The best books I read in 2024
am I allowed to put my own book in this list
I track my reading by making a yearly list in my notes app. It’s an imperfect method but I’ve never really been into Goodreads or any medium that uses the star rating. I find boiling a novel down to a star rating difficult and sort of meaningless; it doesn’t tell me anything about the experience of reading the book. Novels meet you wherever you are in your life. You could have a totally rapturous love affair with a novel that, if you had picked up a few years before in a different time of life, might have left you cold. That’s what’s so wonderful about novels; the process of reading them is a dialogue between you and the story. Reading is not a passive act, it requires your participation. How do you communicate that in a star rating? You can’t!
But I do still want to track what I’m reading; it’s handy for recommendations and I like noticing patterns and trends in my reading life. Since I started my reading list on January 1st 2021, I have read 304 novels.1 Every year, I read more than I did the year before, and in 2024, so far, I’ve read 96 books. I might get to 100 by the end of the year, because December is usually a big reading month for me; lots of curling up on the sofa with a book or taking my kindle on train journeys to visit family, although, also, I might not.2 I never have a numerical reading goal, but I do always make a reading resolution, and this year it was to read outwith my comfort zone, which I think I did.3 And so, without further ado, here is my 2024 Literature Wrapped. I read a lot of good stuff this year so the list is quite long. I’ll also give you recommendations of who you should buy these books for as pressies because it’s that time of year, eh?
The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen
Buy for: your friend who you want to impress with Serious Literature
I read this at the beginning of the year after enjoying The Bee Sting by Paul Murray and reading an article that name-checked Franzen as an influence. I had heard about some of his scandals and previously avoided his work because of this, but in doing so I was stupidly holding myself back from what was probably the best reading experience I had this year.4 The Corrections was the novel that launched Jonathan Franzen into the public consciousness and began his career as an often controversial literary superstar. I totally adored this novel, which follows a Midwestern family as they fall apart in a myriad of comic, tragic, ridiculous ways. It’s long - nearly 600 pages, but it isn’t the kind of book that’s hard work. It’s funny, theatrical, immersive, not overly serious or dull, smart but not patronising, honestly I could go on and on. But you’ve probably heard the hype, and I’m just here telling you that it's well deserved. There’s a slapstick comedy scene where a man tries to shoplift a giant sheet of smoked salmon by putting it up his shirt and then feeling it start to defrost and slide into his pants, and there’s also some really brutal stuff about Alzheimer's Disease; the human mind contains multitudes. Anyway, I’m a Fran Head5 now.
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche
Buy for: your friend who loves rom-coms
I thought I knew what this novel was going to be about, and so I wasn’t interested in reading it. I had an opinion of Ngozi Adiche’s work that had been formed from reading her non-fiction, and so I thought that this novel was going to be serious and a bit of a slog. Do you ever do that? Just form a baseless opinion on something only to find out that you were talking total pish. Well, that’s what I did with Americanah, which is actually a beautifully written love story about two childhood sweethearts who emigrate from Nigeria to London and America respectively. Spanning fifteen or so years, the novel follows Ifemelu and Obinze as they lose and find each other again and navigate their echoing feelings of disapora. I honestly just had so much fun reading this; it was juicy! It was funny! Thoughts were provoked! I would highly recommend Americanah if you’re looking for a smart read with a love story at it’s heart.
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
Buy for: your friend who loves doomscrolling. Or maybe not. This is a weird choice for a gift, actually.
I had always steered away from McCarthy because I heard that his writing was difficult and I always thought of him as one of those…… male authors…….. that don’t have much going on in their novels for women. Once again, I was wrong, my opinion was unfounded, and I need to stop with the generalisations. In the end, I picked The Road up on my partners recommendation, and WOW! The writing is gorgeous, deceptively simple but so unique, and the building and release of tension is just masterful. This is one you should go into knowing as little as possible, I think, so I’m going to leave it there. Although I will share that I may or may not have written forty thousand words of an eventually scrapped apocalypse novel after reading this because The Road gave me that burning, jealous ‘I wish I had written this’ feeling.
