My top 10 books of 2024

This is not a gift guide, but books do make great gifts

I read 40ish books this year and started many more. It’s obvious from my top 10 what I was reading for: books about memory; books about loss; more essays and memoirs and autofiction than fiction. Not all of these were published in 2024, but most of them are relatively recent.

This is not a gift guide, but books do make great gifts, as do bookstore gift cards, Libro.fm subscriptions, and literary magazine subscriptions. 😉

Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory by Janet Malcolm

I inhaled these meditations on photographs from throughout Malcolm’s life. Her childhood in New York in the 1940s was fascinating to read about, mostly because it felt at times like she was describing our life in New York today. Her reflections on her libel lawsuit were also very interesting, and I just cannot get enough of her style — no one writes like Janet Malcolm.

The Vulnerables by Sigrid Nunez

Another singular voice. I will read anything by Sigrid Nunez. I wasn’t quite ready for a pandemic novel (Panpocalypse by Carley Moore is still the only one I’m really okay with as a pandemic novel), but this one is more about writing and being a writer and generational differences and aging. I will read anything Sigrid Nunez writes.

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

MHB completist over here. Her novel Parakeet is still my favorite (a *perfect* novel, chef’s kiss), but I loved the sad strangeness of Beautyland. Read my full review at the Chicago Review of Books.

Culdesac by Mike Nagel

Okay, I know I have said this about every one of these writers so far, but I will drop everything when there is a new Mike Nagel whatever out. It could be a grocery list for all I care. A true talent who has mastered writing about the heaviness of life in a way that leaves you feeling lighter. It’s about nothing, it’s about everything, it’s about the absurdity of modernity in the American suburbs. This book is a sequel to his book Duplex, so if I have sold you, why not get the two-pack?

They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib

What can I say that hasn’t been said? Why did I wait so long? I listened to this one on audio and Hanif reads it and I can’t think of any writer who is a better reader of their own work. The kind of essays that make you want to pay better attention.

Touching the Art by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

This is a rule-breaking memoir/memoir of an other/long essay — hard to classify, very enjoyable to read. Mattilda writes about her grandmother, who was an abstract artist in Baltimore. We love an exploration of a complicated family legacy.

The Hearing Test by Eliza Barry Callahan

This book about a young composer experiencing Sudden Deafness while living alone in New York City just completely blew me away. Based on that premise, you would expect it to feel a little claustrophobic, but the writing is expansive and the narrator’s thoughts take you so many different places. My favorite kind of book.

The Burden of Joy by Lexi Kent-Monning

This is a perfect example of a book that could have easily been ruined by a heavy editing hand trying to make it more “commercial” but instead found a perfect home with an indie press and an editor who let it be what it is. A draft of a memoir that morphed into an autobiographical novel and is about, at a very high level, the extreme messiness of life. Drugs, dead animals, what’s not to love?

Grief is for People by Sloane Crosley

I am a sucker for memoirs of others. This memoir of Crosley’s former boss and friend is an attempt to make meaning out of unexpected loss that’s also about the impossibility of that endeavor.

An Image of My Name Enters America by Lucy Ives

Wow, I loved this essay collection. Lots of hard left turns, lots of footnotes, some unicorns. Weird and academic and totally engrossing.

A note about Bookshop.org affiliate links!

You might have noticed that my links to books are almost always Bookshop.org affiliate links. I signed up for the Bookshop.org affiliate program when I launched this newsletter with the idea that I would donate the proceeds. After four years, my affiliate account has $10.70 in it, and you can’t withdraw the money until it hits $20, but I feel like we’re going to get there in 2025, and when we do, the money will be donated to USA for UNFPA, which is doing lifesaving work to help women experiencing pregnancy and birth complications amid humanitarian crises around the world.

When you purchase a book through one of my links, 10% of what you pay goes toward this donation, and another 10% goes to a profit pool that is split between all the independent bookstores that participate in Bookshop.org’s bookstore program. Way better than buying on Amazon. 👏

All that said, if you have a favorite local bookstore, buy directly from them!!!!!!

Attention, writers!

Feeling like you might need a little extra encouragement around, say, January 20, 2025?

During the first 100 days of the next administration, Writing Co-Lab will be sending a short daily email about why we keep going. Each day’s missive will come from a different writer, and one of them will be from me!

In the meantime, I hope you’re managing during this ultra-compressed holiday season. It’s a lot! Take care of yourself.

Love,
Shayne