If you had told me at the start of 2024 that I would read 122 books, I would have laughed. Sure, I read 10 books per month in 2023 but it took a herculean effort. I was convinced it was a record I couldn’t sustain, much less beat. Well, here we are. Last year has officially been my most successful reading year ever.
I attribute my reading record to three factors. First, I continued to lean heavily on audiobooks. Like in 2023, I listened to approximately 40% of the books I finished. This year’s audiobooks were nearly twice as long on average—Barbara Streisand’s memoir was 40 hours long!—BUT they had much better narrators. Wil Wheaton’s narration of John Scalzi’s “Starter Villain” was a standout performance, perfectly complementing an incredible plot.
Another factor was that I didn’t force myself to power through trilogies if I didn’t feel like it. “Wool” and “The Housemaid” were two great reads that I comfortably left hanging after the first of three books. The sequels didn’t look as promising and I have hundreds of other books that I am dying to read. Ain’t nobody got time for subpar stories.
Last but not least, I’ve gotten better at selecting books. One big lesson I learned this year is that President Obama and I have completely opposite taste in books. I read three recommendations from his reading lists—”Overstory,” “Trust,” and “Intermezzo”—and I did not enjoy them. “Intermezzo” was the biggest surprise because it was written by Sally Rooney, one of my favorite authors. I will be staying clear from books he recommends for the foreseeable future. Instead, I will trust my network. They recommended my favorite books this year, including my top three: “Beautyland,” “Project Hail Mary,” and “The Impossible Fortress.”
As always, the full list of books I finished this year is below in order of completion. Those I loved and highly recommend are shown in bold. Those with an (A) were audiobooks. The ones marked with an asterisk were the monthly selections for my Miami-based book club, The Booze and Books Club.
A sincere thanks to everyone who contributed recommendations to my 2024 reading journey! What were your favorite books you read last year? Leave me a comment below. I’d love to consider them for 2025.
Every Book I Read in 2024
- “Live Your Life” by Amanda and Anna Kloots (A)
- “Quietly Hostile” by Samantha Irby (A)
- “Silo Series Book One: Wool” by Hugh Howey
- “We All Want Impossible Things” by Catherine Newman
- “Olga Dies Dreaming” by Xochitl Gonzalez
- “Empire of Pain” by Patrick Radden Keefe (A)
- “The Guest” by Emma Cline
- “The Rachel Incident” by Caroline O’Donoghue (A)
- “The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride*
- “Really Good, Actually” by Monica Heisey
- “El Viento Conoce Mi Nombre” by Isabel Allende
- “The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle” by Stuart Turton
- “Good Material” by Dolly Alderton
- “Come & Get It” by Kiley Reid*
- “My Name is Barbra” by Barbra Streisand (A)
- “The Bomber Mafia” by Malcolm Gladwell (A)
- “The School for Good Mothers” by Jessamine Chan
- “Wellness” by Nathan Hill
- “The Museum of Ordinary People” by Mike Gayle (A)
- “Surrounded by Idiots” by Thomas Erikson
- “Beautyland” by Marie-Helene Bertino*
- “Grief Is For People” by Sloane Crosley
- “Trust” by Hernan Diaz (A)
- “All Marketers Tell Stories” by Seth Godin
- “All Things Aside” by Iliza Shlesinger (A)
- “The Psychology of Money” by Morgan House (A)
- “One in a Millennial” by Kate Kennedy (A)
- “Martyr!” by Kacey Akbar
- “That Was Then, This Is Now” by S.E. Hinton
- “Table for Two” by Amor Towles*
- “The Women” by Kristin Hannah
- “The Overstory” by Richard Powers (A)
- “Great and Precious Things” by Rebecca Yarros (A)
- “The Art of Thinking Clearly” by Rolf Dobelli
- “Before The Coffee Gets Cold” by Toshikazu Kawaguchi (A)
- “The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles
- “Send Me” by Marty Skovlund and Joe Kent (A)
- “Cut and Thirst” by Margaret Atwood (A)
- “Community Board” by Tara Conklin
