Every Book I Read in 2024, Not Ranked
Another year spent reading books and not making much time to write about them. This time I’ll make it simple. Here are all the books I read in 2024 in the chronological order in which I read them. I’ve bolded the ones that are bangers, a banger being:
a page turner
with some literary value beyond merely pulp
that I could see myself reading again
and I recommend others read too
At least, that’s my current working definition of a banger.
I did not read very many books that were released in 2024, but I did read a lot that were released in 2023.
And yes, I still think it’s absurd for anyone, anywhere to claim they know what the “best” book in any given year was. I only read a handful of books that were released in 2024. Of those, my favorite was James by Percival Everett.
Now, here’s the list. Reminder that bold = banger:
The MANIAC by Benjamín Labatut (2023)
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride (2023)
Y/N by Esther Yi (2023)
The Name of the World by Denis Johnson (2000)
Nobody Move by Denis Johnson (2009)
The Sunset Limited by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara (2022)
The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy (1965)
Come and Get It by Kiley Reid (2024)
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai (2018)
Who Says: Mastering Point of View in Fiction by Lisa Zeidner (2021)
Holly by Stephen King (2023)
The Soulmate by Sally Hepworth (2022)
If It Bleeds by Stephen King (2020)
A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (1991)
The Villa by Rachel Hawkins (2023)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino (2021)
Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein (2023)
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt (1963)
The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (1971)
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
Counterfeit by Kirstin Chen (2022)
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962)
James by Percival Everett (2024)
My Darkest Prayer by S. A. Cosby (2018)
The Wife by Meg Wolitzer (2003)
The Ferryman by Justin Cronin (2023)
How to Be Eaten by Maria Adelmann (2022)
Trust by Hernan Diaz (2022)
Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton (2023)
Piglet by Lottie Hazell (2024)
Deliverance by James Dickey (1970)
The Haar by David Sodergren (2024)
L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy (1990)
Erasure by Percival Everett (2001)
Everyone Who Can Forgive Me is Dead by Jenny Hollander (2024)
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (2014)
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (2017)
Darling Girls by Sally Hepworth (2023)
Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson (2009)
The Housemaid by Freida McFadden (2022)
The Housemaid’s Secret by Freida McFadden (2023)
Reinhardt’s Garden by Mark Haber (2019)
The Housemaid is Watching by Freida McFadden (2024)
The Infatuations by Javier Marias (2011)
A Short Stay in Hell by Steven L. Peck (2009)
Empire of Dirt by Francesca Manfredi (2022)
Hex by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (2013)
The Last Party by A. R. Torre (2024)
Revival by Stephen King (2014)
Rose Madder by Stephen King (1995)
First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston (2024)
The Eyes Are the Best Part by Monika Kim (2024)
Win by Harlan Coben (2021)
Tell No One by Harlan Coben (2001)
The Candy House by Jennifer Egan (2022)
The Hatred of Poetry by Ben Lerner (2016)
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer (2023)
Perhaps there’s a separate list for me to make, detailing the books I did not finish reading and why.
If I see one major theme in this list, it’s that I read a lot of contemporary books. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing or just a thing. And while I read far more fiction than non in 2024, about half the bangers I read were non-fiction. (I read a lot of non-banger novels.)
I have no specific reading goals for 2025, other than to continue to read bangers and to try to write about them a little bit more than I did in 2024. Let’s see how it goes.