The Best Things We Read in 2024
The 2024 Guests of The Stacks podcast, share the best books they read this year, and the one book they can't wait to read in 2025.
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At the end of the year, we always get so many lists of “best” and “top” and “favorite” books of the year, and we even get lists that round up all of those lists. And while I do love all of these lists, this list is by far my favorite. This list is the best things the guests of The Stacks read this year. It can be a book from any year and about anything. Each guest also provided one book they’re looking forward to reading in 2025 (though it doesn’t have to be a 2025 release). Why is this my most favorite list? Well, obviously because guests of The Stacks have the best taste, and every year this list gives range.
Carolina Ixta
Author of Shut Up, This Is Serious
The best book I read in 2024 was Rivermouth: A Chronicle of Language, Faith, and Migration by Alejandra Oliva. I have never read a memoir that is so expository, nor an expository text that is so personal. Oliva demonstrates poetic and narrative dexterity around complicated topics without sacrificing the heartbeat of her own experiences. She brings hidden voices and hidden histories out of the shadows and to center stage where they belong. Truly a masterful text.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: I am most excited to read The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley!
Carolina was our guest for Episode 302, where she discussed her book Shut Up, This Is Serious.
Lauren Markham
Author of A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging
I finally read Shirley Hazzard's The Transit of Venus. (I'd tried several times before, but I believe that some books find you at just the right moment.) It's the story of two orphaned sisters who move from Australia to England in the 1950s--a transporting, altering novel of manners that also feels like a two-headed epic. Hazzard uses such a fine-tipped pen to render her characters' consciousnesses and longing situated within a larger social order. Her prose is incantatory. I've never read anything like it and will recommend it endlessly to everyone--including you!
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: I can't wait to read Rabih Alameddine's An Unnecessary Woman in 2025.
Lauren was our guest for Episode 307, where she discussed her book A Map of Future Ruins.
Elise Hu
Author of Flawless: Lessons in Looks and Culture from the K-Beauty Capital
The best thing I read this year was I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jeanette McCurdy. Usually, I don't love memoirs, and I know I'm late to this mega-bestseller. I'm glad I finally got to it because man, it hit me right in the gut. I listened to the audiobook, gripped, with my jaw open for a good chunk of it. McCurdy, a former child star, is so unflinching in plumbing her own memories and interiority as she explores the relentless and fearsome control of her mother. The story is also one of resilience and grace and the people along the way who helped her, and I can't stop thinking about it.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: You Didn't Hear This From Me by Kelsey McKinney, the host of Normal Gossip.
was our guest for Episode 309 where she discussed her book Flawless, and Episode 312, where she discussed the book Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu.Andrew Boryga
Author of Victim
Julius Caesar by Shakespeare. I was never all that into Shakespeare in school, but this year I randomly decided, yo, I should really see what this dude is all about. And I’m so glad I did. Julius Caesar was the first play I started with and it absolutely blew me away. These lines in particular were the hardest I’ve ever read in print, and I’ll be thinking about them for some time: “Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.”
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: I’m very excited to read Glass Century by Ross Barkan, which is coming out in May of 2025. Ross is an excellent journalist and essayist and I’ve long enjoyed his musings in the New York Times, New York Magazine, and other mainstream outlets—as well as his dope Substack. I’m very anxious to see how his immense talents in the non-fiction realm translate to the fictional realm.
was our guest for Episode 314, where he discussed his book Victim.
Keith O'Brien
Author of Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball
The best thing I read this year was James (obviously). But since that's the easy answer, I'll offer a different one: The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka. This book is short; you can read it in a day or two. But it packs a powerful punch. Otsuka paints a stunning portrait of Japanese women who came to America in the 20th century, detailing the indignities they endured and the tragedies they overcame. It's a fictional account, written in a creative way. There's no main character here, no single protagonist. And yet it's all too real—a story built with detailed reporting and understanding about what these women faced. I simply can't stop thinking about The Buddha in the Attic.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: The book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: The Boy From the Sea by Garrett Carr.
Keith was our guest for Episode 315, where he discussed his book Charlie Hustle.
Carvell Wallace
Author of Another Word for Love
Not to be weird but the best thing I read in 2024 was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818). I read it once before, and I think I sort of missed it. But I randomly picked it up again this year and it's so fascinating how at 17 she's inventing horror that is very patient and deeply unsettling, changing points of view, telling stories within stories within stories, roasting men simply by imitating them, and offering layered and complicated philosophical questions in the creepiest way possible. I just fucking love a brilliant goth teen going tf off. Highly recommend.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: The book I'm looking forward to reading is We Will Rest!: The Art of Escape by Tricia Hersey. I read it once and will continue to read it because it's a handbook as far as I'm concerned, and as our mutual friend George McCalman says: "This is a very Black conversation." I don't think this book is for everyone, but it is most definitely exactly for me, right here and right now.
