# Best books of 2024 **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [December 15, 2024, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-books-of-2024/1011671 "2024-12-15T15:51:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2025, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-books-of-2024/1011671/21 "2025-01-02T20:33:12Z")
I read 54 last year, 41 fic, 13 non. The best of the bunch were: FICTION The Caretaker, Ron Rash The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver The Mighty Red, Louise Erdrich Playground, Richard Powers NONFICTION Blood in the Machine, Brian Merchant (History of the Luddite Movement) ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2025, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-books-of-2024/1011671/22 "2025-01-04T22:32:04Z")
> [@The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](#): > > top **five** favorite fiction I’m gonna get me a couple of these. ---
**Author:** ![Hoops](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hoops/32/6408_2.png) [@Hoops](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hoops)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2025, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-books-of-2024/1011671/23 "2025-01-04T23:22:48Z")
I didn’t read much that was newly published in 2024, but one I did was _The Bright Sword_ by Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians trilogy. It’s an Arthurian tale in which a talented but socially isolated and decidedly common young man sets out to join the Knights of the Round Table. Arriving at Camelot early in the book, he finds that . . . . . . King Arthur has just died, and the major Knights of The Round Table are absent; the only ones left are kind of second stringers. And they join up and have adventures as they try to figure out what’s going on. (Arthur does appear a fair amount in the book, in many lengthy flashback chapters which trace the origins of his kingship and the Round Table.) I wasn’t sure that Grossman’s authorial tone—which can tend to the wry and somewhat snarky—would work in an Arthurian tale. But I ended up liking it just the same, so if you want a book like that and especially if you enjoyed the Magicians books, I’d certainly recommend it! (On the other hand, I have seen more than one person say that they were turned off of the Magicians books because the protagonist, Quentin, can be kind of a mopey sad sack. If so, I will warn you that our protagonist here, Collum, is cut from similar cloth.) ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2025, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-books-of-2024/1011671/24 "2025-01-04T23:30:20Z")
Ah but in _The Magicians_ everybody is also an horrible person, whereas in _The Bright Sword_ Quentin , for all his mopey sadness, is a likeable person. At least that’s why I felt, and that explains why I finished (and liked) _The Bright Sword_ but abandoned the other book in disgust. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2025, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-books-of-2024/1011671/25 "2025-01-05T01:12:34Z")
These are _maybe_ the 10 best books I read in 2024, in the order I read them: - [Math Games with Bad Drawings](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58684397-math-games-with-bad-drawings) by Ben Orlin. Orlin is a master at writing about math in ways that are interesting, enlightening, and worth reading across a broad range of levels of mathematical expertise. I loved his earlier _Math with Bad Drawings_ and _Change Is the Only Constant_. I didn’t enjoy this one as much, because games aren’t as fun to read about as they are to play, but I did enjoy it. - [The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36556202-the-coddling-of-the-american-mind) by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Interesting and (to the extent that their claims are correct) important. - [To Green Angel Tower](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44141054-to-green-angel-tower) by Tad Williams. The massive third volume of his _Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn_ epic fantasy. - [Just One Damned Thing After Another](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53501004-just-one-damned-thing-after-another) by Jodi Taylor. A fun first book in _The Chronicles of St. Mary’s_, a series of books about time travel that remind me of Connie Willis’s works in that genre, albeit more fast-paced and pulpy. - [Uprooted](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36681425-uprooted) by Naomi Novak. A really good standalone fantasy, whose main antagonist is a delightfully menacing evil forest. - [Ragtime](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10595532-ragtime) by E. L. Doctorow. A novel of early 20th century America, not quite like anything I’ve ever read before. - [The Constant Rabbit](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53263304-the-constant-rabbit) by Jasper Fforde. Set in a version of the UK where intelligent rabbits coexist (though not entirely harmoniously) with humans. Not as wacky and inventive as some of his other books, but I found the storyline to be one of his most satisfying. - [The Fifth Witness](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9681098-the-fifth-witness) by Michael Connelly. Fourth in his “Lincoln Lawyer” series. Just an entertaining, well-constructed page-turner. - [The Heartbreaker](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11248.The_Heartbreaker) by Susan Howatch. The ninth and last of a series of loosely-linked