Reading 2024: Fiction

 As promised, here are the fiction books I read this year: 

1.    Beartown by Fredrik Backman

2.    Kindred by Octavia Butler

3.    House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

4.    A Land More Kind than Home by Wiley Cash

5.    The Skin and its Girl by Sarah Cypher

6.    Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

7.    The Long Way Home by Louise Penny (Inspector Gamache series)

8.    The Man Who Died Twice (Thursday Murder Club series)

9.    A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving

10.    Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

11.    James by Percival Everett

12.    As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

13.    Theo of Golden by Allen Levi

14.    The Bullet that Missed by Richard Osman (Thursday Murder Club series)

As I mentioned in my post on non-fiction, I read more NF than fiction this year, although it was only one more, so it was about even. 

I liked all of these, but the clear favorite was number 13, Theo of Golden, the story of an elderly gentleman who goes to live in a seemingly random community in Georgia and makes an indelible mark. You are not likely to find this on any reading lists (by all indications, it is self-published), but I think you are likely to find it as compelling, poignant and moving as I did. 

Numbers 1, 2, 3 and 5 were all selections from the book club I started attending early in the year, and all books I would not likely have read had it not been for that group. I enjoyed all of them and had the good fortune to visit Edith Wharton's (author of House of Mirth) home, "The Mount," on my trip to New England in October. Unfortunately, as the year progressed, for a number of reasons my book club attendance lapsed, but I hope to go back in January. 

I continued my plodding along in the Inspector Gamache series with The Long Way Home. It was up to the usual standards. I also marked off two more in the Thursday Murder Club series, both of which were excellent. 

Covenant of Water is a close second behind Theo of Golden, by the author of Cutting for Stone. Weighing in at over 700 pages, I use it as my excuse for reading fewer books this year! 

James and Demon Copperhead (another long one) were also page turners worth calling out. My nod to the classics was As I Lay Dying (which I picked up at the recommendation of a friend who is reading through all of Faulkner's works). John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany might not yet qualify as a classic, but it's one I had heard about for years but never gotten around to reading. It was worth the wait. 

A Land More Kind than Home is the second I've read by North Carolina author Wiley Cash, who I discovered last year. I highly recommend.

The TBR stack for 2025 is already high. Several of you who read this blog have made good recommendations over the years, and I hope you will keep them coming.