The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 1,593 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Always a Sibling

Tyler R. Tichelaar ❤️ loved this book because...

I lost my brother in 2019. Since then I've read several books about grief, but this book was the first to really understand the difference between losing a sibling compared to a parent, grandparent, or other loved one. The author lost her own brother and she went out and interviewed others who lost their siblings. She really understood the family dynamics that are changed when a sibling dies and how the remaining sibling has to repress their feelings often to care for their parents. This book is a must read for anyone who lost their sibling, no matter how good or strained their relationship was or what ages they were when the loss happened. Highly recommended!

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Teach 🥈 Emotions
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Annie Sklaver Orenstein,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

A practical, compassionate guide to sibling loss, with research, stories, and strategies for "forgotten mourners" as they move through the stages of grief towards finding meaning.

After her brother was killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan, Annie Sklaver Orenstein was heartbroken and unmoored. Standing in the grief section of her local bookstore, she searched for guides on how to work through her grief as a mourning sibling-and found nothing. More than 4 million American adults each year will lose a sibling, yet there isn't a modern resource guide available that speaks directly to this type of grief that at…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of The Waters

Tyler R. Tichelaar ❤️ loved this book because...

The novel is set in Michigan, in the Comstock region near Kalamazoo, near where I used to live. I could relate to the characters, even though they were all female. I loved the mythic and poetic language. I also loved that it was about three generations of women, one of whom was a healer. It was also about family dysfunction, magic, and community. I especially loved that Campbell loves the Oz books and named many of her characters after characters from The Wizard of Oz and its sequels and kept making references to the books.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Character(s) 🥈 Originality
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Bonnie Jo Campbell,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp-an area known as "The Waters" to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan-herbalist and eccentric Hermine "Herself" Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three estranged daughters. The youngest-the beautiful, inscrutable, and lazy Rose Thorn-has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy "Donkey" Zook, to grow up wild.

Donkey spends her days searching for truths in the lush landscape and in her math books, waiting for her wayward…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of G.W.M. Reynolds Reimagined

Tyler R. Tichelaar ❤️ loved this book because...

George W. M. Reynolds was one of the bestselling authors of Victorian England but he has been largely forgotten today. His greatest works included The Mysteries of London and Wagner the Wehr-wolf. He wrote gripping sensational plots that often included social criticism. This book contains several fascinating essays about Reynolds' works and his life and provided me with information I didn't know before, especially in his work running Reynolds' Miscellany. This contemporary of Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope deserves more recognition for his contributions to literature, and this book is one of the few that has tried to revive his reputation. Some of the finest scholarship exists in these essays that I've read in recent years.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Teach 🥈 Outlook
  • Writing style

    👍 Liked it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Jennifer Conary (editor), Mary L. Shannon (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked G.W.M. Reynolds Reimagined as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This essay collection proposes that G.W.M. Reynolds's contribution to Victorian print culture reveals the interrelations between authorship, genre, and radicalism in popular print culture of the nineteenth century. As a best-selling author of popular fiction marketed to the lower classes, and a passionate champion of radical politics and "the industrious classes," Reynolds and his work demonstrate the relevance of Victorian Studies to topics of pressing contemporary concern including populism, working-class fiction, the concept of 'originality', and the collective scholarly endeavour to 'widen' and 'undiscipline' Victorian Studies. Bringing together well-known and newly-emerging scholars from across different disciplinary perspectives, the volume explores…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

When Teddy Came to Town

By Tyler R. Tichelaar,

Book cover of When Teddy Came to Town

What is my book about?

Matthew Newman, reporter for the New York Empire Sentinel, should have seen his assignment to cover the trial as the opportunity of a lifetime. But Matthew is also a native of Marquette, Michigan, where the trial will be held. Matthew left Marquette long ago and does not relish returning to deal with a distant sister and her drunkard husband, or to attend his niece’s wedding, set for the weekend after the trial begins.

The situation becomes more difficult for Matthew when he learns that Roosevelt is staying at the home of George Shiras. Once close friends, Matthew and George have not seen each other in years after a serious blow caused Matthew to leave Marquette. Now he is uncertain how to deal with George’s overtures of friendship.

As one witness after another, from navy admirals and secretaries to bodyguards and butlers, are called forth to testify in Roosevelt’s defense, Matthew must call forth his past and come to terms with it.

Novelist Tyler Tichelaar, a native of Marquette, Michigan, goes where biographers have never gone in detailing not only the significance of the often-ignored Roosevelt libel trial, but also how Roosevelt’s presence stirred Upper Michigan into a frenzy of excitement. This is the tale of a big man in a small town, how that small town responded, and how we all influence one another, often in unseen ways.

Book cover of Always a Sibling
Book cover of The Waters
Book cover of G.W.M. Reynolds Reimagined

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