Favourite Books of 2024

All the new-to-me books that I loved last year, from the backlisted title to the new release

This post is too long for email, so please do click through to the app or your browser to read the whole thing.

I usually begin these posts with a preamble, looking back over my year of reading. Usually this tends into the hundreds (thousands) of words. This year, though, I am perfectly contented as I look back on 2024 as a whole. I read some great books that have become easy favourites, I read lots of books I would generally recommend to the right reader and overall there were very few duds. Almost everything I read taught me something; what I do and don’t like, what makes for a good or bad reading experience.

I read a very neat and tidy 100 books. Technically I wrote reviews for 101—I finished Ada Palmer’s Too Like the Lightning in the first days of January, but it occupied most of my December so I counted it as such in my monthly books.

I read 9 nonfiction books—pretty good for me!—and 17 translated books. I’d probably like to read more of both this coming year, though I’m not entirely unhappy with that ratio. It was also the year of big books, and I surpassed the previous year’s page count in about September or October. I read 13 books over 500 pages, 6 of which were over 800.

I listened to far fewer books, I think through lack of routine in large swathes of the year. This is pretty surprising as 100 is the most books I’ve read in a year since the birth of my daughter, and I think I read a lot in 2023 by listening to a fair few. But equally, it was also the year I pivoted hard to books in my online output, which freed up a lot more ‘work time’ for reading.

Speaking of, I read at least 60 books with others this year (and it could be higher, I’m not sure). Reading with others through the book club continues to be such an enriching and rewarding experience. It’s probably why I feel so great about the year; I got value from many of the books I didn’t outright love through our countless discussions.

As for plans or changes in 2025, I definitely need to find a good balance of new releases and backlist titles, as well as reading for larger projects or courses. A couple of my reading projects took up practically all of my precious reading time in the latter half of the year (partly because I was playing catch up after a very busy summer) and I missed reading more to my mood. This is obviously tricky when you’ve only got so many hours in a day. But I’ll keep working at it, and in the meantime the Airtable base I use to organise my reading becomes more and more elaborate.

Let’s get into the books, shall we! I haven’t counted rereads this time, even though I still love Jeff VanderMeer’s original Southern Reach trilogy and Hernan Diaz’s In the Distance, obviously. Usually I do quite haphazard categories, but we’re going to stick to a fairly standard First, Second and Third Place categorisation today. As always, I had to be true to my more nebulous sense of connection to a book. We can’t always explain what it is that makes us really love one well-crafted book compared to another. There are so many great books I won’t be writing about today that might give you that feeling, and I encourage you to scroll through my monthly reads if you’re interested. There are over twenty additional books I’d still highly recommend (I’ll include a few as honourable mentions at the end of this post), and almost forty more books after that that I consider pretty good and would recommend to the right reader.

I’m going to try and be brief below (lol—nice try), but do go and click through to my original reviews if you want to learn more about each.

Links to Blackwells below are affiliate links!

First Place

These are the books that have stuck with me since I read them, and that I consider on their way to becoming all time favourites (this designation I think only truly comes after rereading and a year or two of reflection). All but one of these authors was new to me this year!

The Employees by Olga Ravn trans. by Martin Aitken (2018) - original review

I loved this book, and I loved discussing this book. It’s an unusual novel and one that might usually get my hackles up. It’s told through a series of employee statements given to an HR-like body. They work aboard a spaceship and have recently ventured to explore a nearby planet, where they have found mysterious ‘objects’ which are provoking strange reactions amongst them. We quickly discover, though, that some of these employees are human and some are humanoid, and we’re not explicitly told which is which.

Puzzling this out, interpreting the role of the objects, and discovering the underlying storyline (it’s there and it’s good!) was so rewarding, and unlike other short novels set in space (Orbital), it really feels like it has depth, nuance and meaning. Wonderful! I’d love to read her book My Work this year.

Little, Big by John Crowley (1981) - original review

I read this book over several busy weeks, which interrupted its flow and rhythm. But I haven’t stopped thinking about it, to the point that I’ll be rereading it this year as part of a slow read I’m running—I hope some of you will join me! I really think it’s a masterpiece. It opens with the journey of Smoky Barnable, who is walking from the City to Edgewood, where he will be getting married to a woman he only fleetingly knows, Daily Alice Drinkwater. Indeed, he has been given special instructions as to his journey; he must walk and not ride, he must eat only food he himself has made, and he must find or ask for a place to sleep. See, the Drinkwaters are a little strange, as is their house and the grounds on which they live. Do fairies live in Edgewood? And what is the Drinkwaters’ relationship to them? This is that rare book that really captures the magic of the fairytale, amongst other things. It is utterly beautiful.

