A list of novels, in randomized order, that I read and enjoyed in 2024.
2024 was the year I read ancient Greek/Roman mythology texts and modern retellings.
Lavinia is Ursula K. Le Guin’s take on the ancient mythological modern retelling back in 2008 way before this genre became cool.
Lavinia, the titular character of the novel, is a throwaway character from Virgil’s Aeneid — giving Le Guin ample room to expand on Lavinia’s life and to venture into a meta-fictional mode as well (think Final Fantasy VII Remake ).
2024 was the year I read a lot of gigantic books.
Mary Gentle’s masterpiece Ash - A Secret History is over one thousand one hundred pages of gold.
It’s got a frame narrative. It’s got an accurate-seeming portrayal of a mercenary captain taking their armor on and off for 97% of the book with her being thrust into high intensity combat for the rest of it. It’s got melodramatic (positive) recurring characters that always hit.
It’s awesome and I wish it wasn’t out of print.
2024 was the year I read books recommended by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
The Etched City is peak weird fantasy that reads like poetry. It’s rich with flowery metaphors and allusions and everything in between without feeling too purple.
2024 was the year I discovered Gene Wolfe’s work.
His skewed perspective POV characters provide a great lens through which to view his worlds from. Wolfe uses these POVs to make his stories dense with hidden meanings and allusions that are really enjoyable to find.
Wolfe’s novels aren’t puzzles — his work can’t be solved but you can think about them endlessly and I really like that.
2024 was the year I appreciated Gene Wolfe’s work.
I read not one but two of Wolfe’s bricks.
In the Wizard Knight, Wolfe chose to integrate myths across the world and time into one internally consistent hierarchical parallel universe with multiple different layers of reality, each existing above and below, within and without, each other one.
And, I love him for it.
If anyone else had authored a novel like the Wizard Knight, it would be their magnum opus.
But for Wolfe, it was Tuesday.
2024 was the year I read a bunch of Adrian Tchaikovsky novels.
Adrian Tchaikovsky’s favorite novel he’s written (at least as of 2023). He’s written a lot of great books but this one takes the cake for me too.
I love when Tchaikovsky writes stories from limited POVs — specifically, in this case, beings going through an expansion of their own sentience and sapience.
Dogs of War does exactly this and does it really well.
2024 was the year that I finally read some of Iain Banks’s Culture novels.
It only took me 15 years of wanting to but never getting around to it.
The Culture series’s premise (a far future humanity ruled by sentient and benevolent AI) allows Banks to play with big philosophical ideas in a consistently entertaining and thought-provoking way.
Of the Culture novels I’ve read, the Player of Games is the easiest to recommend as a place to start for those unfamiliar with the series and it is my favorite by far so far.
2024 was the year I discovered comic books.
Alejandro Jodorowsky’s story combined with Mœbius’s art in the Incal is magnificent.
The breakneck pace of the story combined with the scope, scale and wildness of both the art and the story made for an epic reading experience that I’m unlikely to forget anytime soon.
2024 was the year I discovered the Tournament of Books, specifically the Long List.
Glorious Exploits was one of many books that appeared on the Long List that surprised the hell out of me.
It reads like a historical (~400 BCE) mockumentary following two out of work Sicilian potters trying to put on a play by Euripides without any of the skills or material required to do it properly.
Watching them try to do it anyway is both tragic and comic — in many ways, mimicking the Greek plays the text is referring to.
2024 was the year I read critically acclaimed books.
Chain-Gang All-Stars features death row inmates fighting each other in gladiatorial combat for the entertainment of the masses.
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah uses this science fictional premise to explore real world issues surrounding the American prison-industrial-complex and, more broadly, systemic racism and oppression in the US.
It both makes you think and it’s entertaining AF.
2024 was the year I returned to Stephen King’s work.
Stephen King’s still got it.
There’s a dome that appears on top of an American town that stops anything from passing through it.
This creates a pressure cooker of sorts in the town that King leverages to construct the most entertaining roller coaster ride of a book I’ve read all year.
Honorable mentions: ¶
2024 was the year I read a bunch of Adrian Tchaikovsky novels (Part 2).
Service Model feels likes a spiritual successor to Dogs Of War (Adrian Tchaikovsky) which is my favorite Adrian Tchaikovsky novel but Service Model is quickly becoming my new favorite of his.
I’m almost all the way through it but not quite — it doesn’t feel right putting it on my 2024 novels of the year list if I haven’t finished it yet. Maybe next year?
Conclusion ¶
2024 was a great year for me reading-wise.
I read 94 books in 2024 which is more than the 77 books I read in 2023 and much more than the 29 books I read in 2022.
I wrote ~35k words about the books I’ve read in 2024 (compared to ~16k words in 2023 and only ~5k words in 2022).
NB: these numbers are inflated because they include words in quotes pulled from the text — it is what is.
Of the novels that I finished, I rated:
- 44 books with a 5 star rating.
- 27 books with a 4 star rating.
- 11 books with a 3 star rating.
- 9 books with a 2 star rating.
- 2 books with a 1 star rating.
- A Desolation Called Peace (Arkady Martine) is a horrible follow up to A Memory Called Empire (Arkady Martine) — the sequel was clearly rushed out the door to seize on the hype surrounding the first book and it makes me mad because I can see how interesting this novel could have been with a lot more time in the oven.
- Royal Blood (Alejandro Jodorowsky) is so heinous — Jodorowsky takes big swings, I love him for it, but he swinged right off his rocking chair on this one.
I rarely finish books that I hate which skews the numbers but I definitely give too many books 5 star ratings.
My average rating is 4.1 which seems excessive.
I read 6 books with a friend (the buddy read) in 2024. I get so much out of this kind of reading experience that I’d love to be able to do it more.
In 2025, I’d like to become a better buddy reader — by taking better notes, being a better listener and bringing up more interesting topics to discuss. I’d also like to find more people to do buddy reads with.
That’s about it nerdy number-wise.
I feel a little shame about my backlog so I’m not going to count how many books I’ve got sitting on my shelf waiting to be read.
But given my pace, I feel confident that I’ll be able to get to most of them in 2025. If I don’t that’s alright — this isn’t a race, it’s just one part of the endurance run that is my life.
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