I read a lot again in 2024. Here’s what I’ve read. Some great books…
Ruskin Park: Sylvia, Me And The BBC – Rory Cellan-Jones
I found Ruskin Park a beautiful and moving portrayal of a much misunderstood single mother, Sylvia, whose motivations and struggles only came to light years after her death, when her loving son read the letters she’d left for him and decided to tell her story. This is such a compelling and loving book, expertly crafted by former BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, who sat on the letters for many years before finally starting the long journey of excavation that resulted in this wonderful story. My parents also met at the BBC, though my upbringing was very different to Rory’s. It was wonderful to have this inside and very evocative view of what life was like for the pioneers of radio and television. I bought this book for my mum and she loved it as much as I did.
Hamnet – Maggie O’Farrell
Not a book I’d usually pick up as I’m not really into historical fiction. But Hamnet was highly recommended by Kate Codrington so I thought I’d give it a go. I loved it so much I went to see the stage show of the story – not as good though! The book was truly sublime. Beautifully written, moving, other-worldly, draws you in and holds you captive. An imagined story of Shakespeare’s son called Hamnet who died in childhood, and not long after there was a rather famous play called Hamlet. I grew up on the Stratford Road in Birmingham and Shakespeare’s home was just down the road and an every present fixture of my childhood. So it was especially evocative for me. Highly recommended!
The Whalebone Theatre – Joanna Quinn
Another book I wouldn’t have naturally turned to but I saw The Whalebone Theatre again highly recommended. It sat on my Kindle for a while before I got started as so many of my books do! Very long, very detailed, lots of characters to get attached to. I’d never read a family saga before so this was very much a new genre for me. I loved it. I didn’t appreciate it enough early on, I don’t think, but eventually I relaxed into the beautiful writing and enjoyed it for its own sake as well as relishing the story itself. Absolutely fantastic and I was sad to get to the end. Hard to believe it was a debut novel. I listened to a lot of it on my walks which was good, but I think it was almost better read than listened to.
Breath, Eyes, Memory – Edwidge Danticat
Breath, Eyes, Memory was written in 1994 but it didn’t come across my radar till February 2024 at book club. At the time it was hailed as a stunning literary debut by a very young author. It’s a beautiful and shocking book about the women in Haiti, their struggles and conflicts, their fortitude and resilience. It tells of the violence of their homeland and the difficulties of life as an immigrant to the US. I really enjoyed this and it was a window into a world I know little of.
The Warmth Of Other Suns: The Epic Story Of America’s Great Migration – Isabel Wilkerson
This is a glorious book and a Pulitzer Prize winner. Another one that had sat on my Kindle for several years after I heard about it on a podcast during the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s a spell-binding work of creative nonfiction following the personal stories of three people who participated in the great migration of the Black population from the American south to the north during the 20th century.
This book was such an eye-opener for me. I thought I knew quite a lot about the US having lived there for three years in my 30s. But I had no concept of just how very divided the north and the south were and how for a century after the end of the Civil War apartheid was still a fundamental part of the way the American south operated. This book really brought into perspective for me the current issues surrounding race relations, especially in the US.
This is a long book but well worth reading to understand more about man’s inhumanity to man. America may set itself up as the land of the free but life certainly wasn’t free for a huge proportion of its population until very late in the last century. Shocking and eye-opening. I part listened to this book on Spotify and was delighted to find that the narrator was the same voice actor as read Breath, Eyes, Memory.
Woman Of Valor – Lynne Golodner
This was a book written by my podcast guest and I was fascinated by it. I have always been fascinated by Judaism and especially by orthodox communities. I live very close to the Hasidic community in North London. I am fascinated by the way they live their lives, the clothes they wear, the way women cover their hair etc. I think the fascination may have started because my godmother was Jewish. I know that’s a contradiction in terms. But she promised to bring me up in the Christian faith!
This is a fascinating novel about a woman who, while ethnically Jewish, grew up pretty secular but embraced a very orthodox Jewish life. It takes us deep into the life of an orthodox Jewish woman and how that life is lived. While she never struggles with her faith, she does struggle with the community in which she has chosen to live. This book taught me so much about orthodox Jewish life and I found myself looking up words constantly as I was keen to understand their full meaning. This is beautifully written, very evocative and compelling.
