the limited (often terrible) choices that have been presented to us by the ruling class.
“Six Lessons From the World’s Deadliest Environmental Disaster.” I never knew the world’s most deadly environmental disaster was a misguided humans-versus-sparrows war started by China’s Chairman Mao back in the 50s. From John R. Platt’s revealing article:
“To stop sparrows from doing what comes naturally, China directed its citizens to persecute the birds at a level of carnage that may remain unmatched in human history. During the Great Sparrow Campaign people smashed nests and eggs and chased sparrows while shouting, banging pots and spoons, lighting firecrackers, and making other loud noises.”
“Advanced Meditation Alters Consciousness and Our Basic Sense of Self.” This is a long on, but if you can hang in there, it’s filled with payoff lines like these:
“The term ‘advanced meditation’ might evoke images of monks in robes, but these experiences are not limited to ascetics isolated from the rest of the world … We believe that advanced meditation has potentially broad implications for people’s understanding of what it means to be human and for interventions for mental health and well-being, and it therefore deserves the attention of the scientific community.”
“The 16 Most Memorable Books I Read in 2024.” I’ve been a Jon Finkel fan for a long time. His Books & Biceps weekly newsletter is exactly what it sounds like — a listing of what to read and how to workout. I think the guy’s a national treasure, plus, he’s been nice enough to respond to my many, many questions about writing a newsletter and trying to get my ass back into some semblance of shape. This listicle is great for any sports fan whose looking for their next read.
“My daughter came out, and I missed the punchline.” Two things I look to Shannon Carpenter for guidance with: Writing and Parenting. This piece about his teenage daughter coming out (told with his daughter) is a great example of why.
“My Psychiatrist Had Back Spasms While Giving Me Weird Advice.” I think Andrew Knott is at his absolute best when he’s tackling dark, uncomfortable subjects like death and depression, and mixing humor and seriousness at a ratio that’s appropriately three parts mirth to one part heart. It may seem like he’s deflecting with humor until — BAM! — he hits you with a line of brutally raw honesty before getting back to the wittisms and exceptional writing.
4th on McSweeney’s Most-Read List
“What Your Favorite ’90s Band Says About the Kind of Bored Suburban Mom You Are Today.” Well, shit, the follow-up to the Dad’s/90s Bands McSweeney’s post Talia Argondezzi and I wrote was the fourth most-read post on the vaunted humor site in 2024! how do we keep this premise going — Uncles? Stepmothers? Weird Cousins?
What articles, essays, poems or opinion pieces moved you last year and what are planning to read this year? Message me or put it in the comments.
you tagged some great stuff. I always love Andrew's stuff, and yes, Kareem is one of our greatest treasures. He really did spend a lot of time studying martial arts. It was seen as weird at the time, but there were several reasons for Kareem's grace on court and time in the dojo was one of them.
Thanks Jared! You and Talia can't stop with the bands until you hit number one. Keep reaching for the stars, etc.