The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 1,586 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

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My favorite read in 2024

Cactus Country

By Zoë Bossiere,

Book cover of Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir

Katherine E. Standefer ❤️ loved this book because...

The world Zoë Bossiere builds in CACTUS COUNTY is utterly unique, with characters at once compelling, nuanced, and heartbreaking. Zoë's writing brings every moment of this story alive: we are dusty, crispy, seared, elated, rage-filled, and--by the end--so very desperate for them to get out. Deft in its portrayals of class issues and what it's like to be genderqueer, CACTUS COUNTRY is also just a top tier memoir, telling a story we haven't heard in gorgeous language I couldn't put down.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Writing 🥈 Immersion

  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it

  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down
Cactus Country

By Zoë Bossiere,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A striking literary memoir of genderfluidity, class, masculinity, and the American Southwest that captures the author’s experience coming of age in a Tucson, Arizona, trailer park.

Newly arrived in the Sonoran Desert, eleven-year-old Zoë’s world is one of giant beetles, thundering javelinas, and gnarled paloverde trees. With the family’s move to Cactus Country RV Park, Zoë has been given a fresh start and a new, shorter haircut.

Although Zoë doesn’t have the words to express it, he experiences life as a trans boy—and in Cactus Country, others begin to see him as a boy, too. Here, Zoë spends hot days…

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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Pitfall

By Christopher Pollon,

Book cover of Pitfall: The Race to Mine the World’s Most Vulnerable Places

Katherine E. Standefer ❤️ loved this book because...

In PITFALL, Christopher Pollan tackles one of the most important questions of our time: how do we square the need for so-called "green technologies" that decrease our independence on fossil fuels with the impacts of the enormous mineral resources required to build and maintain them? A seasoned journalist whose reporting takes us to mines all over the world, Pollan isn't afraid to offer controversial solutions-- which are exactly the ideas that have the potential to move us forward in our current stalemate. I recommend PITFALL for any readers who own an electric car or a solar panel, and especially for those interested in how business and policy can collude toward a more sustainable future.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Outlook 🥈 Thoughts

  • Writing style

    👍 Liked it

  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down
Pitfall

By Christopher Pollon,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?


A harrowing journey through the past, present, and future of mining, this expertly-researched account ends on a vision for how industry can better serve the needs of humanity.

A race is on to exploit the last bonanzas of gold, silver, and industrial metals left on Earth. These metals are not only essential for all material comfort and need, but for the transition to clean energy: in the coming decades, billions of tons of copper, nickel, silver, and other metals will be required to build electric vehicles, solar and wind installations, and green infrastructure. We need more metals than ever before,…

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My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Son of a Gun

By Justin St. Germain,

Book cover of Son of a Gun

Katherine E. Standefer ❤️ loved this book because...

SON OF A GUN is taut and tense from beginning to end. It's especially masterful as an example of how to write from research. St. Germain's recreation of his mother's murder (a scene he wasn't even present for!) in the final pages of the book are both perfectly placed and some of the best I've ever read. This is a heart-cutting, gritty, well-built work, made extra haunting by my own relationship to this stretch of desert-- St. Germain had me feeling Southern Arizona's monsoon in my teeth.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Writing 🥈 Immersion

  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it

  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down
Son of a Gun

By Justin St. Germain,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

In the tradition of Tobias Wolff, James Ellroy, and Mary Karr, a stunning memoir of a mother-son relationship that is also the searing, unflinching account of a murder and its aftermath

Includes an exclusive conversation between Alexandra Fuller and Justin St. Germain

Tombstone, Arizona, September 2001. Debbie St. Germain’s death, apparently at the hands of her fifth husband, is a passing curiosity. “A real-life old West murder mystery,” the local TV announcers intone, while barroom gossips snicker cruelly. But for her twenty-year-old son, Justin St. Germain, the tragedy…

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Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Book cover of Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life

What is my book about?

This "utterly spectacular" book weighs the impact modern medical technology has had on the author's life against the social and environmental costs inevitably incurred by the mining that makes such innovation possible (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises).What if a lifesaving medical device causes loss of life along its supply chain? That's the question Katherine E. Standefer finds herself asking one night after being suddenly shocked by her implanted cardiac defibrillator.

In this gripping, intimate memoir about health, illness, and the invisible reverberating effects of our medical system, Standefer recounts the astonishing true story of the rare diagnosis that upended her rugged life in the mountains of Wyoming and sent her tumbling into a fraught maze of cardiology units, dramatic surgeries, and slow, painful recoveries. As her life increasingly comes to revolve around the internal defibrillator freshly wired into her heart, she becomes consumed with questions about the supply chain that allows such an ostensibly miraculous device to exist. So she sets out to trace its materials back to their roots.

From the sterile labs of a medical device manufacturer in southern California to the tantalum and tin mines seized by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to a nickel and cobalt mine carved out of endemic Madagascar jungle, Lightning Flowers takes us on a global reckoning with the social and environmental costs of a technology that promises to be lifesaving but is, in fact, much more complicated.

Deeply personal and sharply reported, Lightning Flowers takes a hard look at technological mythos, healthcare, and our cultural relationship to medical technology, raising important questions about our obligations to one another, and the cost of saving one life.

Book cover of Cactus Country: A Boyhood Memoir
Book cover of Pitfall: The Race to Mine the World’s Most Vulnerable Places
Book cover of Son of a Gun

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