Taking the sad with the happy

On how and why we mark milestones on the occasion of another beginning that feels less than hopeful

John Smoltz, a Hall of Fall pitcher who spent all but the last couple of years of his Major League Baseball career with the Atlanta Braves, said once, on reaching a vaunted milestone, that he wasn’t a better pitcher that day than he had been the day before. According to him, if anyone viewed the perceived difference lay only in the fact that people have a thing for round numbers.

There’s a neatness to 200 wins that isn’t quite there with 198 or 199. And, if you know baseball, a gem of a pitching game can end in a loss or no decision through no fault of the guy on the mound. That 200th win might have sneaked under the glove of an error-prone infielder. Smoltz pitched the very first MLB baseball game I ever saw in person in 1991, so I always had a soft spot for him.

Over the course of his career, Smoltz accomplished two marquee numbers: 200 wins and 150 saves. Still, even though he crossed not one but two of the magic lines that mark the border into baseball greatness, he wasn’t wrong. People like round numbers. I think about this sometimes when I think about the passage of time.

We’re only a few hours older the day we turn 40, say, than we are the day before. But somehow still being 39 on the eve of your birthday feels like an entirely different, more youthful, less fraught time in your life. It certainly doesn’t inspire the same sense of existential dread about getting older.¹ Similarly, January 1 is only one day after December 31, but most of us can’t help but be absolutely in our feelings—both happy and sad—at the turn of the calendar. Facing the start of another year and what it means for us individually and as a collective is of such consequence that we made it a holiday to cope.

Time passes. Things change. But they also kind of stay the same—or at least, they inch along subtly, almost imperceptibly until something makes us look back and we see how far we have come, how different we are and, of course, to think about where we will be long into the future. I guess that’s what the turn of the calendar is for. To remind us to take stock. Yes, my circumstances have changed and so have I. But in spite of how far it feels like we as a society have traveled, 2024 was one of those years in which the journey felt particularly circular. It ended after an election marked by beliefs—fears, actually—that the past will somehow save us. Have we really gone anywhere? Will 2025 feel like the future or a regurgitation of battles we should have long stopped fighting?

I don’t ask these questions in search of a pithy answer or for an answer at all, really. I just want to remind to myself to keep questioning. To keep moving. To keep looking back and forward. To keep noticing things and bearing witness. To keep believing that injustice is not the norm, even when it is happening on a daily basis.

The next time we stop and take stock, the story we see will be good and bad, sad and happy. The point is that there will be a story to tell and that it will be worth telling.

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My absolute favorite reads of the year

I was thinking about all of the above as I read the last book I finished in 2024: Atonement by Ian McEwan. A friend saw me reading it at one point when I was near the start of it and noted that it was very depressing. It is. A terrible thing happens and justice is not served. Most specifically—spoiler alert, I guess—a rich asshole does a terrible thing and an innocent man of humble origins must face the consequences because a young girl confused by her own moods makes a false accusation. It felt apropos for the new political era into which we enter,² and while the story is an entire gut punch, the writing is marvelously sharp and moving and will make you feel alive in the way only the very best writing does. I would say as much about the writing in the other two novels I loved last year. All of them span lifetimes, and all of them do a lot of looking back.

(Links will take you to reviews I wrote at the time of reading.)

• The Color Purple by Alice Walker

• They Dream in Gold by Mai Sennaar

• Atonement by Ian McEwan

I read some excellent nonfiction too, also spanning lifetimes, also taking stock. All of these brought me to tears.

• How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith

• The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown

• Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer

• Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us by Rachel Aviv

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Everything else I read in 2024

I think I broke a personal record this year with more than 40 books read and/or listened to on Libby. The ones listed above were far and away the best of the bunch. It was much harder to parse the rest into categories for the purpose of recommending them or not, but half the reason I read is to give people informed opinions about what they should read, so here you go . . .

Novels I really liked

• Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend by M.J. Wassmer

• What Strange Paradise by Omar El Akkad

• Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

• Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden

• The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (Re-read)

Memoirs I really liked

• All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

• Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford

• Yearbook by Seth Rogen (recommend it as an audio book)

• Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt (recommend it as an audio book)

Nonfiction that will always be worth reading

• All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks

• A Short History of Nearly Everything By Bill Bryson

• On Juneteenth by Annette Gordon-Reed

Fiction I liked with reservations

• We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry

• Razorblade Tears by S.A. Cosby

• Northern Spy by Flynn Berry

• Canadian Boyfriend by Jenny Holiday

• The Wind Knows My Name by Isabel Allende

• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Not bad but I was underwhelmed

• The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

• Libertie by Kaitlyn Greenidge

• The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave

• The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera

• The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

Loved the start but not the finish

• This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour

• A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

• My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante - I should note that this one is really only here because it is a series and thus the first novel didn’t really have an end. It was hard to formulate an opinion when the story is not even half done.

Just plain ol’ did not like

• Flores and Miss Paula by Melissa Rivero

• Seven Days in June by Tia Williams

• Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn

Books I read because my kids are reading them and enjoyed

• The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2) by Rick Riordan

• The Titan’s Curse (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #3) by Rick Riordan

Books I read because my kids are reading them

(In case my daughter is reading this: It’s not that I don’t enjoy these, sweetie. I love talking to you about them. But you know that I think these are too long. The writer needs a better editor and a lesson on pacing, a thing Mr. Riordan does very well. The action all blends together, and the ongoing preoccupation with which boy Sophie likes—you know, the ‘ship stuff—is not something I like as much as you.)

• Exile (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #2) by Shanning Messenger

• Everblaze (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #3) by Shannon Messenger

• Neverseen (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #4) by Shannon Messenger

• Lodestar (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #5) by Shannon Messenger

• Nightfall (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #6) by Shannon Messenger

• Flashback (Keeper of the Lost Cities, #7) by Shannon Messenger

1. News flash for those of you who aren’t there yet: Your 40s will be fun as hell.

2. And by “new political era” I mean really nothing more than the same old shit in which we have always been mired.