anthrodish favourites of the year

top fiction, non-fiction, cookbooks, and podcasts

I’m taking the month of December off of essay-writing, but until I return in January with fresh essays, I’ve compiled a list of some of my favourite reads and listens of the year — consider the books a hint of what might make for a great gift for a food-loving or book-loving person in your life this holiday season as well! And the podcasts? Well, that’s just for your enjoyment.

These are in reading order, rather than by “best” — they were all exceptionally great in their own ways (can you tell I’m now a parent to two!?).

fiction

1. Come and Get It by Kiley Reid — Reid always manages to cleanly dissect the modern dialogue amongst women and demonstrate how captivating a story can be when women are taken seriously.

2. I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harper — Heartbreaking, reflective, psychologically driven, and a bit haunting.

3. Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang — A delightful surprise around the idea of queer body horror. Huang’s prose is gorgeous, artful, and refreshing.

4. Dawn by Octavia Butler — Someone on TikTok had mentioned how well this 1980s sci fi book holds up in modern day, and they were absolutely right. It was a really eerie, powerful, fascinating novel.

5. Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit by Nadine Saunders-Green — A debut novel for Saunders-Green, absorbing in it’s portrayal of a young woman becoming entangled in an abusive relationship with an older man in the isolating Yukon.

6. Death Valley by Melissa Broder — A beautiful and wild and magically realistic ride into grief in the desert.

7. Butter by Asako Yuzuki — A visceral depiction of a reporter gaining the trust of a murderer through butter and recipe-making that is full of reflections on fatphobia, appetites, and what women owe themselves.

8. Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte — This book of interconnected stories around modern dating and rejection was hilarious, whip-smart, cringey, and so cutting.

9. Bad Cree by Jessica Johns — A haunting debut by Johns, where a young Cree woman’s dreams lace supernatural horror and real-life legacies of violence against her family and traditional lands.

10. Open Throat by Henry Hoke — A queer mountain lion lives under the Hollywood sign and contemplates the housing crisis and climate change. A strange, clever, fun POV that goes by quickly!

non-fiction & memoir

1. Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley — This was a short and punchy book centred around the passing of Sloane Crosley’s good friend. Her balance of realism, heartbreak, and comedic insights into how society at large views grief were very welcome.

2. Thick and Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom — This book of essays tackles a wide range of topics, from whiteness, Black misogyny, beauty ideals and norms, pop culture, and politics. Even the role of the personal essay was challenged within its racial and sociocultural context.

3. Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton — This is a graphic novel memoir which details the Canadian author’s experiences working in the Alberta oil sands for two years after graduating from a university in Cape Breton. It is a smart blend of challenging Canadian nationalism through environmental extraction and gendered violence.

4. Kings of Their Own Ocean by Karen Pinchin — About a fisherman named Al and his triumphant success tagging the most blue fin tuna and shifting how we think about tuna migrations and the impact on global policies. Pinchin is a stunning writer and scientific journalist.

5. The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi — I’m really, really late to this, but such a profoundly unique approach to telling the story of growing up in Iran amidst the Islamic Revolution. It was so adeptly narrated and an immersive experience. I will be thinking about Satrapi’s memoir for a long time after this.

6. Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking on America’s Largest Meatpacking Company by Alice Driver — An investigative book that documents the stories of migrant workers at Tyson meatpacking plant in Arkansas, and situates these lives against an impossible backdrop of bipartisan agricultural politics that break your heart.

7. Hearty: On Cooking, Eating, and Growing Food for Pleasure and Subsistence by andrea bennett — A series of essays that explore the ideas of pleasure and subsistence through many stages of food. It’s Canadian-focused, which feels nice as someone that interviews a lot of Americans (references to Salsateria in Guelph!), and this book provides some grounded optimism.

8. A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France by Steve Hoffman — A story that surprised me. Steve’s memoir explores his family’s sabbatical to the Languedoc region of southern France, and he adeptly identifies what it takes to strip down one’s ego to make a life experience work for everyone in the family.

9. The Mango Tree by Annabelle Tometich — This book was heartbreaking and heartwarming and beautifully, lovingly crafted. I have never seen someone approach complicated relationships with their parents in a way that doesn’t make caricatures of them, and she paints everyone in as vivid and complex a way as she can. I cried and laughed and felt seen in the eldest sister with a weird family/weird deaths way.

10. The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates — This isn’t a book that’s going to teach you anything new but it is a book that is going to make you really think about the medium you use, and the message it conveys. It felt like a push as a writer to be more specific and direct in what you stand for, and the power of language in compelling a reader to think (which is precisely what he did). I realize he got a lot of difficult media coverage for the section that spoke to Palestine, but this coverage felt quite dismissive of the argument he was making about language, history, and the responsibility of a public writer.

cookbooks

1. The Depanneur Cookbook by Len Senater — If you love Toronto as much as I do, consider this required reading on the culinary narratives that shape our city.

