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Tuesday, December 17, 2024

Beat Books of 2024

These year-end lists reflects the things I have enjoyed reading apart from evaluation and awards committees, and, in the age of AI, it really highlights the value of individual curation. Does anyone else have my exact same taste -- middlebrow, thriller, Anglophile being some commonalities? Maybe not, but these are the sorts of books I recommend whole-heartedly to friends and colleagues.

Long Island Compromise (2024) by Taffy Brodesser-Akner

This was my book of the year, and it may be my book of the decade, in that (spoiler!) I am trying to embrace Carl Fletcher's giddy dying realization that every other day of his life he was not being kidnapped. I am a fangirl.

Good Fortune (2023) by C.K. Chau

There is little I love as much as a solid Austen re-telling, this one is set in early-oughts Manhattan's Chinatown, with winning Elizabeth and Darcys.

Angolophilia

The Other Half (2023) by Charlotte Vassell

The In Crowd (2024) by Charlotte Vassell

These two are the first of, I really hope, a whole series featuring the ambiguously positioned DI Caius Beauchamp, that read like procedurals but are concerned with the upper crust. So much froth, class intrigue, and a lovely overlap of milieu between the first and second books.

Whips (2023) by Cleo Watson

I am so thrilled about the Rivals-associated Jilly Cooper revival, and this is a great, slightly naughty read if you are out of Rutshire novels. Young women finding their way in the world, including Westminster and the City.

Wives Like Us (2024) by Plum Sykes

Sykes' riotous take on social-climbing in the Cotswalds is full of name dropping and designer labels, but I think the inter-group politics holds in almost any community.

Past-Present-Past

Same as It Ever Was (2024) by Claire Lombardo

The Chicago suburbs are the backdrop for this novel about two women's lapsed friendship, which rings true in both past and present.

School Days (2022) by Jonathan Galassi

A boarding school book that follows classmates through a "me too"-type case decades after the fact, with strong characterization and interesting, never predictable twists and turns.

Un-real Estate

An obsession with house holding punctuates some 2024 favorites.

Caledonian Road (2024) by Andrew O’Hagen

The protagonist is a high profile writer with lots of outgoings and a sitting tenant, in stark contrast to his son, a globetrotting DJ. The post-covid particulars and gentrification make for something that feels really of the moment.

Come and Get It (2024) by Kiley Reid

Millie, like so many of my favorites this year, is a little adrift, working as an RA at the University of Arkansas, where she meets a visiting professor who uses her access to study the college girls' rituals and expenditures (which make me worry it won't age very well -- already, inflation has upended many of the references). All Millie really wants is a little house in Fayetteville, and to keep her job with the university. This sophomore effort is super-strong, and it is lovely to read something so deeply place-based that is not about Manhattan or London.

Entitlement (2024) by Rumaan Alam

Alam's Brooke is one of those people who lives in the orbit of the wealthy without being particularly well-resourced herself. When she becomes the protege of a philanthropic millionaire, she hopes to effect change, but things are never that easy. With one of those ambiguous endings English teachers love.

Royal-adjacent

Murder in Mustique (2020) by Anne Glenconner

Anne Glenconner's own story is fascinating, and this mystery is informed by her own experience as very 1970s hostess to royalty and the glitterati on one of the most exclusive, if undeveloped, of Carribean islands. Wonderfully atmospheric.

A Haunting at Holkham (2022) by Anne Glenconner

Holkham is Glenconner's family stately home, and this mystery is set in wartime, with a titled young woman returning a familiar place now functioning as a military installation. Fans of Downton will love it.

A Most Intriguing Lady (2023) by Sarah Ferguson

Sarah, the Duchess of York, channels a Victorian-era Dorothy Sayers in this novel about a sleuthing Duke's daughter. Fun.

Thrillers

Swiped (2024) by L.M. Chilton

An app-based dating-turned-killing spree based around a coffee van, with a British seaside setting. When Gwen becomes the suspect after her online matches are killed, she takes things into her own hands.

The Guest (2024) by B.A. Paris

Two couples' long-standing friendship is upended when one couple splits over the revelation of an affair and an illegitimate child. A story of secrets and lies, where no one is completely innocent.

The Last Word (2024) by Elly Griffiths

The third of Griffith's Harbinder Kaur novels, and the supporting Brighton-based characters of Edwin and Natalka steal their scenes. A solid procedural with a literary bent, centered around a literary retreat and a string of authorial murders.

Next of Kin (2021) by Kia Abdullah

I had not read Abdullah until Those People Next Door (2023), and her plotting is strong, but this one in particular stuck with me. Two sisters share a criminal case, a genetic disorder, and jealously and avarice.

Nonfiction with voice

Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up (2024) by Abigail Shrier

Sbrier's topics may be controversial, but her research and writing are impeccable. This one tackles the industry that has become mental health, and asks some salient questions, especially about whether we are pathologizing young people through mindfulness and social emotional learning.

The Upstairs Delicatessen: On Eating, Reading, Reading About Eating, and Eating While Reading (2023) by Dwight Garner

Garner's textured autobiography is studded with incredible moments of both food and books, and his low-key recollections reveal his own writing talent. His Southern upbringing, his travails, his modesty are just lovely. This is one I found in last year's Best of lists...

The Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers from Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta--and Then Got Written Out of History (2023) by Howell Raines

This is a life's work around the often-overlooked North Alabamian resistance to the confederacy, pulling together threads from every important work of Southern history I know. Raines does not really get the strange institutions that are archives, but his back-and-forth reckoning with the historical record is well done.

Erotic Vagrancy Everything about Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor (2023) by Roger Lewis

Kitty Kelly's The Last Star was the first celebrity biography I ever read, and it lead to a thorough preteen sacking of the genre at my public library. I read this after seeing the Sam Mendes's The Motive and The Cue, which stoked my interest, and it does such a thoughtful deep dive into a complicated relationship between two iconic and really interesting people, and the writing itself is glorious.

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Best Books of 2023

I wasn't sure how I was going to cobble this together. Since summer I have been busy reading for a big list, one of those without any real time or content limits, so it was hard to determine what to share here...

Well, I couldn't break the streak, so basically, this is what isn’t in contention over there... In addition to all that reading, this year, I luxuriated in everything read out loud by Julia Reed and finally got into the sagas of Penny Vincenzi. I also listened to procedurals by Helen H. Durrant and even the Marco Pierre White memoir, basically anything read by Tim Bentinck, who I have known for years as the solidly-Middle English David Archer (as well author of his own, very good biography).

What to Wear

The Kingdom of Prep: the inside story of the rise and “near” fall of J. Crew (2023) Maggie Bullock

Part archeology, part anthropology, all about what J. Crew represented in closets across America at the turn of this century.

Counterfeit (2022) Kirsten Chen

A fun, frothy novel about two former college roommates teaming up to undermine the luxury handbag industry.

Fabric: The hidden history of the material world (2021) Victoria Finlay

Finlay mixes memoir and her close study of fabric making around the world in this masterful volume. I can't wait to read her book on Colors.

Getting Out of Town

Tourists: How the British went abroad to find themselves (2022) Lucy Lethbridge

A glimpse into the centuries-old industry of going abroad and all that it has come to represent ad involve.

Travelers in the Third Reich: the rise of Fascism, 1919-1945 (2018) Julia Boyd

Of course people went there. Mines fascinating primary sources accounts of those who went to Germany during Hitler’s regime.

First Person Stories

Stash: my life in hiding (2023) Laura Cathcart Robbins

A standout memoir about addiction and recovery, with a surprising romance.

Dirtbag, Massachusetts: a confessional (2022) Isaac Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald’s semi-feral boyhood onwards, autodidactic response, and slough through the service industry are terrific fun to read about.

Odd boy out (2022) Gyles Brandreth

Gyles is a fixture on This Morning and in The Oldie; he is a true Renaissance man, and, after reading his wonderful biography full of gossip and name-dropping, I will never hear an Oscar Wilde reference or see a teddy bear without thinking of him.

Shifting the Frame

Becky (2023) by Sarah May

Thackeray’s Vanity Fair recast in frothy ‘90s English tabloid culture.

The family Chao (2022) Lam Samantha Chang

The Brother Karamazov in a midwestern ethnic restaurant, with siblings that feel like you know them.

Beware the woman: a novel (2023) Megan Abbott

In this expert gothic with a new bride held captive in a remote Upper Peninsula cabin, Abbott explodes many gendered tropes underpinning suspense.

The fraud (2023) Zadie Smith

Smith imagines the story behind Tichborne claimant, the long-lost heir that had Victorian England captivated, as engineered by his Caribbean manservant.

Some fiction, and one stranger than fiction

Love Marriage (2022) Monica Ali

Two young doctors look like the perfect couple, but the upcoming wedding throws both the traditional Muslim parents of the bride and the arty elite mother of the groom into chaos.

The List (2023) Yomi Adegoke

When a young influencer’s fiancé appears on a crowdsourced list of wrong-doers, it throws their relationship and realities into conflict.

Yellowface (2023) R.F. Kuang

Literary jealousy made manifest when a hot young author leaves an identity-rich manuscript behind.

Factory girls (2022) Michelle Gallen

Now-historical fiction amid textile workers at a factory in Northern Ireland includes 1990s interreligious conflict, juxtaposed with the lure of the broader world.

Wrong place, wrong time (2022) Gillian McAllister

Not usually a fan of things that play with timelines, but this Groundhog Day-esque book where a woman moves through time trying to understand the events that led to her son’s arrest was a treat.

Lucky girl: a novel (2023) by Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu

A coming-to-New York story about a young Kenyan student finding her very sweet way.

American pain: how a young felon and his ring of doctors unleashed America's deadliest drug epidemic (2016) John Temple

A fascinating true story about the Florida pill mills feeding the opioid epidemic, their unique corportate culture and their downfall.

