The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 325 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024…

Book cover of Playground

A.M. Potter I ❤️ loved this book because...

Although the opening sags a bit, the narrative soon lifts off and the story soars, a tale intertwining AI and the future of the world’s oceans. The novel is, by turns, playful and disquieting. It is also inventive, evocative, and forward-looking.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Emotions
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Richard Powers,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Playground as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A magisterial new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory and Bewilderment.

Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2024…

Book cover of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

A.M. Potter I ❤️ loved this book because...

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind is well-written, challenging, and edifying.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Teach 🥈 Thoughts
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Yuval Noah Harari,

Why should I read it?

24 authors picked Sapiens as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?

In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the…


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My 3rd favorite read in 2024…

Book cover of The Songlines

A.M. Potter I ❤️ loved this book because...

For years, I’ve been rereading my favourite travel writers, such as Robert Macfarlane, Pico Iyer, Jan Morris, and Paul Theroux. In 2024, I reread The Songlines, an exploration of nomadic life honouring the eyes and ears of Australia's Aborigines.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Outlook 🥈 Originality
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Bruce Chatwin,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Songlines as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This Moleskine-bound edition is sold together with a blank Moleskine notebook, for recording your own thoughts and adventures. Perfect for the travel writers of the future.

The Songlines is Bruce Chatwin's magical account of his journey across the length and breadth of Australia, following the invisible and ancient pathways that are said to criss-cross the land. Chatwin recorded his travels in his favourite notebook, which he would usually buy in bulk in a particular stationery shop in Paris. But when the manufacturer went out of business, he was told "Le vrai moleskine n'est plus". A decade after its publication, on…


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Silver Moon Rising

By A. M. Potter,

Book cover of Silver Moon Rising

What is my book about?

Lieutenant Ivy Bourque of the Cape & Islands Detective Unit is called to a Martha’s Vineyard ferry at midnight. She soon learns that the estranged son of Massachusetts’ most famous political family is dead.

Was the victim, Daniel John Fitzgerald, murdered, or was he assassinated? Dan-Dan Fitzgerald was a preeminent eco-activist and whale advocate. His death triggers more deaths. Numerous suspects arise, among them the ferry crew, a megalomaniacal State governor, former Marines, a federal political lobbyist, and anti-whale shipping companies.

The investigation falters until Bourque realizes the key lies below the surface of Vineyard Sound, which leads to a tangled web centered on Cuttyhunk Island off Cape Cod.