What a splendid year for reading! I had a superabundance of favorites. It was tough to choose, but here are my 16 favorite books for 2024.
All these titles and many more favorites are available in two new Mindful News bookshops!
Bookshop.org supports independent bookstores, and Amazon is, well, you know. I earn very small commissions in either shop, which doesn’t increase your price, and helps me in my pursuit of making a modest living. 🙂
With enormous gratitude to Suse, my bff and book-club-of-2 partner, with whom I read most of these books, and the Rockledge Readers, seven book-loving and supportive friends in my apartment building, for the gift of reading James and all our fun together. 🙂
(A) – I listened to these on Audiobook. All were excellent!
* Published 2024
** On The NY Times 100 Best Books of the Year list
Literary Fiction
*Susie Boyt, Loved and Missed
British author Susie Boyt’s seventh novel and the first published in the US. It’s exquisite—possibly my favorite in this richly abundant year.
Ruth’s adult daughter Eleanor, whom she loves dearly and who is addicted to drugs, has a baby. Ruth does her best to provide support, but it’s insufficient; she literally sees her granddaughter Lily’s needs not being met. When someone dies of an overdose in Eleanor’s apartment, she hands Eleanor an envelope stuffed with cash and takes Lily home. She basically kidnaps her, completely changing her own life and Lily’s. How will this turn out?
Read my full review: Don’t miss this book: Loved and Missed
Buy it: Amazon, Bookshop.org
**Kristin Hannah, The Women (A)
A compelling page-turner, to put it mildly! When her beloved brother ships out to Vietnam, 20-year-old Frankie McGrath follows, joining the Army Nurse Corps and a handful of women breaking gender barriers in the 1960s US military.
Hannah masterfully fills the pages with taut drama, both global and intimate—war, family, friendships, and romance—as Frankie comes of age during the violence in Vietnam. She returns home to a conflicted nation and friends and family unable or unwilling to accept what she’s been through. She has a long journey ahead of her to find healing and her rightful place in history as a true hero.
An Audible Top 10 Audiobook of the Year, with good reason! An NPR critics and staff 2024 top book and Readers’ top 2024 choice for historical fiction on Goodreads.
Buy it: Amazon, Bookshop.org
**Percival Everett, James (A)
In this majestic, brilliant novel based on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jim’s character is radically transformed into James, a fully realized, mature, kind, strategic man of depth and hard-won wisdom. The results are gripping, darkly humorous, enlightening, and unforgettable, an adventure of an entirely different sort than in Twain’s original. Another favorite of the year! A soulful, thrilling novel.
Winner of the 2024 National Book Award, Kirkus Prize for Fiction, Audible’s Audiobook of the Year, and shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
Also enjoy the terrific conversation on the NY Times Book Review Podcast Ep. 488, Let’s Talk About Percival Everett’s James—only after reading the book (spoilers)!
Buy it: Amazon, Bookshop.org
*Samantha Harvey, Orbital
This is a gorgeous piece of writing! Completely different from anything you’ve ever read. Harvey beautifully describes one day in the life of six women and men—astronauts and cosmonauts from America, Russia, Italy, Britain, and Japan—as they orbit the earth in a space station at over seventeen thousand miles an hour, day and night coming again and again.
In some ways, it’s more like a piece of music than writing—flowing in and out of thoughts, emotions, memories, ambitions, dreams, worries, hopes, and physical sensations in a spacious, lyrical way. It’s also profound, hopeful, and reverential towards earth. A lovely small paperback.
Winner of the 2024 Booker Prize. Read Joshua Ferris’s excellent review in the NY Times (gift link).
Buy it: Amazon, Bookshop.org
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
Kirkus Reviews called it a novel “as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and moving as prayer. Matchless and towering.”
Open the book almost anywhere, and you’ll find a passage that’s gentle, quiet, and deep without being sentimental. “The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light, just as a candle looks beautiful in the light of morning. Light within light. It seems like a metaphor for something. For the human soul, the singular light within the great general light of existence. Or it seems like poetry within language. Perhaps wisdom within experience…”
Number 10 on the New York Times 100 Best Books of the 21st Century list.
Buy it: Amazon, Bookshop.org
Memoir
**Salmon Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder (A)
It had been 33 years since Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering Rushdie’s death due to his novel, The Satanic Verses when a man rushed the stage at Chautauqua in 2022 and stabbed him wildly and repeatedly for 27 seconds. The story of the event, his gradual processing of it, and his long, arduous recovery is gripping and beautifully written. It’s also, charmingly, a love story of his marriage to the decades-younger American poet and novelist Rachel Eliza Griffiths.
Originally drawn to the stunning book cover, I ended up listening to the audiobook, which Rushdie reads in his gorgeous British accent.
Also, listen to Ezra Klein’s terrific interview with Rushdie about the book on the NY Times Book Review podcast (Ep. 512).
Buy it: Amazon, Bookshop.org
Abraham Verghese, The Tennis Partner: A Doctor’s Story of Friendship and Loss
Tennis and medicine are twin passions for the author. When his marriage unravels, and he relocates to El Paso for a fresh start and a position at Texas Tech School of Medicine, he befriends a medical student in addiction recovery. Since David had been briefly on the pro circuit, they became tennis partners and friends, with tennis providing a river of inspiration, challenge, and comfort between them.
Yet, David’s rocky recovery is ever present, and Verghese becomes a witness to the heart’s capacity to generate both healing and pain, as well as the sometimes mortal struggle between the two.
Buy it: Amazon, Bookshop.org
David S. Tatel, Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice
Tatel, now 82 and recently retired, had a remarkable career as a civil rights lawyer and judge, having succeeded Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. His memoir is an engaging legal history of the past half-century. And—he’s blind.