See favorites from the past fourteen years below:

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Best Books of 2022

Remember how, when you made your crush a mixed tape, you included the name of the song and artist, but also what album the track came from? I miss that…#nostalgiaisdeadly
— laurelsnyder (@LaurelSnyder) December 1, 2022

Okay, this was a weird year. A lot more re-reading -- some Phyllis A. Whitney, lots of Jen Lancaster, Susan Isaacs, some of the late great Barbara Ehrenreich. And, let's face it, I spent a lot of time in the past. The 1980s, in particular, which is why the Snyder hashtag above, #nostalgiaisdeadly, resonated. I do feel like the arc bending towards justice gets a little longer every year, but that doesn't stop me reveling in some cultural nostalgia. And note that I am also including a bit more YA this go-round, since I am not reading for any awards requiring confidentiality....

All About the 1980s

Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of '80s and '90s Teen Fiction (2018)

Gabrielle Moss

Not unlike Grady Hendrix's Paperbacks from Hell on last year's list, this gorgeous volume collects some extraordinary cover art from a range of what-would-become YA books from past decades. A loving tribute to the books that made us.

Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall (2022)

Alexandra Lange

This book is one of the best things I've read about American sociology, consumerism, and change over time. While not strictly about the '80s, that decade factors heavily.

Red, White, and Whole (2021)

Rajani LaRocca

It's 1983, Reha's mother is sick, and this novel in verse explores her experiences, caught between cultures and working through those heady middle school friendships.

I Must Betray You (2022)

Ruta Sepetys

Sepetys explores Ceausescu's Romania, where the VCR is upending totalitarianism and young people are negotiating freedoms. Watch Chuck Norris Versus Communism afterwards.

Party Girls Die in Pearls (2017)

Plum Sykes

From the detailed descriptions of the '80s wardrobe to the silly in-group slang, I thoroughly adored this blast from the past wrapped around a mystery.

YA, YA (okay, and some MG)

Himawari House (2021)

Harmony Becker

This really well-executed graphic novel features a trio of teenagers finding their way in the world and exploring aspects of Japanese culture, with re-discovery of their own identities thrown into relief.

In the Wild Light (2021)

Jeff Zentner

Jeff Zentner has his finger on the pulse of the realities of the contemporary American South, even when you put those Southern kids in a Connecticut boarding school.

The City Beautiful (2021)

Aden Polydoros

This incredibly dark YA novel will take you into the White City that was the Chicago World's Fair, with precise period details and an entirely new sensibility. Fans of Daniel Kraus will love it.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club (2021)

Malinda Lo

I was in the middle of this one when it swept the ALA Youth Media awards in January. Historical, queer, romantic, complicated Asian identities, this book has so much going on and it still manages to be a page-turner.

The Tryout (2022)

Christina Soontornvat

A graphic novel about middle school with all the friendship drama and feels for your rabid Raina readers. I am already antsy for the sequel, which will be called The Squad…

African Town (2022)

Charles Waters and Irene Latham

An achievement of a novel in verse, told from alternating points of view, about the close-knit community founded by the last group of enslaved people brought to the United States. Carefully researched and masterfully executed, but funny and joyous, too.

A Sitting in St. James (2021)

Rita Williams-Garcia

A complicated family, a brutal place and time, and all sorts of personal agendas and generational vendettas make this novel absolutely Faulknerian. I dare most readers to even notice it is marketed as young adult.

Thrillers, Mysteries, a Little Romance

Apples Never Fall (2021)

Liane Moriarity

Back to vintage Moriarity, with characters who are so dimensional and stories that criss-cross in shocking moments of revelation. Here, four children attempt to figure out what has happened to their mother and what the young stranger who stayed in their home might have had to do with it. No one gets it right.

The Spies of Shilling Lane (2019)

Jennifer Ryan

A young woman disappears while doing espionage work during the Second World War. Her headstrong mother heads to London to find her, and finds a sweet happily-ever-after of her own in the process. Jennifer Ryan has a great body of work set in this era, but this was my favorite.

The It Girl (2022)

Ruth Ware

Again, as with the Sykes, back to Oxford, only a decade ago but somehow more distant because of all the inherent institutional anachronisms. A cast of characters that will remind you of people you knew in college.

Meet Me in London (2021)

Georgia Toffolo

I am not British, so I refuse to be thwarted by Toff's Tory leanings. This is the first in a series of four delightful linked romances, about a creative and an entrepreneur, and it's perfect for the holidays and for those who have not been abroad in too long.

The Last Party (2022)

Clare Mackintosh

A fun procedural set in a border community where locals are dealing with an influx of weekenders at a new resort. Lots of interesting characters and a wonderful ending that leaves you wondering just who really "did it."

The Heights (2022)

Louise Candlish

The observation of someone who shouldn't be there, from a distance, spiraling into obsession, is the perfect pandemic-era thriller, at once claustrophobic and voyeuristic.

The Maid (2022)

Nita Prose

The voice of a neurodivergent main character is so different, and the twists so very clever, it definitely made me think a thought or two. And can I mention how fun it is to read a book set in Canada?

The Rock Star in Seat 3A (2012)

Jill Kargman

After a re-watch of the whole of Odd Mom Out, I ripped through all Jill Kargman's books this year, because I am convinced we would be best friends in another universe. This was particularly fun and sexy, and full of the trademark Kargman side-eye.

Thirteen more years of best books: