For although I did not post about them here, I did read loads in 2024, with a grand total of 43 books. That is the same amount as I read in 2023, which amazed me then and it amazes me again. Several of the 43 were library books, proving once again that joining your local library is one of the best things you can do to read more.
I am currently in the middle of reading 3 other books, but since I probably won't finish any of them before midnight, now is the time to share the list:
1 The Whalebone Theatre
2 The Instant
3 Kaas uit eigen keuken
4 Astonish me
5 I know why the caged bird sings
6 Looking for Alaska
7 Cat's Cradle
8 Loathe to love you
9 The Singer's Gun
10 Turtles all the way down
11 Voor ieder wat waars
12 Days at the Morisaki Bookshop
13 Love, theoretically
14 Day
15 Waarom vuilnismannen meer verdienen dan bankiers
16 Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
17 The Firm
18 Childern of Time
19 De Onmisbaren
20 High Fidelity
21 De terugkeer van de wespendief
22 Skippy dies
23 Yellowface
24 The Lola Quartet
25 Persuasion
26 Morele ambitie
27 The five dysfunctions of a team
28 De supermarktsurvivalgids
29 Armoede uitgelegd aan mensen met geld
30 Chain-Gang All-Stars
31 Atalanta
32 The Wake-up Call
33 Circe
34 Station Eleven
35 We are all completely besides ourselves
36 Simon vs the homosapiens agenda
37 The Hours
38 Good Material
39 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
40 The Bone Clocks
41 The Duke and I
42 The Pier Falls
43 Everything I never told you
Lots of Dutch non-fiction and also lots of rereads (7 in total), which partially might explain why I didn't post anything about them here. But still, 36 new books to break down into neat little lists!
Best English novel
1 Chain-Gang All-Stars
2 Day
3 Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
I read Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah in 2019 (how time flies), when I said I hoped he'd write a novel. Well, he did. Chain-Gang All-Stars is a horrible book. It's also a great book. It's one of those books that tells you things you don't want to know about, but you want to keep on reading anyway, because some part of you does want to know how it ends and hopes for the best. The end left me somewhat shattered, as only great literature does. This is one of those books I wanted to post about, but couldn't get my head around to actually start writing, as there is just too much to say about it. Read this book, if you haven't.
All the other new novels this year somewhat pale by comparison, but Day by Michael Cunningham was another good read. His stories are always small, centering on a single day and a few characters (as in The Hours) but in that smallness they tackle the big things in life. This novel was started before covid but changed by it. I think it is a testament to the strange times we lived through, as are Ali Smith's seasonal novels.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is a library book from the beginning of the year, which was somewhat eclipsed by later reads. It was a nice read; it is always difficult to create neurotypical main characters without at some level also making fun of them, but Gail Honeyman managed that nicely, especially as more and more details of Eleanor's past are revealed. In the end, the story turned out to be more uplifting than I expected from the outset.
Honourable mention to Skippy Dies by Paul Murray. This somewhat felt like a Secret History make-over, but turned out to be completely different. His The Bee Sting has been on all the top 10 lists this year and has also found its way to my bookshelf, so we will see about that next year.
Best Dutch novel
Did not ready any of these this year... There was a graphic novel (De terugkeer van de wespendief) but that deserves its own category when I actually read more than one.
Best classic
I read a couple of books that are considered classics, such as I know why the caged bird sings, Cat's Cradle and The Firm, but I wouldn't put any of them in a 'best classic' list. I also read a couple of books that are retellings of actualy classical stories, namely Atalanta and Circe. These obviously don't count as 'actual' classics, but they were better reads than the 'real' classics nonetheless. So the only book that I would put down as best classic is one of my rereads; Persuasion. This has been my favourite novel by Jane Austen for a couple of years and reading it again proved to me once again why.
Best non-fiction
1 Waarom vuilnismannen meer verdienen dan bankiers
2 Morele ambitie
23% of the books I read this year were non-fiction, again mainly thanks to the library. Some of these were very practical (cheese making) but most were concerned with social or moral issues. They were informative, but not the best. The two books mentioned above, both by Rutger Bregman, stood out in that they had some original ideas and practical tools to get started. Interestingly, I also read two books by Rutger Bregman in 2015, the year of my original 52 book challenge. He is apparently still very current almost 10 years later.