Leaving – Roxana Robinson
This was a gripping and moving book about a couple who meet late in life and revisit the relationship they never properly ended in their youth. I was really caught by the story and ended up reading this very quickly. I struggled to put it down! It was an interesting look at issues surrounding adultery and the power children can hold to wreck their parents lives. At times I thought surely this can’t be happening now in 2024, but then I realized it was absolutely possible still. With much of it set in New York it was fun to be taken back to places I knew. It was refreshing to have a love story featuring older characters most certainly in their third act. Highly recommended.
The Anxious Generation: How The Great Rewiring Of Childhood Is Causing An Epidemic Of Mental Illness – Jonathan Haidt
I’ve long been concerned about the impact of smartphones on the very old and the young. This book is a must read for everyone, examining the terrible toll on the mental health of our young people caused by the now ubiquitous smartphone and the unfettered access that provides to social media. For too long we’ve accepted the changes in technology as something we have to live with and adapt to.
Jonathan Haidt presents the research and hard data showing how the combination of smartphones and open access to social media has done enormous damage to our youngsters. He provides ideas for how we as a society can do something about it. It’s absolutely time we did. I’m already much more conscious of my own smart phone and social media use. A powerful and thought-provoking read.
Against The Loveless World – Susan Abulhawa
This is a thought provoking and painful book about the Palestine experience over the last few decades. It follows the life of a young Palestinian woman as she narrates her life from her Israeli jail cell and how she ended up there. It’s a compelling and masterful work. It made me ask lots of questions and want to know more about what life has really been like for the Palestinians. We have such a very particular view presented in the Western media. This book challenged me on lots I did know about the situation and made me realise how much I don’t know. I found myself googling how much of the novel was based on fact – sadly too much! I found it a difficult, challenging, moving and shocking read. Highly recommended.
The Nickel Boys – Colson Whitehead
This is a very fine book by American writer Colson Whitehead who also wrote The Underground Railroad. It’s based on accounts of reform schools in America, this one particularly brutal and situated in the very racist south. It follows the fortunes of two boys, one who should never have been at a reform school in the first place, and the terrible violence and racism they encounter in Jim Crowe Florida, even though this is the 1960s. A book club choice. A powerful and disturbing story. But highly recommended.
Anxious People – Fredrik Backman
I don’t think a book has ever made me laugh as much as this one. I found it funny in its written form but when I moved to the audio version, listening on Spotify, I laughed even more. The narrator is perfect. I’m sure people thought I was a bit strange as I giggled to myself walking round the park. This was another book club book that I never would’ve discovered by myself.
That’s one reason I love book club! This was so much fun and so cleverly crafted and written. It’s a book about a bank robbery, a hostage situation, idiots, relationships and some rather anxious people. It kept me hooked from beginning to end and I miss it now it’s finished. Highly entertaining, lots of fun and laugh out loud funny. Written about a town in Sweden but it could really be anywhere. A fascinating exploration of insecurities, opportunities missed, preconceptions, love, acceptance and taking chances. Highly recommended.
Tomorrow, And Tomorrow, And Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin
Oh my goodness, how I loved this novel, set in the world of computer gaming. It sat on my Kindle for ages again. When I discovered it had been a (my) book club book, that raised it up the priority list. It’s not often I spend a day to finish a book, usually I read in the gaps, but I did for this one.
While I have never played a proper video game, it has long been a part of my life, both as a favored pursuit of my son and as the industry of my partner. I’ve never wanted to get too caught up in a game, to be honest. Too much else to do. And reading books is one of those activities that I prefer. But this book is just beautiful and taught me so much about the gaming world and the people who make games.
