Top Five Books of 2024

LibraryThing's Top Five Books of the Year is back! Please see our new blog post for each staff member's list of favorite reads from this past year: https://blog.librarything.com/2024/12/top-five-books-of-2024/

What were your top five books for the year? We'd love to hear about them here, and also invite you to share them in our December List of the Month: Top Five Books of 2024

>1 AbigailAdams26:

I think there should be TWO lists - one for fiction and one for non-fiction. Because I can't narrow it down that much! In any case, I'll wait a bit to try because I still have books to get through this year.

Boy, it's tough to whittle down from 69 books to the five best. The older I get, the better I am at identifying books worth my time, and this year saw a significant uptick in my pleasure reading.

My honorable mentions: Revival, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, A Deepness in the Sky, Sindbad: The Thirteenth Voyage, Pale Horse Rider, The Deep, Titanium Noir.

Empress, Ruby Lal
Indian history with a female twist. Her more recent Vagabond Princess is also excellent.

When the Heavens went on Sale
Recent space flight history. Very well written.

Frisches Gemüse im Winter ernten
How to keep your garden productive in winter in the Vienna, Austria region. I found it very inspiring - for next year.

The Dress Diary
I think I got this from someone's list last year. A Victorian woman in Singapore kept samples of cloth from her own garments and from friends and relatives. The modern author has done a lot of research and brings it all to life.

God is not a White Man
What does that mean for the church?

No fiction? Best fiction was probably Forever, interrupted! a very moving story of love and grief and moving on. but it doesn't quite make it into the top 5.

>1 AbigailAdams26:

Was The Dark Is Rising a new read for you this year or a re-read? I loved that book as a kid, and I re-read the whole series as an adult and found that they held up quite well.

>5 paradoxosalpha: It was a childhood favorite. I reread the entire series recently with friends, as part of a book club. I'm now rereading Susan Cooper's Boggart series, which is not as good, but still very enjoyable.

Hard to pick 5 out of my Book of the Month's. I always have 12. :) But in no particular order...

Where the Deer and the Antelope Play by Nick Offerman (read it on audio, where Offerman reads it himself)
Angel of Rome by Jess Walter - Walter is an automatic read for me
Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Starter Villain by John Scalzi - automatic author. Didn't disappoint
Father and Son by Larry Brown - automatic author, but sadly he passed at the age of 53, I've loved everything I've read of his

I've had an off-kilter reading year: two lengthy reading slumps and trouble concentrating when reading. I also had more 4.5 star reads than 5 stars.

Anyway, I keep returning to the following book, which I read in January 2024. It sadly was relevant during the Biden administration and will be even more relevant during Trump II:

Frontera, a beautiful graphic novel that describes undocumented "illegal" immigrants' experiences with Border Patrol, but also with people who are kind. There also is a speculative element that enhances the journey.

I rarely say this, because everyone's reading taste is their own. But: Please read this book.

>6 AbigailAdams26: I also reread the dark is rising sequence recently which I loved

I'm proud of my reading! I'm resetting my habits. I've spent a few years reading maybe one book a year, and I'm finally returning to my love of reading. I haven't been tracking everything, but I know I've finished over two dozen titles this year, and I'm not done yet.

I have been struggling, as I am sure many of us have since the pandemic started, with loneliness and human connection, and The Midnight Library and Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine resonated with those themes in a way that put them on top of the list for me this year. These books both start out so depressing and lonely, and built into a story of hope and connection about building your life up from the ashes. Midnight is a little speculative and explores the idea of all the other lives one could have chosen. Eleanor Oliphant is a realistic drama exploring the depths and the heights of what people do to and for each other.

The Power is probably next on my list. To me, it was a perfect balance of a cohesive message about real-world themes, expressive characters, and intriguing speculative world-building.

I'm Glad My Mom Died was so emotionally compelling and really resonated with some of the experiences I and my loved ones have struggled with. McCurdy is a very talented writer and I'm looking forward to seeing where she goes from here. I finished this book in one setting.

