I didn’t read a whole bunch in 2024 but mostly the books were worth the time.
Why We Love Baseball by Joe Posnaski – Just the think to read when Spring Training seems like it will never get here.
Prequel by Rachel Maddow – The story of the German infiltration of the US Congress and the mass movement to side with Germany in the years approaching WWII.
Blood Memory by David Duncan and Ken Burns – An account of the near elimination of the American bison, known more familiarly as the buffalo. Depressing as hell but worth the time.
Eat, Poop, and Die – How Animals Make Our World by Joe Roman – The circle of life involves pooping. Lots of pooping. Surprisingly interesting science for the masses.
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens – I never read this before. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the life of David as he struggles to advance from nothing to prosperity in the structured society of nineteenth century England. You gotta love a book with a creepy character named Uriah Heep.
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver – A reworking of Copperfield set in 1990s southwestern Virginia. Very impressive and an interesting prequel to my summer bike tour down thataway.
200 Hard New York Crosswords – The first 50 were pretty easy. By the end I was utterly defeated.
Blowout by Rachel Maddow – An account of how oil and gas interests became intertwined with geo-politics and the 2016 election.
Drift by Rachel Maddow – How Congress has ceded the authority to wage war to the White House. It touches the same themes as Michael Beschloss’s Presidents at War which I read a couple of years ago.
Over the Hills by David Lamb – A re-read of an account of a cross country bike trek by a middle aged, booze drinking, cig smoking, foreign correspondent in need of a break from his career.
How I Became Red Bike Guy by Joe Flood – My friend Joe had his 15 minutes of fame when he mocked some brown shirts on the national mall. This book covers related events and their kooky participants after their fearless leader lost the 2020 election.
Chip Wars by Chris Miller – Everything you wanted to know about the world of computer memory. It is mind boggling how everything we do, as people and as nations, is touched by incredibly sophisticated silicon chips.
Table for Two by Amor Towles – Short stories and a novella by one of my favorite authors. Just read all four of his books.
American Ramble by Neil King, Jr. – King hikes the back roads from DC to Manhattan and takes us along on a fascinating trek. Sadly, he died a few months ago.
Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann – Apparently white folks in Oklahoma and nearby Kansas were murderous scum who systematically killed Osage Indians for their oil rights. Astounding and true.
Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane – A murder drama based in Boston during the dawn of school desegregation in the 1970s.
North Woods by Daniel Mason – This novel follows events on a plot of land in western Massachusetts from the 17th century to present day. It sounds tedious but it’s a great book.
The Last Murder at the End of the World by Stuart Turton – The last survivors of a world wide catclysm race to solve a murder before they are subsumed by a lethal fog. I found the plot contrived and manipulative.
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney – A nice comeback from Rooney. She still has an incredible facility with intimate dialogue.
The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto – The mostly forgotten history of New Netherland, long forgotten when the British took control of America.
The Hunter by Tana French – The follow up to French’s The Searcher, A fish out of water story of a retired Chicago cop in rural northwestern Ireland. Grifters, crosses and double crosses, and murder.
Call for the Dead by John Le Carre – Le Carre’s first book and the introduction of secret agent George Smiley. It turns out that spies in the late 1950s were frumpy middle-aged divorced men. Not an Aston-Martin in sight.
In the Woods by Tana French. Who brutally killed the little girl who lived near the woods? Does the crime have anything to do with the disappearance of two other kids 20 years before? Twists and turns and red herrings galore, a fine debut by French.
The Likeness by Tana French. The follow-up to In the Woods. Another entertaining murder mystery by French but the plot is based on an utterly implausible premise.
Bike Tripping by Tom Cuthbertson. A re-read of a book published in 1972. My how bicycling has changed in my adult lifetime!
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan. A novella about a man who is encounters the evil of the Magdalen laundry in his small Irish town at Christmas time. Wonderful.
On Bicycles: A 200 Year History of Cycling in New York City by Evan Friss. This book tells the story of the wheel from the first short-lived velocipedes in 1819 to the boom in bike infrastructure and the Citibike bikeshare system in the 2010s and 2020s. A good primer for newbie bike advocates and a breezy and informative read.
A Few Spokes Shy of a Wheel 
I have the Towles, the French and the Lehane, but haven’t read any of them yet. Keegan is absolutely fabulous. I only discovered her this year and read “Antarctica” and another short story collection. Bicycling books noted. Thanks. A
When we were recently commenting back and forth about books and you mentioned Tana French, I couldn’t figure out why I had heard her name before. Turns out I OWN In the Woods. I haven’t read it yet, but I found this one years ago at a Little Free Library. Now that I am more of an avid reader I will absolutely finish it soon.
You already know Demon Copperhead is also in my possession, and will be read sometime this year.
I have a few of these you mentioned on my TBR list. Intermezzo is one of them. Admittedly I cannot stand Sally Rooney’s writing style, and the lack of quotation marks, but I have heard good things about this book.
Thanks for more ideas!
Yeah, the quotation mark thing his annoying. If you haven’t watched the Normal People miniseries, you should. Unreal chemistry between actors playing Connell and Marianne.
I read the book first, and was so put off by the writing style it tainted the story a bit for me. I didn’t hate the story, but I didn’t love it. Then I watched the show and I LOVED it. This is one of the few times I can think of where the show/movie adaptation was better than the book for me.
This was the second book to show/movie I watched with Paul Mescal and he was fantastic in both.