2024 Books
2024 Books
I read books. I keep track of them. I like lists. Read quite a few young adult books this year because Nadia kept pushing them at me (to my delight) or I would read them with her. Ratings are x/5.
Give your recommendations, tell me you loved/hated something I also (or didn’t) love or hate. I can promise you that if you excitedly come to me and say, “I loved this book!” I will also read it, no matter what sort of genre it is. So share your favorite books on the year!
If you are on Goodreads I will shamelessly steal your highly-rated books and recommendations for my own list in the coming years.
Note: My copy-paste took away all my proper underlining and I'M NOT REDOING IT
1. Notes on an Execution, Danya Kukafka, 5/5
2. The Gunslinger (Dark Tower #1), Stephen King, 4/5
3. A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them, Neil Bradbury, 5/5
4. The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman, 4/5
5. I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy, 3/5
6. Fugitive Telemetry (Murderbot Diaries #6), 5/5
7. City of Girls, Elizabeth Gilbert, 4/5
8. The King of Warsaw, Szczepan Twardoch, 5/5
9. How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water, Angie Cruz, 4/5
10. The Drawing of the Three (Dark Tower #2), Stephen King, 4/5
11. The Sun Down Motel, Simone St. James, 4/5
12. Middlewest, Book One, Skottie Young, 4/5
13. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath, 3/5
14. My Evil Mother, Margaret Atwood, 4/5
15. Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World’s Worst Diseases, Lydia Kang, 4/5
16. The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman, 4/5
17. Middlewest, Book Two, Skottie Young, 5/5
18. The Book Eaters, Sunyi Dean, 4/5
19. Commonwealth, Ann Patchett, 4/5
20. Wait Till Helen Comes, Mary Downing Hahn, 5/5 (rated by Nadia)
21. Middlewest Book Three, Skottie Young, 4/5
22. We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland, Fintan O’Toole, 5/5
23. American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century, Maureen Callahan, 4/5
24. Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., 3/5
25. The Ardent Swarm, Yamen Manai, 4/5
26. Number the Stars, Lois Lowry, 5/5 (rated by Nadia)
27. Another Country, James Baldwin, 4/5
28. The Waste Lands (Dark Tower #3), Stephen King, 4/5
29. Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone, Richard Lloyd Parry, 5/5
30. The Giver (Giver #1), Lois Lowry, 5/5
31. Bewitched Moon: Emergence, C.R. Stephens, 4/5
32. Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases, Paul Holes, 3/5
33. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum, 4/5
34. Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes, Moshe Kasher, 5/5
35. Gathering Blue (Giver #2), Lois Lowry, 5/5 (rated by Nadia)
36. The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller, 4/5
37. System Collapse (Murderbot Diaries #7), Martha Wells, 4/5
38. Ordinary Notes, Christina Sharpe, 4/5
39. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee, 5/5
40. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, 5/5
41. The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, Jonathan Freedland, 5/5
42. Messenger (Giver #3), Lois Lowry, 4/5 (rated by Nadia)
43. The Sentence, Louise Erdrich, 4/5
44. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel, 4/5
45. Family Meal, Bryan Washington, 4/5
46. Liberty’s Daughter, Naomi Kritzer, 4/5
47. The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, Dave Grohl, 4/5
48. The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, 3/5
49. Brood, Jackie Polzin, 3/5
50. Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders, 3/5
51. Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, Erik Larson, 4/5
52. Man o’War, Cory McCarthy, 5/5
53. All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business, Mel Brooks, 5/5
54. My Government Means to Kill Me, Rasheed Newson, 4/5
55. The Monster of Florence, Douglas Preston, 4/5
56. Son (Giver #4), Lois Lowry, 3/5
57. The Color Purple, Alice Walker, 5/5
58. Fleabag: The Scriptures, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, 3/5
59. Moon of the Crusted Snow, Waubgeshig Rice, 4/5
60. The Thirty Names of Night, Zeyn Joukhadar, 4/5
