10 Books You Shouldn’t Skip

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Looking for a great read for yourself or for a holiday gift idea? Here are the top 10 books I loved in 2024. Still need more? Click through for the roundups of 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 and 2017!

My 10 favorite books in 2024

10. “Take What You Need” by Idra Novey (fiction). This somewhat-dark novel tells of the separate inner lives of an estranged former stepmother and stepdaughter. One lives a polished life in Queens, one lives in poverty in Appalachia. One is a tightly wound white-collar knowledge worker, one is a blue-collar hospital employee and unlikely metal sculptor. Their disrupted relationship haunts them both. This one is on the weirder side, but the story really pulls you in. It was long-listed for some big prizes, and you’ll see the mark of the author’s artistry – even though the setting feels overcast, the emotions stay with you long after you’re done reading.

9. “The Book of Charlie: Wisdom From the Remarkable Life of a 109 Year Old Man” by David Von Drehle (nonfiction). Von Drehle is an editor at the Washington Post and former editor at Time, and he found himself living across the street from a 100+ year old man who seemed to have it all figured out. He began to interview his neighbor more formally to explore the secrets of his longevity – which Charlie White himself put down to luck. Von Drehle paints an easy portrait of White’s life, which spanned the Depression and WWII into the era of the iPhone. White was known for his persistent sense of wonder and curiosity, which do seem to have served him well. I took notes!

8. “Someone Else’s Shoes” by Jojo Moyes (fiction). Vacation book alert! This one is just fun. It’s a swapped-identity story that starts with a gym-bag mix up that puts the two main characters into each other’s very different shoes. As you can imagine, intrigue and hilarity ensue. Cops meet robbers, high brow meets low brow, and so on. There’s a reason why Jojo Moyes is a best-selling author. Enjoy!

7. “Solito, a Memoir” by Javier Zamora (nonfiction). Zamora crossed the Mexican/U.S. border illegally at age nine, hoping to reunite with his parents who had already established some stability in California. Leaving his grandparents, cousins and childhood in El Salvador, he has to try multiple times with multiple “mules.” The passage is as awful as you might imagine. Zamora has sourced lots of historical record to support his memories, so the retelling is full of detail about the ups and downs. I kept thinking of my own kids and trying to imagine them facing such a perilous journey without even a family member along. It was ultimately a story of hope with many moments of generosity and empathy.

6. “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” by Alexandra Fuller (nonfiction). When you’re done with adventures in Central America, step on over to warring Rhodesia-becoming-Zimbabwe in the 1970s. British ex-pat Fuller’s family is there living as tenant farmers, and she’s just trying to grow up. It’s a chaotic mix of dogs, parasites, extreme racism with a double dose of clashing cultures, parties, passions and automatic weapon training for pre-teens. Fuller tells the story frankly, including the good, the bad and the ugly, for our entertainment. It’s a universe you’ll want to know. While we live in temperature-controlled comfort, life in Rhodesia unfolds in extremes, ruled by the rhythms of nature far more than the humans with their trials and tribulations.

5. “Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine” by Gail Honeyman (fiction). In this novel, enter Eleanor’s neuro-divergent British life and see the world from another angle. Once you accept Eleanor’s quirks, you’ll quickly see her charms and begin to root for her. She’s a lonely soul who had to raise herself, and she isn’t equipped to explain that to the rest of the world. As the story unfolds, you’ll see other characters who are also discovering and loving Eleanor for her charms. Soon you’re on a team with them, trying to save her before it’s too late. It’s a creatively told story with lots of heartwarming humanity.

4. “A Paris Novel” by Ruth Reichl (fiction). Here’s an equation to describe this novel: Parisian foodie tales + art history mystery + sweet find-your-place-in-the-world story = delight. Author Reichl was a food critic, an editor of Gourmet magazine, and a six-time winner of the James Beard Foundation Award for her food journalism. (She also studied art history at the University of Michigan – go blue!) She’s written a bunch of memoirs, cookbooks and novels. Now that you know Reichl, take a trip to Paris with her to unravel the mysteries of a 33-year-old father-less editor whose deceased mother has decreed that she must use her inheritance to travel to Paris. Eat, drink, and solve some little mysteries with Stella. You’ll be so happy you did.

3. “Slow Productivity” by Cal Newport (nonfiction). Newport, a computer science professor, is one of my favorite modern thinkers. He steps back to see the world with the systems-thinking of an engineer, and then returns to help the rest of us see how it’s going and what we could change. In this book, he takes on the topic of burnout. It’s a structural problem, he points out engineering-ly. Modern workflows are set up to maximize everyone’s capacity and create project bottlenecks, setting us up on the treadmill of frustration and unfinished work. The big takeaway I got from this was that we all have to purposely limit our missions and projects, because no one else will do that for us.

2. “In My Time of Dying” by Sebastian Junger (nonfiction). Buckle up, it’s about to get quantum in here. Author profile: award-winning war journalist. Atheist, deeply rational, only tolerates evidence-based conclusions. Junger faced a health crisis where he died briefly – during which he encountered and interacted with his deceased father. This book is his effort to lay out all the facts and try to reconcile the evidence and the unexplainable. It’s one-third medical science, showing just how technical and fact-minded he is. Then there’s a third devoted to the philosophies of divinity and ways that humans have wrestled with spirituality. The last third takes on quantum physics – he is literally trying to find the loophole in knowledge where his encounter with his dead father could have factually existed. I’m so glad he tried – what food for thought.

1. “Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted” by Suleika Jaouad (nonfiction). While we are in the territory between life and death, let’s talk to Jaouad. This book was the most beautiful, riveting thing I read this year. Multi-lingual Jaouad was just starting her adult life, living in Paris and preparing to be foreign correspondent, when she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. While her ambitious and talented friends go on to start careers, she goes into the hospital in NY and doesn’t really come out for years. She hovers on the brink of death and then, surprisingly, recovers after a successful bone marrow transplant. In her mid 20s, having already faced the end, she has to re-start her adulthood. Today, Jaouad is married to the amazing musician Jon Batiste. Their story (including her cancer relapse) is captured in the stunningly beautiful Netflix documentary “American Symphony.” These two artists are like lightning rods who are beaming their work straight from the heavens. Don’t sleep on this pair.

Please share your favorite reads this year!

I hope you find a gem or three on this list, and I hope you will send me back a gem or three from your recent reading adventures. Personal recommendations are solid gold.

Happy holidays to you and yours! Please reach out in 2025 if you or your colleagues could use an experienced financial writer and marketing strategist to help get those projects done.  

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