One of my favourite bookish moments of the year is sitting down with my reading diary – a list of the books I’ve read since 2002 – and choosing my favourites of the year. Usually there are some that jump out at me, but which I’d forgotten about until my memory was jogged. Not this year! Without consulting my reading diary, I knew what the top nine would be – and there were a lot of solid contenders for tenth place, but I settled on the one that brought me greatest joy.
You know I love to rank things, but I’ll be honest – numbers four to nine could probably be in more or less any order. But there was a definite top three.
I’ll do a post about 2024 reading stats soon, but – here are my favourite books of 2024 (as usual, no rereads or repeat authors). Click on the links for full reviews.
10. My Darling Villain (1977) by Lynne Reid Banks
A young adult novel about a troubled teenage romance between a middle-class girl and a working-class boy – it’s Lynne Reid Bank’s exceptional storytelling that sweeps you along and makes you fall for Kate and Mark.
9. Dept. of Speculation (2014) by Jenny Offill
The whole of a marriage is shown through Offill’s innovative, fragmentary approach – a patchwork of vignettes, sometimes several paragraphs and sometimes only a handful of words. Searing psychological trauma might be placed next to an objective fact about space travel. It all coheres mesmerisingly, and tells the story of a couple with more thoroughness than many traditional novels five times as long could manage.
8. A Body Made of Glass (2024) by Caroline Crampton
The only non-fiction title on my list year, Crampton weaves together memoir and research as she shares her own experiences of health anxiety/hypochondria with a history of the condition (including a vogue for believing your body was literally made of glass). A Body Made of Glass is so helpful, so well-researched, and often moving – not least when Crampton shares the ways healthcare professionals marginalise women and people of colour.
7. The Visitors (1958) by Mary McMinnies
An incredibly rich, detailed (and very long) novel about a British Foreign Office official and his wife living in a thinly disguised Krakow, Poland. There aren’t a huge number of characters, but we are fully immersed in every moment of their lives. I wouldn’t often want a novel this densely thick with the minutaie of everyday interactions, but McMinnies does it so well that I have seldom found a world and its characters so perfectly realised.
6. Such A Fun Age (2019) by Kiley Reid
A novel of race relations in modern-day America that shows, with nuance and humour, how even the most well-meaning white people can get things horribly wrong. Starting with a young, Black woman being falsely accused of kidnapping the child she is babysitting, Reid takes us on a rollercoaster of morals, misunderstandings, competing memories, self-deception and a twist that blindsides you.
5. The Oracles (1955) by Margaret Kennedy
A small village is glad to have a noted sculptor living there (albeit with mistress and a tangle of semi-wild children) and the local would-be intelligentsia are marvelling at his latest sculpture… not realising they’re actually looking at garden furniture that has been struck by lightning. Kennedy’s novel is very funny and unafraid to swipe at intellectualism, but has a great deal of heart in its central characters – a married couple who misunderstand and mistrust each other, for whom the fall-out of the sculpture situation has far wider implications than anybody could anticipate.
4. Lady Living Alone (1945) by Norah Lofts
Something that never ceases to be a joy to me is that a novel can be out of print when I read it – and in print with the British Library Women Writers series by the end of the year. Penelope Shadow (what a name!) is an erratic woman with a notable foible: she cannot cope with being in a house on her own. What starts as a witty novel with excellent comic timing gradually becomes something much darker – ending in full-on thriller territory. Lofts is known for her historical fiction, but her domestic thriller is exceptional.
3. The Spring House (1936) by Cynthia Asquith
Set during the First World War, The Spring House tells of Miranda (whose husband is stationed in Canada) and the various flirtations she has, the nursing she undertakes at her palatial home turned into a hospital for invalided soliders, her relationship with her mother, her best friend, her brothers and various others. Asquith is brilliant on adult siblings and, more than that, simply exceptional on character and place. It’s hard to convey why The Spring House is so good, except for how immersively wonderful the reading experience was. Sadly, it’s very hard to track down.
2. Interpreter of Maladies (1999) by Jhumpa Lahiri
Beautiful, thought-provoking short stories, mostly about the relationship between two individuals – some romantic, some familial, some very fleeting. Whether tourist/driver, husband/wife, or child/babysitter, Lahiri is so good at mining the depths of these connections – the spoken and, especially, the unspoken. It’s my first experience of Lahiri’s writing and I’m excited to read more.
1. The Spring Begins (1934) by Katherine Dunning
And finally, my first read of the year was my best book of the year. Scott chose it as his best read last year, so I’m delighted to carry the torch for this extraordinary forgotten novel (and so grateful to Scott for sending me a pdf). Dunning foregrounds three women who would normally be in the background of other novels – Maggie the scullery-maid and Lottie the nurse-maid at the rich Kellaways’ house, and Hessie, an impoverished ‘lady’ who acts as governess for the vicar’s family. Each is such a wonderfully perfected creation, from Lottie’s fearful naivety to Maggie’s sensual daring to Hessie’s self-conscious misery. Dunning’s writing is beautiful, from descriptions of sea and sunshine through to the everyday lives and anxieties of women whom most novels would only glance at in passing. The novel is somehow both pacy and dreamlike, and a world I longed to speak longer in. It’s extraordinary that The Spring Begins is not in print. And I’m delighted to say that will not be the case for many more months…
I have a copy of The Oracles on my tbr shelf and now have The Spring Begins in my little handbag notebook for when out & about near a bookshop … thank you for your considered suggestions this year … Happy New Year … waving from Cambridge UK
Thank you Kimberly, and a happy new year!
