Books of 2024
Stats, my top 12 reads, and a year on Substack
A year on Substack! I’m really enjoying having a chatty outlet to write as and when I like and if we forget the fact that I created a tax vortex when turning on paid subscriptions, it’s been a great time. (Paid subscriptions are now off and will stay off and a friendly reminder to all my fellow writers that you are in contract with the people subscribing to your newsletter, not Substack, and are subject to the tax laws of wherever those subscribers are based and Substack do not do a good job of making this clear or providing support to keep yourself on the right side of those laws! Check with your accountant if you are making money here!)
It’s been mainly reading round-ups here but do check out my two Austen posts which are the things I had the most fun writing and do read to the end of the post for some out of context quotes from the year’s reading.
On to the books! You may have noticed (or indeed you may not!) that I haven’t actually posted any reading round-ups in a little bit. This is predictably because I have been pinballing from one deadline to another so I haven’t been reading much at all and what I have been reading has been to prepare for events and interviews. All of which to say I’m not going to do a reading wrap-up for October to December as I’ve only read thirteen books across the last three months and eight of them were for events, three were classics, and one will be in this post as a last minute addition to my favourites of the year.
I feel no need to stick to top tens so please find, after some stats, the twelve books that had the greatest impact on me this year. These are all books that were new to me, mainly published in 2023 or 2024 but with one classic and one from the 2010s. I’ve excluded rereads from this as they’d take up too much of the list but I went back to Earthsea and The Lord of the Rings this year, as well as rereading a non-fiction favourite, Follow This Thread by Henry Eliot.
Stats
I have read 66 books as of putting my holiday out-of-office on. Which is lower than usual but this is also the first year I’ve had to write two books. It has had an impact. Fifty-two of those I read by August, so you can tell when the intense deadlines kicked in.
I read 36 adult novels, 13 children’s books, 9 YA novels, three books of poetry (two of which were The Iliad and The Odyssey), three non-fiction books, and two graphic novels.
I read 25 books published this year, 18 that were published last year, 8 from the 2000s & 2010s, 2 from the 1980s & 90s, 4 from the 1960s & 70s, 5 from the 1920s - 50s, 2 from the 1870s & 1880s, and two epic poems from the 8th century BC.
I read 27 books purely for pleasure, 17 books for work or work-adjacent things (eg Women’s Prize longlist), and 22 books where the timing was work-induced but that I would have read at some point regardless.
As well as my own spreadsheet I use Storygraph (on a private, anonymous account) to track my reading. According to Storygraph my top 5 most read genres were fantasy, literary, classics, historical and LGBTQIA+.
I don’t do public star ratings, but I do rate privately on Storygraph and I like that you cam do it in 0.25 increments. My average rating for the year was 3.76.
I only gave two books five stars but I did give 16 books 4.5 or 4.75 stars (quite a lot of them rereads). I gave 21 books 3 - 3.75 stars, 6 books 2 - 2.75 stars and then two books got 1.5 stars and one book got one star. I dnf-ed one book.
And so! On to my highlights! I’ve decided to do these alphabetically by author surname (once a librarian, always a librarian) rather than in order of preference because all of them are great, and it really just depends what you like to read. There’s one classic and one recent book that probably stand out above all the others so I will highlight them. Honourable mentions to The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, Parasol Against the Axe by Helen Oyeyemi, and River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure all three of which I really enjoyed and would recommend enthusiastically, but haven’t quite stayed with me in the way these twelve have.
The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden
I’ll start with the disclosure I made at the time of reading, that Katherine is a friend and I was also reading this to interview her for an event I was paid for. Having said all of that, we met in the first place because I loved Katherine’s Winternight trilogy so much. I might also mention I read plenty of books by friends this year, many that I really enjoyed and yet are not all of them are on this list! I’m obviously not going to ever badmouth books by friends online, but please know that a books of the year list is as close as I ever come to a sacred text. But anyway, on to the book. The Warm Hands of Ghosts is set during the First World War and follows a Canadian nurse trying to find out what has happened to her soldier brother. I was a little nervous to read it because I loved the Winternight trilogy so much and because it’s always slightly anxiety-inducing reading friends books, but I am pleased and relieved to report that this is exceptionally good. At the time of reading I pondered whether I liked it more than The Bear and the Nightingale but as my reading reflections settle I would say that I would put it a close second if I was ranking Katherine’s books. I really loved the way that it is very much a historical novel but has this very cleverly done fantastical angle exploring such a clever question - what would the devil do in a mechanised, man-made horror of such scope as the First World War?
