24 Treats | Advent calendar 2024

Poem

"He Would Never Use One Word Where None Would Do"

By Philip Levine

If for nothing else, you should read Philip Levine for the simple fact that he was just anointed our newest Poet Laureate. A champion of the working man, whom Edward Hirsch called "A large, ironic Whitman of the industrial heartland" we love the tender vitality of this piece.

Music

Egg Shells

By Jacko Hooper

Jacko Hooper combines delicate acoustic noodlings with a soulful, emotive voice.

Short Story

The Zero Meter Diving Team

By Jim Shepard

This curious, masterful story is about a set of brothers who work as managing engineers overseeing the Chernobyl power station on April 26, 1986

Audiobook

The Great Gatsby

Read by Frank Muller

Frank Muller reading “The Great Gatsby” will make you realize, that audiobook narration is an art form all on its own. In Muller’s reading of “Gatsby,” you can recognize an almost supernatural quality to the way he inhabitesd each character, whether he is rendering the watchful, sensible narrator, Nick Carraway, or bullying Tom Buchanan, or even flighty Daisy — often in scenes where rapid -fire dialogue has him shifting back and forth between all three within milliseconds. But perhaps most amazing is his enigmatic, chimerical Gatsby — a character Fitzgerald confessed to having had trouble fully seeing...

Short film

Time Trap

By Michael Shanks

If you could travel through time where would you go? To the future? To go see dinosaurs? And what would you do? Cure cancer? Prevent wars? Sure. But what about just using time travel to selfishly make your life easier? It sounds silly but it really might be the funniest thing you can do with time travel.

Playlist

Santa's Playlist

By Kris Kringle

No mater im 2014 grabbed you and held you in it's arms and changed your live to the better, or if the last month have been a roller-coaster-ride: Good music was always on your side, different genres from every corner of the world And so you can close down this chapter as easy as possible, Santa Claus put together the very best and greatest tracks of all of 2014, selected from a bunch of god or not so good bands and created this playlist for you. So you can have these songs always with you...

Crime Novel

The Son

By Jo Nesbøs

Sonny Lofthus is a strangely charismatic and complacent young man. Sonny’s been in prison for a dozen years, nearly half his life. The inmates who seek out his uncanny abilities to soothe leave his cell feeling absolved. They don’t know or care that Sonny has a serious heroin habit - or where or how he gets his uninterrupted supply of the drug. Or that he’s serving time for other peoples’ crimes.

Ebook

The Art of Stillness

By Pico Iyer

In The Art of Stillness—a TED Books release—Iyer investigate the lives of people who have made a life seeking stillness: from Matthieu Ricard, a Frenchman with a PhD in molecular biology who left a promising scientific career to become a Tibetan monk, to revered singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, who traded the pleasures of the senses for several years of living the near-silent life of meditation as a Zen monk. Iyer also draws on his own experiences as a travel writer to explore why advances in technology are making us more likely to retreat. He reflects that this is perhaps the reason why many people—even those with no religious commitment—seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or seeking silent retreats. These aren't New Age fads so much as ways to rediscover the wisdom of an earlier age. Growing trends like observing an “Internet Sabbath”—turning off online connections from Friday night to Monday morning—highlight how increasingly desperate many of us are to unplug and bring stillness into our lives.

Audiobook

The Son

By Jo Nesbøs

Sonny Lofthus is a strangely charismatic and complacent young man. Sonny’s been in prison for a dozen years, nearly half his life. The inmates who seek out his uncanny abilities to soothe leave his cell feeling absolved. They don’t know or care that Sonny has a serious heroin habit - or where or how he gets his uninterrupted supply of the drug. Or that he’s serving time for other peoples’ crimes.

Ebook

Gone Girl: A Novel

By Gillian Flynn

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne’s fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick’s clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River.

Ebook

The Fault in Our Stars

By John Green

In The Fault in Our Stars, John Green has created a soulful novel that tackles big subjects - life, death, love - with the perfect blend of levity and heart-swelling emotion. Hazel is sixteen, with terminal cancer, when she meets Augustus at her kids-with-cancer support group.

Ebook

No One Belongs Here More Than You

By Miranda July

Award-winning filmmaker and performing artist Miranda July brings her extraordinary talents to the page in a startling, sexy, and tender collection. In these stories, July gives the most seemingly insignificant moments a sly potency. A benign encounter, a misunderstanding, a shy revelation can reconfigure the world. Her characters engage awkwardly—they are sometimes too remote, sometimes too intimate. With great compassion and generosity, July reveals their idiosyncrasies and the odd logic and longing that govern their lives. No One Belongs Here More Than You is a stunning debut, the work of a writer with a spectacularly original and compelling voice.

Ebook

The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays

By Albert Camus

The collection of stories published as Le Mythe de Sisyphe in 1942 was the second of the absurds. The work has been cited by critics as refined and carefully crafted. The collection stands as more literature than philosophy. Camus spent at least five years writing and editing the work. The polish is clear with the very first sentence: "There is only one really serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide."

Ebook

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

By Haruki Murakami

Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their names contained a colour. The two boys were called Akamatsu, meaning ‘red pine’, and Oumi, ‘blue sea’, while the girls’ names were Shirane, ‘white root’, and Kurono, ‘black field’. Tazaki was the only last name with no colour in it. One day Tsukuru Tazaki’s friends announced that they didn’t want to see him, or talk to him, ever again.

Shortfilm

Yours and Mine

By Beyoncé

A year ago Saturday, Beyoncé surprised everybody when she suddenly released Beyoncé. She doesn’t have a similar surprise like that this year (at least we don’t think she does), but she has released a short film called Yours and Mine to mark the one year anniversary of her album.

Music

Black Messiah

By D’Angelo

Ho. Lee. Shit. I don’t know if I ever imagined I’d be in the position to actually tell someone that the D’Angelo had finally delivered on everyone’s except his own promise to redeem soul music wholly and forever with the follow-up to his turn-of-the-century masterpiece Voodoo.

Ebook

The dark Tower

By Stephen King

The Dark Tower is a series of books written by American author Stephen King, which incorporates themes from multiple genres, including fantasy, science fantasy, horror, and Western.

Ebook

We were Liars

By E. Lockhart

“E. Lockhart is one of our most important novelists, and she has given us her best book yet. Thrilling, beautiful, and blisteringly smart, We Were Liars is utterly unforgettable.” –John Green, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Fault in Our Stars

Ebook

I am Malala

By Malala Yousafzai

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday 9 October 2012, she almost paid the ultimate price. Shot in the head at point blank range while riding the bus home from school, few expected her to survive. Instead, Malala’s miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in Northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York.

Music

Sorry (EP)

By The Intermission Project

Sometimes it pays off to take a second look or even look deeper than the superficial #1 on hypem might suggest. We proudly present: The Intermission Project And Their Song ‘Sorry’...

Shortfilm

Wanderers

Directed by Erik Wernquist

"I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts." Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Music

And the War Came

By Shakey Graves

Alejandro Rose-Garcia (aka Shakey Graves) didn’t take the straight path to the country world. He went from playing late-night open mics in New York to joining the underground LA freak folk scene while looking for acting gigs before finally settling in Austin — the perfect setting for his lo-fi Americana.