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich (2001) - original review

I’ve read Erdrich books before and had minor niggles with them whilst broadly enjoying them, but something about her writing is very moreish to me. And this one just really got me. I don’t know why I was so taken with the story of Agnes DeWitt/Father Damien—a woman who finds herself rather unexpectedly performing the role of a Catholic priest on an Ojibwe reservation—but I was. It is meandering and tragic and funny and ultimately very moving. I think about it a lot and will now be working my way through the series it comes from from the top.

Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad (2023) - original review

This book works on many levels; it is smart and incisive; it’s a good story that works through multiple layers of interpretation; the prose is captivating; and it is somewhat ambitious and inventive. It follows Sonia, an actor living in London who decides to visit her sister in Haifa after a disastrous love affair. As a Palestinian who has avoided the pain of living in and around Israel for many years, this brings up a lot of emotions for Sonia, especially when she finds herself in a production of Hamlet taking place in the West Bank. It is great literary fiction of an older tradition, and I so look forward to watching the rest of Hammad’s career.

Hild by Nicola Griffith (2013) - original review

I had to put this one here, even though I struggled with it at times, because it just keeps coming back to me. This is extremely dense historical fiction based on the early life of Saint Hilda. It is granular in detail at times, and keeping on top of the political machinations at this pivotal moment when Christianity arrived on our shores (shores not yet British or English) was difficult at times. And it is written in this thickly lyrical dreamlike prose which I think highlights just how alien this world is. But Hild, and her connection to the natural world around her, wormed her way into my heart. I missed her when she was gone, and I look forward to accompanying her on the next stage of her life in Menewood.

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury (1957) - original review

I found this book to be moving in many ways, partly in Bradbury’s absolute earnestness with it. Who could describe many contemporary novels with that label? But I’m also putting it here because it is totally weird and it shouldn’t work at all, but it does! And that surprise element just really delighted me. It’s a mishmash of stories, some focussing on 12-year-old Douglas Spaulding—earning it the designation of ‘coming of age’ novel—but it also features several other stories, including one out-and-out horror story which shouldn’t fit the genre at all, and it pretty much abandons Doug entirely through the second half. And whilst it starts in gentle realism, strange machines begin to proliferate in Green Town, Illinois. This instability in the narrative structure in turn lends it a real magic in the effect of the actual story. Will be rereading in a future summer!

My Friends by Hisham Matar (2024) - original review

Matar writes here of Khaled, a fictional protagonist who—in this version of events—attends the very real demonstration outside the Libyan embassy in London in April 1984. Convinced to go by his friend, he is one of those injured by the gunmen shooting from the windows of the embassy, and his whole life is unutterably changed, the future he thought he’d have gone in an instant. He lives, then, in exile, and relies on his close but delicate friendships with the people around him. Matar’s long, contemplative sentences drew me deep into this book, and spin beautiful portraits of Khaled and his friends. There is true humanity in this book. His and Isabella Hammad’s work is really a balm for the soul for those of us who are tiring of the current trends in literary fiction. It is alive and well if you look in the right places.

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez (2022) - original review

I spend my days searching for an author like Jimenez, who is writing challenging and ambitious speculative fiction wrought in accomplished, assured prose of a distinctive style and is doing it all today. These are rare authors, and they must be cherished. It is difficult to describe this book in just a few sentences, but suffice it to say it is a vivid, evocative story of a journey taken by two men in a strange, otherworldly place. There are elements of this book which feel familiar and give it its epic proportions, but Jimenez also includes so many surprising and imaginative details that make this novel both fascinating craft-wise and also entertaining (a long lost combination of things!) All wrapped up in some really distinctive and thoughtful prose. We are reading The Vanished Birds for book club next month, and I can’t wait.

