In 2024 I read about 64 books–that is, I wrote about 64 books in my monthly roundups, not counting a few books I reread and some that I read for classwork, which feels like a substantively different kind of engagement to me. These were the ones I loved the best.
Cracking good stories
I just finished the The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, so I can only repeat what I said at the time: The first third sizzles with meanness and the tense, miserly way the main character stewards her home and her family relationships. The middle third pushes through all that tension and bursts into a puddle of lust. The final third is heartwrenching. I loved it and I would read it again in a heartbeat.
Although it is set in Ireland a few years after my own college years, The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue made me feel like a kid in my 20s again–in all the best ways, since the book is narrated by a main character in her 30s looking back on her younger self with amusement, affection, and some embarrassment.
The Book of Love by Kelly Link is 600 pages long, so it is difficult to say that it “cracks,” but I devoured it despite the sprawling prose. I meant to read it in little sips between other books, but I fell in love with the teen narrators (who are sort of dead, but trying not to be) and stylish supernatural adversaries and the little seaside town where they go to war.
Audacious literary experiments
When I Sing, Mountains Dance by Irene Solà is an astonishing book that dances from perspective to perspective in a mountain village in the Pyrenees–humans, animals, even clouds and mountains. In less skillful hands, this anthropomorphization could be cloying or silly; in this novel, it feels like a show of bravura and a meaningful take on environmental storytelling: the mountains shaped this town, so why not explore what mountain time feels and sounds like?
I can’t explain Parade by Rachel Cusk, which you might say deconstructs the idea of character and what characters are supposed to be and do in fiction. I just enjoyed the journey, and the impressions and reflections it evoked for me–similar to the way I enjoy abstract art, which not coincidentally plays an important role in some chapters.
Nonfiction I constantly recommend
Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs is one of my favorite reads of 2024. The writing is fluid and personal and engaging, and I love the way she combines personal reflection and feminist theory with marine biology–not to anthropomorphize marine mammals but to reimagine the place of humanity within the more-than-human world.
Doppelganger: A trip into the mirror world by Naomi Klein has a compelling narrative framework: the author studies the career trajectory of Naomi Wolf, the once-feminist-now-antivaxxer writer she is frequently confused with. By exploring how Wolf went “through the looking glass” to become a guest on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast and contextualizing when and how conspiracy theories take root, Klein finds a way to touch on climate change, vaccinations, the genocide in Palestine, and other politically divisive issues. If you need someone to explain everything to you gently and make sense of the last few American elections, this book is it.
Crossings: How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by Ben Goldfarb offers a big picture look at how roads affect ecosystems–particularly wildlife–as well as some solutions that work and some that don’t.
Hidden Systems: Water, Electricity, the Internet, and the Secrets Behind the Systems We Use Everyday by Dan Nott is a graphic novel that makes an accessible, engaging primer on infrastructure–good background for understanding water stewardship and what makes the rapid growth of data centers so ecologically challening.
Some honorable mentions:
I enjoyed the audacious literary experiment of North Woods by Daniel Mason, which features many different perspectives on a single plot of land over time, although I think Irene Solà did it better. I’m not always a fan of short stories, but I greatly admired the delicate prose and thoughtful human stories of scientific knowledge production in Andrea Barret’s Ship Fever and Natural History.
The Morningside by Téa Obreht was a gripping mystery set in a world of climate migration and rampant sea level rise. Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang is a slower-paced reflective story set in a bleak climate future, in which an attempt at cloud seeding makes sunlight vanish and crops fail; as a former food scholar, I was impressed at how deftly it explored different philosophies of what makes meals meaningful.
The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins is just so weird and and gristly and distinctive that I think it is worth reading, especially if you love a macabre world-building in the vein (ha) of The Locked Tomb series or creepy schools of magic like Vita Nostra.
The Nature of Our Cities: Harnessing the Power of the Natural World to Survive a Changing Planet by Nadina Galle is not the most well-written nonfiction I read this year, nor is it as nuanced about technology and the environment as I would like to see, but it does offer a fascinating survey of how cities around the world are increasing green space and adapting to climate impacts.
I’m on Storygraph; we can be friends, if you want, and see what one another is reading. I am also doing another environmental reading challenge with the Rewilding Our Stories Discord this year: just 25 books, no prompts, although I may make my own prompt list. It was challenging indeed to read books in each of last year’s 24 categories, but the prompts pushed me to diversify my reading in ways that I found interesting and beneficial, even if I didn’t love everything I read for the challenge.
Happy new year, and happy reading!
Sara Davis 