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We did it. We made it through the first month of 2024. Did you run all the miles you wanted to? Refrain from drinking all the alcohol you didn\u2019t? Whatever one\u2019s resolutions, I\u2019ve never heard anyone say their goal was to read less<\/em> books\u2014so let us help you with that. Here are our favorites from the last few weeks, the stories that made us stay up too late, the nonfiction that\u2019s changing how we interact with the internet, the dog-eared paperbacks we passed off to our friends. Here we are, handing them on to you. \u2014Keziah Weir<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018The Reformatory\u2019 by Tananarive Due (Simon & Schuster, 2023)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It\u2019s an astounding feat for a writer to reach into depths of total darkness and sorrow and craft them into something as vivid, lively, lovely and moving as this novel by Tananarive Due<\/strong>. The author is a friend (and a Vanity Fair<\/em> contributor<\/a>) so I picked up The Reformatory<\/em><\/a> prepared to love it. What I was not prepared for was the breathtaking beauty of her words, the poetry of her prose. Early in the book, a character reckons with the harsh realities of danger and injustice by noting that sometimes “God blinks,” which is as good an explanation as any for the commonplace nightmares that history has a habit of repeating.<\/p>\n The Reformatory<\/em> is a ghost story, set at the intimidating edifice of a “school” for delinquent boys, where many of those detained never live to grow up, let alone get out. Due\u2019s storytelling and craftsmanship make this far more than a genre thriller, although it\u2019s certainly that too, delivering a satisfying and imaginative tale of hair-raising terror. It tells the story of a Florida community in the Jim Crow era of the 1950s, where Black lives end abruptly, and fear enforces so-called law and order. Robert Stephens is a young boy sent to the reformatory who begins to see visions of others like him whose lives ended on its grounds in brutal fashion.<\/p>\n The harsh and painful stories that manifest themselves as ghosts in this book were inspired by real events. Robert Stephens is named after an uncle of Due\u2019s, who died at age 15 in the notorious Dozier School for Boys<\/a>, where dozens upon dozens of graves<\/a> were eventually uncovered. How can such inhumanity exist? The only explanation, for those who hope to retain some faith that the universe does indeed bend toward justice, is that God occasionally blinks. The Reformatory<\/em> does not blink. It stares into its horrors straight on, with a broken heart and tearful eyes, but never looks away. \u2014Anthony Breznican<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018They Called Us Exceptional\u2019 by Prachi Gupta (Crown, 2023)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Written to her mother, Prachi Gupta<\/strong>\u2019s memoir They Called Us Exceptional<\/em> tackles the myth of the model minority and how it can dictate an individual\u2019s life. From having immigrant parents in a xenophobic country to dealing with the rage of the men in her family, Gupta documents her growth, her loss, and her desire to break the cycle. Her honesty is gutting, and though there are sections that are tough to read, Gupta\u2019s rawness and vulnerability keep the pages turning. \u2014Kathleen Creedon<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Filterworld\u2019 by Kyle Chayka (Doubleday, 2024)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In Kyle Chayka<\/strong>\u2019s Filterworld<\/em>\u2014a peek under the hood at the systems of algorithmic recommendations that power what we buy, watch, and listen to\u2014the picture is unsurprisingly bleak. Here is a technology that exerts control while promising frictionless ease, like an obsequious butler who puppeteers the house. As Chayka, a New Yorker<\/em> writer, puts it: \u201cThe algorithm always<\/em> wins.