25 Best Books to Read in 2024
October 22, 2024
If you’re anything like me, you probably have a long list of books you’ve been meaning to read. Allow me to add to that already lengthy list. Here are some of the best books to read in 2024 (so far). You’re welcome!
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Best Books of 2024 – Fiction
1) Intermezzo, by Sally Rooney
You’d have to live under a rock to have missed the eruption of Sally Rooney’s new book (the release of which spawned Harry Potter levels of fandom – Looney for Rooney!)
A story about the divergent lives of two brothers grieving the loss of their father, Rooney’s new book imagines, “desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking.”
Of the myriad reviews of this book, Anthony Cummins’ stands out. He muses, “Is there a better novelist at work right now?…Rooney, author of four books in just seven years, has at this point already created more enduringly memorable characters than most novelists ever manage. And – to mangle a line from the book – she’s, what, 33? Christ.”
2) Rejection, by Tony Tulathimutte
Described as “Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life.” The seven interconnected stories deal with the evergreen crises of our tech-obsessed age – sex, relationships, identity, and the internet.
Of Rejection, Dwight Garner says “if [it] were a futuristic pop-up book, up would jump unflattering sex pics, medicine for cauliflower acne, unreturned texts, hateful pet birds, the Stanford alumni magazine, terrible food, the odors of crotches and armpits, semi-satirical Judith Butler Halloween costumes and holograms of ‘friends’ who are either poseurs or users or toxic grievance collectors.”
Best Books to Read 2024 (Continued)
3) Grown Women, by Sarai Johnson
Following the lives of four generations of black women, Johnson’s tender book examines the legacy of trauma and how a family comes together to heal. Of Johnson’ book, Kirkus Reviews says it conjures “A vivid line of women inch[ing] toward a place where it isn’t always the mother’s fault.”
4) Colored Television, by Danzy Senna
I’ve loved Danzy Senna’s writing since her first novel, Caucasia. Like her other novels, Colored Television takes on questions of race, creativity, and the allure of fame. The protagonist, Jane, manages to find a house-sitting gig where she can finally finish her novel. Everything seems to be coming up roses until she meets Hampton Ford, whose idea to develop “the Jackie Robinson of biracial comedies” threatens to upend Jane’s plans.
As Carol V. Bell writes in her review, “This cutting exploration of an artist’s striving and dreaming and flailing in the shadow of Hollywood’s dream factory…masterfully explores and explodes the psyche…of a woman trying to level up on family, work and race in a post-post-racial America.”
Best Books to Read 2024 (Continued)
5) Creation Lake, by Rachel Cushner
If you loved Cushner’s earlier The Flamethrowers, you’ll love this story of a freelance spy who infiltrates a commune in southwest France. In his review for the New York Times, Dwight Garner calls Kushner a “major writer, …[with] a gift for almost effortless intellectual penetration.”
6) Entitlement, by Rumaan Alam
In Alam’s fourth book, Brooke Orr, a Black woman in her thirties living in New York, starts working for Asher Jaffe, a billionaire looking to give away his fortune. Though her intentions are good, Brooke’s new proximity to extreme wealth starts to change her. In his review, Joseph O’Neill calls Entitlement a “a psychological thriller that subtly turns into a vicious exposé of affluent liberalism.”
Best Books to Read 2024 (Continued)
7) All Fours, by Miranda July
Love her or hate her, July is a cultural force to be reckoned with. (I’ve had mixed feelings about her work since her uber-twee 2005 film, Me and You and Everyone We Know.) July’s new book tells the story of “A semifamous artist” on a cross country drive. Not 30 minutes from her house, she “spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention.” While technically true, this description says nothing about the copious sex that animates the narrator’s reinvention. In one oft-quoted line, the narrator claims to hear her husband’s penis “whistling impatiently like a teakettle.”
8) Clean, by Alia Trabucco Zerán, translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes
In this taut thriller, a young girl has died and the family’s maid, Estrela, is being interrogated. From the outset, it’s clear that things are not as they seem. Both a mystery and an examination of privilege, this book “shows how her [Estrela’s] apparently simple life turns into a repetitive and ultimately violent nightmare.” This sentiment is echoed by the critic Laura Van Den Berg, who leaves the book wondering, “How are we revealed by the stories we choose to believe in, and the stories we turn away from?”
Best Books to Read 2024 (Continued)
9) Wandering Stars, by Tommy Orange
Longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, Orange’s new novel functions as both a prequel and sequel to his 2018 book, There There. Tracing the lineage of Orvil Red Feather, Orange’s book catalogs the six generations of trauma and structural violence that continues to affect Native populations in the United States. Of Wandering Stars, Anthony Cummins marvels at its “eye-opening historical re-creation …[and] gritty social realism.”
10) Martyr!, by Kaveh Akbar
Akbar’s main character, Cyrus Shams, is an Iranian-American whose father came to America after Cyrus’s mother was killed in a plane crash over the Persian Gulf. When his father dies of a stroke when Cyrus is in college, Cyrus nears his breaking point. At once a narrative of addiction, love, and art, Martyr! is alive with what Junot Diaz calls “beautiful, tragic, laughing stories — so that the unspeakable will not have the last word.”
Best Books to Read 2024 (Continued)
11) Scaffolding, by Lauren Elkin
The plot of Lauren Elkin’s book is simple. It follows two couples who live in the same Paris apartment fifty years apart. This shared space allows Elkin to explore the constants of couplehood – marriage, parenthood, sex – with an eye toward those questions which cannot fully rise to language. Sophie Mackintosh calls it a “beautifully fluid meditation on what is at stake, and who we become, when we desire.”
