My Best Books of 2024, Part One

YWR is back (but probably just for end o' year hijinks)

Oh, hi! I didn’t see you there! (Said with a bright inauthentic smile like a 1990’s infomercial or Elle Woods at the beginning of her Harvard law school video essay.)

Yes, this is the trenchant literary referencing you’ve been missing for months, I know. Do the critics at The New Yorker even know about ammonium thioglycolate? Doubtful.

No, I’m still not planning a full weekly return just yet, I think but …

YES, YES I say YES, we need to talk about our year-end “best of” reading lists. To not do so would be churlish and collectively discourteous, and rob us of the only news that’s fit to consume lately - lists of books that have made an imprint on our tender, divine souls this year.

SO! Here’s my vaguely chaotic but nevertheless personally satisfying year-end deal:

• “Best of” = most memorable, most enjoyable, most thought-provoking … basically any book I still think about and recommend, NOT just the book that is the “most well written” according to the Pulitzer Committee.

• These are books I’ve read in the past 12 months, not necessarily books that came OUT this year. Older books deserve love too!

• Books will be listed from lowest lambs to highest, because joy bats last. If you’re new here:

  • Really sorry you signed up for a newsletter that’s been on a petite hiatus. How anticlimactic, if nevertheless beneficial to your inbox clutter.

  • But thanks, though, and so nice to meet you.

  • Learn all about the all-important Gentle Lamb Reading Scale HERE

Read on for the first part of my year end list, and come back next Sunday for the happier lambies!

And please leave YOUR favorite books of 2024 in the comments!

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Hidey ho, what an unexpected choice to start! Good thing you’re reading this newsletter, because it’s not like any other list included James, a retelling of Huckleberry Finn told from the perspective of the enslaved Jim.

I could convince you of Percival Everett’s masterful writing. Or that any misgivings you may have regarding “inspired by” fiction do not come to pass in this stunning, brutal, powerful book. Or I could share more of what I wrote here, back in July. But you can probably just trust literally every other critic, reader, year-end list that and National Book Award Committee that praised this book.

I promise it gets (slightly) less predictable from here.

Back in March, I read The In-Between, the memoir of a hospice nurse about some of her patients at the end-of-life. And back in March, I thought both: this is not a profoundly well-written book. But I bet I’ll remember it for a long time.

So here we are, unbelievably in December, and my opinion remains unchanged. So don’t look for an award winner, but if the topic interests you, and if your tender heart can take it, I found it unexpectedly moving and plainly beautiful about the final moments humans can experience and the grace of having someone accompany you as far as they can on the journey.

What a whirlwind Martyr! is - a literary novel about a newly sober orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, told with contemporary swagger and panache, a story about immigration and family and sobriety and longing and art. Both funny and devastating. This novel feels a little bit “kitchen sink” of good ideas that don’t necessarily all need to be in this novel - Akbar’s ambition is showing as much as his talent. But it’s undeniably incandescent and bold and interesting. Did I LOVE it? I don’t know. But I (and everyone else) can’t create a year-end list without nodding to its impact. So. shrug.

I don’t know anyone who’s read Wellness other than the people I told about it even though it was on a ton of top charts and on Oprah’s book club (I love her, but does Oprah even matter anymore? Discuss.) But this book left me battered, breathless, lifted up and uncomfortably seen.

On the surface, it’s about a couple who fell in love in 1990’s Chicago, but now are middle-aged parents struggling with their own identities and their relationship to each other. This is a total kaleidoscope of a book that shouldn’t work, but absolutely does. I can’t recommend it enough (read more of my opinions HERE).

Did I need to specifically give this 2.25 lambs back in April? 2.25? Not 2 or 2.5? I really was doing the most, sheesh.

I technically read How to Say Babylon on New Year’s Eve 2023. But I cannot say enough good things about this memoir by a Jamaican woman born to a strict Rastafarian family, charting her path to independence and womanhood and poetic success under the thumb of her domineering father.

You can read all my gushing HERE. It’s not only one of my favorite books of the year, it’s among my favorite memoirs ever. For fans of Educated, which is to say - all of us?

The title, Lilian Boxfish Takes a Walk, is the summary - 85 year old Lilian Boxfish walks through New York City on New Year’s Eve, 1984, reminiscing about her life, her loves, her mistakes and her triumphs. It’s a gorgeous series of vignettes about an unconventional woman. Smarter, wittier, sharper and more poignant that I expected. A nice little novel.

I honestly can’t remember why this isn’t a 3 Lamb Rating so there must be something sadder than I now remember. Forewarned is forearmed!

The Ministry of Time, in which a group of people are brought from the past into current times for shadowy reasons. The Ministry of Time, which is a … sci fi-ish romance? A chatty, quirky thriller? An uncommonly smart escapist read? I’ve seen it described as A Gentleman in Moscow meets The Time Traveler’s Wife and while I’ve only read the former, it’s an apt description in its courtly banter, its observational commentary that feels unhurried while moving a complicated plot along. The last third feels like a different book but nevertheless, it’s fun and interesting!

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All books link to Bookshop.org, because you still have time to order book gifts from Not Amazon. I believe in you.