The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 812 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Never Let Me Go

Sharman Apt Russell ❤️ loved this book because...

It may be the best book ever written. Okay, that is hyperbole. But this is literary science fiction with a powerful social message. This is literary science fiction with wonderful and evocative scenes of childhood and young love. This is literary science fiction which prompts emotion and thought, which means this book becomes a dialogue between you and the author. Of course, in such masterful storytelling, you care about the characters and what happens to them. The storyline is terribly sad but I felt uplifted for having read this book. This was, in fact, my second reading (listening).

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Thoughts 🥈 Emotions
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Kazuo Ishiguro,

Why should I read it?

20 authors picked Never Let Me Go as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

One of the most acclaimed novels of the 21st Century, from the Nobel Prize-winning author

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

Kazuo Ishiguro imagines the lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Narrated by Kathy, now thirty-one, Never Let Me Go dramatises her attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. A story of love, friendship and memory, Never Let Me Go is charged throughout with a sense…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Liberation Day: Stories

Sharman Apt Russell ❤️ loved this book because...

The stories are so funny and humane and poignant and shocking and entertaining and compassionate and surprising, all at the same time. Who doesn't love George Saunders? He has become one of our great literary figures. Importantly, I believe he is also a nice man. I think this because of interviews and lectures I have seen him give. Also, a sense of decency--coupled with wild humor and some adolescent silliness--runs through his writing.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Originality 🥈 Writing
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By George Saunders,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

Named a book of the year 2022 by the Sunday Times, The Times, Guardian, Irish Times, New Statesman, BBC and Waterstones 'One of the best science fiction short stories to be published in the 21st century so far' SFX Review 'Saunders is funny and kind as ever, and his narrative virtuosity puts him up there with the best' Anne Enright, Guardian 'A triumph of storytelling' i paper 'A joy. Effortlessly stylish, funny and smart' Daily Mail ____________ The first short story collection in ten years from the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo MacArthur…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI

Sharman Apt Russell ❤️ loved this book because...

The author told a riveting story I had, surprisingly, never heard before. I have read many other stories by Native writers about how Native people in America have been terribly and dishonestly treated by White people and White culture. I just had not known about this particular story, which is as terrible as any of the others. I have to really credit David Gann for making the Osage characters come alive, and not just as victims, but as wives and husbands and sons and daughters. I write nonfiction myself, and I marveled at his boldness in telling this history with the strategies and insight and boldness of a novelist.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Teach
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By David Grann,

Why should I read it?

20 authors picked Killers of the Flower Moon as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. As the death toll climbed, the FBI took up the case. But the bureau badly bungled the investigation. In desperation, its young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. Together with the Osage he and his undercover…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

What Walks This Way: Discovering the Wildlife Around Us Through Their Tracks and Signs

By Sharman Apt Russell,

Book cover of What Walks This Way: Discovering the Wildlife Around Us Through Their Tracks and Signs

What is my book about?

Did a red fox pass this way? Could that be a bobcat print there in the dirt? Do those tracks belong to a domestic dog or a coyote? Combining lyrical memoir with an introduction to wildlife tracking, What Walks This Way explores the joys of learning to recognize the traces of the creatures with whom we share our world.

The nature writer Sharman Apt Russell tells stories of her experiences tracking wildlife-mostly mammals, from mountain lions to pocket mice-near her home in New Mexico, with lessons that hold true across North America. With wit and compassion, she guides readers through the basics of identifying tracks and signs, revealing a landscape filled with the marks left by browsing deer, predatory weasels, and inquisitive bears, skunks, and raccoons. Closely observing these traces, Russell also finds community, a sense of place, and a renewed connection with the nonhuman world. She explores the health of mammal populations in North America and questions common wildlife-management practices, calling for new approaches that better reflect current understandings of ecology. Above all, What Walks This Way is a celebration of all the wild animals secretly, stubbornly, and triumphantly roving through our cities, suburbs, and countryside.