BEST of the YEAR

TalkClub Read 2024

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BEST of the YEAR

1SassyLassy
Dec 16, 10:06 am

2025 is almost upon us. It's time to take a look back and let your fellow readers know which books really stood out for you. Even better, let them know why it stood out.

2Sean191
Dec 16, 11:38 am

I think one of my early review books was among the best or was the best I read this year:

Frank's Bloody Books by Mack Green

The first few pages of this novel had me regretting requesting it as an early review book. The rest of the book had me thankful I did.

I hope author Mack Green had a reason for going with small publishing company April Gloaming, because if he shopped his book around to larger publishers and they passed, some people should be worried about losing their jobs. And kudos to AG for getting Green's book out to the world. His characters are fantastic and fantastical and memorable. They're Cormac McCarthy level larger than life - with (slightly) less violence associated with them. The writing, the descriptions of the time and locale...all pure art. The story of "Half-Pint" Crowe, told from a look back now that he's an old man, is fantastic. It's believable and inconceivable at the same time and the pace and connections through the story all work so well. I highly recommend this book.

3KeithChaffee
Dec 16, 2:34 pm

I gave 5-star ratings to 5 books this year:

A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace, Arkady Martine
Burn, Patrick Ness
Tidal Creatures, Seanan McGuire
Greatest Hits, Harlan Ellison

Those are all at least SF-adjacent, as it happens, but to pick a couple of favorites outside that genre:

The Big Bite, Charles Williams
Dogland, Tommy Tomlinson
The Husbands, Holly Gramazio (Is this also SF-adjacent? Yeah, but even with its obvious fantasy elements, I think it reads a lot more like rom-com, so much so that it shouldn't scare off the SF-wary.)

4dchaikin
Dec 16, 11:17 pm

Goodness, right off the top of my head, Canterbury Tales, The Sound & the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Possession, The Blue Flower and a collection of Emily Dickinson’s poems come tumbling out. That’s without looking at my list.

5rv1988
Dec 17, 9:45 pm

>3 KeithChaffee: I'm reading A Memory Called Empire at the moment and it is fantastic.

6thorold
Dec 20, 2:46 pm

The five I added to the LT best of the year list were:

— House of day, house of night by Olga Tokarczuk
— Our evenings by Alan Hollinghurst (new 2024)
— The railway by Hamid Ismailov
— James by Percival Everett (new 2024, also high on the LT list)
— Lower than the angels: a history of sex and Christianity by Diarmid MacCulloch (new 2024)

7FlorenceArt
Dec 21, 5:49 am

This year I read almost exclusively fluff, and I don't regret a minute of it. Most of it I enjoyed immensely, and some of it was really good. However in retrospect, even the books I gushed about right after reading them have left very little impression behind. I guess my memorable books of the year will be non fiction books:

Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud
Petits Viêt-Nams

I also discovered a few wonderful series, and even though I can't pick a single book, I think they are worth citing as series:

Lois McMasters Bujold's World of the Five Gods
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller's Liaden Universe
And Victoria Goddard's Nine World novels

8SassyLassy
Dec 21, 12:28 pm

>7 FlorenceArt: This year I read almost exclusively fluff, and I don't regret a minute of it. Love that!

9WelshBookworm
Edited: Dec 21, 12:39 pm

>7 FlorenceArt: I'm doing that for 2025 - focusing on cat cozy mysteries!

12Ameise1
Dec 24, 9:25 am

For me there is only one book The Woman with the Cure by Lynn Cullen. It will take a long time to top this book. I can highly recommend it.

13SassyLassy
Dec 24, 10:29 am

>11 japaul22: What a great reading year you've had. I'm a real fan of rereads too.

>12 Ameise1: A woman who knows her mind!

>10 torontoc: Taking note of the McBride, as he is the monthly author for February.