Hangman by Maya Binyam
I read this while reading the Women’s Prize longlist (three of the list are from that project) and had a great time only to record my Women’s Prize shortlist prediction video with Eric to discover that it was apparently “the most hated book on BookTube”. I’m very glad I read it in blissful ignorance as I really loved it although realising other people didn’t made me realistic about its changes to make it on to the shortlist (I’d love to know which judge was championing it). It’s a very odd, clever, darkly funny book that’s a real treat if you enjoy experimental fiction. I’d really recommend not knowing much about it before you go in and just let Binyam take you on the road she’s setting out and revel in the journey. It’s a tricky one to talk about without spoiling the “fun” (the reading experience is a delight if you enjoy such things, but the themes are heavy) but if you don’t mind having elements of a novel very clearly and purposefully hidden from you and enjoy going along with a writer’s vision. One for fans of Vendela Vida, Elif Batuman or Helen Oyeyemi.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, translated by Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor
A new all-time favourite here and one of my top two of the year. This is a book I’d been meaning to read forever and finally read to as part of the extremely sporadic book club I’m in with two author friends. I started with the copy I’ve had since university and was a little underwhelmed so did a bit of research into the translation options and realise I was reading the one broadly agreed to be the weakest (Glenny). After reading some extracts by other translators I settled on the one by Burgin and O’Connor purely just as the voice I liked the most. The book is just spectacular - grotesque but also full of strange loveliness, irreverent but also somehow incredibly sincere, a window into 1930s Moscow while also feeling wildly fresh and modern, biting satire but also full of hope (the ending made me cry with how brilliant and beautiful it was!). Incredibly funny while also being a profoundly beautiful exploration of faith and love.Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel
I’m rarely drawn towards books about sport, but I am drawn to books about women and girls, and I am also drawn to unusual or playful structures and Headshot very much ticks off the last two. It’s a brilliant debut about a fictional girls boxing competition in America. The book takes the form of the competition itself, so each chapter is a bout between two girls and we switch between their internal perspectives as they fight and win or lose. Despite being about fighting it’s a very tender book and has a gorgeous final section - a celebration of girlhood in all its brutal beauty.
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshanathan
Many (but not all) literary prizes are organised so that because of time constraints and the sheer quantity of submitted books, the judges each read a portion of the submitted books and a longlist is formed from each of their individual choices. Ideally each book is read by at least one judge, and ideally the chair reads the vast majority of submissions, but it’s common that at longlist stage not all the books have yet been read by all the judges. This means that longlists can sometimes feel rather disjointed before a clearer version of this the taste of a particular group of judges emerges at the shortlist once everyone has read everything. This was certainly the case with the Women’s Prize this year. I thought it was a particularly strong shortlist (two of the six books feature here) but it was a strange longlist with some books that were honestly quite bizarre inclusions. But the winner, this book, was one of the standouts. (Also please permit a moment of smugness as I predicted this as the winner correctly and indeed even tried to place a bet but couldn’t find anywhere that would offer me odds).
Brotherless Night is about the civil war in Sri Lanka, and is primarily set during the 1980s. It follows an aspiring doctor named Sashi from the age of 16 until her early 20s as she tries to understand what “do no harm” means amid impossible circumstances. The book also weaves in fictionalised versions of two real-life people - Thileepan, the Tamil Tiger revolutionary who went on hunger strike, and more obliquely Rajani Thiranagama, a doctor who both assisted and criticised the movement. (Although I’d recommend not reading about the real life counterparts until after you’ve read the novel.) The book almost feels like a memoir because of these inclusions and the vivid, immersive style. It does have several distressing moments, and I cried a lot while reading it but would recommend it vigorously as a propulsive, thought-provoking and hugely moving novel that well deserved its Women’s Prize win.Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad
As per much of what I said above, this is the other Women’s Prize shortlistee that has really stayed with me. It’s about an actress of Palestinian and Dutch heritage living in London who returns to her family’s hometown of Haifa and ends up involved in a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. It’s about language and performance, the role of art amid conflict, and occupation of both land and identity and is unlike anything I’ve read before. It’s quite a dense writing style but I mean that as a compliment - it’s an elegant, complex book that rewards focus and attention but it still flows along, especially once Sonia gets involved in the play and it builds to a clever, very affecting ending.
