Recently, The New York Times Book Review released their list of the best books of 2024 (so far). Because the NYTimes paywall used to be the bane of my existence, I thought I would share the list of 12 books here. After browsing the list, I realized that I personally own half of the books but have read zero. So you can count on me to be posting reviews of these books in the near future.
Fiction
James
Percival Everett
A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.
Good Material
Dolly Alderton
From the New York Times best-selling author of Ghosts and Everything I Know About Love: a story of heartbreak and friendship and how to survive both. In this sharply funny and exquisitely relatable story of romantic disaster and friendship, Dolly Alderton offers up a love story with two endings, demonstrating once again why she is one of the most exciting writers today, and the true voice of a generation.
Marytr!
Kaveh Akbar
A newly sober, orphaned son of Iranian immigrants, guided by the voices of artists, poets, and kings, embarks on a remarkable search for a family secret that leads him to a terminally ill painter living out her final days in the Brooklyn Museum. Electrifying, funny, and wholly original, Martyr! heralds the arrival of an essential new voice in contemporary fiction.
The Hunter
Tana French
It’s a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die. In the sequel to The Searcher, retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper becomes caught up in the crimes of his small Irish hamlet.
Wandering Stars
Tommy Orange
The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There delivers a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.
Headshot
Rita Bullwinkel
Set at a women’s boxing tournament in Reno, this novel centers on eight contestants and the fights – physical and emotional – that they bring to the ring. Frenetic, surprising, and strikingly original, Headshot is a portrait of the desire, envy, perfectionism, madness, and sheer physical pleasure that motivate young women to fight—even, and perhaps especially, when no one else is watching.
Beautyland
Marie-Helene Bertino
From the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn’t feel at home on Earth. In 1970s Philadelphia, an alien girl sent to Earth prior to birth communicates with her fellow lifeforms via fax as she helps gather intel about whether our planet is habitable.
Nonfiction
Knife: Meditations After An Attempted Murder
Salman Rushdie
In August 2022, world-renowned author Salman Rushdie was brutally attacked onstage as he prepared to give a public lecture in New York. Rushdie lost the use of one eye and one hand. Refusing to stand down, Rushdie addresses the attack in his new book on life, love, the power of art, and the toughness it takes to live for 30 years under a deadly fatwa.
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, & the Making of a Crisis
Jonathan Blitzer
An epic, heartbreaking, and deeply reported history of the disastrous humanitarian crisis at the southern border told through the lives of the migrants forced to risk everything and the policymakers who determine their fate, by New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer. With astonishing nuance and detail, Blitzer tells an epic story about the people whose lives ebb and flow across the border, and in doing so, he delves into the heart of American life itself. This vital and remarkable story has shaped the nation’s turbulent politics and culture in countless ways—and will almost certainly determine its future.
The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact, & the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook
Hampton Sides
On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. How did Cook, who was unique among captains for his respect for Indigenous peoples and cultures, come to that fatal moment? The Wide Wide Sea is at once a ferociously-paced story of adventure on the high seas and a searching examination of the complexities and consequences of the Age of Exploration.
The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon
Adam Shatz
A revelatory biography of the writer-activist who inspired today’s movements for social and racial justice. In The Rebel’s Clinic, Shatz offers a dramatic reconstruction of Fanon’s extraordinary life―and a guide to the books that underlie today’s most vital efforts to challenge white supremacy and racial capitalism.
Fi: A Memoir of My Son
Alexandrea Fuller
From the award-winning New York Times-bestselling author of Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller, comes a career defining memoir about grieving the sudden loss of her twenty-one-year-old child.