novels that combine psychology, religion, and sex. I’m sad that she didn’t write any more after this, because I haven’t found anyone else who writes 'em like this. This book is both deeply Christian and deeply R-rated, and it has a protagonist whom I at first found very off-putting but was rooting for by the end (even as I still wasn’t sure how much I actually like him). - [Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes: Patronage, Honor, and Shame in the Biblical World](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68040571-misreading-scripture-with-individualist-eyes) by E. Randolph Richards and Richard James. Like Richards’s earlier book, _Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes_ (also good but I didn’t read it in 2024), this is an informative look at the world of the Bible, how it differs from the modern Western world, and how that causes modern Western readers to misunderstand it. Honorable mentions: - [I Hate the Ivy League: Riffs and Rants on Elite Education](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61611630-i-hate-the-ivy-league) by Malcolm Gladwell. I’m not sure if this really counts, since it’s an audiobook collected from his podcasts. It makes some interesting and important points about American higher education. - [What’s Math Got to Do with It?: How Teachers and Parents Can Transform Mathematics Learning and Inspire Success](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23659067-what-s-math-got-to-do-with-it) by Jo Boaler. An important but inspiring and easy-to-read book about math education. This was sort of a re-read, albeit a new edition, so I wasn’t sure whether to count it or not. ---
**Author:** ![The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecc23a/32.png) [@The\_wind\_of\_my\_soul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_wind_of_my_soul)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2025, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-books-of-2024/1011671/26 "2025-01-05T02:06:26Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > [The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36556202-the-coddling-of-the-american-mind) by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Interesting and (to the extent that their claims are correct) important I’m so happy to see this on your list! Lukianoff’s sequel, The Cancelling of the American Mind, was on my Top Ten list this year, but Coddling was also on my list the year I read it. Both The Coddling of the American Mind and The Cancelling of the American Mind are two of the best nonfiction books I have ever read, lingering in my mind and affecting my perspective long after I finished reading. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [January 5, 2025, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-books-of-2024/1011671/27 "2025-01-05T04:57:53Z")
Glad someone started this thread (or two of them!) before I was able to. I read 47 books last year, three fewer than the year before. My Top Ten: _Space Cadet_ by Robert A. Heinlein - Still a favorite YA sf book of mine, although the lack of female cadets at the elite space academy is a definite shortcoming. _Surely You Can’t Be Serious_ by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker - Like **Dendarii\_Dame** above, I really enjoyed this behind-the-scenes guide to the making of _Airplane!_ I recommend the audiobook, which includes interview snippets with lots of the cast and crew. _Fatherland_ by Robert Harris - I re-read this favorite alternative history/police procedural novel, about an SS criminal investigator looking into the mysterious deaths of several elderly Nazis in 1964 Berlin, just before Hitler’s 75th birthday celebrations. Both chilling and engrossing. _Inland_ by Tea Obreht - Novel about a wrangler for the U.S. Camel Corps and a hardbitten (and possibly mad) frontier mom in drought-stricken Arizona, and how their paths unexpectedly intersect. The best Western I’ve ever read, and now easily on my all-time Top Ten Favorite Novels list, too. _Kitchen Confidential_ by Anthony Bourdain - Raucous, funny, very informative guide to becoming, and remaining, a top chef. _The Annotated Big Sleep_ by Raymond Chandler, ed. by Owen Hill, Pamela Jackson and Anthony Dean - Fascinating commentary on Chandler’s classic hard-boiled detective classic, with particular attention to gender roles, chivalry, big-city corruption and (most amusingly) the use of similes. Lots of interesting background detail. _Eye of the Needle_ by Ken Follett - Terrific WW2 spy novel about the Allied deception effort as to the location of the D-Day landings, and the tenacious German spy who threatens to expose it. _The Runaway Jury_ by John Grisham - Clever, fun legal thriller about a groundbreaking tobacco-liability trial in which one of the jurors - or is it two? - has an agenda of his own. A real page-turner. _And So We Read On_ by Maureen Corrigan - Very interesting look at F. Scott Fitzgerald and the writing, initial failure, rediscovery and amazing eventual success of _The Great Gatsby_. _James_ by Percival Everett - The story of Huckleberry Finn as told by his runaway-slave friend, Jim (or James). Beautifully-written and moving, although Everett takes considerably liberties with Twain’s original tale. Runners-up for the year: _Time for the Stars_ by Robert A. Heinlein, _The Yiddish Policemen’s Union_ by Michael Chabon, _Elleander Morning_ by Jerry Yulsman, _Redeployed_ by Phil Klay and _The World As It Is_ by Ben Rhodes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-books-of-2024/1011671.md?page=1)