The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 1,588 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of The Pornographer

Michael Hickins ❤️ loved this book because...

The setting and characters all seem familiar, and yet they are revealed to be different, unexpected, warm.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Writing 🥈 Thoughts
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By John McGahern,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

One of the preeminent writers of our time, John McGahern has captivated readers with such poignant and heart-wrenching novels as Amongst Women and The Dark.

In The Pornographer, Michael creates an ideal world of sex as a writer of pornographic fiction, while he bungles every phase of his entanglement with an older woman who has the misfortune to fall in love with him. But his insensitivity to this love is in direct contrast to the tenderness with which he attempts to make his aunt's slow death in a hospital tolerable. Everywhere in this rich novel is the drama of opposites,…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Matrix

Michael Hickins ❤️ loved this book because...

I had no idea 12th century nuns could be as violent or as libidinous!

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Character(s) 🥈 Immersion
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Lauren Groff,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS
AN OBAMA'S BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Gorgeous, sensual, addictive' SARA COLLINS
'Brightly lit' NAOMI ALDERMAN

Born from a long line of female warriors and crusaders, yet too coarse for courtly life, Marie de France is cast from the royal court and sent to Angleterre to take up her new duty as the prioress of an impoverished abbey.

Lauren Groff's modern masterpiece is about the establishment of a female utopia.

'A propulsive, captivating read' BRIT BENNETT
'Fascinating, beguiling, vivid' MARIAN KEYES
'A dazzlingly clever tale' THE TIMES
'A thrillingly vivid,…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Arcadia

Michael Hickins ❤️ loved this book because...

A fascinating look at a failed utopia — not at all predictable in its predictability!

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Character(s) 🥈 Immersion
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Lauren Groff,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A staggering portrait of a crumbling utopia, this "timeless and vast" novel filled with the "raw beauty" beautifully depicts an idyllic commune in New York State -- and charts its eventual yet inevitable downfall (Janet Maslin, The New York Times).
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Timeless and vast... The raw beauty of Ms. Groff's prose is one of the best things about Arcadia. But it is by no means this book's only kind of splendor."---Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"Even the most incidental details vibrate with life Arcadia wends a harrowing path back to a fragile, lovely place you can…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

The Silk Factory: Finding Threads of My Family's True Holocaust Story

By Michael Hickins,

Book cover of The Silk Factory: Finding Threads of My Family's True Holocaust Story

What is my book about?

A powerful examination of the past in light of the present, The Silk Factory is as much an autobiographical descent into the generational trauma induced by history as it is a memoir of the Holocaust itself. Sparked by an email from a nephew he didn’t even know existed, Hickins, a former journalist, learns of the existence of a silk factory that belonged to his family before being expropriated by the Nazi government, relives the deaths of people he never met, and comes to learn of the heroism of Paul Mirat, the mayor of a small village in France who saved his father’s life along with hundreds of others. Hickins is also forced to confront his own patterns of misbehaviors as he tries to raise a young child free of the blood and guilt of the past.

Book cover of The Pornographer
Book cover of Matrix
Book cover of Arcadia

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