S. Craig Zahler’s favorite discoveries from 2023 and 2024

My Top 10 Books I read in 2024:

--Hell’s Princess: The Mystery of Belle Gunness, Butcher of Men by Harold Schechter (This is an atmospheric, evocative, frightening, and often funny book. It ranks with Ed Yong’s An Immense World as my very favorite nonfiction book ever.)

--The Human Stain by Philip Roth (This is the best of the half dozen Roth books I’ve read by a significant margin. Roth expertly and fluidly moves though minds, time, events, and histories while exploring what can be done better in a novel than in any other art form.)

--Cold, Thin Air, Vol. 2 by C.K. Walker (See my review on this site: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)

--Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories by qntm

--Lush Life by Richard Price

--Rontel by Sam Pink

--The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

--Cold, Thin Air, Vol. 1 by C.K. Walker

--Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud

--The Gorgon’s Head by Florence Hurd

My 15 favorite 2024 comics and new reprints editions that came out this year are:

--Smoking Kills by Thijs Desemt

--Peepshow #15 by Joe Matt

--Dreadstar vs the Inevitable by Jim Starlin

--Donald Duck "Mystery of the Swamp" by Carl Barks

--What We Mean By Yesterday Vol. 1 by Benjamin Marra

--Who Raped My Horse? By Johnny Ryan

--Nancy & Sluggo’s Guide to Life by Ernie Bushmiller

--Alley by Junji Ito

--Processing: 100 Comics That Got Me Through It by Tara Booth

--Distant Ruptures by C.F.

--Godzilla’s Monsterpiece Theatre by Tom Scioli

--I Wish I Was Stupid by Yoshikazu Ebisu

--Forces of Nature by Edward Steed

--12 by Manix Abrera

--Tender by Beth Hetland

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/25391366-2025-updates-and-year-end-lists

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My top 15 favorite prose books I read in 2023 are:

An Immense World (Yong)

Permutation City (Egan)

Skidding into Oblivion (Hodges; reviewed by me on this site)

Soldato! (Albert; reviewed by me on this site)

Valley of Assassins (Albert; reviewed by me on this site)

Reborn as a Demonic Tree (XKarnation; reviewed by me on this site)

To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)

Fargo: Death Valley Gold (Haas)

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Diaz)

My Best Friend's Exorcism (Hendrix)

Rontel (Pink)

Children of Time (Tchaikovsky)

Imaro (Saunders)

In Watermelon Sugar (Brautigan)

Everyman (Roth)

Baby Boom (Yokoyama) was my favorite 2023 comic, and an all-time great manga/use of the medium. This book contains the most exciting daily chores in history (and might have come out very late 2022 in some markets). The Gull Yettin (Kessler), Monica (Clowes), Life Under Tension (Harkness), I Wish I Was Stupid (Ebisu), Werewolf Jones & Sons (Hanselmann & Pettinger), Michael Mouse (Lohmeier), Tombs (Ito), Three Rocks (Griffith), Maniac Army (Ryan), and Night of the Ghoul (Snyder & Francavilla) are also special books.

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/24386070-recommendations-and-updates