He wasn’t always. In 1954, a ball hit him in the face, which he didn’t even see coming. He was eventually diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa (RP), which caused a gradual and complete loss of vision. I found his meditations on making decisions as a judge, the progression of his blindness, and his changing interactions with the world fascinating!
Buy it: Amazon, Bookshop.org
Mystery
**Tana French, The Hunter (Cal Hooper #2) (A)
This is the second in a (so far) two-part series, the first being The Searcher. Both are terrific!
Tana French is a master mystery writer with an extensive list. These two are my favorites for the rich quality of both characters and setting. Cal Hooper is an ex-cop from Chicago with heart, who seeks peace by moving to a remote village in Western Ireland, where he encounters half-feral teenager Trey Reddy and takes her under his wing. Complex challenges swirl up from the atmospheric local environs and inhabitants.
Both books are compelling reads—or listens!—from start to finish!
Buy it: Amazon, Bookshop.org
**Liz Moore, The God of the Woods (A)
It’s early morning in 1975 at a summer camp in the Adirondacks. Camp counselors have just discovered that the Van Laars, the extremely wealthy camp founders’, teenage granddaughter Barbara, is missing from her bunk. Her older brother had similarly vanished 14 years before and was never found.
Moore weaves a glimmering web of a story full of mystery, class distinctions, misogyny, misdirection, hopes, love, lack of love, ambitions, breakthroughs, and hidden agendas in a natural setting that imbues the narrative with shifting colors and moods. A dynamic, absorbing, intriguing, thoughtful tale–with a brilliant resolution.
An NPR critics and staff 2024 top book and Readers’ top 2024 choice for mystery on Goodreads.
Buy it: Amazon, Bookshop.org
**Ariel Lawhon, The Frozen River (A)
People Magazine’s review says the author “works storytelling magic with a real-life heroine.” Perfectly put! Such a great story centered on Martha Ballard, a Maine midwife who’s never lost a patient.
The action largely takes place in the winter of 1789 and includes a body found in the frozen river, multiple mysteries, childbirths, cliffhangers, family life, romance, villains, and richly drawn characters, especially Martha herself, a truthteller and defender of women in a male-run world. Her relationship with her husband of 30 years, Ephraim, is a delight. A robust, rewarding read. (Caveat: one very violent scene towards the end of the book involves a villain and our heroine.)
Buy it: Amazon, Bookshop.org
*Jacqueline Winspear, The Comfort of Ghosts (A)
The perfect end to Winspear’s marvelous series of 18 novels spanning the early to mid-20th century about Maisie Dobbs, a psychologist and investigator who expertly unravels mysteries in each book.
Maisie’s personal and professional story is captivating from beginning to end, from her job as a maid in a grand London mansion at age 13 to a well-educated woman of property and means. Fascinating details of history across WW I and WW II, interesting characters and challenges, romance, and lifelong friendships are beautifully woven in. If you’re in the mood for a new mystery series, I highly recommend this one, beginning with Maisie Dobbs.
Buy it: Amazon, Bookshop.org
Nonfiction
Neal Bascomb, The Perfect Mile: Three Athletes, One Goal, and Less than Four Minutes to Achieve It
An exciting read about the quest to break the barrier of the 4-minute mile in the early 1950s, starring Roger Bannister, an English medical student and amateur part-time runner; John Landy, the son of a privileged Australian family, who trained relentlessly; and Wes Santee, a Kansas farm boy and naturally fine athlete. Each was the pride and hope of their nation.
Success in running depends upon perfecting training, strategy, mindset, and endurance—and in this case, overcoming the known boundaries of the human mind and body.
Did you like Boys in the Boat or Carrie Soto is Back? This might be for you. 🙂
Buy it: Amazon, Bookshop.org
Rachel Carson, Under the Sea-Wind
Rachel Carson is credited with changing the course of history with her landmark best-seller Silent Spring, inspiring the environmental movement, popularizing ecology, and making the public aware that nature is vulnerable to human intervention.
And she did this as a woman in the early 1950s and 1960s.
This was her first book and personal favorite. Combining scientific acumen and observation with lyricism (quintessential Carson), she celebrates the open sea, taking us on migratory journeys with species that populate the shores, the skies, and the mysterious depths. A terrific summer/beach read!
Also read my blog post, Have you heard of Rachel Carson?
Buy it: Amazon, Bookshop.org
Buddhism
Karen Maezen Miller, Paradise in Plain Sight: Lessons From a Zen Garden
Part memoir, part paean to nature, and part guide to mindful moments, the book feels like a lovely series of wise, nourishing essays.
In restoring the hundred-year-old garden that came with her newly purchased home, Zen teacher Maezen Miller discovered the living wisdom of the natural world—and paradise in her own backyard.
“Sometimes people come to the garden and say, ‘I had no idea.’ Then they don’t say anything else, because they are seeing the garden. They are seeing what is right in front of them and experiencing it. Then nothing needs to be said.” Beautifully transparent, gentle, and thoughtful. The here and now.
Buy it: Amazon, Bookshop.org
Phillip Moffitt, Dancing with Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering
Former Esquire Magazine Editor-in-Chief and now meditation teacher Phillip Moffitt explores the Buddha’s core teachings of the Four Noble Truths: (1) There is suffering; (2) There is a cause of suffering (craving); (3) There is an end of suffering; (4) There is a way to the end of suffering (The Noble Eightfold Path).
What’s different here is the attention Moffitt pays to the accompanying 12 Insight practices that illuminate the truths and bring them into the experience and potential liberation of the devoted practitioner. A book that is vibrant with meaning and life blessings.
Buy it: Amazon, Bookshop.org
Post photo by Elena Kloppenburg
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