My favorite books to me are five-star reads, and when I look back over what I read in 2024, I had very few five-star reads.
I read one hundred and nine books in 2024. That is a great reading year, according to the amount I read, but this list of top ten books was hard to come up with. Not because I couldn’t narrow it down to ten, but because I had trouble picking ten books.
When I think of favorite books, I think of five-star reads, but compared to normal, I didn’t have a lot of five-star reads in 2024.
Some years are like that, though. Some reading years are great, some are good, and some are just okay.
I will share more about what I think went wrong with my reading life in 2024 next week when I share my reading goals for 2025.
In the end, I came up with five fiction reads that I loved and five nonfiction ones that I also loved.
My favorite fiction books of 2024 were all historical fiction. I read all kinds of fiction, but my favorites are almost always historical fiction.
The tenth book I picked as a favorite was the memoir Egg and I. I liked the book Egg and I, but in a typical year, I don’t think it would have made my list of top books of the year.
Favorite Fiction 2024
Click on the title of each book for a full review and more information.
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
A Shadow In Moscow by Katherine Reay
The Berlin Letters by Katherine Reay
Cold Victory by Karl Marlantes
Favorite Nonfiction 2024
In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson
The Watchmaker’s Daughter by Larry Loftis
Being Elisabeth Elliot by Ellen Vaughn
Lit by Tony Reinke by Toni Reinke
The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald
What were your favorite reads of 2024? I would love to hear about them in the comments.
Happy New Year, Lynn!
I always appreciate your candid and honest reviews of the books you’ve read. Thank you for continuing to share your thoughts and suggestions with us.
I read 48 books in 2024, which ties my record high, set in 2023. So it was a really good year for me. Here are my top 5 favorites from 2024:
1. Forty Autumns by Nina Willner. I recommended this book to so many people after I finished it and it’s easily in my list of all-time favorite books.
2. Rajneeshpuram by Russell King. Not an easy topic to read but for someone who was growing up in Oregon during that time, a very interesting book on a truly awful piece of our state’s history.
3. A Fatal Inheritance by Lawrence Ingrassia. A fascinating cross between memoir and science. I’m still thinking about it months later.
4. We Were the Lucky Ones by Georgia Hunter. A story of a family’s survival and resilience during WWII. I picked this one up after reading your review of it.
5. The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman. The only fiction book to make my top 5. I picked up the audiobook on a whim at the library and was surprised at how enjoyable it was. It probably qualifies as a cozy mystery, which isn’t my normal genre to get excited about but it was fun and the main character is so easily likable. Only afterward did I find out it’s the first of a series of 14 books. I’m on story #3 now.
You had a great reading year! I agree with Forty Autumns. It is a great book! I added Rajneeshpuram to my to be read list, I remember that story and would love to know more about it. Thanks for sharing your favorites. We have similar reading tastes, so I always love to see what you are reading.
Some favorites were:
-Rembrandt is in the Wind by Russ Ramsey
-Van Gogh Has a Broken Heart by Russ Ramsey
-The Truth in True Crime by J. Warner Wallace
-The newest books in both The Kings Lake and the D. C. Smith series by Peter Grainger
I have Rembrandt is in the Wind in my to be read stack for this year. I have heard so many great things about it. I just looked up The Truth in True Crime and I am adding that to my list to read too. It looks really good. Thanks for shraring those!
The Great Alone is fantastic as is In the Garden of Beasts. I really enjoyed The Women by Kristen Hannah this year.
The Women is in my stack to read, I just need to be in the right mood to pick it up.