My blog posts may have been virtually none existent in 2024, but there are some traditions I refuse to let die...and posting my annual "what I read" list is one of them.
I read 27 books in 2024, though admittedly, it felt like an underwhelming year in terms of my selections. There were only a handful of books I really enjoyed, maybe one or two I loved, and a lot that I couldn't wait to be finished with by the time I got to the last chapter. As I review this list now there has been more than one occasion where I've thought to myself - what? what book was that? I read that?
Maybe it's a sign of the times, maybe it's that my distraction level feels at an all time high, maybe it's the fact that I let reviews and other people's suggestions or opinions about books shape my choices too much. Whatever brought on the "meh" book reads of 2024, I hope it stays back in that year we have now bid adiue. Brighter reading ahead for 2025!
The Postcard - Anne Berest
And Yet: Poems - Kate Baer
This is Happiness - Niall Williams
The Tale of Despereaux - Kate DiCamillo
My Last Innocent Year - Daisy Alpert Florin
We All Want Impossible Things - Catherine Newman
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store - James McBride
All the Broken Places - John Boyne
Tell the Wolves I’m Home - Carol Rifka Brunt
Hello Beautiful - Ann Napolitano
The House in the Pines - Ana Reyes
Horse - Geraldine Brooks
People We Meet On Vacation - Emily Henry
North Woods - Daniel Mason
Sipsworth - Simon Van Booy
Remarkably Bright Creatures - Shelby Van Pelt
Euphoria - Lily King
Romantic Comedy - Curtis Sittenfeld
James - Percival Everett
In a New York Minute - Kate Spencer
H is for Hawk - Helen Macdonald
Sandwich - Catherine Newman
Tuck Everlasting - Natalie Babbitt
The Anthropologists - Aysegul Savas
Hester - Laurie Lico Albanese
A Christmas Memory - Truman Capote
Tell Me Everything - Elizabeth Strout
My favorite read of the year:
North Woods. It's been getting a lot of press and I absolutely felt it lived up to the hype. It might not be everyone's cup of tea but I was fascinated by the premise and the way Mason crafted a novel where the main character is a plot of land. Highly recommend! My only warning is that you need to stick with it beyond the first few chapters. Initially you'll start to read it and wonder what in the world you have picked up. It will make sense, I promise. Keep reading.
Other solid contenders:
My Last Innocent Year - I loved this book most for the what it was like to go to college in the late '90's vibe; though I also was impressed that the author was able to keep me intrigued around the cliched story of an undergraduate female student being seduced by her older male professor. How many times have we heard that story? Yet this one felt fresh.
Euphoria - no, this is not the premise for the HBO show. I will read anything that Lily King writes, down to her grocery list. This was the last novel of hers I had not yet read and I held out for awhile knowing I'd have used up my Lily King balm when I finished it...but like that last Christmas cookie you kind of want to save and simultaneously want to gobble up, I wasn't sorry at all when I pulled it down from the shelves and read it in a couple of days.
This is Happiness - both a very good friend and Ann Patchett sang this book's praises so obviously I had to read it. And I really liked it. I did. But I also thought I was going to love it, based on the recs so I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed when I didn't clutch it to my chest weeping as I read the last page.
I read All the Broken Places, which is set in London, and about the daughter of the head SS commandant in charge of a concentration camp, while I was IN London and going on to eventually visit one of the most notorious concentration camps in Europe on that same trip. The setting and timing certainly didn't hurt but I think if I'd been on my couch in NYC I would still have really loved this book. Dark subject matter obviously, but so well done. I would climb into my hotel bed after my friend and I toured about the day desperate to read a chapter or two before I fell asleep. Strongly recommend.
We All Want Impossible Things was a pleasant surprise for me so I was ready to love Sandwich as well but ugh, I didn't. Whiny narrators kill me. They kill me.
Romantic Comedy was more clever than I'd expected, though the first half of the book was far more interesting than the 2nd half.
I felt similarly with James - initially I couldn't put it down...but the last third felt really rushed to me, like the author had been trying to meet a deadline and his editor was like "yeah, sure, that's good enough." James was Barnes & Noble's book of the year...which is what The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store was in 2023, which was a book I did not like. At all. Truly, I do not understand what all the fuss was about. Maybe it would make a better movie?
Books that left me seriously underwhelmed:
Hello Beautiful. Full disclosure I went into this book with the wrong expectations entirely. People kept telling me it was like Little Women, so with each chapter I kept waiting for the Little Women parallels. And...yeah, okay, they are kind of there. KIND OF. But I think this book was doomed in my eyes from the start. I also take a lot of issues with the portrayal of the parents...and the boyfriend guy was annoying, and oh, I have thoughts. Also, I saw this author interview another one of my all time favorites, Elizabeth Strout, and she was really not great and not engaged and E. Strout is SO wonderful that now I feel like I have a personal vendetta out against this author.
The House in the Pines. I have looked at my list of 2024 reads approximately seven times wondering if I actually read this book. I wrote it down though and I only write it down once I read the last page so I'm going to trust myself... but I could not tell you a single plot point of this book if you offered me a million dollars. Completely forgettable.
Books that I said "meh, it was okay" if a friend asked me what I thought:
Sipsworth
Sandwich (see above)
Remarkably Bright Creatures
Hester
The rest on the list not specifically called out were also 'okay' but I'd likely leave the "meh" and the "just" out of that review so I suppose in Kelli speak that makes them a touch stronger than the others.
But please, trust me on that North Woods recommendation.
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