61. Saga, Volume 10, Brian K. Vaughan, 5/5
62. The Silent Boy, Lois Lowry, 3/5
63. Saga, Volume 11, Brian K. Vaughan, 4/5
64. Erasure, Percival Everett, 5/5
65. All Boys Aren’t Blue, George M. Johnson, 4/5
66. James, Percival Everett, 4/5
67. The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk, 2/5
68. The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts, Loren Grush, 5/5
69. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Suzanne Collins, 4/5
70. Passing, Nella Larsen, 4/5
71. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Judy Blume, 4/5
72. Paper Girls, Volume 1, Brian K. Vaughan, 5/5
73. Paper Girls: The Complete Story, Brian K. Vaughan, 5/5
74. Checkout 19, Claire-Louise Bennett, 2/5
75. The Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean M. Auel, 3/5
76. A Girl of the Limberlost, Gene Stratton-Porter, 3/5
77. When Stars Are Scattered, Victoria Jamieson, 5/5
78. Heartstopper: Volume One, Alice Oseman, 5/5
79. Heartstopper: Volume Two, Alice Oseman, 5/5
80. Heartstopper: Volume Three, Alice Oseman, 5/5
81. Heartstopper: Volume Four, Alice Oseman, 5/5
82. Heartstopper: Volume Five, Alice Oseman, 5/5
83. The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Heather Morris, 3/5
84. The Phantom Twin, Lisa Brown, 4/5
85. Tree. Table. Book., Lois Lowry, 4/5
86. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, Nikole Hannah-Jones 5/5
87. Bad Gays: A Homosexual History, Huw Lemmey, 2/5
88. You Know, Sex: Bodies, Gender, Puberty, and Other Things, Cory Silverberg, 5/5
89. Queer as All Get Out: 10 People Who’ve Inspired Me, Shelby Criswell, 3/5
90. Claudia and the Middle School Mystery (BSC #40), Ann M. Martin, 4/5
91. Bury Your Gays, Chuck Tingle, 4/5
92. Lovecraft Country, Matt Ruff, 4/5
93. Nine Perfect Strangers, Liane Moriarty, 3/5
94. The Firekeeper’s Daughter, Angeline Boulley, 5/5
95. The Four Winds, Kristin Hannah, 4/5
96. Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges, 2/5
97. Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America, Talia Lavin, 3/5
98. Assistant to the Villain, Hannah Nicole Maehrer, 3/5
99. Silence, Full Stop: A Memoir, Karina Shor, 3/5
100. Strange Planet, Nathan W. Pyle, 4/5
101. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs, 4/5
TLDR: 5 Standouts: Intentionally different types of books that stuck with me for one reason or another.
1. Notes on an Execution, Danya Kukafka, 5/5 Compulsively readable. Ultimately this isn't a very satisfying exploration of a serial killer (why, how, any of the other morbid details you'd expect) but it's more than satisfying probing the edges of his life through the context of particular women. It's also very good at making you think you might want something (i.e. seeing a reunion of mother and son/s or extended family) and then not giving it--but this is compelling in and of itself. Life doesn't give clean, neat answers. (This might be a frustration for some--all ends are tied up, but not in the way one might want.)
2. A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them, Neil Bradbury, 5/5
If my spouse turns up dead, please disregard that I read this book. (THAT IS A JOKE.)
This was a really fascinating combination of murder-and-accidental-poisoning anecdotes, descriptions of symptoms, mechanism of action, chemical makeup of poison molecules (and why they affect various cell structures in our body), how a particular poison can go from inert to deadly, and historical/alternate uses of said poisons.
Let me just say. French scientists with the poisons every time, man. Throughout history. "This white powder is good, so this white powder must also be!" It reminds me of the rogue history of developing vaccines (Ahh, the good ol' "let me stick myself with this and see if it works" method.). French scientists were out there wilding.
3. The King of Warsaw, Szczepan Twardoch, 5/5
I desperately want more of my friends to read this book so I can talk about it--because it's one of those "holy sh*t, I HAVE to talk about this" kind of books. You think things are going one way (granted, with an underlying air of gritty menace because--of course, given the time and the situation of the characters), and things do not go exactly the way you might think.
