Favorite books of 2024

Always a welcoming sight, although, to accommodate all the books,
one really needs this shelving system to be multiplied by ten.

Nothing to do with words ending in the letter y. 

Nonetheless, pretty much in order of how much I liked each book: 

The Magic Barrel and Other Stories, Bernard Malamud (properly printed original softcover edition, though look at the dust jacket of the original hardback . . . .)

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Suzanne Collins

In the Land of Men: A Memoir, Adrienne Miller

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin

James, Percival Everett

In Praise of Shadows, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki

The Freaks Came Out To Write: The Definitive History of The Village Voice, The Radical Paper That Changed American Culture, Tricia Romano

Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden, Eleanor Perényi

Village Pumps, Richard K. Williams

The Not So Big House: A Blueprint for the Way We Really Live, Sarah Susanka

The Breakfast Book, Marion Cunningham

Claudia Roden’s Mediterranean: Treasured Reciped from a Lifetime of Travel, Claudia Roden

The British Baking Book, Regula Ysewijn

This book in the making, 2022.

I also read several short stories by a man who put together an almost finished collection of them. They were rooted in the small town of his childhood, now recast as the fictional town of Oak Knoll, Pennsylvania. Jim Fox’s story “Uncle Warren Had a Dog Named Wanda” was the one I loved. I wish Jim hadn’t died before titling his collection and writing an introduction for it. I wish he had lived to have the whole, cohesive bunch published. The stories represent a slice of Americana that has vanished, along with the kind of very un-hip stories Jim wrote. Apparently, a famous writer Jim knew discouraged him from writing; shame on her. 

This week I began re-reading a book I first read in 2004, right about the time the bookshelves in the top photo came into my life. The book is Rohinton Mistry’s masterpiece A Fine Balance, the Faber paperback edition.