2. Sesame, Soy, Spice: 90 Asian-ish Vegan and Gluten-free Recipes to Reconnect, Root, and Restore by Remy Park — Come for the delicious recipes, stay for the beautiful woven stories of eating disorder recovery, sobriety, and healing relationships with food and culture.

3. In Pursuit of Flavour by Edna Lewis — Obviously this is not a new cookbook, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and cooking from it. It reminded me of what good recipe-crafting is, and taught me more about where the seasonal food movement really came from, which is Black liberation movements in America.

4. Heydays at the June Motel by Freddy Laliberté, Evan Baulch, Katie Laliberté, and Emma Baulch — A nostalgic and warm splash into coastal comfort foods that is a boon in winter months, a reminder of what beach foods can be at the end of a long and sun-drenched day. The mushroom soup is now in my regular rotation from this one

5. Sweet Tooth: 100 Desserts to Save Room For by Sarah Fennel — I am a huge Broma Bakery fan, and her recipe book is nothing less than a gold standard. Every detail is well thought out, even down to listing ingredients in order of use, simple instructions/substitutions/expectations, and helpful tips that ultimately make you a more confident baker.

podcast episodes (not my own)

Here are podcast episodes I really enjoyed this year — with zero push for you to check out any AnthroDish episodes (even though you should, this season has been so good!)

1. Longform Podcast#584: Ta-Nehisi Coates — An episode that surprised me, and made me an even bigger fan of Coates. I love his approach to writing, thinking, and public speaking.

2. The Road Podcast by Canada’s National Observer — A deep dive into the potential risks and benefits of building a road in Ontario’s Ring of Fire and the impacts on Webequie First Nation

3. We Have Lived Podcast by Not 9 to 5/Hassel Aviles — A series of interviews with hospitality industry leaders on mental health, burnout, diversity, and so much more. Hassel is a lovely interviewer, and her guests have so much to share.

4. Come by Chance by CBC Podcasts — Devastating and well-delivered story of a 52-year old secret that two men born on the same day at a rural Newfoundland hospital discover.

5. Nicki Sizemore
   ’s Mind Body Spirit FOOD Podcast episode “What Is Spirituality (and What does It Have to Do with Feeding Ourselves)?” with Jasmine Nnenna — a rich and explorative treat to explore how Nnenna situates the idea of nourishment in much more spiritual consumption.

substack essays

It’s truly impossible to track down every newsletter I enjoyed on Substack, but here are some that have made lasting impressions in how I think and connect ideas this year:

1. “heat waves, the climate crisis, and me” by

   lala thaddeus

2. “what i’m doing about alice munro” by

   Brandon
   Taylor

3. “The pantry is an installation” by

   Apoorva Sripathi

4. “The Catastrophe Already Happened” by

   Devin Kate Pope

5. “Have We Lost Our Minds?” by

   Brendon Holder

6. “Indulgences and the Consumer Imaginary” by

   Jon Randell Smith

7. “The Algorithm of the Mind” by

   Alicia Kennedy

8. “What's the opposite of xenophobia?” by

   Annabelle Tometich

9. “Anatomy of a Critic” by

   Mahira Rivers

10. “On the Myth of Motherhood as Self Improvement” by

    Ines Bellina

online articles

Here’s a blend of online articles that left a mark on me this year:

1. “Fish Hacks: Often dismisses as a “trash fish,” the porgy anchors Black maritime culture” by Dr. Jayson M. Porter for Distillations Magazine

2. “A new kind of slavery: Skyrocketing use of temporary foreign workers in restaurants and fast food chains has advocates concerned” by Ghada Alsharif for The Toronto Star

3. “Unpacking the mystery of grizzly bears in Wapusk National Park” by Trina Moyles for Canadian Geographic

4. “Sylvain Charlebois is Canada's 'Food Professor.' His take on food prices is helping shape our climate policy debate” by Marc Fawcett-Atkinson for National Observer

5. “Elizabeth Goodspeed on our current obsession with food in advertising and fashion” by Elizabeth Goodspeed for It’s Nice That

Okay, that’s it for now!

I’ll be back in your inboxes in a couple of weeks with a round-up of my favourite AnthroDish back-catalogue essays of 2024, and a paid-subscriber interview with Ary Maharaj of the NEDIC out Dec 15th.

AnthroDish podcast is also on break in December, but available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. There have been tons of great conversations this season, so I strongly encourage a listen!