Second Place

There are only two books in this category! I don’t know why I couldn’t push them up into the first—it’s a mystery to me too. Is it because they are missing the ‘human warmth’ factor that pretty much always needs to be present in a book I consider an all time favourite? It’s certainly not entirely absent here, but it’s not as overt in either as in many of the books above. There is surprising human warmth in The Employees, even. But I find both to be exceedingly good books.

Embassytown by China Miéville (2011) - original review

To borrow my own words from my original review: Have you ever wondered what a language might look like where there is no (or less) slippage between a word and its referent? Where language somehow grasps the physical world? And then, have you ever wondered what might happen when that kind of language met our kind of language? China Miéville has, and he wrote this book about it. This is a fascinating and complex book, that explores the entanglements between personhood, power, language and colonialism in a unique and powerfully thought-provoking way. And despite some dips in pacing here and there, the story itself is also engaging and satisfying.

2666 by Roberto Bolaño trans. by Natasha Wimmer (2004) - original review

This is a perfect maze of a book, Bolaño challenging us to find the connections and resonance across its five volumes. The book ultimately revolves around the northern Mexican town of Santa Teresa—which is experiencing a spate of femicides—but it also delineates the story of four academics in search of the author they’ve dedicated their lives to, the story of a man fighting on the eastern front of WWII, the story of a Black American journalist covering a boxing match in the wake of his mother’s death. It is strange and surreal at times, blunt and straightforward at others. Overall I was left very impressed by it.

Third Place

These books are in here for a number of reasons: the book was just too good at a craft level to exclude; I couldn’t stop thinking about it or it felt significant to my reading, flaws or no; it surprised me in some way (the element of surprise plays a large role in my feelings about a book… hence why rereadings are ultimately important); it was unique or noteworthy enough that I want to tell you about it again.

An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong (2022) - original review

This was one of the first books I read in 2024, and I thought about this a lot in the months after I read it. It just seemed to have relevance everywhere I looked. When we discussed The Employees I was thinking about it, and again when I listened to The Mountain in the Sea. Looking to different animals’ sensory systems—some similar and some vastly different to our own—defamiliarises the world. There are millions of different worlds experienced just on our own planet. It was a fascinating read, expertly told with just the right balance of science and personable voice.

Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera trans. by Lisa Dillman (2009) - original review

I think I need to return to this one once I’ve read some Homer. Because somehow Herrera embodies the feel of an epic in just 119 pages. I find Herrera to be a fascinating author with a really unique approach; Ten Planets which I read in 2023 was mind-bending in the best possible way. I also love reading Dillman’s translator’s notes, I haven’t read the Spanish of course but the way she translates his work, to my eye at least, is ingenious. Here we follow the journey of Makina, a young Mexican woman searching for her wayward brother in the States. In order to do so she must traverse a kind of underworld. Truly excellent writing.

The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe (1980) - original review

I didn’t quite finish The Book of the New Sun in 2024, but I was enthralled by this first instalment (I was less enamoured with the second but I still liked it). I loved the slightly obscured style, the mysterious asides, and the depth of the world created. We follow Severian, a young man brought up in the guild of torturers in a dying world. He is on his way to becoming one himself only to find his commitment to the guild called into question by one of its prisoners.

Gogmagog by Jeff Noon and Steve Beard (2024) - original review

This comes into the surprise category. I expected very little from this book, and found a richly imagined world which skirts many of the hackneyed tropes and types from other speculative fiction that results in something that feels fresh and unusual. We follow irascible boat pilot Cady Meade who reluctantly agrees to aid a young girl and her thrall down the river Nysis, which is inhabited by the ghost of a dragon. I want more people to read it!

Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo trans. by Douglas J. Weatherford (1955) - original review

The precursor to such books as Signs Preceding the End of the World, this was a strange and surreal little book, and I very much enjoyed following the threads of its narrative. I particularly loved the ghostly atmosphere it conjured up; I remember moments from the opening pages well nine months after reading it.

The incredible full cover (front and back) by Kinuko Y. Craft

Ombria in Shadow by Patricia McKillip (2002) - original review

This book is also dreamlike and strange, but instead of the unnerving, threatening atmosphere of Comala, it is the true strangeness of fairytales that seeps into its pages. Because fairytales are not cosy, warmhearted tales, they are uncanny and alien in many ways. Here we are immersed in shadowy, dangerous Ombria; glittering above the surface, dark in its depths. The Prince of Ombria has just died leaving a vacuum of power, with only his mistress and five year old son left behind to ward off the encroaching threat of sorceress Domina Pearl.