Rounding out the list, I put out a book recommendation request for speculative fiction with disability metaphors. So far I've really enjoyed everything I was recommended in that list, but Lycanthropy and Other Chronic Illnesses tops them. It balances the seriousness of the main character struggling with her own chronic illness with an upbeat (if internet-based and very hip/modern) sense of humour, and the dramatic irony of her best friend's lycanthropy was richly written.

Still Life by Sarah Winman
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
Himself by Jess Kidd
Darling Girl by Liz Michalski

Hm, there's fewer obvious candidates for this that last year. But let's try:

Ancient Sea Reptiles - really good popular science
Amphibian Evolution - less "popular", but highly interesting and readable
Armies of the Aztec and Inca Empires, other native peoples of the Americas and the Conquistadores - The only negative thing I've got to say about it is that the title is too long.
Triumph and Illusion - the fifth and final part of Jonathan Sumption's history of the Hundred Years War; I actually finished vols. 3-5 this year, but figure it'd be silly to include all three separately here.
The First Pharaohs - really good on early Egypt

I’ve put my top 5 on the list, but since staff snuck in some honorable mentions, these are some of mine:

• ‪The Sparrow by ‪Mary Doria Russell
  
• ‪The History of Love‬ by Nicole Krauss
  
• ‪Fun Home by‬ ‪Alison Bechdel
  
• ‪The Passion by ‪Jeanette Winterson
  
• ‪Crooked Plow by ‪Itamar Vieira Junior
  
• ‪Titanium Noir by Nick Harkaway
  
• ‪The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
  
• ‪Fever dream by Samanta Schweblin
  
• ‪Popisho by ‪Leone Ross
  
• ‪A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life and Epic Journey of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey by ‪Jonathan Meiburg

I looked over my reading for the year and it is hard to narrow it down to 5, considering the series I read over the year. But here goes:
Nine Tailed
Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries
Legends and Lattes
Keeper of Enchanted Rooms
Penric's Demon
The series I read that stand out the most are Penric and Desdemona, Discworld, and Murderbot.

I find it very funny that the top "related list" for this list is "2022 Christmas Gifts".

We will read and love the book you gifted us, but it will take us a year and a half to get to it.

>15 norabelle414:

Well, it's probably true! The data show it.

I was fortunate to add quite a few highly-rated reads to my list this year; it was not easy to narrow down to five.

Unsouled by Will Wight - actually the entire Cradle series. It took a little bit to get into the first one, but now I'm on the tenth and eagerly anticipating the final two books.

Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon is so beautifully written and cleverly breathes new life into some of fantasy's most classic plot devices.

Starling House by Alix Harrow is my first of hers but I will have to track down others; I was instantly pulled into this story and surprised at some of the twists and turns.

What You Are Looking For Is In The Library by Michiko Aoyama is brilliant and comforting and thought provoking all at the same time.

The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec is a delight for lovers of Norse mythology, as it explores the back story of a character - Loki's first wife - who fills an important role in the myths but was not given a story of her own before.

Honorable Mention:
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo is YA but very very well done. I understand there is a tv show version but I have not seen it to compare, although I do highly recommend the book trilogy.

I love reading other people's top 5's at this time of year and like many others i find it hard to choose just five but here are those that I thought particularly worthwhile.
Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk in which the Turkish author recalls his 1950's childhood in a city far removed from the tourist image.

Circe by Madeline Miller which is a re-imagining of the myth both humanising and empowering the foe of Odysseus.

The vanishing half by Brit Bennett in which two sisters, both black but one passing as white live markedly different lives. This was a very powerful and thought- provoking book which not surprisingly recalled Nella Larsen's
'Passing' to me.

Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris which I found to be a riveting account of the flight to America of two of the men who signed the death warrant of King Charles 1 and the hunt for them by a determined investigator.

The High House by Jessie Greengrass,a novel which brought home to me both the horror of extreme climate change and the difficulty that even the most prepared of us would have in surviving it.

Apologies for the variable touchstone results.

>177 Correct touchstone I think is Istanbul. Hmm. My library has it, even in English.

My top 5 of 2024:

1. The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
2. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
3. Sociopath by Patric Gagne
4. Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman
5. 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton