8 Favorite Books of 2024
It’s the end of 2024, and what a year it’s been. Kate Middleton beat cancer. Travis Kelce showed up on the Eras Tour stage. Simone Biles and Steve The Pommel Horse Guy dominated the Olympics. And the lyrics to “Espresso” invaded every silent moment. One thing that isn’t new is that I spent many of my hours this year reading. And I found some of my new absolute favorite books! Unfortunately, reading a lot means I also read a few pretty bad books (The Aeneid is a good ten hours of my life I will never get back). But we won’t dwell on those. Here are eight books I read this year that instantly became new favorites. There’s a mix of contemporary fiction and classics, poetry and novels, long and short, something for everyone. And maybe one will become one of your favorites of 2025!
8. After Annie by Anna Quindlen
“Life got made that way, bit by bit, at the party, the doctor’s office, the stop sign, the grocery.”
-Anna Quindlen
Goodreads: When Annie Brown dies suddenly, her husband, her four young children and her closest friend are left to struggle without the woman who centered their lives. Bill Brown finds himself overwhelmed, and Annie’s best friend Annemarie is lost to old bad habits without Annie’s support. It is Annie’s daughter, Ali, forced to try to care for her younger brothers and even her father, who manages to maintain some semblance of their former lives for them all, and who confronts the complicated truths of adulthood.
Yet over the course of the next year, while Annie looms large in their memories, all three are able to grow, to change, even to become stronger and more sure of themselves. The enduring power Annie gave to those who loved her is the power to love, and to go on without her.
Written in Quindlen’s emotionally resonant voice, and with her deep and generous understanding of people, After Annie is a story that ends with hope, a beautiful novel about how adversity can change us in profound ways.
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This is a quick one to get through and a great book if you’re looking for a beautiful, touching, and wholesome family story. You may cry, you may laugh, and you’ll want to give Ali the biggest hug. Though it’s mostly an exploration of grief, After Annie also explores female friendship, addiction, coming-of-age, parenthood, and the small moments that make up our lives. I seriously could not recommend this book more.
7. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
“So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.”
-Virginia Woolf
Goodreads: A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled Women and Fiction, and hence the essay, are considered nonfiction. The essay is seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.
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This is one that I’ve recommended before, but it’s one of my favorite nonfiction books I’ve ever read. As a writer and a woman, it was an especially poignant read, but even if you’re neither of those, it was eye-opening to learn some history about women’s place both in fiction and in society. It is a feminist essay, but one that empowers both men and women, rather than bashing one for the sake of the other. Virginia Woolf was very ahead of her time, and so much of this stuck with me. I read this back in January, so I’m definitely due for a reread.
I don’t have anymore nonfiction on this list, but if that’s what you’re looking for, I would also recommend John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed. It was another great book that I read this year, and lighter than Virginia Woolf. Basically, John Green rates random elements of our world (sunsets, the Indy 500, Monopoly, etc.) out of five stars. Great way to learn interesting facts about random things, but also to appreciate humans’ little slice of this big, big universe.
6. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
“There would be the sky and the mountains, the flowers and the girl and the feeling that all this was a nightmare, the faint consoling hope that I might wake up.”
-Jean Rhys
Goodreads: Wide Sargasso Sea, a masterpiece of modern fiction, was Jean Rhys’s return to the literary center stage. She had a startling early career and was known for her extraordinary prose and haunting women characters. With Wide Sargasso Sea, her last and best-selling novel, she ingeniously brings into light one of fiction’s most fascinating characters: the madwoman in the attic from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. This mesmerizing work introduces us to Antoinette Cosway, a sensual and protected young woman who is sold into marriage to the prideful Mr. Rochester. Rhys portrays Cosway amidst a society so driven by hatred, so skewed in its sexual relations, that it can literally drive a woman out of her mind.
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This is the ultimate piece of fan-fiction, and to be honest, it’s better to have read Jane Eyre (or at least the SparkNotes) before going into this one. But it’s beautifully written, and I had goosebumps up and down my arms. It’s a work that both commends and critiques its source material, and it raises important questions about class, race, and power while not being too dense. Definitely easier to get through than Jane Eyre, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less masterful.
5. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
-John Steinbeck
Goodreads: In his journal, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.
Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aaron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness enveloped by a mysterious darkness.
First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love's absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis.