Carvell was our guest for Episode 319, where he discussed his book Another Word for Love.
Sierra Greer
Author of Annie Bot
Like so many others this year, I was captivated by Kristin Hannah’s The Women with its visceral and disturbing depictions of nurses during the Vietnam War. My uncle was lost in that war, so this novel hit home for me. I appreciate Hannah’s storytelling, her believable characters, and her shining a light on the military women who serve our country.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: For next year, I’m looking forward to reading Billy Collins’s latest collection: Water, Water: Poems. I had the pleasure of hearing him speak at the Miami Book Fair, and I love how his crafty mind works.
Sierra was our guest for Episode 320, where she discussed her book Annie Bot.
Melissa Mogollon
Author of Oye
It's so hard to pick ONE "best" book I've read all year! But I have to say that Victim by Andrew Boryga had me thinking and returning to it for a long time. To me, it explores humor in all the ways I admire and adore: from the perspective of immigrants, as a response to trauma, and through the scathing and blistering minds of teenagers...The first chapter of the novel is a masterclass in openings. Enticing, warm, determined, revelatory. I wanted to listen to it on audio over and over, for hours.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: One book I'm extremely looking forward to in 2025 is Ruben Reyes Jr.'s Archive of Unknown Universes. A genre-bending book about two families in alternative timelines of the Salvadoran Civil War where one member uses an experimental device to peek into alternate versions of their lives.
Melissa was our guest for Episode 322, where she discussed her book Oye, and Episode 325, where she discussed It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover.
Adam Higginbotham
Author of Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space
The best thing I read this year was Ian Fleming: The Complete Man by Nicholas Shakespeare. It’s a masterful, page-turning biography that unearths not just the truth of Fleming’s extraordinary work during the Second World War but also his tortured personality—and how his most famous creation made his fortune, then sent him to his grave. An ultimately tragic and often unbelievable story of a man who often trod a Zelig-like path through history, it also forms a fascinating snapshot of the last days of the British Empire.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Adam was our guest for Episode 328, where he discussed his book Challenger.
Mateo Askaripour
Author of This Great Hemisphere
Not to do the whole author flex, but I read Colored Television at the end of 2023 before it came out in 2024, and it's still my favorite read of the year. Works that are at once funny, tender, and all-too-real, especially when they concern creative spaces––and even more so when they focus on writing––always appeal to me, and Colored Television was no exception. Danzy Senna did her thing with this one! The twists, the turns, and the everyday tedium of trying to maintain sanity despite 21st-century American angst were gold. I've said it once and I'll say it again: I adore this novel.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: In terms of 2025, Jason Mott's People Like Us is at the top of my list. And, yes, I've already read some other 2025 novels, so shout out to The Grand Scheme of Things by Warona Jay. Happy reading, homies.
Mateo was our guest for Episode 329, where he discussed his book This Great Hemisphere.
Regina Porter
Author of The Rich People Have Gone Away
I have to say that my favorite book of the year was rereading Frankenstein. It seems appropriate somehow for this moment as the book is about, at its heart, human’s individual and collective responsibility for each other. The monsters people sometimes not only are but become and make. The story centers on a scientist who plays God and creates a human monster, only to freak out and abandon his creation. But the monster won’t go away.
Regina was our guest for Episode 333, where she discussed her book The Rich People Have Gone Away.
Eve Dunbar
Author of Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction: Black Women Writing under Segregation
The best thing I read this year was Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. The novel's premise hooked me, but Kuang's investment in a compelling, unreliable narrator made me think about the book anytime I wasn't reading it. Torn between wanting to see June "Juniper" Song brought down for stealing a dead woman's manuscript and wanting to see her get away with it, I found the question of who owns any story, especially one of trauma and pain that isn't one's own, muddied in the best way.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: City Summer, Country Summer by Kiese Laymon
Eve was our guest for Episode 335 where she discussed her book Monstrous Work and Radical Satisfaction, and Episode 338, where she discussed Jazz by Toni Morrison.
