What I Read in 2024

I’ve been posting what books I’ve read for the last four years (you can see the posts for 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023).

My reading total was a bit lower this year because I ditched a lot of books. I had some real dry patches where I just couldn’t figure out what I was in the mood for and so I started a few books that were most definitely not what I was in the mood for.

I don’t bother tracking DNF (did not finish) books. Especially because some of them I may go back to some day. For example, I spent many weeks getting about a third of the way through Hamilton before I decided that was enough time spent with a self-important white guy waxing poetic about another self-important white guy. (Who, for the record, was not as much “up from the bottom” as the musical would have you believe. He’s descended from Scottish nobility.) It’s a well-written book and the story is interesting (I’m a fan of the show) and it was fun running across lyrics throughout the book. But I’m not sure how much more time and energy I’m willing to give to either Chernow or A. Ham.

That said, I read some fantastic books this year, both fiction and nonfiction. Here they are …

Fiction

Happiness Falls: A Novel by Angie Kim: This book was heart-breaking but so amazing. It’s interesting to see how writers write stories set during the pandemic. Also if you know me and you know my son, you will know why this book hit me in the solar plexus.

The Encanto’s Daughter by Melissa De La Cruz: I got this as an advanced reader copy and I really liked it. It’s firmly YA, but well written and a fun story.

The Late Americans: A Novel by Brandon Taylor: This is the writer who recommended Commonwealth by Ann Patchett so I decided to check him out. This book was more a series of connected short stories, which is not a style I generally enjoy. I liked this more than I would have expected – mainly because the stories are compelling and well-written – but there are always unanswered questions for me when the stories don’t fully connect.

Hell Followed with Us by Andrew Joseph White: This was a recommendation from my daughter. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it horror, which I don’t like, but it was pretty gory. But an interesting story. I wish he’d more fully developed the idea that the opposite of religious extremism doesn’t have to be anti-religion.

Long Island Compromise: A Novel by Taffy Brodesser-Akner: Excellent, excellent, excellent. Propulsively paced. Read it if you haven’t already.

The Familiar: A Novel by Leigh Bardugo: I really loved the Shadow & Bone books so I was excited when this was picked by a book club I’m in. It wasn’t quite as good as those earlier books, but it was a fun, good read. I have The Ninth House, another book by her, on my TBR.

Demon Copperhead: A Novel by Barbara Kingsolver: There’s a reason this won all the things and was on all the lists. It was truly great. I need to read more of her work.

The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood: This was a re-read for me. It’s one of my all-time favorite novels. That said, I hadn’t read it in a bit and it’s very of its time (1990s). With that caveat, I think this is Atwood at the top of her narrative power. It’s remarkable the way she dissects power and gender and how women navigated a world that was made for them to serve and please. Despite it feeling dated I think it’s so important to recognize how ahead of its time it was.

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: A Novel by James McBride: Again, there’s a reason everyone recommends this one. Another book club pick I really liked.

The Dictionary of Lost Words: A Novel by Pip Williams: Another book club book. This one was historical fiction based on the creation of The Oxford English Dictionary. As a word nerd I was expecting more word nerdery. But it was still very good and interesting to think about how language shapes culture and culture shapes language.

The Patron Saint Of Liars by Ann Patchett: I read Commonwealth and Tom’s Lake last year. They were both so good I decided I should read more by her. This one was good but not so great that I decided to keep going through the rest of her backlist. I’ll come back to them, but I think she’s best in doses.

Nonfiction

I Can Fix This: And Other Lies I Told Myself While Parenting My Struggling Child by Kristina Kuzmic: Parenting teens is so different from parenting littles. I once said that motherhood is the worst on-the-job training program imaginable – as soon as you get good at what you are doing, you need a completely new set of skills. And wow is that true when it comes to teens. Neither of my kids has the kinds of challenges that Kuzmic writes about, but I still found a lot in this that resonated. Most importantly, sometimes your kids have problems you can’t solve and all you can do is be there and love them and support them. People who know me well know that I am a problem solver by nature, so that lesson is one I’ve had to learn over and over.

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou: My husband had been recommending this to me forever and when I was in one of my “I don’t know what I want to read” moods this popped up as available at the New York Public Library (NYPL). I can’t believe I didn’t read it earlier! A great, compulsively readable book about a truly wild story. How so many ostensibly smart people could be so stupid is hard to understand. I would recommend this book to anyone who’s had any experience with tech and Silicon Valley, but I’d also recommend it to journalism geeks. Not all reporters can write about what they do as well as they can write their actual stories. Carreyrou can and the behind-the-scenes account of how he broke this incredible story is riveting.

This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life by Lyz Lenz: This was one of the many “divorce memoirs” that came out last year. I really liked this and I wasn’t sure, going in, that I would. I don’t think you have to hate marriage – or men! – to like this book and think she’s making a good case for an inherent inequality that is built into heterosexual marriage. Her husband is unimaginably awful, so it might be easy to dismiss him as one bad apple. I think she does a good job pointing out that while yes, he is unimaginably awful, that many “good” husbands also behave in ways that are similar if not as extreme. She also shows how the culture supports and defends that inherent inequality.

Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World by Annie Lowrey: This one had been on my TBR for a bit and bubbled to the top of the pile because of some conversations I was having. It’s an interesting concept and something I think we should take seriously. But it’s hard to imagine we will.

Holding It Together by Jessica Calarco: This book is great and I’m working on a longer essay about it, so for now let me just say you should read it. This book will help you understand why I think we won’t take the idea of UBI seriously. In The Sum of Us, Heather McGhee shows how racism underlies every decision we’ve made in the last 50 years about public policy and particularly investment in public goods and social welfare. Holding It Together focuses on the role that gender has played in those decisions. As Calarco famously said in during the pandemic, “Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women.” And yes, both books also examine gender and race, respectively. The two books together are like suddenly fitting the two critical pieces into a puzzle that explains everything about how we live, and struggle, in America today. Also, to my point about Lyz Lenz’s book, she does a great job illustrating how “good” husbands leverage the culture of inequality to their own benefit.

I Cannot Control Everything Forever: A Memoir of Motherhood, Science, and Art by Emily C. Bloom: The title of this book hit me in the gut. This is one of the absolutely best mom memoirs I’ve ever read – an amazing blend of memoir, research, and so much more. I don’t rank my books – but this was probably my favorite book this year. I think it actually illustrates, well, a lot of the issues in the Lenz and Calarco books. Bloom’s husband is a great guy, committed, in this telling, to supporting his wife’s professional ambitions. And there are still so many things that fall on her shoulders. But the problem with that, of course, is one of Calarco’s main points – individual solutions do not solve systemic problems. And on top of that, the book’s writing is sublime. Lyrical and never self-pitying, this book is what every memoir should aspire to be.

P.S. I don’t bother with hyperlinks. I figure if you are smart enough to read this essay you are smart enough to know how to buy or borrow a book. I will say I read most of these as loans from the Queens Public Library or the New York Public Library. Both lend ebooks and it is fantastic – 10/10, no notes, highly recommend. But if you are the buying sort I recommend Bookshop.org. It’s a great way to support independent booksellers. I love my Kindle, but if I’m buying a physical book I prefer not to give more dollars to you-know-who.

P.P.S. What did you read this year? Post a comment!