More Good Books
More of my favorite things I read in 2024
To recap: I read a lot last year and it fundamentally changed the way my brain works. In redeveloping my reading habit I realized that I enjoy a wild array of genres, and that is very much reflected in the books mentioned in today’s newsletter. I also discovered a great love for reading the books my friends love. Last week I wrote about six books I felt were must-reads, the cream of the crop if you will. This week's list was supposed to only be six additional titles, but by the time I got done with it, it ended up being eight. Pretty soon I’ll return to writing about things that aren’t just books, but in light of the dissolution of social media, and my general lack of enthusiasm around TikTok at the moment, I decided my newsletter would be the best outlet for this big year-end wrap list.
Since there are eight books this week, I’ll try to be brief (but when am I ever!)
Here are eight of my favorite books that I read last year that I think you might like!
Dark Matter by Blake Crouch
This book came to me on recommendation from friend after friend and everyone said the same thing: you won’t be able to stop reading once you start. This was my exact experience of Dark Matter. I started it at 7am and stole away as many moments throughout the day as I could to read it. By bedtime I had finished it. I knew nothing about the plot before I dove in, and that experience was perfect so I’m asking you to trust me that you’ll love it. I gifted this book to four people for Christmas this year.
A Bit Much by Lyndsay Rush
No one does it like Lyndsay Rush aka
. She’s been favorite follow on Instagram for a while under the same moniker, but I wasn’t prepared for how wonderful her first published book of poems might be. A Bit Much is a collection of poems that are incredibly earnest, super delightful, and beyond tender. Many made me cry, many made me laugh, and many made me feel seen for the post-Spice-Girls generation Millennial try-hard that I am.Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
I read and loved Demon Copperhead so much I talked about it at length to as many friends as would listen. I’ve also written about it here, I’m sure. My friend Laurel read it too and once she was finished she messaged me “How am I supposed to read another book that doesn’t have Demon in it?” I told her it was very hard. Demon Copperhead is a Barbara Kingsolver masterpiece as an Appalachian epic about the opioid crisis that was inspired by Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. I read it in the summer. It made me cry for an hour while I ran in the pool. It is deeply good. If you read one of my recs today, let it be this one.
The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix
There were several books that I read last year that made me realize I liked something new, and this book was one of them. I’d read several vampire books, and on a whim, I picked The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires up on a run to my favorite used bookstore. This book is distinctly a horror novel and I devoured it. I read it in one sitting and had trouble sleeping afterward. The vampire in this book is truly terrifying. I loved it so much I started to think I might love horror as a genre. Much to my delight, I do!
Down the Drain by Julia Fox
I joined a book club (called Bimbo Summit) last year and as part of my initiation to the book club, I was told (jokingly) that I had to listen to the audiobook of Julia Fox’s Down the Drain and report back. I was Julia Fox agnostic before reading this book, but now I’m a believer. This book was riveting. I had no clue what to expect of it, but the details of her life were absolutely bananas. A must-listen for anyone who is into pop culture.
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
This is the second book to make my best books of the year that my friend Becky insisted I read. I had watched the movie before and still wasn’t prepared for what I was getting myself into. The movie is good, and the book is much, much better. Annihilation is a short little thing packs a wallop. As I was reading it I realized one of my favorite feelings while diving into a new book is the feeling that I am looking into a trick mirror, like I can tell that what I’m seeing is distorted, but I can’t put my finger on everything that’s wrong with it. This book is a master class in that.
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
I don’t know what it is about Station Eleven that I find so dreamy? It’s either the fact that there’s sexual tension or music and art after the end of the world. This book was published in 2014 and takes place near the Great Lakes after a pandemic kills a large portion of the population. It follows the members of a symphony who perform the plays of Shakespeare in the post-apocalypse. I had Tucker read it recently, and he didn’t enjoy it as much as I did, which leads me to believe that maybe I like end-of-the-world dystopian fiction more than your average person, but I love this book. The TV show adaptation of the book is also very good. It’s different, but in a way I found it quite gratifying. Of all the books on this list, this one is my favorite, and in a fun synchronicity it is also the book the most of you have purchased through my affiliate links with Bookshop.org!
No One Left to Come Looking for You by Sam Lipsyte
This recommendation came to me from my beloved husband. No One Left to Come Looking for You is a mystery that follows a stolen bass through the dark underbelly of the drug-addled DIY music scene of 1993 Manhattan. It’s a little deranged, but the word that Tuck and I keep coming back to for it is that it’s so FUN. If you like reading New York City stories, you’ll love this.
As always I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Have you read any of these books? What are you reading right now? Liking and commenting on newsletters helps push them out to other people who might like what I’m doing so any voice added to the chorus is appreciated!
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I read Demon Copperhead last summer and it was in my top books of the year! (The top 4 were Outlawed by Anna North, Draco Malfoy and The Mortifying Ordeal of Being In Love, The House in The Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune, and Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins.)
I read Station Eleven at the beginning of Covid, which was an interesting choice on my part, but nonetheless I really, really enjoyed it.
As the world's biggest baby when it comes to horror, The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires was an unexpected delight for me as well! I listened to the audiobook and the narrator is SUPERB.