Last year I shared my favorite reads from 2023. It was one of my most read blog posts, so I decided to do the same again. One of my goals for this third chapter of my career was to make more time for reading, and this proved to be a record-breaking reading year for me. Including audio books, I read almost 100 books! (Thank goodness for audio books.)
I was able to quickly choose my top 20, but it proved nearly impossible to narrow it down further. Instead I decided to focus on ten lesser-known titles that I think are likely to appeal to you, dear reader.
While on vacation in western Massachusetts last summer, I happened upon a re-issue of a delightful title by the late writer May Sarton. The Fur Person tells the story of a cat’s adoption by two older ladies from the point of view of the cat. Cats are inscrutable animals, and we’ll never know for sure what they are thinking, but Sarton makes a believable attempt to get inside the feline mind. This is a short and heart-warming read. As some of you know from social media, I lost my Fur Person just before Christmas, so this title is especially dear to me this year.
I can’t for the life of me remember how Andrea Carlisle’s There Was An Old Woman came across my radar screen, but it was the best thing I read on aging this year. (And readers know that because of my book project, I read a lot about aging.) The subtitle is a pretty good description of the content: “Reflections on These Strange, Surprising, Shining Years.” Carlisle is a writer and editor who has spent the last 40 years living on a houseboat in Oregon. Her thoughtful essays on the joys and challenges of growing older include reflections ranging from what it means to be the “keeper of the family artifacts” to the lamentable reality that older women become largely invisible in our culture to the things Carlisle learned from caring for her own mother in her final decade. Because it was published by a university press (with a limited marketing budget), this book is not as well-known as it should be.
In the realm of personal development, I recommend two titles: Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away by Annie Duke and Bruce Feiler’s The Search: Finding Meaningful Work in a Post-Career World. Duke’s thoroughly-researched book makes the case that knowing when to quit is one of our most important life skills. The Search is packed with examples of people who have created their own road map to meaningful work in our current world where career paths are no longer linear or clearly defined.
Two books on climate change stretched my mind this year. The first was a novel, Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy. I wrote last month about the power of reading in community. One of the benefits of book clubs, I noted, was that they nudge us to read things we might not otherwise choose. This was one of those books for me. Set in an unspecified future world where thousands of species have gone extinct due to climate change, the book traces a biologist’s pursuit of the last surviving Arctic Terns as well as her deeply painful personal journey. Franny, the protagonist in the novel, follows the terns all the way to the Antarctic which is the link to my other favorite book on climate change. Elizabeth Rush’s book The Quickening: Antarctica, Motherhood, and Cultivating Hope in a Warming World, chronicles her journey on a scientific research vessel bound for the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. As she works alongside dedicated scientists seeking to understand the scope and pace of ice melt in Antarctica and its implications for our world, she also contemplates whether to start a family in the face of our uncertain future.
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin is not an overlooked book, but it is a timely one. Published in 1963, it probes the painful consequences of racial injustice for all Americans. In some ways, its message is just as urgent as it was sixty years ago.
I loved Katherine May’s book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, so I was not surprised that I also loved her earlier book The Electricity of Every Living Thing. In it, she charts her discovery—well into adulthood—that she was neurodivergent. As she embarks on a project to explore several coastal hiking paths in her native England, May explores the ways in which her atypical brain had shaped her atypical responses to the challenges of everyday life and how she made peace with herself.
Crystal Wilkinson’s Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts is a lyrical celebration of African-American women and their work to sustain generations of family through raising and cooking food. The book includes recipes, but it is not a cookbook. Rather it is full of family culinary stories. This book deserves a wide readership.
Since I’m a historian, it wouldn’t be fitting to close this list without including at least one historical title. I listened to Jared Cohen’s Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House on audiobook. It’s a fascinating exploration of what it means to build a purposeful life after leaving the most powerful job in the world. I knew a lot about several of these presidents, but I also learned a great deal. One of the presidents he features is Jimmy Carter who we lost in the waning days of 2024.