Danzy Senna
Author of Colored Television
The best book I read this year was Being There, a novel from 1971 by Polish-American writer Jerzy Kosinski. It tells the story of a man, Chance Gardener, a neurodivergent gardener who leaves the safety of his home one day and through a series of strange events, gets claimed as a kind of guru and pundit by the world of politics. Powerful people project onto him all sorts of meanings he didn't intend. Absurd and painful, poignant and strange, this book exhilarated me with its brilliance but also filled me with existential dread as it touches so deeply on our modern world - the cult of personality, the emptiness of modern life, the failure of any of us to truly connect. It's also a great movie starring Peter Sellers.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: Get ready for the first spate of what I imagine will be decades of books about Gaza. In fiction, film, essays, and non-fiction, we are going to have to process what we've witnessed and are still witnessing - the crime against humanity that has been done on our watch, using our funding - for a long time to come. I had the chance to read one excellent book in Galley that will be coming out next year and everyone and their mama should read: Omar El Akkad's One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This. It is intimate, furious, vulnerable, and deep - a kind of Between the World and Me about the international calamity. Also, Pankaj Mishra is an incredibly incisive and deep thinker and I am looking forward to his forthcoming book The World After Gaza: A History.
Danzy was our guest for Episode 336, where she discussed her book Colored Television.
Jason De León
Author of Soldiers and Kings: Survival and Hope in the World of Human Smuggling
The best thing I read this year was The Horse by Willy Vlautin. He's one of my favorite storytellers and someone who always amazes me with his ability to capture the working-class American experience. The Horse chronicles the troubled journey of a grizzled musician trying to make it despite a life characterized by bad luck, crippling anxiety, and a tortured relationship with booze. Willy always breaks my heart with his books but this one left me feeling ok about the world.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: The book I am most looking forward to next year is The Antidote by Karen Rusell. I got to read excerpts a while back and loved it!
Jason was our guest for Episode 341, where he discussed his book Soldiers and Kings.
Jason Reynolds
Author of Twenty-Four Seconds from Now . . .: A Love Story
There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraquib is an example of everything I love about Hanif's work. It's experimental - the language, the perspective, the courage - and it's thought provoking, all while being incredibly entertaining.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: No Sense in Wishing by Lawrence Burney
Jason was our guest for Episode 345, where he discussed his book Twenty-Four Seconds from Now . . ..
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
Author of What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futurism
Loving Corrections by adrienne maree brown struck me, above all, as a necessary cultural intervention. It opens with a "Dear Men" letter on relinquishing patriarchy, arcs through ways of being in the right relationship (with family, ego, weed, abundance, etc.), explores the imperative of accountability (there's certainly not enough of that going around right now) and how we move from fragility to fortitude, to being able to actually hear the truth. Goodness, there is a lot of loving correction needed right now! I'm grateful for this calling-in guide.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: Human Nature: Nine Ways to Feel About Our Changing Planet by Kate Marvel
was our guest for Episode 346, where she discussed her book What If We Get It Right?.
Greta Johnsen
Author of GRETAGRAM
The best thing I read this year is Marie-Helene Bertino's Beautyland. I'm usually a plot person -- I love when absolutely unhinged shit goes down, when I stay up late reading because I have to know what's next. This is not that kind of book, but it's perfect. It's a novel that fully embraces a broad, beautiful spectrum of what it means to be human. It's full of gorgeous sentences and it made me look at daily life with a fuller heart.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: I can’t wait for Kevin Wilson’s newest book, Run for the Hills. All I know is that it’s a cross-country road trip novel, but honestly, I don’t need a premise to be convinced to read a Kevin Wilson book. I will follow that lovely human anywhere. I’m also extra excited for the audiobook, which is read by my favorite narrator, Marin Ireland!
was our guest for Episode 350, where we discussed The Best Books of 2024.MJ Franklin
Editor at The New York Times Book Review
The best thing I read this year was, easily, James by Percival Everett. This is not a surprise pick because James has been on just about every year-end best-of list, it was shortlisted for the Booker, it won the National Book Award, and for good reason — it’s an ambitious work of fiction, written by one of America’s greatest novelists, that reshapes our existing cultural narratives while also standing on its own as a bold, original story. The novel is cerebral, adventuresome, funny, harrowing, challenging, and accessible, all at once. It’s a masterpiece.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: Stag Dance by Torrey Peters
MJ was our guest for Episode 350, where we discussed The Best Books of 2024.
Traci Thomas
Host and creator of The Stacks
The best thing I read this year was Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham. I went back and forth between this book and James (because James is so incredibly good) but I had to stay true to myself, and a work of investigative journalism about a major disaster that came out of human failing is just too me to not be my favorite. Higginbotham turned an event I knew all about into a damn thriller. I still can’t believe they launched that shuttle. The science, the institutional failings, the people involved, and the aftermath were all rendered perfectly on the page.
Book I'm looking forward to reading in 2025: Authority by Andrea Long Chu
Omg Adam Higginbotham is a high/low man - WHAT A DREAMBOAT. We love a bro who can do both!
Backlist! This is a good list. I am also looking forward to reading We Will Rest! Family in Georgia asked Hersey to sign a copy for me at a book event and then they dropped it off a few days ago.