\u201d (Hence the phenomenon known as algorithmic anxiety,<\/em> a consequence of navigating this unknowable, ever-shifting terrain.) The book surveys the recent past\u2014media\u2019s ill-advised \u201cpivot to video,\u201d Instagram\u2019s abandoned chronological feed, the TikTok churn\u2014while peppering in perspectives from historical figures (Michel de Montaigne) and contemporary ones (Taylor Lorenz<\/strong>). Filterworld<\/em>\u2019s chief concern is the flattening of creative output to least-common-denominator fill\u2014a situation \u201cin which we are fed culture like foie-gras ducks, with more regard for volume than quality,\u201d Chayka writes. Still, the algorithm alerted the world last week to John Galliano<\/strong>\u2019s latest Margiela Artisanal spectacle in Paris, proof that audiences are still hungry for the spikily subversive. If algorithmic malaise depletes \u201cour capacity to be moved, or even to be interested and curious,\u201d then his proposed homework is a refreshing one: to leave the sanitized playlists and For You grids behind and trawl through the mud, nose down for what surprises and offends. \u2014Laura Regensdorf<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Dormant Season\u2019 by Erinn Springer (Charcoal Books, 2023)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Erinn Springer<\/strong> returned to her rural Wisconsin hometown in the late 2010s and began to photograph her community there. The resulting black-and-white images in Dormant Season<\/em> are cinematic, moody, and literary in their ability to convey the tenor of life in such an agrarian place. A place where sub-zero winters mean perpetually overcast days. A place where the very floor underneath your feet leans, an entire electric stove and kitchen cabinet slanting with it. A place where a deer in a headlight punctuates the darkness, and instead of providing company enforces your solitude. There are children here\u2014not unlike those in Andrea Modica\u2019s Treadwell<\/em>\u2014captivating for the breadth of emotions on their faces as they hold hunting rifles or swing from the rafters of a barn, light streaming in between rotting boards to create an otherworldly clubhouse. One imagines secret passwords whispered through cupped hands in order to gain entrance. But time slips in and then it passes. The children become the elders and the animals continue their brutal lifecycles. What remains steady is the cycle of the seasons. \u2014Madison Reid<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Life\u2019 by Keith Richards (Back Bay Books, 2010)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Keith Richards<\/strong>\u2019 autobiography Life<\/em> was published in 2010, and I first read it ten years ago, but I decided to grab it from the bookshelf for another go this year to be reminded why I love Keef and The Rolling Stones so much. A lot has changed since it was published: the Stones are now down to three members but, last October, they released their first record of original material in 18 years. One thing that hasn\u2019t changed is that they\u2019re gearing up for another tour and, revisiting Life<\/em>, I\u2019ve realized that Richards\u2019 stories of a singular existence are still as fascinating as ever. You don\u2019t have to be a Stones fan to appreciate the tales of being a musician in an era that won\u2019t and can\u2019t exist ever again, and reading this book is basically getting them from the most qualified narrator, who is remarkably not as unreliable as one would think, given the context of most of these stories. \u2014Fred Sahai<\/em><\/p>\n \u2018Fight Night\u2019 by Miriam Toews (Bloomsbury, 2021)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Narrators are tricky\u2014it\u2019s hard business, telling a story\u2014and certain categories can be a particular gamble: animals, second person, a child. When they work, though, they work really well. Henry Hoke<\/strong>\u2019s Open Throat<\/em> is a superlative of the first category, Carmen Maria Machado<\/strong>\u2019s In The Dream House<\/em> of the second and, happily, Fight Night<\/em> for the third. In it, nine-year-old Swiv is suspended from school for fighting, and spends her days being \u201chomeschooled\u201d by her bawdy, eccentric grandmother, Elvira, while her very pregnant mother, an actress, attends theater rehearsals. The book\u2019s a masterclass in tragicomedy, with Swiv quoting her mom and grandmother like a tiny, hilarious sociologist (of a director, her mother \u201csaid he\u2019s banged every young actress in town<\/em> and super talks down to everyone<\/em>\u201d), but also, devastatingly, remains terrified that her mother\u2019s going to kill herself, as the suicides of her aunt and grandfather drift murkily below the narrative\u2019s surface. \u201cJoy, said Grandma, is resistance<\/em>. Oh, I said. To what? Then she was off laughing again and there was nothing anybody could do about it.\u201d \u2014KW<\/em><\/p>\n