The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 1,176 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of I Cheerfully Refuse

Bruce A. Tate ❤️ loved this book because...

The book was encouraging in the way the characters managed difficult circumstances. Tenderness, fortitude and compassion were all essential for the characters to deal with challenges. It fits our time.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Character(s) 🥈 Outlook
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Leif Enger,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Barnes & Noble's April Book Club Pick
An Amazon Top 10 Editors' Pick
A Most Anticipated Book of 2024 from Literary Hub

Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of a bereaved musician taking to Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved bookselling wife. Encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, Rainy finds on land an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, crumbled infrastructure and a lawless society. Amid the Gulliver-like challenges of life at sea, Rainy is lifted by physical beauty, surprising humour, generous strangers and…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

Bruce A. Tate ❤️ loved this book because...

On Tyranny is essential reading for 2024. As we see the rise of authoritarianism in the US and around the globe, Snyder's book prepares the reader in how to spot it and what to do to reject it. It's a very quick read and incredibly important. I bought to give to friends and family.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Teach 🥈 Outlook
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Timothy Snyder,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked On Tyranny as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER**

'A sort of survival book, a sort of symptom-diagnosis manual in terms of losing your democracy and what tyranny and authoritarianism look like up close' Rachel Maddow

'These 128 pages are a brief primer in every important thing we might have learned from the history of the last century, and all that we appear to have forgotten' Observer

History does not repeat, but it does instruct.

In the twentieth century, European democracies collapsed into fascism, Nazism and communism. These were movements in which a leader or a party claimed to give voice to the people, promised…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of The Spirit of Justice

Bruce A. Tate ❤️ loved this book because...

History is an essential teacher. Dr. Tisby shares remarakable stories of African Americans who have worked for justice in America in difficult circumstance. I find encouragement and hope in reading the stories. I've long admired Dr. Tisby and am grateful to learn about the actions of the incredible people featured in his book who work for justice in big and small ways that have had lasting impact. There lessons we can all learn.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Teach 🥈 Outlook
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Jemar Tisby,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

The Black History You Never Knew: Uncovering Unsung Heroes in the Struggle for Racial Justice.

The Spirit of Justice reveals the stories of the people who fought against racism and agitated for justice—and what we can learn from their example, their suffering, their methods, and their hope.

How is it that people still work for change after continuously seeing the worst of humanity and experiencing the most demoralizing setbacks? What keeps them going? It is that spirit of justice that rises up "like a war horse," as Myrlie Evers-Williams famously said. It is a sense in the hearts of people…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Currently Away: How Two Disenchanted People Traveled the Great Loop for Nine Months and Returned to the Start, Energized and Optimistic

By Bruce Tate,

Book cover of Currently Away: How Two Disenchanted People Traveled the Great Loop for Nine Months and Returned to the Start, Energized and Optimistic

What is my book about?

The walls were closing in on Bruce and Maggie Tate. Isolation forced on them by the pandemic, combined with America's growing political factionalism, threatened their bonds with community and family. Something had to change. Maggie's surprising answer: buy a boat, learn to pilot it, and embark on the Great Loop. For nine months Bruce and Maggie navigated rivers, coastal waters, lakes, locks, and loss. Against all odds, they conquered the Loop, and along the way found common cause across political divides with new friends while blowing the walls off their world.

Bruce and Maggie Tate were spiraling downward. Normally outgoing and cheerful, Maggie was broken down by pandemic isolation. Bruce, facing asthma, heart disease and Covid-related professional issues, was sure that the virus and his comorbidities would kill him. And the plant-based diet he had just started made him wish it would hurry up. Meanwhile, their country seemed to be crumbling into warring factions.

That was when Maggie made a life-changing decision. With no experience, knowing little about seafaring, inboard motors, or navigation, she and Bruce and the family dog decided to take on the Great Loop, a six-thousand-mile journey down inland rivers, around the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, and across the Great Lakes. They had to navigate canals and locks, were threatened by dangerous seas, and even had to deal with heartbreaking loss. But along the way, they made new lifelong friends and were forever changed.

When, in a time of great divisiveness, two broken people took on the challenge of their lives, against all odds they found common cause across political divides and made themselves whole again.

Book cover of I Cheerfully Refuse
Book cover of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Book cover of The Spirit of Justice

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