The most books I’ve read in a year was around a hundred, back when I discovered I could get ebooks from Edinburgh Libraries via Libby. I’ll beat that this year due to all the reading I’ve been doing for my own book about the history and rise of immersive art, but while my previous record had a healthy amount of fiction, 2024 has practically none.
Here are some of the books I’ve enjoyed the most this year, in no particular order:
Playing The World by Jon Peterson (2024). Recounts the invention of Dungeons & Dragons and the history of wargames and role playing games. Originally published in 2012, it’s being republished by MIT Press in two volumes (the first is out now) which means I’ll have read it three times by the time I finish. No regrets!
Gothic Art: Visions and Revelations of the Medieval World by Michael Camille (1996). A wonderfully accessible defence of the sophistication of gothic art and the “total experience” it created in cathedrals through colour, sounds, smell, and architecture.
The Imagineering Story: The Official Biography of Walt Disney Imagineering by Leslie Iwerks (2022). This goes into a hundred times more detail than the Disney+ show and only starts pulling its punches when you reach the Iger era. Fascinating stuff.
Riding the Black Ship: Japan and Tokyo Disneyland by Aviad E. Raz (1999). Argues Tokyo Disneyland was not merely an instance of US cultural imperialism or a 100% perfect carbon copy of existing parks, but something more original. Subsequent events have contradicted his case, but it’s a smart take.
Installation Art: A Critical History by Claire Bishop (2005). This was the perfect introduction to installation art and the start of my Claire Bishop binge-reading streak.
On the History of Film Style by David Bordwell (2018). Hard going if you’re relatively new to film studies like me, but well worth it for the tale of how artists have strove for, and strayed from, realism. The PDF is free!
The Shows of London by Richard D. Altick (1978). Brisk, funny, and astonishingly well-researched history of how Elizabethan and Victorian London entertained itself.
Narrative as Virtual Reality 2 by Marie Laure-Ryan (2015). The best single book I’ve read that unites the idea of visual immersion with the immersion you feel when reading a good book. Criminally under-read.
The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt (1958). Deeply perceptive about our modern illusion of individual sovereignty.
DIE by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans (2019). A thrilling graphic novel about a group of adults entering a real RPG and a very good novelisation of the concepts in Jon Peterson’s Playing the World.
mssv 