Ed Park's 6 favorite works about self reflection and human connection

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Ed Park's novel 'Same Bed Different Dreams,' now out in paperback, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the 2024 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction. Below, the author, editor, and critic names six of his favorite books of 2024.

'Stubs' by John Jaewon Kim

A simple conceit yields the coolest memoir of the year. Kim found an envelope containing ticket stubs to 32 indie-rock shows (plus a Warhol exhibit and a Joan Rivers set) that he'd attended between 2001 and 2010. Each stub sparks a memory, producing a portrait of the artist as a young law student, avid concert-goer, crush-haver, life liver. Buy it here.

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'The Last One at the Wedding' by Jason Rekulak

In this deeply satisfying thriller, a veteran UPS truck driver should be happy as he travels to a tech baron's idyllic New England compound to marry off his estranged daughter into money. But why is her fiancé so skittish, and where in the name of V.C. Andrews is her future mother-in-law? Buy it here.

'Blurry' by Dash Shaw

Shaw, the author-illustrator of "Bodyworld and Bottomless Belly Button," reinvents himself with each graphic novel. Blurry lacks a central character, instead letting the narrative flow from person to person, couple to couple, like a passed baton made up of grace and light. Buy it here.

'Negative Space' by Gillian Linden

This pitch-perfect novel charts a week in the life of a frazzled part-time private school English teacher at the height of the pandemic in New York City. Worries about her own children and her grasp on Kafka occupy her whirring mind when she sees — or does she? — a troubling teacher-student interaction. Buy it here.

'Self-Portraits' by Osamu Dazai

"One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji," the standout story in this curated collection of Dazai's autobiographical shorts, begins with a corrective bit of art criticism regarding depictions of the titular promontory. The story then wanders a while — like the best of John Cheever's fictions. Buy it here.

'1095 Short Sentences' by Donato Loia

The best of these numbered entries have an offhand wisdom ("210. Your success or failure as a professor depends enormously on the tone of your voice"). And they might change your life in small ways if you let them: "4. The first coffee of the day should be consumed as slowly as possible." I'll drink to that! Buy it here.

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