- “The Humans” by Matt Haig
- “Hideaway” by Dean Koontz
- “The Ministry of Time” by Kalinne Bradley
- “Memory Piece” by Lisa Ko*
- “West with Giraffes” by Lynda Rutledge (A)
- “Call Me By Your Name” by Andre Aciman
- “Pecho Frio” by Jaime Bayly
- “All Fours” by Miranda July*
- “Unreasonable Hospitality” by Will Guidara (A)
- “The New One Minute Manager” by Spencer Johnson and Ken Blanchard (A)
- “Please Stop Trying to Leave Me” by Alana Saab
- “The Paris Novel” by Ruth Reichl*
- “Anthem” by Ayn Rand
- “The Housemaid” by Freida McFadden
- “Running with Scissors” by Augusten Burroughs (A)
- “How to be Eaten” by Maria Adelmann
- “Love Between Equals” by Polly Young-Eisendrath (A)
- “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles
- “Circe” by Madeline Miller
- “The Nix” by Nathan Hill (A)
- “Inside Voice” by Lake Bell (A)
- “North Woods” by Daniel Mason (A)
- “How to Decide” by Annie Duke (A)
- “Long Island Compromise” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner*
- “Get Honest or Die Lying” by Charlamagne Tha God (A)
- “Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism” by Amanda Montell (A)
- “Dark Matter” by Blake Crouch
- “James” by Percival Everett (A)
- “101 Essays That Will Change the Way You Think” by Brianna Wiest (A)
- “Youthjuice” by E.K. Sathue
- “Lady Tan’s Circle of Women” by Lisa See
- “The Myth of Sisyphus” by Albert Camus
- “How to Hide an Empire” by Daniel Immerwahr (A)
- “The Fury” by Alex Michaelides
- “Fates and Furies” by Lauren Groff
- “Rich AF” by Vivian Tu
- “The Nightingale” by Kristin Hannah (A)
- “My Year of Rest of Relaxation” by Ottessa Moshfegh
- “Talking as Fast as I Can” by Lauren Graham (A)
- “Tell Me Lies” by Carola Lovering (A)
- “This Is Going to Hurt” by Adam Kay (A)
- “The Life Impossible” by Matt Haig*
- “Ghosts” by Dolly Alderton
- “Lies My Teacher Told Me” by James W. Loewen (A)
- “Project Hail Mary” by Andy Weir
- “The Courage to Be Disliked” by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga (A)
- “The Sequel” by Jean Hanff Korelitz*
- “We Are Experiencing a Slight Delay” by Gary Janetti (A)
- “Revenge of the Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell (A)
- “The Girls” by Emma Cline
- “The Last One at the Wedding” by Jeson Rekulak*
- “Stop Saving the Planet!: An Environmentalist Manifesto” by Jenny Price
- “The Ministry of the Future” by Kim Stanley Robinson (A)
- “How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth” by Meg Bowles, Catherine Burns, Jenifer Hixson, Sarah Austin Jenness, Kate Tellers, Padma Lakshmi (Foreword) and Chenjerai Kumanyika (Introduction)
- “What I Ate in One Year” by Stanley Tucci (A)
- “The Husbands” by Holly Gramazio
- “My Murder” by Katie Williams
- “I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself” by Glynnis MacNicol (A)
- “The Fault In Our Stars” by John Green
- “Interesting Facts About Space” by Emily Austin
- “The Ride of a Lifetime” by Robert Iger (A)
- “Dinner with the President: Food, Politics, and a History of Breaking Bread at the White House” by Alex Prud’Homme
- “State of Paradise” by Laura Van Den Berg
- “Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom
- “Rosewater” by Maziar Bahari and Aimee Molloy (A)
- “Intermezzo” by Sally Rooney
- “The Anthropocene Reviewed” by John Green (A)
- “Go Set A Watchman” by Harper Lee
- “Ambition Monster” by Jennifer Romolini (A)
- “Book of Extraordinary Tragedies” by Joe Meno
- “The Impossible Fortress” by Jason Rekulak
- “Save Me the Plums” by Ruth Reichl (A)
- “The Wedding People” by Alison Espach*
- “Quit” by Annie Duke (A)
- “In My Time of Dying” by Sebastian Junger
- “The Song of Achilles” by Madeline Miller
- “Acts of Desperation” by Megan Nolan
- “The Heiress” by Rachel Hawkins
- “Starter Villain” by John Scalzi (A)
- “Tell Me Everything” by Elizabeth Strout
- “En Agosto Nos Vemos” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- “The Invisible Man” by H.G. Wells (A)
- “What The CEO Wants You to Know” by Ram Charan
Hi, I'm Margarita. 