Books I read in 2024
I read 35 books for fun in 2024, coincidentally the same as last year.
Bold = faves (doesn’t include rereads)
* = rereads
Classics
I was pleasantly surprised by how contemporary the 135-year-old humor of Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) is. What a strange, hilarious little book. My plan is now to read books that were clearly inspired by this one, such as To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (1997).
At some point in the year, I had the thought that since my son is named Oscar, I’d better read all the other Oscar Wilde books and plays I hadn’t yet read. So I got started on that.
- The Importance of Being Earnest* (Oscar Wilde)
- An Ideal Husband (Oscar Wilde)
- A Woman of No Importance (Oscar Wilde)
- The Canterville Ghost (Oscar Wilde)
- Jamaica Inn (Daphne du Maurier)
- Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) (Jerome K. Jerome)
Contemporary fiction
About half of these were picks from my book club. I think Outlawed was the most divisive choice of the year.
The full-cast audiobook for Daisy Jones and the Six is criminally fantastic. I couldn’t stop recommending it to everybody within earshot.
Don’t ask me why I reread The Da Vinci Code. It was grosser than I remembered it being. It’s a tiresome male fantasy, and it constantly equates albanism with inner evil (???).
- A Man Called Ove (Fredrik Backman)
- The Bright Sword (Lev Grossman)
- The Da Vinci Code* (Dan Brown)
- Daisy Jones and the Six (Taylor Jenkins Reid)
- The English Understand Wool (Helen DeWitt)
- Hotel Nantucket (Elin Hilderbrand)
- Medusa (Jessie Burton, illustrated by Olivia Lomenech Gill)
- My Favorite Thing is Monsters 2 (Emil Ferris)
- Outlawed (Anna North)
- Sabine’s Notebook (Nick Bantock)
- The Secret History* (Donna Tartt)
- Wallflower at the Orgy (Nora Ephron)
- Year of the Tiger (Alice Wong)
Fan fiction
Yes, I’m somehow still into this. Don’t make fun of me, I know this is ridiculous. I simply cannot believe the number of high-quality, book-length stories are out there in the Dramione fandom. Several have been earned their authors book deals — I eagerly await Brigitte Knightley’s original novel!
- Détraquée (Hystaracal)
- Draco Malfoy and the Mortifying Ordeal of Being in Love* (Brigitte Knightley)
- Measure of a Man (inadaze22)
Romance
I dipped back into the romance genre this year for further escapism during election season (ugh). I was interested in reading some classics of the genre by Georgette Heyer, writting in the mid-1930s. It’s always fun to see where various tropes come from.
- Between Us (Mhairi McFarlane)
- In Case You Missed It (Lindsey Kelk)
- Love Me Do (Lindsey Kelk)
- On a Night Like This (Lindsey Kelk)
- One in a Million (Lindsey Kelk)
- The Christmas Wish (Lindsey Kelk)
- I’ve Got Your Number (Sophie Kinsella)
- At First Spite (Olivia Dade)
- All The Feels (Olivia Dade)
- Shipwrecked (Olivia Dade)
- One Day in December (Josie Silver)
- Regency Buck (Georgette Heyer)
- The Convenient Marriage (Georgette Heyer)
Previously: Books I read in 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009.
Since I started keeping track, I’ve read exactly 600 books for fun.