That Old Ace in the Hole by Annie Proulx (2002) - original review

I struggled with this book at times. I read it too slowly and too distractedly for its meanderings. But I didn’t stop thinking about it once I’d finished it! Proulx’s project—documenting the end of a certain way of life in the Texas panhandle—seemed to have burned itself into my brain. I’d love to return to it at some point. It details the experiences of young Bob Dollar—a man without much direction or wherewithal—who accepts a job with Global Pork Rind, sniffing out good spots for a new hog farm. The locals would be pretty hostile to this, of course, being that these farms are smelly, unethical and toxic. So Dollar goes undercover, and finds himself more absorbed with the community than he expected.

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli trans. by Elizabeth Jaquette (2017) - original review

This is an exquisitely crafted book (oh, to read it in the Arabic!) that had me sat staring at the wall for minutes afterwards. It is a book of two halves, the first covering a few days in the life of an Israeli soldier in 1949; he finds, assaults and murders a Bedouin girl out in the desert. Half a century later, a Palestinian woman finds out about this through a ‘minor detail’ in the archive, and sets out to discover the girl’s side of the story with great difficulty, both because of the restrictions placed on her ability to research by the occupation, and the fact of the girl leaving behind no written record. All this inspired by a true story that Shibli came across. I highly encourage you to read it.

A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar (2012) - original review

Again, a book I struggled with at times and yet one that lingers in my mind after the reading. Young Jevick—born on the Tea Islands which are considered somewhat marginal and backward—travels to Olondria, a place he has dreamed about, read voraciously about, and which he has been taught about by his mysterious and charismatic Olondrian teacher. Samatar disrupts the traditional trajectory of the epic fantasy narrative, and in doing so deftly explores the relationship between colonialism and writing and reading. It is rendered in dense, poetic prose that at times seems to occlude the storyline, but also led to some incredibly vivid scenes that I can bring to my mind’s eye even now. I’m very interested in reading more of Samatar’s work.

Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer (2024) - original review

Of course I had to put Absolution in here, the newest Southern Reach novel. A special book to me not only because I enjoyed the reading of it but I also got to chat to Jeff about it as well! I enjoyed this one a lot, and appreciated its expansion of Area X and the project of Central and the Southern reach. I was particularly struck, here, by the seeming ease with which VanderMeer moves between different registers. The first section moves from a journalistic reporting tone to enraptured hysteria; then there was the beautiful, forceful lyricism of some of the nature passages; and finally the chaotic expletive-ridden madness of the last.

Honourable Mentions

Jonathan Abernathy, You are Kind by Molly McGhee - original review

A very promising debut about the crushing nature of debt.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck - original review

Whilst this novel is far from perfect, I absolutely loved dissecting with book club both its contents, but also its place in ‘Literature’, now and when it was published.

Witness by Jamel Brinkley - original review

One to return to—overall a subtle but powerful collection of stories with hints of the strange.

Home by Marilynne Robinson - original review

Not as expertly crafted as Gilead, but something of its rawness and pain really touched me.

My Death by Lisa Tuttle - original review

Very much enjoyed this novel and discussing it, also, particularly that provocative ending. Would be a great read with Byatt’s Possession.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith - original review

A warm, big-hearted book that depicts a slice of working-class life in early-twentieth-century Brooklyn. Really great scene-setting and storytelling, easy to gulp down.

A Flat Place by Noreen Masud - original review

Perfectly balanced nature memoir lauding a type of landscape we often forget about: the flat place.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar - original review

Wears its heart on its sleeve; ambitious, messy, and somehow just about works.

The Extinction of Irena Ray by Jennifer Croft - original review

Absolute chaos that suitably takes to task the world of translated fiction. Very clever and utterly weird.

Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb - original review

I wish I’d had more time to finish out the Liveship Traders series in 2024 or this might have made its way further up the list; as it was it just felt like I was too much in the middle of the story, but Hobb remains a favourite.

Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein - original review

I think Klein hits the nail on the head with this one—so much great analysis of the way the online world interacts with the real. Highly recommended for all.

---

With that, I shall conclude this, and say goodbye to 2024 for the final time. It’s been real. Of course you can find all my other reviews either here on Substack or my website for the older archive.