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Book Box | The Best Books of 2024
Here is 2024's reading roulette, the hits and misses, the best fiction, non-fiction, memoirs and crime and also my biggest disappointments
Dear Reader,
2024 has been a mixed reading year for me.
There were times I read two or three fantastic books in a row. At other times it seemed as if I was picking all the wrong books - they dragged on and I ended up doing a DNF (do not finish). I had reading slumps. I listened to less audio. I felt I was reading too many recent books, getting persuaded by glowing reviews only to be disappointed.
And then there have been the stunners, the books that beguile you, that change the way you think, that draw you closer to fellow readers. Books like Brotherless Night, a historical fiction set during the Sri Lanka Civil War, won this year’s Women’s Prize.
So here they are: My favourite reads of this year, and also a few of my disappointments.
Best Fiction - I discovered Angie Kim in last year’s best book lists, many of which featured Happiness Falls, which I loved. Then I went back and read her earlier book Miracle Creek, a courtroom drama set in a world of challenged children and their parents, and was simply blown away. If you love survival stories and nature writing, The Vaster Wilds is compelling. Beware of Pity, a story of the devastating consequences of feeling bad for other people was published in 1939. It’s absorbing, powerful and provocative in the way classics are. Everything Perumal Murugan writes is sheer brilliance and Poonachi, the story of a goat is riveting. I’ve written earlier about the amazing storytelling in Kaikeyi. As for Long Island, there is just so much to say about it, that I will have to save this for another time and simply recommend it for now.
Best Non-fiction - Every now and then comes along a book that changes the way you think, a book you wish you’d read years earlier. Eve is that book this year for me, as it examines how women are made different from men and also the biology of reproduction across species. We’ve been reading about the practical and day-to-day significance of these differences in books like Invisible Women and Eve is a fantastic follow-on.
If you want to understand human beings and also AI, A Brief History of Intelligence is your go-to book. I read this book in paperback and also listened to it on audio. More on The Anxious Generation which also features on Barack Obama’s booklist, on Fire Weather, a book about forest fires in Canada and The Golden Road. The Identity Project features in the New York Times World’s Top 100 books to read this year, more on this book coming up next week, along with a conversation with author Rahul Bhatia.
Best Memoirs - Read a Citibank trader tell his story in the racy pacy The Trading Game. Hear from a nun who becomes a best-selling writer on religion, as she takes us through her years in a convent in Through the Narrow Gate. Step into the world of women prisoners in Pune’s Yerwada jail with Sudha Bharadwaj in From Phansi Yard. And follow Charles Spencer, younger brother of Princess Diana, as he takes us through the terrible abuse of boys in a British boarding school in A Very Private School. And here’s why we must read Knife by Salman Rushdie, and these beautiful essays by Sara Rai, the granddaughter of Munshi Premchand. And if you want to learn how to be a leader, read Freedom by Angela Merkel, it’s fascinating to hear Merkel tell us about her childhood in East Germany and see her decisions and the many small opportunities she took, that collectively built her into the leader she now is.
Best Crime Fiction - I love crime fiction for so many reasons — it is the perfect way to spend a holiday, to piece a puzzle together and also because you discover the fault lines in society. In Everybody Knows, which is set in LA, a murder brings out the unholy alliances between people in power, politicians, policemen, builders and the entertainment industry. In One by One, you are stranded in the snow in a posh ski resort with a startup team on an offsite. Butter has been talked about so much already with its exploration into feminism and food. Listen for the Lie is a true crime podcast precipitated pacy story and The Examiner is another one of Janice Hallett’s cleverly structured murder mysteries, this time around a collaboration between a corporate and an art course at a college. Close to Death is Anthony Horowitz's latest Inspector Hawthorne mystery with a ‘meta’ angle of the writer himself being a character in the murder mystery.
And finally, some of my disappointments, books that came with such catchy concepts like time travel in The Ministry of Time, an insider’s story of SoftBank in The Money Trap or a glimpse into middle-age angst in All Fours or a snarky view of South Bombay society in A Matrimonial Murder. The blurbs and reviews on these books were so catchy that I persisted with the books to the very end.
What about you dear Reader? What have been your favourite and least favourite books of 2024? Do write in with your lists.
And until next week, happy reading.
Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com
The views expressed are personal
