The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 735 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of The Parisian

Andrea Rugh ❤️ loved this book because...

I liked her restraint, i.e. that she left it to the reader to figure it out. Example: She used Arabic a lot but mostly didnt translate it so you had to figure out what she was saying. Gave atmosphere to the book.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Writing 🥈 Thoughts
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Isabella Hammad,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

'A sublime reading experience: delicate, restrained, surpassingly intelligent, uncommonly poised and truly beautiful' Zadie Smith

**WINNER OF THE BETTY TRASK AWARD 2020**

Midhat Kamal - dreamer, romantic, aesthete - leaves Palestine in 1914 to study medicine in France, under the tutelage of Dr Molineu. He falls deeply in love with Jeannette, the doctor's daughter. But Midhat soon discovers that everything is fragile: love turns to loss, friends become enemies and everyone is looking for a place to belong.

Through Midhat's eyes we see the tangled politics and personal tragedies of a turbulent era - the Palestinian struggle for independence, the…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Lady Tan's Circle of Women

Andrea Rugh ❤️ loved this book because...

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Teach 🥈 Character(s)
  • Writing style

    👍 Liked it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Lisa See,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked Lady Tan's Circle of Women as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Despite the inordinate limits placed on women, See allows their strengths to dominate their stories' Washington Post
'Poignant . . . quietly affecting' Time

In 15th century China two women are born under the same sign, the Metal Snake. But life will take the friends on very different paths.

According to Confucius, 'an educated woman is a worthless woman', but Tan Yunxian - born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separation and loneliness - is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. She begins her training in medicine with her grandmother and, as she navigates the…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of The Covenant of Water

Andrea Rugh ❤️ loved this book because...

It gave such a good picture of life in different time periods and how the thinking of people changed

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Teach 🥈 Character(s)
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Abraham Verghese,

Why should I read it?

34 authors picked The Covenant of Water as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SUBJECT OF A SIX-PART SUPER SOUL PODCAST SERIES HOSTED BY OPRAH WINFREY

From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret

“One of the best books I’ve read in my entire life. It’s epic. It’s transportive . . . It was unputdownable!”—Oprah Winfrey, OprahDaily.com

The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Simple Gestures: A Cultural Journey into the Middle East

By Andrea Rugh,

Book cover of Simple Gestures: A Cultural Journey into the Middle East

What is my book about?

Despite decades of intense involvement in Middle Eastern affairs most Americans still know little about the cultures of the region. Simple Gestures describes one American woman's over forty years to better understand the people and customs in countries where she lived and worked as an anthropologist, including in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. As she says, culture is revealed most clearly in the way people interact with one another--in the way they treat the poor, the elderly and women, how they rear and educate their children and in the way they react to a foreigner suddenly thrust in their midst.