Such eclectic variety, thanks for sharing your favourites!
thank you!
Such an interesting list, with lots of new-to-me titles to consider (I’ve only read Department of Speculation — really brilliant, once I got into it– and the Lahiri). I have Lady Living Alone awaiting me (thanks to one of your previous posts) and I’ve now added Asquith’s The Spring House & Kennedy’s Oracles (I loved The Feast). As for the Dunning novel, which sounds the most interesting of all — such a tease! I’ll stay tuned for news of its reemergence from its not-in-print status . . .
Thank you! And I definitely want to read more Offill this year – such a surprisingly wonderful book.
A really interesting and unusual list. I’ve added Lady Living Alone and The Oracles to my own wish list as they both caught my eye.
Excellent! I am very confident you’d enjoy the Kennedy, especially.
I always love your lists and this year’s is especially varied and intriguing. I’ve had absolutely no luck tracking down the Dunning so am delighted to hear that will be easier next year!
Happy New Year and best wishes for a wonderful 2025!
thanks Claire! Yes, I’m looking forward to having my own copy, rather than a pdf. I did find one more by her, which I’ll be reading for the 1952 Club.
A really fascinating list, Simon. As you know, I’m a failure when it comes to ranking my reading, so I do admire you being able to order yours. And there are some really interesting titles there! Happy New Year and here’s to the 1952 Club!
thanks Karen! Yes, ranking definitely helps my thinking. And looking forward to going big with 1952 Club
Always great to read the results of your year’s reading review Simon. I’ve just ordered a copy of The Oracles from the library (I finally read and loved The Feast this year) and I am very happy to note that steps have been taken to rectify the difficulty of obtaining a copy of the Dunning. I shall be watching out for it (I even have a hunch as to who might be responsible for republication!) in 2025.
Here’s too lots of books and reading and that you will know much of God’s blessing in 2025!
Do let me know what you think of The Oracles – as I said, I think it’s her best, but it might just be her most uncharacteristic!
I enjoyed your round-up, Simon! A Lady Living Alone is one I am definitely going to look out for; it sounds delightful.
Happy New Year!
Rohan
Thanks Rohan! Yes, it was such a surprise – and does an awful lot in a short book.
What a lovely routine, to revisit your year’s reading via your diary. I enjoyed reading your list. The book there we both really loved that stands out to me is Kiley Reid’s: I still think about those characters, after all this time, even though many other books and characters have faded out of my thinking in the meantime. And the book I’ve long meant to read, but haven’t yet, is Jenny Offil’s. And it’s so short, too. But SSBSLT: I know you know how that goes! Happy New Year, Simon!
Definitely agree with the Reid, and the narrator captured the main character so, so well – really helped imprint her in my mind.
Such an interesting and varied list, Simon. A friend picked the Kiley Reid for our book group not long after in came out in h/b, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. As you say, it explores some important aspects of racial prejudice/bias in a smart and humorous way. We had a great discussion about it!
Of the others on your list, A Body Made of Glass is probably the one I’m most interested to read. The audiobook is queued up in my Spotify account, so hopefully I’ll be able to listen to it soon.
Thanks Jacqui! I hope you get as much out of A Body Made of Class as I did. And I can see that Such A Fun Age would make a great book group book – might suggest it to mine.
I loved Lady Living Alone – exceptionally well-written and a new favourite in the British Library Women Writers series. This is an interesting list (as always), and your tease about a forthcoming reissue of the Dunning is much appreciated, but is there any similar hope for the Asquith????
I’m so glad, thank you! I think the Asquith might be unlikely for a couple of reasons, but I’m intending to read her other novel in 2025 and that might qualify better.
You’ve sent me on a search for The Oracles, especially as you say it is her best book. I’d also love to read The Spring House and The Spring Begins. I’m so glad you liked Lahiri and hope you will read more of her work.
Ooh, exciting note at the very end! I loved Such a Fun Age, and I’m glad you did, too. We have different Top 10s/20s but that’s the joy of all this, isn’t it! Happy reading for 2025. I’ve been disappointed and bamboozled, respectively, by my first two reads of the year …
I have heard of a few of your books and read “The Interpreter of Maladies”. That’s such a great book, I loved it.
Here are my statistics
https://momobookblog.blogspot.com/2025/01/statistics-2024.html
I liked Dept. of Speculation and Interpreter of Maladies, especially IoM. I have Lady Living Alone on top of my TBR pile, waiting for me to finish my A Century of Books project.