My Brain Is Goldfish (But Here Are Some Things I Liked In 2024)

I think my brain is not okay. I don’t mean to suggest I’ve got actual worms up in there, but the Current Era combined with Holidaytimes has really just turned my skull into a malfunctioning music box. First, I whiffed on ever doing a Terribleminds Gift Guide for the year — I blame this in part on the fact Thanksgiving was later than usual, and by the time I was like, “Yeah, let’s do a gift guide!” it was way too late to make that actionable. Second, I’m now tasked (by myself) to offer up the Books And Other Stuff I Liked In 2024, and when I go to access that file folder inside my head-computer, I just get a series of pop-ups and janky ads.

I suspect this is in part because my brain is choosing to live implicitly in The Present. It’s trying not to look too close in the past, lest it accidentally traipse across one of the various news-related landmines there. And it’s definitely not looking forward because that feels like time-traveling to the inside of a black hole. So mostly my brain is in goldfish mode. It exists in this moment and blinks blissfully inside its glass uhhh — and here I’m going to note it took me about 60 seconds to conjure the word “fishbowl.” I was like, “well, aquarium, obviously, but that’s not the right image. It’s like, there’s this glass orb where you put a newly-acquired fish? A fish orb, a fish jar, a spherical fish apartment, a goldfish palantir,” before finally landing on oh right —

Fishbowl.

Brain not okie-dokie.

It’s fine. It’s fine! I’m sure it’s fine. Everything is fine and nothing hurts!

So, here is a list of some of the things I liked in 2024.

This list will be far from exhaustive because, again, my brain is just moths and dust, I fear. (Further, on the topic of books, it gets weirder because I read a bunch of 2025 releases in 2024, and do I mention those here? Or not? Or what? I may! I may not! Even I don’t know what I’ll do!)

Let’s begin.

Books

Right out of the gate, I think my favorite read of the year was Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher of the Forest. It’s perfect. She’s an astonishing writer. Everything she writes is great, but this is one of those books — like Sara Gran’s Come Closer — that I know I’ll read again and again. It’s eerie and empathetic and pointed and uncanny and written in such a way so as to not be full of itself, to be fully accessible to any reader, while still being both small and profound in equal measure. It’s a treasure.

Actually, it’s been a damn fine year for novellas — M.L. Rio’s Graveyard Shift and Delilah Dawson’s Guillotine both come to mind. DARK, SINISTER SNACKS, these books, and you need them. Oh! Oh also: When Among Crows, by Veronica Roth. I read that in… January last year? So it counts.

Other books of note: A Mask of Flies by Matthew Lyons is fucking great. Paul Tremblay rocked Horror Movie, a filmic head trip through the remake of a purportedly cursed film. Gabino Iglesias’ House of Bone and Rain is some dark, powerful, vengeful stuff. CJ Leede’s American Rapture is an absolutely A+ unique take on the apocalypse, and honestly pairs really well with Clay McLeod Chapman’s upcoming Wake Up And Open Your Eyes. Oh! And At Dark, I Become Loathsome, by Eric LaRocca.

Weirdly, I read both the Chapman and the LaRocca on vacation in Portugal this past year, and also, I’m going to be doing events with them both next month — Chapman and I at Doylestown Bookshop on Fri, Jan 10th at 6pm. And LaRocca I’m joining in NYC

In nonfiction I really, really loved A Natural History of Empty Lots, by Christopher Brown. That and I also read Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost, which is not new, but was very important to me this year, both personally and in the writing of Staircase in the Woods.

I know I read other books this year, right?

Oh! I know. I read my first proper Stephen King in a long time — I am, like many, a student of his earlier works. Sadly, though, I’m less studied when it comes to the stuff he wrote in the last 10-15 years. I read Fairy Tale. I liked it a lot. Took a while to get going to where it was going but even there, you’re just happy to spend time in the world of his writing. I have deeper thoughts that maybe I’ll get around to sometimes in the future.

Did I read more this year? Surely. Do I remember what those books were? Not at the moment. Forgive my porous mind. Onward.

TV

What We Do In The Shadows ended, and it was perfect. Shrinking and Bad Monkey continue to prove that Bill Lawrence knows what he’s doing (see also, Scrubs, Ted Lasso, Cougar Town). The Penguin was surprisingly excellent. Diplomat season two was not as strong as the first season but I still loved it a lot. Was Shogun this year? Amazing, obviously. Ripley had a whole different vibe than the film, closer to the book, and I found the black and white cinematography of it truly stunning, one of the most stunning shows I’ve laid my eyes on in recent memory. Arcane, also, totally beautiful. I needed time with it to remember what the fuck happened in season one, but it’s really staggering in terms of how well that animation looks, how perfect the action scenes are, how not video gamey it is even as it’s very video gamey? It’s something special.

Oh and maybe my favorite thing?

True Detective: Night Country. The best. Give Issa Lopez all the things. The money, the awards, the laurels, the high-fives.

I very much did not like The Bear S3, and I generally love that show. Hm.

Movies

Were there movies? Did I watch them? *grits teeth, takes a bumpy ride in the time machine*

Longlegs, Alien: Romulus, Challengers, Dune Part Two, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Babes, My Old Ass, Problemista, The First Omen, Late Night with the Devil, and what else?

Oh wait, no, I know — my two favorites this year:

Love Lies Bleeding, and Monkey Man.

There were other movies, I’m just not calling them my favorites of the year.

Moving on.

Games

Balatro is easily the most addictive game I played this year. So addictive it may have just eaten all the other games.

Favorite game overall might be Rise of the Golden Idol, which is just a delight.

Alan Wake 2 was amazing, though I think that came out in 2023 initially.

Thank Goodness You’re Here was incredibly funny and clever. Not necessarily a great “game” in the sense of “contains puzzles and various challenges,” but was a delight to go through and experience.

Pacific Drive was rad.

Animal Well consumed my life for a while, and I felt like it was nearly perfect in understanding how to create a challenging game that still builds you up to those challenges well? A game that hard that never feels frustrating is aces.

Very much wanted to love both Star Wars: Outlaws and Veilguard, and very much did not love them. Liked both. But neither really sang and I tapped out of Outlaws (though I’m told I should go back and try again) and Veilguard just feels like a weirdly watered-down Pixared version of a Bioware story. It’s good. But it also feels very video gamey — the maps don’t feel like maps, they feel like “levels,” and you’ll come upon an area of glowy, patiently-waiting bad guys same as you would in, say, Halo. The whole thing just isn’t coming together for me, but a lot of people I know love it, so maybe it’s just me.

Music

This year, loved new music from St. Vincent, Jack White, the Linda Lindas, Phantogram, The Last Dinner Party, Carter Veil, Louis the Child, Sprints, Sleater-Kinney, Rosie Tucker, Remi Wolf, Oceanator, Amyl and the Sniffers, Crobot, Childish Gambino, plus holy shit there was new Poe this year? Poe. POE. Just a little bit — all tied to Alan Wake 2, but hey, I’m a man thirsty in the desert, I’ll take whatever drops of water I can touch to my tongue.

I think one of my favorite and then saddest discoveries was Mama Zu — it’s like, “Wow, she’s great, I love this,” *googles* “oh god she died??” Crushing discovery of such a vital talent just showing up and then being gone from us too soon — sad for us, for her friends and family, fuck.

Your Turn

Okay. Flood the comments — what’d you like from this past year? Recommend me something. A song, a book, a game, whatever.