A review of Best Books
by
It's that time of year again where the best of the year lists start appearing. Have you started your lists? Publishers Weekly has just released their best books of 2024. The categories include: Top 10, Fiction, Mystery/Thriller, Poetry, Romance, SF/Fantasy/Horror, Comics, Nonfiction, Religion, Lifestyle, Picture Books, Middle Grade, Young Adult. There is something for everybody. My attention went to the nonfiction list which has a nice mix of interesting titles.
- The Big Freeze: A Reporter’s Personal Journey into the World of Egg Freezing and the Quest to Control Our Fertility by Natalie Lamper
- Bitter Crop: The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holliday’s Last Year by Paul Alexander
- Burdened: Student Debt and the Making of an American Crisis by Ryann Liebenthal
- Code Dependent: Living in the Shadow of AI by Madhumita Murgia
- Context Collapse: A Poem Containing a History of Poetry by Ryan Ruby
- The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power by Dana Mattioli
- The Fast: The History, Science, Philosophy, and Promise of Doing Without by John Oakes
- Get the Picture: A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See by Bianca Bosker
- Ghosts of Crook County: An Oil Fortune, a Phantom Child, and the Fight for Indigenous Land by Russell Cobb
- Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley
- Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life by Richard Beck
- In My Time of Dying: How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife by Sebastian Junger
- Into the Unknown: The Quest to Understand the Mysteries of the Cosmos by Kelsey Johnson
- The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoë Schlanger
- Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius by Carrie Courogen
- Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church by Gareth Gore
- Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown by Andreas Malm and Wim Carton
- Planes Flying over a Monster: Essays by Daniel Saldaña París, trans. from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney and Philip K. Zimmerman
- The Playbook: The Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War by James Shapiro
- Question 7 by Richard Flanagan
- Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank by Justene Hill Edwards
- Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto by Kohei Saito, trans. from the Japanese by Brian Bergstrom
- Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories by Amitav Ghosh
- A Termination by Honor Moore
- There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib
- We’re Alone: Essays by Edwidge Danticat
- Whiskey Tender by Deborah Taffa