The Stand, Stephen King
Buy for: Your friend who loved The Last of Us
The unabridged version of The Stand was the longest book I read this year, coming in at a whopping 1,153 pages. And I read it in less than a WEEK, which is a testament to how compulsive the narrative is. It’s an apocalypse novel about a flu virus (which is a bit Covid-y so avoid if you’re still fatigued by pandemic stuff) that kills 99.9 percent of humanity, and the narrative follows a bunch of immune people in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy as they travel to meet up and navigate the strange new world together. But a dark force is calling survivors to Las Vegas…. and everyone is having weird dreams…. and this is actually a book about good vs evil????? Honestly, I have been recommending The Stand to everyone, despite it’s length, because it’s just a brilliant story6. Stephen King, despite being hugely popular, doesn’t get enough cred for his writing and character work. He does a great thing with the characters in The Stand where he initially presents them as almost caricatures; the plucky teenage heroine, the booze-soaked performer, the kind but tough southern everyman, and then he slowly shows the reader that there’s a lot more to them than that; almost chastising you for your prejudice. The Stand is so good that after I finished it, I read Misery (which is brilliant) and I was disappointed. That’s all!
Intermezzo, Sally Rooney
Buy for: your friend that has a bookstagram (although she’s probably already got it)
An unsurprising addition to my top books of the year, considering the fact that I would read Sally Rooney’s shopping lists. What is surprising, however, is that this is the first time I’ve talked about Rooney on Substack. I’ve loved her writing since 2018, when I found a copy of Conversations with Friends in my local bookshop and took it back home to bed with me, finishing it in an afternoon. Since then, I’ve read all of her novels, impatiently awaiting each new release, and when I heard that Intermezzo was coming out, I didn’t worry for a second that I wouldn’t like it. Her work is just so consistently good. And Intermezzo was no different. Following brothers Ivan and Peter in the wake of their father’s death, Intermezzo explores questions that Rooney has dealt with in her other works; connection, miscommunication, isolation and the intricacies of modern love. But it never feels like she’s retracing her steps; on the contrary, it feels like there’s innumerable ways to explore subjects so deep and broad. Can you ever write definitively on something as slippery as love or loneliness? No!
Whilst reading Intermezzo, I was struck, as I often am, by how gently Rooney treats her characters. One gets the sense that Rooney isn’t trying to judge or condemn anyone she writes about. She’s just telling us what happened! I find the stories themselves so engaging but her work is worth reading for the writing alone, in my opinion. And there’s really impressive stream of consciousness stuff going on with Peter’s narrative in this one. James Joyce who?????
East of Eden, John Steinbeck
Buy for: your friend that likes family sagas
Okayyyyyy I guess I love Steinbeck now! East of Eden follows two intertwined families; the Trask’s and the Hamilton’s through generations in the Salinas valley as they loosely re-enact the story of Cain and Abel. I love a retelling, especially a biblical one, and Steinbeck weaves together the strands of this sprawling story so beautifully and with such EASE. Like all of the best stories, East of Eden feels like life. It’s so stupid to recommend a book so famous like yeah I’m pretty sure everyone knows that East of Eden is good but like….. it’s good. Steinbeck said that he believes all authors only really have one novel, and all the preceding texts are just practice. If that’s true, then when am I going to write my East of Eden please?????? Also thinking about starting a fan club for Samuel Hamilton does anyone else want to join me? Remember in high school there was always one English teacher who was in love with a fictional character from a classic. That’s me with Samuel Hamilton. Soundest man alive.
So, there you go! Some mini-reviews of my most-loved novels this year. I had another couple of favourites that I’ve already talked about on here, so I’m going to link to them below:
The Wedding People, Alison Espach
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
Long Island Compromise, Taffy Brodesser-Aker
That’s all for now, folks. Fran Heads forever!
I include rereads on this list, which might be controversial, but I’m a serial reread-er so it would feel wrong not to.
And I would NEVER pick up short books or novellas on purpose as a way to fulfil an arbitrary reading goal. I find it so weird when people do this.
My other resolution for this year was applicable to both reading and life. It was: Stop having opinions on things that you haven’t read/don’t know anything about. It was really hard and I definitely failed. But trying counts for something, right?
Also I’ve looked deeper into some of his many ‘cancellations’ and most of them seem like a load of shite to me. #IStandWithFran
This is my made up fandom name for people who feel passionately about Jonathan Franzen
Or as my partner would say, ‘a good romp!’