Favorite Reads of 2024

It’s that time of year again when we do what used to be called making New Year’s Resolutions. Instead, I like to review the past year and reflect on what was accomplished, usually with gratitude. And especially it’s the time when I look back on my book list and share with you my favorite reads over the past year.

Today, “resolutions” might get termed updating our goals, implementing strategy changes, stepping into the new year with purpose, taking advantage of new opportunities, accepting challenges. My inbox is flooded with emails cheering on plans for 2025. Wow, I’m exhausted already.

“Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading—that is a good life.” –Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

My reckoning counts 85 books read last year, 25 of which were fiction. You might think that sounds exhausting, but as a writer, I read, read, read. It’s hard to pick favorite books in just five categories.

Some choices you’ll agree with. Some will surprise or even shock you. Others will no doubt make you laugh. Any way you look at it, my top picks of the year might offer you a nudge toward something outside of your usual fare.

Here, for what they’re worth, are the book highlights of 2024—my favorite reads in the genres I hang out in:

1. Devotional/Bible Study:

• Run With the Horses by Eugene Peterson. This category should have presented a much harder choice than it did, considering that titles by John Ortberg, Sam D. Kim, John Eldredge, and John Mark Comer also “competed” in the running. (Others too). But in the end, Eugene Peterson has few equals. His thoughtful and thought-provoking journey through the life of Jeremiah is one of his absolute bests.

“(The writings of Jeremiah) are not second-level works tossed off in a slovenly manner because they are for despised foreigners. (He) took as much care in proclaiming God’s word to people he would never see as he did in addressing the people he grew up with and lived with. He cared enough….to acquire thorough and detailed knowledge about them.” –Eugene Peterson, Run With the Horses

2. Personal Interest/Self-Care:

Here we have a three-way tie for favorite reads this year. That doesn’t happen often. Usually something stands out. But I enjoyed each of these three for such different reasons that I had to include them all.

• For information and education: 60 Ways to Keep Your Brain Sharp by Bonnie Beth Sparrman. Self-explanatory.
• For inspiration: The Stories We Tell, a (sort of) memoir by Joanna Gaines of Magnolia fame.

“A house becomes a home when it tells your story… Our homes can be filled with random, generic things or they can convey some of our most important truths. Truth, vulnerability, and courage can make even the most everyday, ordinary life tell an extraordinary story. I have become story-obsessed.” –Joanna Gaines, The Stories We Tell

• And just for fun: Collected by Fritz Karch and Rebecca Robertson. Here the sheer variety and playfulness of things collected fascinated me as a collector myself. (Remember my tins?) But swizzle sticks, anyone? Paper dolls, blue bandannas, Cracker Jack charms?

“I believe in having fun first, and along the way, if you teach people, if you influence people, well and good.” –Ray Bradbury

3. Writing Craft/Research:

• The Anatomy of Genres, by John Truby, surpassed all the rest of the numerous books I studied on the subject of writing this year. While it is really long and took me a couple of months to wade through, I learned so much that I’ll probably re-read it many times. Not only writers, but readers and movie fans as well, could profit from the insights into life, literature, and story here.

“What an astonishing thing a book is,” said Carl Sagan. “It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

4. General Interest/Nonfiction:

This broad category encompasses many genres: History, Travel, Biography, Memoir, Science. It’s my continuing education program. This year’s favorite reads:

• Marching Off the Map by Tim Elmore, a timely treatise on the challenges of teaching and relating to the Millennial generations.
• And A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle, a colorful, entertaining tale of the author’s first year as ex-pat living in southern France.

“I grew up in a small town, an out-of-the-way place that was of no consequence to anyone other than the people who lived there. No one traveled. We were isolated and out of touch. Yet I had a lively acquaintance with the great diversity of languages and customs, climate and terrain that the earth comprises… I got it in church. The missionary, not the media, gave us the global village.” –Eugene Peterson, Run With the Horses

5. Fiction:

• The Wishing Game by Meg Schaffer. Oh, how I love YA—among my favorite books in the world—and this wonderful story shimmered. An impoverished teacher who longs to adopt an orphaned boy, an eccentric children’s author and his irascible illustrator living on a secluded island, and all their dreams-come-true through a contest to win the final book. It’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with books instead of candy.

• And although you don’t believe me: Fairy Tale by—Maine celebrity Stephen King. Yes, I admitted that. I don’t read much—or make that any—horror, but this one is different. Like King’s 11/22/63 featuring time travel, Fairy Tale has a staircase portal to another world composed of a tangle of…famous fairy tales.

“It’s the stories of our childhood that make the deepest impressions and last the longest.” –Stephen King, Fairy Tale

I wish I could say that one of the four Christian fiction titles I read made it to the top. One skimmed close, maybe. Another was—well, never mind. I can’t say it was badly written, because it wasn’t, not really. It was just clichéd, shallow. A third was average in every way. Not much you can say about Book 3 in a 5-book series, anyway. Is there?

“You can tell the deepest truths with the lies of fiction.” –Isabel Allende

The fourth Christian writer wrote nothing remotely Christian. She told a good story—deep, lyrical, even hopeful—but offered no hope rooted in Christ. None. Sigh… Because I write in this genre, I suppose I’m more critical: But where are the winning books and favorite reads in Contemporary Inspirational Fiction?

What Else?

Otherwise in fiction, I read some of the next available books in my favorite series: Anne Perry’s Thomas and Charlotte Pitt Victorian mysteries, Ellis Peters’s Brother Cadfael medieval mysteries, and Katherine Hall Page’s Faith Fairchild catering cozies. I visited Paul Doiron’s game warden in Maine, Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache in Quebec, and Donna Leon’s Italian detective in Venice. Around the world in 85 books, you could say.

“Good people shine brighter in dark times.” –Stephen King, Fairy Tale

A discussion with one of my nieces this past summer enlightened me about the fantasy genre’s popularity with young people these days. Although I read and enjoy fantasy literature, I don’t write it, and I wondered why the teens gobble it up. Her simple answer: Because of everything bad going on in the world.

Despite the partying on New Year’s Eve, we all sense that a crisis approaches. Evil and disaster prowl just out of sight, closer than we’d like to believe. Beneath the light, mind-numbing entertainment lurk fear and uncertainty. Even at church, we tend to gravitate toward more social activities and less profound reflection, skipping anything that costs or provokes thought.

God bless her, I don’t think my niece and her peers are attempting to block out reality. In their favorite books, the kids aren’t seeking escape so much as they are pursuing a world where they feel they have a chance to right wrongs, solve problems, and play the hero.

“Since it is so likely that (children) will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise, you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.” –C.S. Lewis, On Stories

What About You?

What were your favorite reads in 2024? Thanks to a cousin’s recommendation, I dipped into Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta forensics series this year. So I hope you’ll share others with me. Think of it as a community lending library like the lakeside “birdhouse” in my niece’s Maine hometown. (Across the road from the Friday-night pizza place.) 🙂

Wouldn’t it be great to meet some book heroes from every walk of life?

Dear God, let us discover books where the world is worth saving and where we find hope in a Savior who can change every ending.

“We read to know we’re not alone.” ―William Nicholson, Shadowlands