Exciting and Fun Reads For 2024

I ended 2023 reading some great books thanks to the Publishers Weekly (PW) Grab a Galley promotion. I was happily surprised by the books I won. Just Snow Already! is available now: the others are available for pre-order. My links are amazon associate links. I give each of these books Five Stars!!

Children’s books

Just Snow Already! by Howard McWilliam

I received a digital copy of this adorable picture book from Flashlight Press. This book is so fun. It has a great premise of a child wanting it to snow so badly that he doesn’t notice all the other fun things happening outside. The illustrations are so vivid and active readers and those being read to will have fun exploring all the details again and again.

The Mighty Onion by Mark Crilley coming April 2, 2024.

I received a physical copy of this fun kids book. It’s about a middle schooler who wants to create a comic but isn’t great at drawing, so he learns about the ins and outs of collaboration. The format is great, switching between the kid writing in his notebook, and the comic book pages along with notes from other students and teachers. It’s a fun, meta approach to the daily struggles of a young comic book creator.

Adult Graphic Novel Memoir

Ai Weiwei’s Zodiac: A Memoir coming January 30, 2024. I received a digital copy from Penguin Random House. This graphic memoir organized with each chapter as a year of the Chinese Zodiac, combines myth and story as well as politics and philosophy to explore an artist’s experiences and thoughts. It cohesively weaves all of these aspects to show the reader the importance of free expression and the power of art to fight oppression. Though I may not agree with every view expressed, the freedom to have different viewpoints and express them is the point of the book.

The graphics, not done by the artist but by Italian cartoonist, Gianluca Costantini are consistently engaging and lively, creating a contrasting feeling of wanting to linger with the images, but wanting to continue reading the story that will make you want to read this book more than once.

Poetry

I also received my favorite poetry collection I read this year as an Early Reviewer from Library Thing. It came out on December 5th and is available now.

The Infinite Loop by Oneyda González is an intriguing collection that explores life’s dichotomies and contradictions in ways I found very exciting. I received a physical copy of this book from Akashic Books.

If you read Experience Writing very often, I think the list of “projects” from the section “Facing the Mirror” will tell you why I love this book:

1. Opposites that meet
2. Exercise of expression
3. The journey, the impulse: darkness and blazes
4. Stillness: its good and its evil
5. Equilibrium
6. The value of work
7. I no longer work; I merely accumulate resonances

Reading this collection, I felt like I found someone on the same path of study and discovering, coming to similar conclusions about what makes life (and poetry) interesting.

I also really enjoy having the original Spanish poem next to the translation for comparison and learning. I highly recommend this book. I am so glad I “won” it from Library Thing. I’ll be re-reading it into the new year and beyond.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Thank you for coming to Experience Writing

and Happy Reading and Writing!