The Top 10 Books I Read in 2024

My favorite part of the end of each year is recap listicles. And it’s time for my own! I’m starting with books and I’ll try to finish up with movies before the end of the year. These are my 10 favorite books I read this year, whether they came out this year or not.

No. 10: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

I would likely not have gone out of my way to read Jane Eyre on my own, but it was selected as a book club book (with, let it be known, a completely undemocratic process). I reluctantly and openly grumpily agreed to read it. It took me a while to get into it, but by the end, I could see why it is a classic. Jane is such an interesting character. She’s deeply unsympathetic at times, but it’s always fascinating to be inside her head. There are so many stories that I love, like Harry Potter or A Series of Unfortunate Events that I just don’t think would have existed without Jane Eyre leading the way. What earns this 10th place spot, though, was getting the chance to talk about it with my friends each week. Whether we were fighting over Mr. Rochester’s suitability as a lover, or being berated by Kapani about not considering Jane’s interiority, it was always a great time.

No. 9: White Cat, Black Dog: Stories by Kelly Link

This is the first time that there will be two books by the same author on one of these lists (spoilers for what is to come!), but I discovered Kelly Link at the recommendation of my mother this year and have loved everything I’ve read by her. She is primarily a writer of short stories; White Cat, Black Dog is her latest anthology and was so much fun to read. White Cat, Black Dog is a collection of fairy tales, but with speculative and modern twists. The first story, for instance, is a take on the classic trope of three children being sent on a quest to impress their father. In this case, though, the father is a CEO and the sons are modern-day nepo baby losers. Some of the stories are funny, some are sad, and all are weird, but in surprising and delightful ways. In some ways, I feel like calling them “fairy tales” does them a disservice, because while you can draw connections between these stories, they still feel complete and original. If you like short stories, I can’t recommend this highly enough.

No. 8: Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

I accidentally read this back to back with another book about a sad Irish family, and this was the one I preferred. Intermezzo’s strength is its characters. Ivan and Peter's relationships with each other and their respective girlfriends are unique and interesting. Ivan and Margaret’s story, in particular, is like nothing I have ever read before. Intermezzo didn’t leave me with the instant-classic, endlessly re-readable feeling that Normal People did, but it is still a drama that is easy to get sucked into (once you get used to not having quotation marks). It’s kind of like if Challengers had five people and was about chess instead of tennis and was Irish and more depressing. It’s not life-changing, but it is deeply charming and well worth reading, even if, like me, you felt like you were in a Sally Rooney slump.

No. 7: Funny Story by Emily Henry

Emily Henry is the only romance writer that I seek out. While some of her books have been misses for me, Funny Story has joined Happy Place and People We Meet on Vacation in her Mount Rushmore. Emily Henry is so incredibly good at writing love stories that aren’t just about two people, but also about places. The small town along Lake Michigan that she writes here is so vivid and charming and makes you want to drop everything and go there. I have spent many a week at my Grandmother’s small Lake Michigan town, which is a lot less magical than this one, but I was entranced by the fictional version that Henry creates. The romance itself is also solid. Miles is a great character and Daphne is fine. In the end, though, the romance plot in an Emily Henry book is always going to be secondary to the humor and the little details of the world.

No. 6: The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber

2024 was a light nonfiction year for me, but The Utopia of Rules is great. Graeber’s argument here is that the proliferation of bureaucracies in both public and private life have both made these two realms functionally indistinguishable and have robbed us of progress, creativity, and joy. What drew me in at the start was what Graeber calls the “Iron Law of Liberalism”, where any effort that a government makes towards “efficiency” (usually through privatization), just ends up just creating more red tape and bureaucracy. The book bounces around, blaming bureaucracy for why we don’t have flying cars, interesting villains in our stories, and better health care, among a million other things. It’s broken up into a few smaller essays that make the book easily digestible. I don’t agree with all of his conclusions; he really hates the state and ends up staking out an anarchist position. However, the phenomena he describes and the way he ties them together are super interesting and readable.

No. 5: Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides

I am a sucker for a big multigenerational family novel and Middlesex is an epic one. You get to follow the Stephanides family through three generations, two countries, major historical events, and a bunch of incest. The fact that Eugenidies has such an epic scope here, but still keeps the family at the forefront in a way that feels (mostly) grounded and realistic is what is so impressive. Cal as both the main character and the omniscient narrator helps to keep things moving along. It’s a sprawling book, but one that I never wanted to put down. Each time I started to lose interest in a particular piece of the story, it moved on to the next one. The fact that this book has everything from the Greco-Turkish war to the race riots in Detroit to lesbian private school subplots helped to cement it for me as a book that I will not easily forget.

