The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 1,187 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Absolution

Doug Bradley ❤️ loved this book because...

I served in Vietnam in 1970-71 so I appreciated the glimpse of the early years and what the spouses (women) of U. S. Diplomats, etc. had to contend with…

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Story/Plot
  • Writing style

    👍 Liked it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Alice McDermott,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Kirkus Reviews, Los Angeles Times, NPR, Oprah Daily, Real Simple, and Vogue

A riveting account of women’s lives on the margins of the Vietnam War, from the renowned winner of the National Book Award.

You have no idea what it was like. For us. The women, I mean. The wives.

American women―American wives―have been mostly minor characters in the literature of the Vietnam War, but in Absolution they take center stage. Tricia is a shy newlywed, married to a rising attorney on…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Regeneration

Doug Bradley ❤️ loved this book because...

As a former soldier, the insights on PTSD (not called that then) and how docs approached it. Especially liked seeing two World War I “anti-war” poets featured!

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Emotions 🥈 Immersion
  • Writing style

    👍 Liked it
  • Pace

    🐌 It was slow at times

By Pat Barker,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

"Calls to mind such early moderns as Hemingway and Fitzgerald...Some of the most powerful antiwar literature in modern English fiction."-The Boston Globe

The first book of the Regeneration Trilogy-a Booker Prize nominee and one of Entertainment Weekly's 100 All-Time Greatest Novels.

In 1917 Siegfried Sasson, noted poet and decorated war hero, publicly refused to continue serving as a British officer in World War I. His reason: the war was a senseless slaughter. He was officially classified "mentally unsound" and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital. There a brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. William Rivers, set about restoring Sassoon's "sanity" and sending him back…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Calling for a Blanket Dance

Doug Bradley ❤️ loved this book because...

Found fascinating the insights into Native American lives, culture, ritual, and struggles!

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Character(s) 🥈 Originality
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Oscar Hokeah,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Calling for a Blanket Dance as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"STUNNING." -Susan Power, author of The Grass DancerA moving and deeply engaging debut novel about a young Native American man finding strength in his familial identity, from a stellar new voice in fiction. Oscar Hokeah's electric debut takes us into the life of Ever Geimausaddle, whose family-part Mexican, part Native American-is determined to hold onto their community despite obstacles everywhere they turn. Ever's father is injured at the hands of corrupt police on the border when he goes to visit family in Mexico, while his mother struggles both to keep her job and care for her husband. And young Ever…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War

By Doug Bradley, Craig Werner,

Book cover of We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War

What is my book about?

In We Gotta Get Out of This Place, Doug Bradley and Craig Werner place popular music at the heart of the American experience in Vietnam. The authors explore how and why U.S. troops turned to music as a way of connecting to each other and the World back home and coping with the complexities of the war they had been sent to fight. Bradley and Werner also demonstrate how music was important for every group of Vietnam veterans—black and white, Latino and Native American, men and women, officers and “grunts”—whose personal reflections drive the book’s narrative. Together their testimony taps into memories—individual and collective—that capture a central, if often overlooked, component of the American war in Vietnam.

Book cover of Absolution
Book cover of Regeneration
Book cover of Calling for a Blanket Dance

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