Books of 2024

I read 68 books in 2024. Yeah, kind of a lot of books! 

My name is Jane, and I am a reading addict. 

It's so easy to supply my reading habit: I always have an ebook on my phone and usually a regular one (or two) on the coffee table. I read every day, almost without thinking about it.

Also: my library card is my friend: if I had to buy all the books I read, I would be poor and my house would contain nothing but bookshelves. If you love books, I urge you to get yourself a library card! 

Anyway, I only know the number of books I've read because I keep track in a book journal like my mom did. My journal is a blank book where I write the title and author of the book, as well as a sentence or two about it, to jog my memory. 

My mom's reading journal, left, with three of mine and the kitty.

One thing learned from reading many many books in a year: there are lots of good books out there! Here is a list of 15 books I especially enjoyed and that I kept thinking about long after I read them. (Last year, I listed 10 in fiction and nonfiction. This year, I added a category...)

Fiction: 

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel: A pandemic sweeps through the world and civilization collapses. Traveling musicians and actors roam the post-apocalyptic world and fate brings people together. Harrowing!

North Woods by Daniel Mason: The stories of the inhabitants of a patch of western Massachusetts: families, apple trees, beetles. The last chapter is a moving meditation on the future.

James by Percival Everett: A retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim. A much better book than Twain's. By the author of Erasure which became the movie American Fiction

Catch and Release by Laura Farmer: Two generations of a western Iowa family, plus a cat, nuns, and the exhilaration of both letting go and holding on. Written by a former student and current colleague.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey: Six astronauts during one day of their time in a space station orbiting the earth. They are a team, yet each is solitary. Ordinary tasks and awestruck reflections.

Nonfiction

How the Word is Passed by Clint Smith: A writer visits places in America--Monticello, Angola Prison, New York City--where the history and ongoing effects of slavery can be found.

Airplane Mode by Shahnaz Habib: Essays about travel and tourism, seen from the eyes of a native of India. Finding joy in an activity with roots in colonialism and capitalism. 

Birding to Change the World by Trish O’Kane: A journalist becomes an avid birder. She earns a Ph.D. in biology, fights for the well-being of urban wild space, and creates nature programs for children.

The Art Thief by Michael Finkel: An art-obsessed young man steals art in Europe by simply taking it off walls and out of vitrines in small art museums when no one is watching. 

Tits Up by Sarah Thornton: An ethnographic exploration of the role of tits in (mostly western) culture--sex workers, milk banks, plastic surgeons, bra designers, and spiritualists.

Light Reads:

(Here's the additional category I added this year: light reads. I love fun books--mysteries, comic reads, etc. Everyone needs a light read now and then! But they get squeezed out of end-o-the-year lists by the heavier ones. Here are some light reads that I enjoyed this year.)

A Man of Some Repute by Elizabeth Edmondson + 2 sequels: Mysteries that take place during the Cold War in rural England. Restrained, smart, and delightful.

You Are Here by David Nicholls: Two middle-aged, recently divorced people meet on a cross-England hike and fall in love. 

Once More from the Top by Emily Layden: A Taylor Swift-ish celebrity singer-songwriter returns to her hometown and contemplates the long-ago disappearance of the high school friend who got her started on music-writing.

Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead: WASP family gets ready for a wedding and everyone misbehaves. Readers discover secrets.

Once Upon a Tome by Oliver Darkshire: Amusing tales of an apprentice in an antiquarian bookshop.