No. 4: Romney: A Reckoning by McKay Coppins

Romney: A Reckoning has the veneer of a straightforward political biography, but it was one of the most intimate and revealing pieces of nonfiction I have ever read. Romney gives Coppins unprecedented access—for someone who is still alive—to his notes and journals and hours and hours of his time (in one of the most interesting parts, Coppins describes how Romney, lonely in his apartment in Washington, seems to view his biographer as one of the only people he can talk to). What emerges is a somber portrait of someone who, grappling with the legacy of his father’s failed presidential campaign, convinced himself that his path to political success would come through malleability. Coppins paints Romney as the ultra-bureaucrat, someone who wants to be president not because of any particular ideological agenda, but because he is convinced that he, above anyone else, has the skills to successfully manage the United States. Most interesting is Romney grappling with the Republican party that he created and its current figurehead that he helped legitimize. Coppins clearly has some sympathy for his subject, but makes it easy to read between the lines of what Romney is and isn’t saying. I found it such an illuminating book on a figure from our lifetimes who already feels like a relic.

No. 3: Beautyland by Marie Helen Bertolino

Beautyland is a short, sweet, and beautiful work of fiction. Starting in the 70’s, it tells the story of Adina, who is mysteriously sent by aliens to be raised on Earth. She communicates the things she learns via fax machine. I was skeptical of this premise, but what it ends up doing is setting up a unique coming of age story, where someone who is positioned on the outside and the margins ends up finding what it means to be human. It is charming, sad, and funny. Adina explores theater, school, writing, and love in many different forms. The aliens provide a great outlet for Adina to share her reflections on what she learns about human nature that feels natural within the story. One of my favorites, for instance: “Human beings, Adina faxes, rip their addresses off old magazines when they donate them to hair salons. This is how criminals find their victims. They search stacks of People magazines. If they find one where the address has been left on, they think: What a fool. I will go to her house and murder her”. It’s a weird, memorable, and deeply human book.

No. 2: The Book of Love by Kelly Link

Kelly Link is back! This is her first novel, and it’s a weird one. Three teens from a small town on the coast of New England return from the dead with a set of tasks from their high school music teacher that they need to complete to get their lives back. This premise really only scratches the surface of this book. The Goodreads reviews show how polarizing this one is and I can completely see why. It’s 600+ pages and has no real justification for being this long. The book likes to take long meandering turns, exploring the main and side characters' backstories, motivations, and random interests. There is a lot of magic. New characters, much weirder than our original protagonists, show up, and suddenly, we care about them too. There are no complex political or societal themes outside of our appreciation for one another and the beauty of the time that we have left. I don’t think it would be possible to enjoy this book if you started to feel impatient with it. In my case, I started it over a long flight, which was the perfect no-distraction way to get into it. I also just love Kelly Link’s writing so, so, so much. It has this blend of magical realism and contemporary humor that completely works for me. I hear all the critiques and I hear that it overstays its welcome and that the characters are unlikable and that it goes off on random tangents, but I just don’t care.

No. 1: Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

I realized right away how much I was going to love Crossroads. It checks all the boxes for me. It’s an unabashedly Midwestern dysfunctional family novel (and only the first book in a yet-to-be-released multigenerational! trilogy) set in the 1970s. Crossroads tells the story of each member of the Hildebrant family. You have Russ, the liberal pastor, struggling with his marriage and his ego after his youth group was stolen from him by his younger and more likable rival. His wife is Marion, who at first seems like a boring shell of a character, but is eventually revealed to have the most interesting and dynamic backstory of anyone in the book. Clem, the oldest son, is away at college, grappling with his first girlfriend and his guilt over not enlisting in Vietnam. Becky is the popular middle daughter who gets involved in her father’s former youth group. And Perry is the youngest son on a self-destructive bent. Almost all of the action in the first three-quarters of the book takes place over one day, but within that, you get to learn so much about each of the characters and their relationships with each of the others, that when the climactic last quarter comes it feels all the more rewarding. It is a kind of hold-your-breath book. The sense of disaster looms large over everything. Franzen’s writing is fantastic; it’s vivid and funny, and the characters are so well-realized. The theming is great. The Hildebrant’s church provides the backdrop for each character's exploration of their faith, or lack thereof, and the youth group is a perfect parody. It’s a beautifully written novel and I cannot wait for Franzen to write the next two.