This book is dark and feels like a gut-punch about 70-80% of the way through. No spoilers, but I WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT.
4. Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes, Moshe Kasher, 5/5
Memoirs can be such a mixed bag. In fact, I thought Kasher in the Rye (Kasher's previous memoir) was a bit of a mixed bag. This is much stronger and does something really fascinating in terms of personal storytelling.
As we progress along the milestones of Kasher's life (as a memoir does) it approaches them from a depth-of-information sort of way. So we get buckets of deep-dive information all connected by the moments of Kasher's life. This is why, in a memoir, you'll get a history of: AA, ASL, Burning Man, Judaism, Stand Up Comedy. All fascinating histories, all reflected through the lens of Kasher's personal connection to these pieces. This made it a really enjoyable read.
5. We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland, Fintan O’Toole, 5/5
This book covers a LOT of ground and a lot of interwoven angles that contribute to the culture of Ireland as it is--and how it came into (and failed to come into for so long) modernity.
The author describes at the end of the book how he was uniquely positioned--having been born into a time of upheaval, coming of age while things were shifting, and writing about the economy/politics as they were happening at the time puts him in a unique position to speak on the shifts and ebbs of Irish culture. That is borne out.
The theme that weaves throughout is the unspoken knowns--the duality of the national consciousness able to hold truths one way, and another; the catholic church (and rampant abuses of children), abortion, political corruption, etc., and the consequences when the known is finally voiced being the catalyst for change. Everyone knew that banned contraceptives were not being used as "cycle regulators" for "married women only", but...as long as it wasn't pointed out too loudly it could be an unspoken agreement. When it became KNOWN-known, then a shift had to occur in the policy, if not the broader culture. It's this filtering of history through the duality of consciousness that makes this particular book more interesting to me than an average retelling of modern history.
I read books. I keep track of them. I like lists. Read quite a few young adult books this year because Nadia kept pushing them at me (to my delight) or I would read them with her. Ratings are x/5.
Give your recommendations, tell me you loved/hated something I also (or didn’t) love or hate. I can promise you that if you excitedly come to me and say, “I loved this book!” I will also read it, no matter what sort of genre it is. So share your favorite books on the year!
If you are on Goodreads I will shamelessly steal your highly-rated books and recommendations for my own list in the coming years.
Note: My copy-paste took away all my proper underlining and I'M NOT REDOING IT
1. Notes on an Execution, Danya Kukafka, 5/5
2. The Gunslinger (Dark Tower #1), Stephen King, 4/5
3. A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them, Neil Bradbury, 5/5
4. The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman, 4/5
5. I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette McCurdy, 3/5
6. Fugitive Telemetry (Murderbot Diaries #6), 5/5
7. City of Girls, Elizabeth Gilbert, 4/5
8. The King of Warsaw, Szczepan Twardoch, 5/5
9. How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water, Angie Cruz, 4/5
10. The Drawing of the Three (Dark Tower #2), Stephen King, 4/5
11. The Sun Down Motel, Simone St. James, 4/5
12. Middlewest, Book One, Skottie Young, 4/5
13. The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath, 3/5
14. My Evil Mother, Margaret Atwood, 4/5
15. Patient Zero: A Curious History of the World’s Worst Diseases, Lydia Kang, 4/5
16. The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman, 4/5
17. Middlewest, Book Two, Skottie Young, 5/5
18. The Book Eaters, Sunyi Dean, 4/5
19. Commonwealth, Ann Patchett, 4/5
20. Wait Till Helen Comes, Mary Downing Hahn, 5/5 (rated by Nadia)
21. Middlewest Book Three, Skottie Young, 4/5
22. We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland, Fintan O’Toole, 5/5
23. American Predator: The Hunt for the Most Meticulous Serial Killer of the 21st Century, Maureen Callahan, 4/5
24. Player Piano, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., 3/5
