Best books I've read in 2024, month by month, by Multcolib My Librarian Diana
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At the end of every month, I look over what I've read and pick the best, the jewel, the cream of the crop. At the end of the year, I try to choose the best book I've read this year.
December, and my best book of the year. It tells the story of Jim, the enslaved person that Huckleberry Finn ran away with, from Jim's- James's- point of view. This manages to be a good yarn that draws you in even as it's really thoughtful about…
January. This book is short and perfect and gorgeously, if simply, written. It tells the story of a man whose business delivers coal and firewood in Ireland in 1970. When his business brushes up against one of the cruel Magdalene laundries (who…
February. This novel tells the story of a fictional family a lot like the author's own spending a week in Cape Cod on vacation. They eat lobsters and go swimming and reveal secrets and make each other laugh. This book made me laugh and cry,…
March. This novella is about a mother and son surviving the apocalypse together in the mountains of Wales. There is some sadness and loss, but the two of them love their quiet life, reading books, working so hard to raise food for themselves that…
April. This novel is kind of a missing link between Austen's books and George Eliot's Middlemarch, and while Molly- the town doctor's young daughter- is clearly the main character, Gaskell's aim is to show us a whole community (or at least the…
May. These thoughtful short stories, mostly set in New York City, pull you right in and are really fun to read. They're full of moments that show their well-developed characters surpassing themselves, crossing lines in ways that make them more…
May. When Margo gets pregnant at 19 and decides to keep the baby, she has no support from the father or from her family, and she has to figure things out quickly. Her two moves? She creates an OnlyFans account and then reconnects with her until now,…
June. Olga is a dynamo, a very successful wedding planner for ultra-rich and extremely annoying people, a member of a loving but contentious Puerto Rican family living in New York City, a bit of a loner dealing with her parents' abandonment when she…
July. In a Puritan Colony of Massachusetts, a young woman has the temerity to question God's mercy after she has suffered three terrible losses. The powers that be make her pay a terrible price for this, including not speaking for one year. This is…
August. Mythology is so close to the surface in Alaska- and in Eowyn Ivey's novels, which also have great characters and gorgeous writing about the natural world. In this one, a single mother and her young daughter go off into the Alaskan wilderness…
September. The voice of the narrator of this novel, Jane, is amazing, tart, funny, messy as hell. There are so many moments that elegantly show what it's like to be a mixed race person in America, to be a woman, to be poor in a world full of so much…
November. A very closed-up woman in post-WWII Holland has her life open up when the woman her brother loves comes to stay in her house. This is beautifully written, sexy, and well-researched, and it probes into some issues I hadn't spent much time…
