My favourite books of 2024

23 favourites, including plenty of perfect holiday reads

I’ve read 57 books so far this year. The past couple of months in reading have been sludgy and slow, because life has been fast. The first half of my reading year was definitely stronger. Overall, we had new Rooney, All Fours fever, and I finally read The Secret History.

I read books about menopause, books about freedom, books about betrayal. Small books, big books. Quiet books. Books that scream. Books set in coastal NSW, London, American suburbs, Brisbane, Sicily, rural England, New Zealand, the middle of the ocean. Books about old women exploring their desires, and a queer mountain lion exploring Los Angeles.

Here are my favourites:

• Cat Brushing, Jane Campbell. A debut short story collection about the desires of older women. Revelatory, daring, whip smart.

• Thirst for Salt, Madelaine Lucas. A perfect summer read by an Australian author. A woman heads to a small coastal town for a holiday with her mother, and meets a local man 20 years her senior. The weeks blur, the writing sparkles.

• Mrs. S, K. Patrick. A heatwave dials up the stickiness and desire in this story about a woman working in an English boarding school who begins an affair with the headmaster’s wife.

• American Wife, Curtis Sittenfeld. The perfect novel, based loosely on the story of Laura Bush. If you loved Rodham, read this. If you love this, read Rodham.

• Open Throat, Henry Hoke. A teeny, highly original book told from the perspective of a queer mountain lion. A masterclass on voice, brevity, and character-building. Set aside an hour or two and get swept away.

• Thanks for Having Me, Emma Darragh. A novel built with a collection of stories about three generations of women. A beautiful experimentation with form, a necessary exploration of maternal ambivalence.

• Between You and Me, Joanna Horton. The perfect cross between Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends and Diana Reid’s Seeing Other People. Set in Brisbane, it charts the relationship between best friends Elisabeth and Mari, and a professor.

• The Bee Sting, Paul Murray. A chunky book meant to be read on slow, languid afternoons when you can be carried along by the story. Expansive, absorbing, masterful.

• You Are Here, David Nicholls. A book about a long walk. A book about much more than a long walk. Comforting, slow yet pace-y (I don’t know how he did it), reassuring.

• All Fours, Miranda July. Held me in its grip. Didn’t let go. Read it in one feverish sitting, on the off chance you haven’t read it already.

• Lioness, Emily Perkins. Therese’s husband becomes embroiled in a corruption scandal which risks her reputation too. So good. Read it after you’ve read All Fours - they’re good companion books.

• Sandwich, Catherine Newman. A great summer read. Catherine Newman’s writing is clear and comforting, and here, a week-long family holiday in Cape Cod serves as the backdrop for a story about family, the body, and change.

• Long Island Compromise, Taffy Brodesser-Akner. Taffy’s done it again, winding through decades, generations, and perspectives. Wealth, trauma, disconnection, betrayal - this novel has it all, and you feel like you’re in safe hands the whole way through.

• Woo Woo, Ella Baxter. Unnerving, unusual, uncomfortable. Unlike anything I’ve ever read.

• Splinters, Leslie Jamison. Jamison documents the breakdown of her marriage after she becomes a mother. The writing cracked me open.

• Same as it Ever Was, Claire Lombardo. A perfect novel. Julie runs into Helen, an older friend she hasn’t seen in almost 20 years, and they rekindle a friendship. It is about ordinariness. It is extraordinary. The final pages are among the most gorgeous I’ve ever read.

• Evenings and Weekends, Oisin McKenna. A moving, well-crafted debut set over a weekend, during a London heatwave, following a waitress named Maggie as she prepares to move back to her hometown. If you like Rooney, you’ll like this.

• Bellies, Nicola Dinan. So sharply observed, tender, and well-crafted that it’s almost impossible to believe it’s a debut. It’s about queerness, capital, balancing morality and money, friendship, grief, and desires both hidden and impossible to hide.

• The Wedding People, Alison Espach. Tender and funny and way better than I thought it would be from reading the blurb. Again, one for summer, despite the seemingly dark premise: a woman goes to a seaside hotel to kill herself. The rest of the hotel is booked up for a wedding. She befriends the bride, and begins to imagine a different kind of life for herself.

• Intermezzo, Sally Rooney. How does Rooney create entire people, and complex relationships between them, out of seemingly small and sparse sentences? This is a character study. A slow unfurling of conflict and desire, connection and disconnection.

• Maurice and Marilyn, Sophie Elmhirst. An extraordinary and tender (true) tale of Maurice and Marilyn, a couple who set off to sail the world, only for their boat to sink when it’s hit by a whale.

• The Hypocrite, Jo Hamya. Original, sharp, and funny. Sophia’s father, a novelist, watches his daughter’s first play, which focuses on a Sicilian holiday they shared together, and questions his morality. While he watches, Sophia and her mother are on a rooftop, having a tense lunch. Tightly woven, perfect for summer.

• The Secret History, Donna Tartt. An unsettling campus novel - I believed it the whole way through, yet some of the revelations snuck up on me, which is testament to Tartt’s ability to craft characters.

I’m hoping to read a few more books before 31 December, once I clock off on Friday and dedicate some solid airplane hours to reading. Any recommendations for books to polish off on a long-haul flight?

Until next time,
Britt