Q4 FAVOURITE READS

Well here we are at the midpoint of December. Some of us will hunker down and have a great reading stretch for the next two weeks; others will probably be too distracted to get much done.

Whichever scenario applies to you, what are your favourite books from October, November, and December 2024?

Looking back over your reading quarter, is there anything you read you would have avoided had you only known?

I've only finished five books this quarter, and assuming the two books I'm reading now, The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese and The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine by Ricardo Nuila, MD, will also make my favorite lists, these are my favorites of Q4:

Our Malady: Lessons in Liberty from a Hospital Diary by Timothy Snyder
Legacy: A Black Physician Reckons with Racism in Medicine by Uché Blackstock, MD

Two novels and two story collections were my highlights:
The Big Bite, Charles Williams
A Desolation Called Peace, Arkady Martine
Greatest Hits, Harlan Ellison
A Lot Like Christmas, Connie Willis

I have several books still lined up for the next two weeks. But so far I have given 8 books 5 stars. Three of those stand out:
The Door in the Wall
Remarkably Bright Creatures and
The Covenant of Water

I haven’t read as much this quarter but still enjoyed the following:
Clear - Carys Davies
This House of Grief - Helen Garner
Creation Lake - Rachel Kushner
Momento Mori - Muriel Spark
The Husbands - Holly Gramazio

Hmm

Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson

Keats: A Brief Life in Nine Poems and One Epitaph by Lucasta Miller

Innocence by Penelope Fitzgerald

The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen

Hang Kang : The Vegetarian, The White Book, Human Acts, Greek Lessons

My top read for this quarter is probably Robert Caro's doorstop biography of Robert Moses, the American urban planner, civil servant, and politician: The Power Broker. It was my big reading project this year,

Other books I read and really liked: Tan Twan Eng - The House of Doors (a fictionalised account of Somerset Maugham in Malaysia), Hisham Matar's My Friends (from the Booker longlist), Robert Jackson Bennett's The Tainted Cup (a fantasy detective novel), and Anne Michaels's beautiful novel that I am still thinking about: Held.

I did read some excellent nonfiction as well:
Michelle T. King - Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food
Ha Jin - The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai
Jing Tsu - Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that Made China Modern

I did read a lot of light thriller/mystery novels, none of which were very good. Looking back, I would have avoided those.