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I’ve been trying to read this book since sophomore year of high school, and this was my third time picking it up. I finally finished it, and I’m so glad I did! This is definitely not a book for the faint of heart, and fifteen-year-old me just wasn’t ready for it. There are some really dark moments, but those moments are worth the payoff in the end. The characters all feel like they could come out of the page, and Steinbeck does so much with plot, with imagery, with setting to create both a searing and beautiful story of the human condition. Another one that’s really thought-provoking but will also have you in tears. If you find yourself with a lot of time on your hands, I recommend sinking into East of Eden.
4. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
“I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say.”
-Daphne du Maurier
Amazon: In Monte Carlo, our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady’s maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at Manderley, her husband’s cavernous estate on the Cornish coast, that she realizes how vast a shadow his late wife, Rebecca, will cast over their lives—introducing a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their love from beyond the grave.
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This is another one that I’ve recommended before, back on my fall book recommendations post. But I really did love this book, especially once the plot started picking up. It takes a while to get into, but trust me, the beginning is worth it. I was scraping my jaw off the floor. This is the perfect book if you’re looking for eerie vibes, toxic relationships, and insane plot twists. Also if you’re a fan of Taylor Swift’s “tolerate it,” because she did base that song off Rebecca.
3. Dog Songs by Mary Oliver
“Every time you wake up and love your life and the world, you’re praying, my dear boy. I’m sure of it.”
-Mary Oliver
Goodreads: Mary Oliver's Dog Songs is a celebration of the special bond between human and dog, as understood through the poet's relationship to the canines that have accompanied her daily walks, warmed her home, and inspired her work. Oliver's poems begin in the small everyday moments familiar to all dog lovers, but through her extraordinary vision these observations become higher meditations on the world and our place in it.
Dog Songs includes visits with old friends, like Oliver's beloved Percy, and introduces still others in poems of love and laughter, heartbreak and grief. Throughout, the many dogs of Oliver's life emerge as fellow travelers and guides, uniquely able to open our eyes to the lessons of the moment and the joys of nature and connection.
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Unlike Rebecca, this is the perfect book if you’re looking for something happy and wholesome that will make you feel all giddy and cozy inside. I giggled, I cried, I wanted every one of these poems on my wall. But if you’re not a dog fan (first of all, what’s wrong with you?), I would recommend Mary Oliver’s Devotions, her crown collection of poetry. After reading both this year, Mary Oliver really did become my favorite poet, and I can’t sing her praises enough. If anything, you should at least read “The Summer Day.”
2. Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
“Death is violent, death is a struggle. The body clings to life, as ivy to a wall, and will not easily let go, will not surrender its grip without a fight.”
-Maggie O’Farrell
Goodreads: Drawing on Maggie O'Farrell's long-term fascination with the little-known story behind Shakespeare's most enigmatic play, Hamnet is a luminous portrait of a marriage, at its heart the loss of a beloved child.
Warwickshire in the 1580s. Agnes is a woman as feared as she is sought after for her unusual gifts. She settles with her husband in Henley street, Stratford, and has three children: a daughter, Susanna, and then twins, Hamnet and Judith. The boy, Hamnet, dies in 1596, aged eleven. Four years or so later, the husband writes a play called Hamlet.
Award-winning author Maggie O'Farrell's new novel breathes full-blooded life into the story of a loss usually consigned to literary footnotes, and provides an unforgettable vindication of Agnes, a woman intriguingly absent from history.
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Once again, I’m just a fiend for beautiful prose, and Hamnet delivered. The most interesting part of this book was Agnes’s story, Shakespeare’s wife. In her interviews, Maggie O’Farrell has spoken about how history looks back on Anne Hathaway (Agnes… not the Anne Hathaway from The Princess Diaries) as a villain, with no real historical basis for this. She wanted to reimagine her story, and again, she delivered. This was also a neat read because I bought my copy in England and read it after visiting Shakespeare’s house in Stratford, where the book is set. But even if you know nothing about Shakespeare or Hamlet or 16th-century England, this is a book that everyone can enjoy.
1. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
“I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle. You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.”
-Marilynne Robinson
Amazon: In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He "preached men into the Civil War," then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle.
Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father--an ardent pacifist--and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son.
This is also the tale of another remarkable vision--not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten.
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OH. MY. GOSH. This was my absolute favorite book I read this year, and it’s going up there with my favorite books of all time. There’s not really any plot, so don’t go into it with expectations for a thrilling story. But do go into it expecting it to change your life. I sobbed in public twice while reading this, and I’m going to be thinking about this book forever. I don’t want to give the book anymore preface than that. Just go read it. Like right now.
If you made it to the end of this post, thanks for letting me yap on about books for a while, and I hope you found at least one good recommendation (especially if it’s Gilead). Happy New Year, and I hope 2025 is a wonderful one!