Top Ten Books Read in 2024

It’s become one of my favorite New Year’s traditions: my annual list of the top ten books I read this year.

Every year I wonder for about three-quarters of the year how on earth this list is going to come together—sometimes the question is how I’ll narrow it down to just ten, other years it’s whether there will be enough standouts to make up the number. This year was more the latter, with a lackluster stretch of reading in the middle of the year leaving me hesitating between two or three titles for the last spot in the end. But always, usually sometime in the autumn, I begin to see the list take a nebulous shape, and by December it becomes definite.

As always, I’ve listed them in the order read (with one exception that will be self-explanatory):

Performing Flea by P.G. Wodehouse

Don't you feel, when writing a story, that if only it were some other story you could write it on your head? I do. I'm sure it's the best way to have two or three going at the same time, so that when you get sick of the characters of one you can switch to another.

A collection of letters to an old friend and fellow writer, largely on the subjects of books and writing, Performing Flea gives a wonderful insight into Wodehouse’s creative process. So often his humorous prose feels like something that must have been tossed off as lightly as a feather, but these letters reveal him as a dedicated and hard-working writer who was shrewd and knowledgeable about the ways of publishers, readers, and the craft of storytelling. It should have come as no surprise to find he was also extremely well-read, but it was also fun to see where his tastes corresponded with my own! And naturally, as with anything written by Wodehouse, it was highly entertaining. This was a strong contender for my top nonfiction read of the year. My brief review here.

George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post by John Tebbel

One book led directly to another here: when Wodehouse mentioned reading this book in Performing Flea, amid his own reminiscences of working with Lorimer, I went straight off to find it (and found it engrossing enough to put myself through the ordeal of reading it off a computer screen at the Internet Archive). It’s a biography of both the editor and the magazine, providing an utterly fascinating perspective on American literature and culture during the Saturday Evening Post’s golden era. It’s crowded with references to familiar authors and artists and glimpses at the inner workings of the magazine in general—and confirmed, in many ways, my impression of the Post as a publication that might be dismissed as bourgeois by the literati, but really exhibits a truer picture of American culture and mores than most 20th-century American literature that has been labeled “great.”

Fanny Herself by Edna Ferber

I think that is why our great men and women so often have sprung from small towns, or villages. They have had time to dream in their adolescence. No cars to catch, no matinees, no city streets, none of the teeming, empty, energy-consuming occupations of the city child. Little that is competitive, much that is unconsciously absorbed at the most impressionable period, long evenings for reading, long afternoons in the fields or woods.

I tend to prefer Ferber’s early short fiction to her more famous novels, and this novel from that same early period was also much more to my taste. Fanny, the vivacious, imaginative daughter of a Midwestern storekeeper in the early 1900s, attempts to grapple with loss and sorrow by leaving home and shutting herself off from her small-town roots, her Jewish faith, and her own creative and artistic nature, and throwing herself into the ambitious pursuit of a business career. But while materially successful, her truest instincts can’t be completely denied, and she will have to decide what kind of life is ultimately most fulfilling. Though the focus of the book itself seems to fizzle a bit in the final chapters, a satisfying resolution is achieved, and it’s a compelling character study and glimpse into both small town and big city in the era of America’s greatest pre-World-Wars prosperity.

It was particularly interesting seeing how the depiction of early-20th-century America in Ferber’s fiction chimed with what I’d been reading about popular literature of the same era in Tebbel’s book—an era in which both the Saturday Evening Post and Montgomery Ward saw Middle America as the most important part of the population, but in which one can also see the tiny seeds of its eventual destruction through over-consumerism being sown.

Death of an Author by E.C.R. Lorac

“I don't mind dealing with proper criminals, but heaven defend me from any more novelists, sir,” he groaned.

This is one of those books that make the list simply because of the sheer fun it was to read. I’ve found Lorac to be a solid plotter without any very great character depth or stylistic brilliance, so I think the strong point of this novel is that its fantastically clever and multi-layered plot takes center stage and shines there. A reclusive author has been reported missing by his secretary, but the trouble is, he’s managed to be so reclusive that the police can’t find any proof beyond the secretary’s word that he actually existed. Are they investigating a real disappearance or trying to discredit an amazingly detailed fabrication? The two inspectors on the case have differing opinions on this point, but work together trying to sort out the case on both lines simultaneously—and as new evidence turns up, the possibilities become even more convoluted.

Rhododendron Pie by Margery Sharp

Life wasn’t a shadow. It was a beautiful, warm, many-voiced reality, full of omnibuses and orchestras and the smell of earth after rain. Ann thought of the way the sunlight lay all dusty-golden on the drawing-room floor, and the splendid bulk of oak trees planted in a row, and her faith would have moved mountains.

A pleasant, lightly thoughtful English novel from the between-the-wars period, in which the youngest daughter of an ultra-sophisticated, Bohemian-type artistic family grapples with the growing realization that she actually wants an “ordinary” life and the wholesome values which the loved ones she has always venerated for their intellect and cleverness habitually sneer at. For a while the book seemed to be taking a long and roundabout way to developing its themes, but then it really blossomed into something satisfying in the final chapters.