25. The Ardent Swarm, Yamen Manai, 4/5
26. Number the Stars, Lois Lowry, 5/5 (rated by Nadia)
27. Another Country, James Baldwin, 4/5
28. The Waste Lands (Dark Tower #3), Stephen King, 4/5
29. Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster Zone, Richard Lloyd Parry, 5/5
30. The Giver (Giver #1), Lois Lowry, 5/5
31. Bewitched Moon: Emergence, C.R. Stephens, 4/5
32. Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases, Paul Holes, 3/5
33. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum, 4/5
34. Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes, Moshe Kasher, 5/5
35. Gathering Blue (Giver #2), Lois Lowry, 5/5 (rated by Nadia)
36. The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller, 4/5
37. System Collapse (Murderbot Diaries #7), Martha Wells, 4/5
38. Ordinary Notes, Christina Sharpe, 4/5
39. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee, 5/5
40. Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston, 5/5
41. The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World, Jonathan Freedland, 5/5
42. Messenger (Giver #3), Lois Lowry, 4/5 (rated by Nadia)
43. The Sentence, Louise Erdrich, 4/5
44. Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel, 4/5
45. Family Meal, Bryan Washington, 4/5
46. Liberty’s Daughter, Naomi Kritzer, 4/5
47. The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music, Dave Grohl, 4/5
48. The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, 3/5
49. Brood, Jackie Polzin, 3/5
50. Lincoln in the Bardo, George Saunders, 3/5
51. Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, Erik Larson, 4/5
52. Man o’War, Cory McCarthy, 5/5
53. All About Me! My Remarkable Life in Show Business, Mel Brooks, 5/5
54. My Government Means to Kill Me, Rasheed Newson, 4/5
55. The Monster of Florence, Douglas Preston, 4/5
56. Son (Giver #4), Lois Lowry, 3/5
57. The Color Purple, Alice Walker, 5/5
58. Fleabag: The Scriptures, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, 3/5
59. Moon of the Crusted Snow, Waubgeshig Rice, 4/5
60. The Thirty Names of Night, Zeyn Joukhadar, 4/5
61. Saga, Volume 10, Brian K. Vaughan, 5/5
62. The Silent Boy, Lois Lowry, 3/5
63. Saga, Volume 11, Brian K. Vaughan, 4/5
64. Erasure, Percival Everett, 5/5
65. All Boys Aren’t Blue, George M. Johnson, 4/5
66. James, Percival Everett, 4/5
67. The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk, 2/5
68. The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts, Loren Grush, 5/5
69. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Suzanne Collins, 4/5
70. Passing, Nella Larsen, 4/5
71. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, Judy Blume, 4/5
72. Paper Girls, Volume 1, Brian K. Vaughan, 5/5
73. Paper Girls: The Complete Story, Brian K. Vaughan, 5/5
74. Checkout 19, Claire-Louise Bennett, 2/5
75. The Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean M. Auel, 3/5
76. A Girl of the Limberlost, Gene Stratton-Porter, 3/5
77. When Stars Are Scattered, Victoria Jamieson, 5/5
78. Heartstopper: Volume One, Alice Oseman, 5/5
79. Heartstopper: Volume Two, Alice Oseman, 5/5
80. Heartstopper: Volume Three, Alice Oseman, 5/5
81. Heartstopper: Volume Four, Alice Oseman, 5/5
82. Heartstopper: Volume Five, Alice Oseman, 5/5
83. The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Heather Morris, 3/5
84. The Phantom Twin, Lisa Brown, 4/5
85. Tree. Table. Book., Lois Lowry, 4/5
86. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, Nikole Hannah-Jones 5/5
87. Bad Gays: A Homosexual History, Huw Lemmey, 2/5
88. You Know, Sex: Bodies, Gender, Puberty, and Other Things, Cory Silverberg, 5/5
89. Queer as All Get Out: 10 People Who’ve Inspired Me, Shelby Criswell, 3/5
90. Claudia and the Middle School Mystery (BSC #40), Ann M. Martin, 4/5
91. Bury Your Gays, Chuck Tingle, 4/5
92. Lovecraft Country, Matt Ruff, 4/5
93. Nine Perfect Strangers, Liane Moriarty, 3/5
94. The Firekeeper’s Daughter, Angeline Boulley, 5/5
95. The Four Winds, Kristin Hannah, 4/5
96. Labyrinths, Jorge Luis Borges, 2/5
97. Wild Faith: How the Christian Right is Taking Over America, Talia Lavin, 3/5
98. Assistant to the Villain, Hannah Nicole Maehrer, 3/5
99. Silence, Full Stop: A Memoir, Karina Shor, 3/5
100. Strange Planet, Nathan W. Pyle, 4/5
101. Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs, 4/5
TLDR: 5 Standouts: Intentionally different types of books that stuck with me for one reason or another.