Best autobiographical
1 The Instant
The Instant is the follow-up to Amy Liptrot's autobiography The Outrun, which I read in 2017 and wasn't too positive about. Having just seen the film adaptation, I am now curious to read that first book again. In The Instant, Amy leaves Orkney and moves to Berlin. Although it is supposed to again be autobiographical, some of the details struck me as a bit too fanciful. The blurb describes it as giving us an 'unapologetic look' at her addictions (firstly to alcohol, in this sequel mostly to love), but to me it felt a bit too good to be true sometimes.
The only other book I read that could be considered autobiographical is I know why the caged bird sings, which I did not care for at all. This might be an American thing I fail to understand, but I couldn't make anything of Maya Angelou's story. Maybe if you've read some of her other works, this reads as a rags-to-fame narrative, but now knowing a lot about here, it was mostly confusing.
Best short story collection
1 The Pier Falls
Only read the one, but it deserves mention here. The Pier Falls by Mark Haddon has sat on my bookshelf for at least a decade, but I finally got around to reading it. It is dark, it is suspenseful, it is populated by characters who have lost any sort of light in their lives, although not for lack of trying. Some of these stories have stuck around in my head for the last couple of weeks, although they are also starting to blend into each other in their bleakness. Maybe not the best thing to read in the dark final days of the year.
Best scifi/fantasy
1 Children of Time
I would always put Station Eleven and The Bone Clocks here (in that order), but those are very fond rereads, so we'll go with the only other real scifi book I read, Children of Time. This took me a while to get into, mostly because Adrian Tchaikovsky insists upon making everything scientifically explainable, and not in the way of Andy Weir. So that made for tough going, but it was a gripping story nonetheless. I have the two sequels ready on the shelf, hopefully I'll get around to them in the coming year.
Best 'new' author
1 Gail Honeyman
2 Joanna Quinn
3 Dolly Alderton
Again, not a full list, and sadly not the quality of authors I put here last year. Gail Honeyman only wrote the one book so far (see above). Joanna Quinn almost made the list below this one, but honestly, she shouldn't. I hope she can redeem herself with another novel soon. Dolly Alderton has written a couple more, one of which I got for Christmas, so we'll see whether that makes any of the lists the coming year. Good Material was a nice read, but not the best.
Most disappointing novel
1 We are all completely besideds ourselves
2 Yellowface
3 Astonish me
I was somewhat tempted to put The Whalebone Theatre here at first, but rereading what I wrote about that in January, and looking back on the other novels I read, it is nowhere near making the cut for most disappointing. It wasn't all it could have been, but it was so much better than some other novels.
So the ones that are on this list are books that I had high expectations of, but which failed me miserably. We are all completely besideds ourselves is written by Karen Joy Fowler of The Jane Austen Book Club, but it is nothing like that. In fact, I found it a horrible read, depressing and sad. I won't go into too much detail why, as it will give away one of the main plot points of the novel, but I really did not like the characters, the plot or the stance it takes on a couple of moral issues.
Yellowface is quite popular in the bookshops, but I am glad I got my hand on a library book. The story was very thin and flat, the main character completely unlikeable and the whole point of the book is seeped in American attitudes. I can see how it works well on BookTok, which is all about sharp opinions and lack of nuance, but I am not a fan.
I wrote on Astonish Me in February. I think this may not be a disappointing book in and of itself, but my expectations of it were just so much higher after the joy of reading Great Circle. I hope Maggie Shipstead returns to the greatness of that book soon.
Authors I read more than once:
- Emily St. John Mandel (3x)
- Ali Hazelwood (2x)
- Rutger Bregman (2x)
- John Green (2x)
- Michael Cunningham (2x)
Last year, there were a lot of new authors in this category, most of whom I did read more of this year. This year, I've read all of them before. Emily St. John Mandel will stay a firm favourite, as the only author to appear in this list 3 years in a row. I enjoyed The Singer's Gun and The Lola Quartet, but compared to her later novels, they don't make any of the lists above. I hope she'll have a new novel out soon. On the other hand, I am now quite done with Ali Hazelwood and John Green, these are typical library snacks that you read once and never look back to.
I was tempted to put a 'Best romance' category, since I borrowed quite a lot of those from the library, but non of them actually were all that good, so the honest top 3 would have been mostly rereads, with again Persuasion as the top book. As I probably only reread books I enjoyed the first time, they give a somewhat skewed perspective. So let's hope that in the coming year, I will read some more great new books!
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