Country Editor’s Boy by Hal Borland

I think I actually enjoyed this even more than Borland’s earlier memoir of Colorado boyhood (also good), High, Wide, and Lonesome. This second book chronicles his family’s move from the homestead to a small town on the high plains of Colorado, where his father became the owner, editor, and printer of one of the town’s two newspapers. Borland, fifteen at the time, recalls small-town politics and social life, hunting and exploring with friends, winter weather on the plains, high school sports and studies, and working alongside his parents in the newspaper office (again, falling into a kind of unintentional synchronism with the Tebbel and Ferber titles in coloring in more details to the picture of pre-war middle-class American life).

Cowboys and Cattle Kings: Life On the Range Today by C.L. Sonnichsen

Published in 1950, this book offers an overview of what ranching life in America looked like in the “modern era” at the time of its publication. Sonnichsen traveled all across the West in 1949, visiting and talking to ranchers and their wives, ranch managers, cowboys, aging drifters, businessmen connected to the cattle industry, and more, and gives us chapters on all aspects of ranching life—from cattlemen’s associations and 4-H groups to dude ranches and community dances, conflicts between ranchers and government, cattle rustling in the modern era, the life of kids growing up on ranches, and so forth. All this was especially interesting to me given that I’ve been increasingly drawn to writing Western stories set in the first half of the 20th century. It documents what had changed since the more familiar “Old West” era of the 19th century, and what was still the same; and now, more than half a century later, offers a window on what is now practically a vanished era itself. But as always, where the West is concerned, some things remain the same. Top nonfiction read of this year.

(I posted a few scraps of excerpts and observations in a Twitter thread while reading.)

Song of Years by Bess Streeter Aldrich

Inside there was the never-ending procession of daily tasks — baking, cooking, washing, ironing, sewing, scrubbing. But the settlers’ interest in life did not cease with these. With the hard work went a capacity for enjoying their pleasures to the full, for sympathizing with a suffering neighbor, for grasping at knowledge of outside human affairs hungrily, for soaring to exultant heights and groveling in miserable depths. Humanity remains much the same. Only the setting and the times change. “I love you” spoken in whatever tongue or generation springs from the same rapturous feeling. “He is dead” brings the same black despair.

All three of my siblings had read this book before me and told me I would love it, and it lived up to expectation. It’s one of the most quintessentially American novels I've ever read: a joyful, vibrant family saga of hardships and simple pleasures, work and beauty, birth, marriage, and death; of mistakes and pain interwoven with achievement and celebration; of ground plowed and homes built, dreams of civilization and prosperity brought about by faithful labor. My top pick for fiction this year.

The Cavalry Trilogy: John Ford, John Wayne, and the Making of Three Classic Westerns by Michael F. Blake

I had a handful of very different books contending for this spot, but ultimately I had to go with this one. At the end of the day, this is a list of books that I, personally, enjoyed most during the year, and reading this book was pure and simple enjoyment. There was almost no way I wasn’t going to like a book about this film trilogy—Rio Grande is my favorite Western, and I practically grew up with all three movies and know them frame by frame. I already knew a lot of trivia, but Blake’s book really focuses on the technical and creative process of the movie-making—locations, costumes and props, setting up shots, performing stunts, and so on. I particularly loved the in-depth look into the writing process for all three movies, seeing how the story and characters developed from early drafts and the changes between even the final scripts and what Ford put on film.

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower

Not that I see throwing myself into the Thames as a viable solution to my ills. We have tea for that.

I am breaking any rule that may exist for top-ten lists here by including an entire series as one entry—but since they’re essentially one continuing story (most of the volumes being quite short), why not. And these books absolutely had to make the list in some form. They were manna in the desert of a lackluster stretch of reading; they defined my autumn-into-winter literary life.

I’m not sure I’ve ever read a series so difficult to succinctly describe. Does one call them historical fiction? Yes, one has to; historical with a quirk, yet not enough of a quirk to be called fantasy. The existence of the whimsical, fictitious neighborhood of St. Crispian’s allows for eccentric behavior of the characters that somehow fits into the setting of Victorian London in the most delightfully improbable way. (I once attempted to define St. Crispian’s to myself, and what came out was “It’s like a village of cuckoo-clocks in the Twilight Zone.” Meaning that in the best possible way.)

And Emma herself, and her continuing story? All I can say is that these books have made me laugh out loud (I absolutely shrieked at the scene where Mrs. Penury comes to tea for the first time), have brought tears to my eyes, and every once in a while come out with a passage that takes my breath away with the depth of its heart and insight. I am full of questions, suspicions, and theories about Emma’s future, and ask only that future installments will be as good as the first eight have been.

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I’ve gotten in the habit of noting, as a matter of interest, how I acquired each top read, and this year’s sources were quite mixed. Performing Flea and Death of An Author were library borrows. Fanny Herself (public-domain and available free), Rhododendron Pie and Country Editor’s Boy were Kindle purchases; The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion were Kindle Unlimited reads. George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post was, as I mentioned, at the Internet Archive, The Cavalry Trilogy was a Christmas gift, and Cowboys and Cattle Kings was an impulse buy at a secondhand bookshop a couple years ago.

Previous years' lists: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011

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