1. Notes on an Execution, Danya Kukafka, 5/5 Compulsively readable. Ultimately this isn't a very satisfying exploration of a serial killer (why, how, any of the other morbid details you'd expect) but it's more than satisfying probing the edges of his life through the context of particular women. It's also very good at making you think you might want something (i.e. seeing a reunion of mother and son/s or extended family) and then not giving it--but this is compelling in and of itself. Life doesn't give clean, neat answers. (This might be a frustration for some--all ends are tied up, but not in the way one might want.)
2. A Taste for Poison: Eleven Deadly Molecules and the Killers Who Used Them, Neil Bradbury, 5/5
If my spouse turns up dead, please disregard that I read this book. (THAT IS A JOKE.)
This was a really fascinating combination of murder-and-accidental-poisoning anecdotes, descriptions of symptoms, mechanism of action, chemical makeup of poison molecules (and why they affect various cell structures in our body), how a particular poison can go from inert to deadly, and historical/alternate uses of said poisons.
Let me just say. French scientists with the poisons every time, man. Throughout history. "This white powder is good, so this white powder must also be!" It reminds me of the rogue history of developing vaccines (Ahh, the good ol' "let me stick myself with this and see if it works" method.). French scientists were out there wilding.
3. The King of Warsaw, Szczepan Twardoch, 5/5
I desperately want more of my friends to read this book so I can talk about it--because it's one of those "holy sh*t, I HAVE to talk about this" kind of books. You think things are going one way (granted, with an underlying air of gritty menace because--of course, given the time and the situation of the characters), and things do not go exactly the way you might think.
This book is dark and feels like a gut-punch about 70-80% of the way through. No spoilers, but I WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT.
4. Subculture Vulture: A Memoir in Six Scenes, Moshe Kasher, 5/5
Memoirs can be such a mixed bag. In fact, I thought Kasher in the Rye (Kasher's previous memoir) was a bit of a mixed bag. This is much stronger and does something really fascinating in terms of personal storytelling.
As we progress along the milestones of Kasher's life (as a memoir does) it approaches them from a depth-of-information sort of way. So we get buckets of deep-dive information all connected by the moments of Kasher's life. This is why, in a memoir, you'll get a history of: AA, ASL, Burning Man, Judaism, Stand Up Comedy. All fascinating histories, all reflected through the lens of Kasher's personal connection to these pieces. This made it a really enjoyable read.
5. We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland, Fintan O’Toole, 5/5
This book covers a LOT of ground and a lot of interwoven angles that contribute to the culture of Ireland as it is--and how it came into (and failed to come into for so long) modernity.
The author describes at the end of the book how he was uniquely positioned--having been born into a time of upheaval, coming of age while things were shifting, and writing about the economy/politics as they were happening at the time puts him in a unique position to speak on the shifts and ebbs of Irish culture. That is borne out.
The theme that weaves throughout is the unspoken knowns--the duality of the national consciousness able to hold truths one way, and another; the catholic church (and rampant abuses of children), abortion, political corruption, etc., and the consequences when the known is finally voiced being the catalyst for change. Everyone knew that banned contraceptives were not being used as "cycle regulators" for "married women only", but...as long as it wasn't pointed out too loudly it could be an unspoken agreement. When it became KNOWN-known, then a shift had to occur in the policy, if not the broader culture. It's this filtering of history through the duality of consciousness that makes this particular book more interesting to me than an average retelling of modern history.