12 Must-Read Books of February 2024

February may be the shortest month of the year, but it’s certainly full of exciting new releases!

Here in Chicago, we’re trying to adjust to a winter that has been notably inconsistent. From frigid temperatures and snow to now relatively balmy temperatures, we’re here to say that things are certainly heating up both outside and on the release calendar! This month is a treasure trove of unforgettable poetry collections, memoirs, and novels, so surely there’s something to satisfy every reader.

Don’t know where to begin? Here are 12 must-read book we recommend!

Yaguareté White
By Diego Báez
University of Arizona Press

The year is still young, but Diego Báez’s stunning debut already lays claim to being one of the standout poetry releases of 2024. Weaving together English, Spanish, and Guaraní (a state-recognized Indigenous language widely spoken in Paraguay), Yaguareté White explores the contradictions of the experiences of self when faced with the absurdities of colonialism. Báez’s poems are lyrical fireworks, both awe-inspiring in their audacity and distinct in their genuineness and vulnerability. 

Working in the 21st Century: An Oral History of American Work in a Time of Social and Economic Transformation
By Mark Larson
Agate Midway

Written in the tradition of Chicago great Studs Terkel, Working in the 21st Century is an expansive and impressive work of oral history that explores how Americans are struggling to make a living in a new era of upheaval. Each intimate interview Mark Larson conducts with people in jobs ranging from nurses and teachers to firefighters and funeral directors probe at the question about what work means to them and consistently uncovers stories of heartbreak and hope. Coming to us on the fiftieth anniversary of Terkel’s Working, Larson’s Working in the 21st Century is sure to be a more than worthy followup and a modern classic in the form. 

Wandering Stars
By Tommy Orange
Knopf Publishing Group

Pulitzer Prize-finalist Tommy Orange follows up his bestselling debut novel There There with a sweeping story that traces the legacies of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre and the institutional eradication of Native culture and identity. Wandering Stars follows three generations of a family which has been traumatized and broken apart when its members are forced to attend the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Orange continues to awe with the scope of his storytelling and ability to trace America’s long history of destruction, making his work a consistently unforgettable reading experience. 

Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story
By Leslie Jamison
Little Brown and Company

It’s no secret that Leslie Jamison is one of the most prolific essayists and cultural historians working today. In Splinters, she turns her sharp introspective focus on the end of her marriage and the process of rebuilding her life and moving forward with joy when loss continues to weigh her down. Her writing balances perfectly between the subtle and the sublime, crafting scenes of new love that make your heart soar and moments of deep loneliness that echo long after you’ve finished reading. Jamison perfectly draws connections between her most difficult experiences in love and motherhood with her own familial history and our culture’s pressures on women, creating a textured and complex portrait of grief and eventual healing. 

Asterism
By Ae Hee Lee
Tupelo Press

Ae Hee Lee’s Dorset Prize-winning debut poetry collection is a revelation of memory and its power. Retracing her lineage from South Korea to Peru to the United States, these poems are full of memories that may seem routine at face value but resonate in their influence and nostalgia. Asterism often spans borders and decades, but Lee constantly slows the pace at the right time to reflect upon the moments that truly matter, from watching her mother make kimchi with care in their kitchen to gathering garden balsams with her cousin. 

How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir
By Shayla Lawson
Tiny Reparations Books

How to Live Free in a Dangerous World is an insightful and hopeful memoir about how the act of travel can itself be a political act when the world can often be a dangerous place to be Black, femme, nonbinary, and disabled. In unsparing prose, Shayla Lawson takes readers on a journey across continents and their own life, from encounters with a gorgeous gondolier in Venice, an ex-husband in the Netherlands, and a lost love on New Year’s Eve in Mexico City. Lawson’s latest is an unforgettable work of both travel writing and decolonial theory, combining the disparate pursuits of Black liberation across the countries they’ve traveled to in order to tell the story of how to imagine and secure new freedoms.  

Greta & Valdin
By Rebecca K Reilly
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster

Meet Greta and Valdin, brother and sister in an eccentric Maaori-Russian-Catalonian family who find themselves stable in their lives but utterly discontented in their romantic pursuits. Rebecca K Reilly’s latest is a hilarious family saga that navigates queerness, multiracial identity, and small dramas that lead to outsized problems. Greta & Valdin is a book that seeks joy in its chaos, and readers are sure to find themselves laughing out loud at every turn. 

Plastic
By Scott Guild
Pantheon

Erin is a plastic girl living in a plastic world, selling wearable tech known as Smartbodies that allow people to experience full, physical immersion in a virtual world far away from real life’s brutal wars and oppressive governments. After her place of work is attacked, Erin escapes into the virtual reality landscape to heal from her trauma, but the secrets of her family’s past begin to invade her carefully constructed reality. Scott Guild’s debut Plastic is a surrealist romp that perfectly captures our modern anxieties and billionaires’ dystopian fantasies, exposing the hollow core of American society. 

I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both
By Mariah Stovall
Soft Skull

We love coming-of-age stories here at the Chicago Review of Books, and Mariah Stovall’s I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both is a fantastic addition to the genre. Set in the suburbs of Los Angeles and New York City, the novel follows Khaki Oliver, a young woman in a period of confusion who reconnects with Fiona, a best friend with whom she shared an all-consuming and potentially toxic platonic love. Following the tracks of their youth from 1980s hardcore to 2010s emo, Khaki begins to reflect upon this formative experience in hopes that it will chart a brighter future with or without her friend. I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both burns brightly with familiar feelings of angst, uncertainty, and passion. 

You Glow in the Dark
By Liliana Colanzi
Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews
New Directions

You Glow in the Dark comes at a perfect time as Latin American horror continues to flourish. Otherworldly and wonderfully disorienting, Bolivian author Liliana Colanzi’s short stories tell the tale of human greed and the poison it releases into the world. Colanzi seamlessly creates cyberpunk-inspired dystopian worlds to show us our dark future if our current structures are allowed to stay in place. 

O Body 
By Dan “Sully” Sullivan
Haymarket Books

Dan “Sully” Sullivan has long been a staple of the Chicago spoken word poetry scene, and in his latest collection his talent for lyricism is on full display. O Body is a knotty meditation on the male body and its privileges when moving through the world. Sullivan never shies from the ways in which patriarchy oppresses bodies of all genders, but he consistently returns to a position of sincere softness and vulnerability even in the book’s most difficult passages. At its core, O Body is a captivating collection about the potential for movement—both physical, emotional, and spiritual. 

Blood and Lightning 
By Dustin Kiskaddon
Stanford University Press

Cultural sociologist and former tattoo artist Dustin Kiskaddon’s Blood and Lightning arrives at a time in which the craft of tattooing has never been more in the spotlight, as generational and culture shifts have led to more acceptance and shows such as Ink Master have publicized the industry to larger audiences. Combining memoir and ethnography, Blood and Lightning explores how the practice of tattooing sits at the intersection of people, bodies, and money and the responsibilities and moral complications that it creates. Kiskaddon is thorough in his reflection and wide in his scope, as he navigates topics such as the fear of making mistakes, conversations about color and race, and the right of refusal for projects that may forever alter a customer’s life. Blood and Lightning is a landmark study of the craft of tattooing that is consistently compelling and rewarding.