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.
Thank you for the fantastic list! I love getting lost in a novel, and reading more of them is helping me finish writing the first draft of my own, so I will add a bunch of these to my list. :)
Here are some of my favorites (fiction and nonfiction) for 2024:
Robinson, Roxana, Cost (2008). What an incredible undertaking and story by one of my favorite authors. Robinson has a unique talent for moving from one character’s private thoughts and insights to several others. This is a family story, one way too common today and only growing exponentially as more and more people become entangled in the deadly web of drug addiction. Julia and Wendell are divorced but share their deep concerns and engagement in the lives of their two adult sons. When concerns about the youngest, Jack, arise, a family often distant with each other, somewhat detached, comes together in a common cause and step into a world so alien to them that each member struggles with coming to terms with it. Highly recommend! (R2024)
Rushdie, Salman, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder (2024). Finally, Salman Rushdie felt safe, free from the fatwa that had threatened his life after his book Satanic Verses came out and he needed to go into hiding. But on the morning of August 12, 2022, as he rose to address a substantial crowd at Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, a man in black wielding a knife rushed the stage and hacked, slashed, and tried his best to murder the author. This is his response, his experiences as he barely survived and had to deal with a loss of his right eye and many other medical emergencies. Trauma. How we are changed by it, for better or worse. What we become following an experience that shakes us to our core. An interesting read. (R2024)
Mockett, Marie Mutsuki, The Tree Doctor (2024). What a delightful book! The unnamed narrator of this story returns to Carmel, California, to care for her mother just as the covid pandemic begins. She leaves her husband and two daughters behind in their home in Hong Kong thinking she’ll soon be reunited with them or they can fly out to be with her in the US. Her Japanese mother declines and must be moved to a facility and the world goes into lockdown, with everything closing, including businesses and borders, and she must hunker down in her childhood home. She becomes preoccupied with the multi-faceted beauty and care of her mother’s garden, including a dormant cherry tree she calls “Einstein.” In the long months of the pandemic, she teaches her Japanese students via zoom, discovers a passionate self she’d thought lost forever, and refurbishes her mother’s garden. The time alone allows her to evaluate her previous life, free herself sexually, and rediscover what has real meaning in her life. (R2024)
Goodwin, Doris Kearns, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s (2024). Doris Kearns Goodwin has top credentials as a historian, particularly as a presidential historian. Her first book was Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, followed by the Pulitzer Prize-winner No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Homefront in WWII. Many more followed as well as a History Channel docuseries that she executive produced. This is the first of her books that I have read and it is right up there with the best I’ve read about politics in the 1960s. As with all of her books, this one is fully and carefully researched and annotated. Her husband Richard Goodwin played a critical behind-the-scenes role as a key speechwriter in both John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson’s administrations. As I always say, words matter, and his brought profound speeches to both presidents’ speeches as they worked to pass some of the most important social accomplishments in US history on civil rights, voting rights, and other social net protections for every citizen. This is not a dry recitation of events; it’s filled with important backstories to these administrations that still have resonance in these chaotic times. I feel it sets the scene for where we are today and highly recommend it, especially for those wondering how we got here and how we get back on track with US goals and dreams. https://doriskearnsgoodwin.com/ (R2024)
Moore, Liz, The God of the Woods (2024). In August 1975 a camp counselor discovers that one of the girls in her group is not in her bunk. After an extensive in-camp search, worries mount. Barbara isn’t one of the regular 13-year-old campers, she is the daughter of the very wealthy Van Laar family, owners and supporters of the entire camp property and surrounding woods. As a broader search proves unproductive, panic and chaos mount and law enforcement, investigator Judyta Luptack among them, arrive on the scene. Soon people are telling Luptack that Barbara’s brother, 8-year-old Bear, also disappeared without a trace ten years earlier. Moore keeps us guessing as she agilely switches back and forth between time periods and various key characters, ultimately bringing the action to a surprising and dramatic conclusion. (R2024)