It was glorious and so cleverly written, compelling, atmospheric, moving, evocative and just the most perfect novel. Just as I wondered where it was going now, it would heap on further surprises and keep you enthralled right to the very last minute. It’s a story about love but not typical love. It’s a story about the angst of youth, the confusion of adulthood and making our way the best we can with the talents we have. Reading the author’s background after I finished the book made me realize how much she had drawn on her personal experience to build this incredible world. Go read it. As soon as you can! Highly recommended.
I enjoyed this book but I found it quite challenging. I think that’s because it’s such a mixture of writing styles and I’m just not used to that. But I like books that challenge me and where I experience something new. At times the lyricism in this book was really beautiful. And other times I got a bit confused by what the writer was trying to say. But it made me think and that’s always a good thing. Ocean Vuong is a poet and that’s ever present in this book. This is a letter from a son to a mother who can’t read. It describes the experience of being a Vietnamese immigrant to the US, an ancestral victim of war, and a victim of prejudice, both for being Vietnamese and for being gay. It feels very autobiographical and supremely heartfelt as a result. It’s a beautiful piece of writing overall and very thought-provoking. Highly recommended.
Blessings – Chukwuebuka Ibeh
This is a beautiful book about a Nigerian teenager coping with his realization that sexually he prefers boys to girls. The discovery of this disgusts his father, who then sends him away to a Christian boarding school. This is a personal coming of age story set against a background of discrimination in Nigeria and leading to a national vote to make our hero’s sexuality illegal. We are taken along on his profound journey of intense love and loneliness. This is beautifully written and very moving. A debut from an extremely talented young author. Highly recommended.
The Myth of Making It: A Workplace Reckoning – Samhita Mukhopadhyay
A fascinating look at the stories women have been told since the 1960s to the present, about how we should function in the world, and particularly the workplace. Samhita Mukhopadhyay looks critically at the history of workplace feminism, contrasting that with her own experience as a woman of color who doesn’t fit the norm. She investigates what’s really going on and how we can change the way work works for women. As she says: the Myth Of Making It is a call to action to redefine and reimagine work as we know it, a field guide and manifesto for all of us who are tired, searching for justice, and longing to be liberated from the oppressive group of hustle culture. Thought provoking.
Everything You Hoped You’d Never Need To Know About Bowel Cancer – Dr Anisha Patel
This is a brilliant, moving and deeply personal must-read book by Dr. Anisha Patel about her journey with stage three bowel cancer. I interviewed Dr. Anisha for my podcast and I read the book before interviewing her. But I recommend it for anyone to read because we all have experience of cancer in our lives, whether or not we personally suffer with it. Much of this book is an inspiring account of surviving the survival and coping with the emotional impacts of cancer. There are lessons here for everyone. Highly recommended.
The Culture Map – Erin Meyer
I’m fascinated by other cultures and I write about how people in different places respond to menopause and female aging in my book, Magnificent Midlife. It’s often very different but in the West we can get very caught up assuming that our way is the norm! The Culture Map was absolutely fascinating. It’s about the differences between cultures and how we interact with the world. Its premise is how to make global teams work, but it’s so interesting about cultural differences in general not just relative to work. If you like to travel or just want to know more about other cultures, this is a great read! Illuminating.
And Then She Fell – Alicia Elliott
This was the first book I have read about native American people and I found it very powerful. This was a book club read and the discussion we had around it was fascinating. There are so many issues and themes raised in this book. I knew only a little about indigenous communities in Canada, and reading a novel about this world was something new. This is a powerful look at how a young indigenous woman tries to assimilate into a white life having married a white academic who happens to be studying her people. It looks at the radical differences in perception between indigenous people and their white rulers, and how colonialism, religion and restrictions on their way of life have lead to greater incidence of alcohol and drugs, and mental illness. It looks at the generational trauma indigenous people carry and the impact this can have. The novel plays with timelines and explores the impact of spirits in the world. At its core is a profound representation of postpartum psychosis. I found this absolutely fascinating although at times it was not an easy read. I love books that open up new worlds to me and this one certainly did. Mesmerizing.