12) Enlightenment, by Sarah Perry
Described as “A story of love and astronomy told over the course of twenty years through the lives of two improbable best friends,” Perry’s book follows Grace and Thomas, two Baptists in Essex, England as they explore faith, love, and the stars. Beejay Silcox calls Enlightenment “gorgeous [and] ethereal.”
Best Books to Read 2024 (Continued)
13) My First Book, by Honor Levy
Levy’s love-it-or-hate-it book emerges from the depths of Gen-Z – “giving,” “serving,” and “thinspo” abound. Martin Dolan calls Levy’s writing, “alternatingly horrifying and hilarious,” but you can just call her “mother.”
Best Non-Fiction Books of 2024
1) The Message, by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Like his famous Between the World and Me, Coates’ new book examines the competing narratives of race, nationalism, and the illusion of equality. His book moves from Senegal to South Carolina, and, in the book’s longest section, to Palestine, where Coates sees first-hand the brutality of the Israeli occupation. Throughout the book, Coates warns against “the elevation of factual complexity over self-evident morality.”
2) A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit, by Noliwe Rooks
Part biography, part memoir, this book sketches out the life and vision of Mary Mcleod Bethune (1875-1955), a tireless campaigner for Black equality. Rooks mines Bethune’s life for lessons to inspire today’s activists.
Best Books to Read 2024 (Continued)
3) The Wisdom of Sheep: Observations from a Family Farm, by Rosamund Young
Memoirs that deal with nature are too often described as “meditative,” “diaristic,” or “melancholic.” Young’s new book is better described as “tender” and “rewarding.” The publisher praises the “startling beauty and tenderness,” of Young’s book and marvels at the “remarkable emotional and intellectual complexity of the animals she lives with on her family farm.”
4) An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work, by Charlotte Shane
Shane’s book focuses on her nearly 20 years as sex worker. Though she pulls no punches about the details of her work, she is more interested in the commodification of desire and the possibility of genuine connection. In the words of the LARB, Shane’s book is less concerned with “matters of harm and power than the intricacies of desire and the variety of intimacy possible between women and men.”
Best Books to Read 2024 (Continued)
5) The Life and Death of the American Worker: The Immigrants Taking On America’s Largest Meatpacking Company, by Alice Driver
Driver’s book is the latest in a long line of damning looks into the violence (both personal and structural) of food production in America. Driver bases her reportage around the employees affected by the deadly chemical accident that occurred at the Tyson Foods chicken processing plant in Springdale, Arkansas in 2011. She traces the lingering effects of this accident on the lives of Tyson’s immigrant workforce. Publisher’s Weekly calls it “a tour de force” filled with language both “sumptuous and empathetic.”
6) Health and Safety, by Emily Witt
In this incandescent memoir, the journalist Emily Witt weaves together the personal and the political. By day she is a journalist for The New Yorker, reporting on the increasingly fascist tone of American politics, but by night, she and her boyfriend Andrew are taking drugs and going to underground raves. In her review, Jennifer Szalai describes Witt’s narration as “by turns, disdainful, cleareyed, playful, serious, adventurous and terrified.”
Best Books to Read 2024 (Continued)
7) Keeping the Faith, by Brenda Wineapple
It’s easy to think of the “Scopes Monkey Trial” as ancient history. After all, the forces that prosecuted a teacher for teaching evolution in a public school have no place in today’s world. Right? Brenda Wineapple’s new book examines the trial and argues that the tension between religious faith and science is the formative conflict of the American democratic experiment. In his glowing review, John Kaag writes that Wineapple’s book “provides a vivid account of how fear has always acted on our national consciousness—and a way of coming to terms with our own fractured political present.”
8) The Secret Life of the Universe, by Nathalie A. Cabrol
As the Director of the Carl Sagan Center at the SETI Institute, Cabrol is uniquely qualified to lead us on a broad survey of planetary science and research. According to Cabrol, we are closer than ever to finding extraterrestrial life (though it’s likely to be microbial).
Best Books to Read 2024 (Continued)
9) Vox Ex Machina: A Cultural History of Talking Machines, by Sarah A. Bell
A comprehensive examination of how scientists and researchers made machines talk, Bell’s text traces the development of speaking machines from Speak & Spell to Siri. Meredith A. Bak argues that Bell’s book “raises vital social, economic, and political questions about our interactions with artificial voice technologies.”
10) Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right, by Arlie Russell Hochschild
In this vital book, Hochschild profiles the residents of Pikesville, Tennessee, a town struggling with job loss, poverty, and drugs. Hochschild sets out to understand the emotional, societal, and cultural factors that led over 80% of Pikesville residents to vote for Trump.
Best Books to Read 2024 (Continued)
11) Dead Weight: Essays on Hunger and Harm, by Emmeline Clein
Clein’s book examines anorexia at the nexus of capitalism, technology, pop-culture, and social media. She offers up medical and scientific information alongside a deep concern for personal narrative and empathy. In her review, Leah Mandel writes that “Clein has marshaled her considerable powers to unearth and elucidate the reasons we think of ourselves as problems to manage in the first place.”
12) The Long Run, by Stacey D’Erasmo
In her review, Mary Gabriel calls The Long Run is “less a book than a dinner party that D’Erasmo has generously invited us to attend.” D’Erasmo profiles eight creators who tell of the struggle of making art decade after decade.
Best Books of 2024 Fiction & Nonfiction – Wrapping Up
I sometimes get depressed when I go into bookstores. I look around and see all the books that I’ll never have time to read. At the same time, 2024 has turned out to be such a great year (already) for smart, compelling books, that I might have to visit my local bookstore today.
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