My Favorite Books of 2024
Novels, memoirs, and nonfiction stuff I loved
If you’ve been following me for a while, you probably know I’m a big reader.
Well, that’s an understatement. When people ask me what I do with my time (outside of work) I think they’re often looking for an exciting answer like “cross-country skiing” or “championship basket weaving” but I almost answer, “I really like to read.” Perhaps boring, but accurate.
I always set a book goal for myself at the beginning of each year, to push myself to read more. I track all my books in a big list as I finish them. This year’s goal was 100 books, and I’m happy to report that I squeaked just under the line this year by finishing my 100th book at 3pm on New Year’s Eve. I’ll admit that I get a little obsessive about it, but hey, there are far worse vices to have.
FREE BOOKS! I’m a big fan of audiobooks, because I spend a large portion of my day walking my dog, and I always have my headphones on. My #1 source of free Kindle books and audiobooks is my public library — they have an app called Libby that hooks up to your library card and lets you check out all kinds of goodies. I hardly ever pay for books, and I don’t need an Audible subscription, because the stuff from my library keeps me busy year-round.
With the Libby app, you can even put books on a “hold” list so you get a notification when they’re available, and I love getting those emails. It’s like a little treat in my inbox in the middle of the day.
So without further ado, here are my favorite books from 2024:
4 Novels I Loved (and One I Hated)
Frozen River — The main character of this novel by Ariel Lawhon was a real-life midwife and healer in the 1700s. Fascinating look at life in New England during this time period.
The Signature of All Things — Yep, it’s Liz Gilbert of “Eat, Pray, Love” fame, and I thought this novel was fun. Bonus: I learned a lot about botany, too.
Fourth Wing and Iron Flame — This fantasy series is kind of sweeping the country right now, so you’ve likely heard of it. The latest installment, Onyx Storm, just came out at the end of January. This series would be SUPER fun for anyone who read the Dragonriders of Pern series as a kid, or really, anyone who likes fantasy and adventure. Heat warning, though — this series contains pretty graphic sex scenes. A friend of mine called the series “Dragon Smut” and she’s not wrong. Still fun though. 😉
Hello Beautiful: I read this for book club and loved it. A little hard to describe, but the themes are family, identity, and mental health. I was sucked in from the first page.
One I hated — Everybody this year was raving about The Women by Kristin Hannah, but I disliked it so much I had trouble finishing it (I only completed it because it was a book club pick). It started strong but the plot completely went off the rails midway, and became completely unbelievable. There was also zero acknowledgment of the main character’s ridiculous financial privilege, which made her whole life possible. I loved Hannah’s previous book, The Nightingale, so I was really disappointed in this one.
Awesome Memoirs from Interesting People
Broken Horses — This is singer/songwriter Brandi Carlile’s memoir, and I can’t recommend highly enough that you GET THE AUDIOBOOK version of this one. It’s interspersed with snippets of her singing tunes from different periods of her life, and it’s fabulous.
Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships — NPR’s Nina Totenberg wrote this about her long-standing relationship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Politics, friendship, food, and personal heroes — woo hoo! I ate it up.
Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco — This one is wacky but still worth mentioning. The author’s mom started baking and selling pot brownies in the 1970s in California and built a thriving (and completely illegal!!) business. This story makes a radical shift in the middle, when her pot brownies evolved into vital medicine that provided comfort and nourishment to patients in the Bay Area during the AIDS crisis.
Strong Female Character — Raw, razor-sharp, and darkly hilarious, this memoir follows Scottish comedian Fern Brady's journey to discovering she's autistic at age 30. The audiobook, which she narrates, unpacks how autism in women often hides behind society's labels of "difficult" or "too much" — and what it means to finally understand yourself.
Books That Made Me Look at the World a Different Way
Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist — I loved this memoir. Massive education for me about what accessibility really means, and how the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) developed. This woman is a total badass, and you’ll be cheering for her.
The Midnight Library — It’s a little hard to describe this novel, but let’s just say the central theme is regret (and how to get past it). It’s a quick read and will really make you think.
If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home by Now: Why We Traded the Commuting Life for a Little House on the Prairie — Writer Christopher Ingraham and his wife move from the bustling east coast to small-town Minnesota, and they end up loving it. The author freezes his ass off and meets great people. An easy, fun read that will make you consider moving to parts unknown.
One Fascinating Nonfiction Pick
Magic Pill: The Extraordinary Benefits and Disturbing Risks of the New Weight-Loss Drugs — I absolutely love this author (Johann Hari) and if he decided to write about the history of phone books in America, I’d read it. But trust me, this one was really good. It starts with an examination of modern weight loss drugs and their potential pitfalls, but then it becomes a memoir about his relationship with food and his own experience taking a GLP-1 medication.
What have you read recently that you loved? Add a comment here and tell us about it.