The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 1,074 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of To Paradise: A Novel

Fran Laniado ❤️ loved this book because...

Hanya Yanigihara creates a vivid word, that while different in key ways from our own, is also remarkably similar. Within that world, she sets three novella length stories: one in a gilded age era past, one in the early 1990's and one in a dystopian future. The stories could be taken as stand-alones, but when taken together act as panels on a triptych.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Writing 🥈 Emotions
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace
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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of The Lincoln Highway

Fran Laniado ❤️ loved this book because...

The characters in this may seem more vivid and alive than the people physically sitting next to you as you read it! But they resist being put into neat categories like "hero" and "villain." That's true of the four main characters whose cross-country journey we follow, but it's just as true as the side characters they encounter along the way. Characters who, elsewhere, would merely serve the plot, here have their own backstory and motivations.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Character(s) 🥈 Immersion
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Amor Towles,

Why should I read it?

13 authors picked The Lincoln Highway as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

More than ONE MILLION copies sold

A TODAY Show Read with Jenna Book Club Pick

A New York Times Notable Book, and Chosen by Oprah Daily, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Bill Gates and Barack Obama as a Best Book of the Year

“Wise and wildly entertaining . . . permeated with light, wit, youth.” —The New York Times Book Review
 
“A classic that we will read for years to come.” —Jenna Bush Hager, Read with Jenna book club
 
“Fantastic. Set in 1954, Towles uses the story of two brothers to show that our personal…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Babel

Fran Laniado ❤️ loved this book because...

This felt like a Victorian novel. Yes, that means it was slow at times, but the rich world and characters that it creates is well worth the effort it sometimes requires. It tells a story that's pretends to be fantasy, but is very much set in our own world nonetheless. I would actually call this more historical fiction than fantasy. Yes there's a fantastical underpinning, but the systems of privilege and oppression it depicts are very familiar. The academic setting is very much intrinsic to the story and is supplemented by footnotes to provide historical/linguistic context.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Originality
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐌 It was slow at times

By R. F. Kuang,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

THE #2 SUNDAY TIMES AND #1 NYT BESTSELLER

'One for Philip Pullman fans'
THE TIMES

'An ingenious fantasy about empire'
GUARDIAN

'Fans of THE SECRET HISTORY, this one is an automatic buy'
GLAMOUR

'Ambitious, sweeping and epic'
EVENING STANDARD

Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal.

Oxford, 1836.

The city of dreaming spires.

It is the centre of all knowledge and progress in the world.

And at its centre is Babel, the Royal Institute of Translation. The tower from which all the power of the Empire flows.

Orphaned in Canton and brought to England by…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Beautiful: A Tale of Beauties and Beasts

By Fran Laniado,

Book cover of Beautiful: A Tale of Beauties and Beasts

What is my book about?

Eimear is Faerie. She left the land of her birth, to find a place where she felt like she could belong. She finds herself in the World, a strange place, where she is the only magical being, and she begins to build a life for herself. But when she encounters Finn, supernaturally beautiful but thoughtless and selfish, she gets angry. In a fit of rage, she casts a spell on Finn. It’s a spell that she can’t undo, even when she discovers that she’s ruined Finn’s life.

Finn is wealthy, arrogant, and cruel. He didn’t think twice about insulting Eimear until it was too late. Now, exiled from the only home he’s ever known, he is forced to make his own way, for the first time ever. He does have support- if he wants it. Eimear wants to assuage her guilt by helping him.

In an isolated place, thrown together initially out of desperation and need, Eimear and Finn find a way to live together. That alliance eventually blossoms into friendship, and even love. But before they can have their happily ever after, Eimear must go on a perilous journey that will force her to confront everything that she ran away from when she left Faerie.