My Reading Year (part three)

The third and final chapter of my oddly long and surprisingly fun (for me, anyway) review of the best books I read last year. Parts one and two are available for perusal, but I don’t think you need them to enjoy this one—it can be standalone if you prefer. Mark pointed out that it doesn’t really count as a “best” books list if I include so many, so I’ll try to narrow it down a bit when I finally get to the end.

Books for Young People
I don’t read a tonne in this category but I do the occasional long-distance readalong with my niece, and of these The Magic Misfits by Neil Patrick Harris is definitely my favourite this year. Yes, Doogie Howser wrote a book—a whole series, I guess, though I only read the first—and it’s quite charming. It’s about a ragtag group of kids solving crimes and becoming great friends in the bargain, and also learning how to do magic tricks. There are detailed descriptions of how to do the magic tricks interspersed with the chapters, which sets the book apart from other similar tales. Also just NPH’s general buoyancy and joy in the story. I listened to the audiobook, which he reads himself, and it truly is delightful. Of the other non-grown-up books I read this year, the best was probably Turtles All the Way Down by John Green. Green writes for teens, too old for my niece—this book came up in my life oddly. Mark is a big John Green fan despite not reading his books—he is a fan of the YouTube channel, which I’ve never seen (I’ve linked every other online thing in these posts but you’ll have to figure this out for yourself—I just don’t know what it is). Every now and then Mark mentions Green in conversation, something funny he said online , and this reminds me about the books, and I go read one. The novels are hit-and-miss for me, which is no shade on JG as I’m really not the target audience. Turtles is a very farfetched story that takes a lot of suspension of disbelief to get into, but once you’re there, the characters feel real and there’s a very detailed and compelling portrayal of obsessive-compulsive disorder. This novel got to me, for sure.

Novels
It’s taken a lot of preamble but novels were really most of what I read in 2024. I guess I mentioned them in a bunch of other categories. I was absolutely floored by the big sprawling lively mess of The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride and how it swirled out from just a couple characters to a whole community and history and adventure, and then swirled together for a thrilling ending. I picked up Split Tooth by Tanya Tagaq knowing nothing about it and for the first half didn’t know if it was a novel or short stories or a memoir or what and by the end was absolutely distraught with wonder it was so good (it’s a novel, I guess, if it has to have a genre). I normally say I’m platform agnostic but oh my gosh, if you can get the audiobook GET IT. One of the best I have ever heard, up there with Lincoln in the Bardo, though completely different. I blurbed Priya Ramsingh’s charming and insightful The Elevator and was delighted to see it emerge into the world this year. Emily Austin’s Interesting Facts about Space was a tough rendering of anxiety and generational challenges and awkward queer dating and SO funny. I had some hesitation about Tom Lake by Ann Patchett after the fact but the experience of reading it was a pure delight. I thought the film American Fiction was so good that the novel it was based on would have to be based on would have to be similar but Erasure by Percival Everett is very different and ALSO excellent. (I went on the read Everett’s James, though, and didn’t really like that one though, which puzzled me. My mom read it too and didn’t care for it either, but she pointed out that neither of us really liked Huckleberry Finn, the novel it is based on, so it stands to reason…) I was SO mad about Yellowface by RF Kuang but could not stop either reading or talking about it, which I think is a sort of rave review.

And that’s it! I read loads more books, of course, and some of those were quite good too (and some weren’t) but we cannot talk about every single thing. Which were the best? For a top five for the year, I would say

Unless by Carol Shields
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
Africa Is Not a Country by Dipo Faloyin
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
Last Woman by Carleigh Baker

Three novels, one short story collection, and one work of nonfiction—honestly, it could have gone any of a number of ways here. So many good books! While we’re talking reading, my friend Kerry wrote this on Ways to Read More in 2025 if you are interested in trying to squeeze a few more of these into your life this year. Always a worthwhile endeavour.

<3

RR