All Fours – Miranda July
This is a book unlike any I have ever read. I’m always interested in books written by midlife women about midlife women, and this is a fascinating look at one woman’s journey of self discovery as she finds herself in perimenopause. The 45-year-old narrator who seems, though fictional, to be remarkably like the author herself, embarks on a road trip from Los Angeles to New York, but stops half an hour in. She then embarks on a strange compulsive adventure, while maintaining the fiction to her husband, that she is still going to New York. This, as you might expect, changes the whole trajectory of her life. This is a complicated and quite challenging novel at times. I didn’t find it an easy read but I wanted to know what was going to happen and where our shero ended up, when she found her way through all the confusion. It seems to jump around all over the place! Perhaps that’s a perfect analogy of the perimenopause transition! And interesting read but at times somewhat baffling. Compelling.
Mr. Loverman: A Novel – Bernardine Evaristo
This is a fabulous book and my second by Bernadine Evaristo, having first read Girl, Woman, Other which is also great but very different. Mr Loverman is set very firmly in Hackney which is where I’ve lived for 20 years and the borough feels as much a character as all the other lovely ones. How does Bernadine write so convincingly in the voice of a 75 year old closeted gay man? That’s what I want to know! I watched the TV adaptation first on BBC iPlayer and then it was chosen for my book club for Black History Month. It’s a fabulous story so lovingly crafted by the author. It’s great on TV, in the written word and the audio version is fantastic too – the narrator seems to have captured all the characters perfectly. Highly recommended!
The Women – Kristin Hannah
I absolutely loved this book. I’d been putting off reading it because I knew that once I started, I would likely not be able to put it down, and that was the case. I listened to most of it on Audible and it was such a beautiful novel. It was a profoundly moving story about the women who served in Vietnam and whose existence was denied by so many for so long. These women were nurses and experienced the true horror of war even if they weren’t in direct combat. And even though they were veterans, being in the Army, Navy or Air Force, they were not allowed to access the support services available to male veterans when they came back. They also suffered terribly, as did so many of the veterans, coming back to a country that despised both the war and them. This is a very powerful book and taught me a lot about a period of American history that I didn’t know a huge amount about. I previously read The Four Winds by Kristen Hannah and loved that too. This was very different and as she says at the end of the book, it was many years in the writing, with an incredible amount of research done. It feels very authentic and real. Deeply moving. Highly recommended.
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
This is not a book I would normally have chosen but it was one of our book club reads. It’s also a lot older than most of the books I read, having been published in 1956. I came to it without knowing much of the background to it other than that it was a groundbreaking book in its time and that the author, James Baldwin, has been a contentious figure at times. I found this book captivating. But it also troubled me and seemed so sad. I was glad to intersperse it with happier books coming as it did shortly after Mr Loverman and Before The Distance Between Us. I can imagine that in 1956 portraying a gay relationship in Paris would have been very groundbreaking. I also understand that it received particular criticism at the time because the main characters are white and the author is black. This was apparently found to be very controversial, as much as the gay relationship. It is beautifully written and recreates Paris of the 1950s superbly well. It is a defining narrative about how fear stops us living our true lives and embracing and enjoying love that society deems unacceptable. This comes highly recommended but with the caveat that you might want something lighter ready to read after it. Beautiful.
The Distance Between Us – Maggie O’Farrell
This was another gem that had been sitting on my Kindle for ages. I don’t know how it arrived there. But I discovered that my book club had read it a couple of years back, so I plunged in. I have read Hamnet, also by Maggie O’Farrell and that was so very different. I am amazed that this author can write two such compelling but radically different books. But now I have discovered that she has other award-winning books set in a wide variety of situations. I loved this one. I found it so clever how the author moved around across continents and timelines and weaved an intricate and beautiful story throughout. Having lived in China and spent time in Hong Kong, I loved the sections of the book that were set there and they immediately made me feel at home in the narrative. It was easy to fall in love with the characters. I think this book can be described as a creative feast. I struggled to put it down which is always a great sign. Just wonderful.
That’s my list for 2024. My book of the year? I’m doing two this year, one non-fiction, The Anxious Generation, because it is such an important book and one fiction, The Women, because it was just so captivating and enthralling. Here’s to more great books!
You’ll find the books I read in 2023 here.
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