The book is very much about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and of course the current genocide adds an inevitable intensity to the reading experience. Please do not forget that this is still happening, keep paying attention and witnessing, and keep putting pressure on those with power to stop financing genocide through protests or this Oxfam petition asking the UK government to stop arming Israel. If you are able to financially help, you can donate a SIM card to help people in Gaza stay in touch with the wider world and press, and with their loved ones.The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin
I don’t read much sci-fi and so I had this in my head as one of those series I should get round to at some point because it’s so well regarded without it being something I was particularly intuitively drawn to. But goodness me this is exceptionally good - I think that the first book in particular is a bit of a masterpiece but the whole trilogy is superb and I would say best read back to back as there’s some complex world-building to keep track of. It absolutely is sci-fi, but it has the feel of epic fantasy and is also low key about rocks (please don’t let that put you off though). It’s beautifully written, morally complex and hugely immersive. (Quick note that there are some quite bleak and distressing moments including cruelty towards children.)Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson
This is the other book in my top two and my favourite recent release (it was published in 2023 and came out in paperback this year). The only book I enjoyed more was The Master and Margarita (excluding rereads of old favourites). I really loved Nelson’s debut, Open Water, but this was operating at the next level for me. It’s a book of tender wonder about music, masculinity, grief, London, race, and love. It summons London summers to life perfectly (would really recommend reading in the summer, especially if you’re a Londoner, and especially if you’re a south Londoner) and it’s full of details of food and music and people. Music, in particular, is used to gorgeous effect, both in terms of references to literal music but also the way it is written making use of lots of repeating phrases to create its own rhythm that builds and builds throughout the book. There’s no way to say this without sounding incredibly pretentious, but there were several points while I was reading it that I was on the verge of tears just because of the beauty and brilliance of the writing.The Modern Fairies by Clare Pollard
This was the very last book I read this year. Or the last book of the emotional year, not the calendar year because I wrap up my reading just before Christmas because a) I like to write things like this and make graphics for Instagram etc etc and b) because I like to read without pressure over Christmas, usually a nice chunky fantasy book. Anyway all of which to say that this had been staring at me from my TBR since I got a proof in the spring because it seemed so up my street and I’m so glad I snuck it in. It’s set at Versailles in 1682 so almost exactly a hundred years before the French Revolution in the salons of the wealthy literati of Paris, that of Madame d’Aulnoy in particular. It’s written gorgeously, weaving the telling of the fairy tales with the lives of the salonnières, who loosely adhere to real people. It’s sexy in a sort of bawdy almost grotesque way (it’s quite Angela Carter-esque) but underneath the excess of the time there is a very powerful story about women and survival and love and I had a little cry at the ending.Gliff by Ali Smith
Ali is one of my very, very favourite writers and also now a friend (this feels absurd to say as I have loved her books from afar for so many years but I have interviewed her many times now and we have become friendly which is a source of constant delight to me!). Ali is just the most clever, kind person if also a little intimidating to interview as she definitely expects a level of intellectual rigour from questions and will also ask you questions in return about what you’re trying to get to. So I was super excited, and also slightly nervous, when she did a Lush Book Club event with us in November to celebrate her latest novel Gliff, which is my favourite of hers that I’ve read after How to be Both I think. It’s about siblings and resisting binaries and pursuing hope and also about a horse. It’s hopeful and beautiful and full of wordplay as Ali’s books always are.
Under Your Spell by Laura Wood
For more transparency, Laura is a long-term Internet pal BUT I truly am not being hyperbolic when I say this is a pretty much perfect romcom - the leads have incredible chemistry, it is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny, there’s an amazing supporting cast of characters (it has brilliant sister relationships which I love) and it does exactly what you’re expecting but in the most charming way possible. It would make the most brilliant film and anyone reading this who has the power to make such things happen should get on that right away. It’s also about grown-ups which I enjoyed - both of the leads are in their 30s. Clemmie is the daughter of a very famous rock star, who has just lost her job and gone through a breakup. Her sister works for a record label and needs someone to babysit heartthrob Theo while he writes his very late next album. Clemmie and Theo feel beautifully real, and Laura has just the right balance of angst to humour to romance to sex (and it is sexy!). Can’t recommend highly enough - just huge fun!Experienced by Kate Young
Kate Young is also a friend! (The things is that I have lots of author friends because I work in books and I like to read the books that my friends are writing, and also that people who you like are more likely to write books you like!) We had Kate as a guest at Lush Book Club and she talked about how she’d studied romcoms to work out the perfect formula and you can really tell in her debut novel which is sexy and queer and big-hearted and full of great cooking and eating scenes. It’s about Bette, a newly-out woman whose girlfriend tells her one morning that she thinks they should have a short break so that Bette can go and catch up on the experiences she missed in her 20s. I actually don’t read loads of romcoms because I am picky and I’m not sure I’ve ever had a romcom, let alone two, in my books of the year but it’s been a good year for them!
So those are the twelve books I’ve enjoyed reading the most and/or had the biggest impact on me this year. Please do let me know what your reading highlights have been and wishing you all a peaceful and happy new year!
To round us off for anyone who is still reading, here are some things I said about books I read this year, ten points if you can identify which book I’m talking about:
It’s about - or rather, given the nature of the book, to me it’s about - how fiction and love meet everyone differently, and about how words are sexy and fun.
I clearly need to embrace that my sweet spot is weird, sexy literary fantasy novels.
It does end on a hopeful note, but it kind of felt like a lollipop after a root canal.
Reading it felt like accidentally ending up at the wrong person’s birthday party.
I’m not sure I’ve ever sincerely used the phrase rip-roaring before, but I can’t think of a better phrase to describe this.
I would say that MacLean and I have different ideas of how sexy the word “turgid” is and there is more “laving” of things than you could possible ever anticipate.
Men would rather drag the corpse of the killer of their lover around a city nine times than go to therapy etc etc.
I find I am less fussed about getting mad about the lack of lady dwarves in the Hobbit and more interested in tearing down the oppressive structures that keep us all trapped in arguments about whether there should be any lady dwarves in the Hobbit.