My Favourite Books of 2024

One Day by David Nicholls

This was recommended to me by writer friends when I said I was on the search for books in which each chapter was set in a different year. One Day was mentioned and as soon as I started reading it I was taken back to my university days. I felt like I really knew the characters by the end of the book, and I was surprised (and saddened) by the ending. Nicholls is a wonderful storyteller.

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Hold On To Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté

This is an incredibly powerful book and I’d recommend every parent, or anyone with even a passing care about the society we live in, to read it. The authors’ central concept is that of peer orientation – whereby children and teenagers prematurely detach from their parents and orient themselves towards their peers (often with disastrous consequences). Although I was already fairly knowledgeable about the benefits of attachment parenting, this book really made me understand and put into context the way I see many teenagers behaving today. I was also particularly interested in the section about the way smartphones and social media are keeping our children in virtually constant contact with each other, once again skewing the natural instincts of children to stay close to and learn from their parents and grandparents. It certainly strengthened my resolve to keep devices out of our family life as much as possible, and for all of us to continue eating dinner together for as long as we are able to.

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Swimmer by Bill Broady

I adore any kind of writing about water and swimming, and being a fan of John Cheever’s excellent short story, ‘The Swimmer’ when I discovered a novella called Swimmer by Bill Broady I knew I had to read it. And I’m so glad I did. The prose is exquisite and the narrative compelling (even though it’s written in second person) and I loved every page of it. I’m just surprised it hasn’t won a whole raft of awards because I think it’s outstanding.

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Treatises on Dust by Timothy J. Jarvis

I was drawn to this collection of short stories because of its gorgeous cover, and the contents were just as weird and wonderful as the cover art. I was really impressed by how thematically coherent the whole collection is, and Jarvis’s lyrical prose is a joy to read. I found some of the imagery to be incredibly striking and I will definitely be seeking out more of Jarvis’s writing in the future.

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Inverted World by Christopher Priest

My son and I both read this, and we were fascinated by how the world looked, so much so that we kept breaking off from the novel to draw sketches of what we thought an infinite planet in a finite universe might look like… I won’t spoil the plot, but I will say this: if you enjoy deeply imaginative SF you will love this!

My son’s Blender image of the inverted world:

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A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore, Tehanu, by Ursula K. Le Guin

When I read these books with my son, a part of me was sad that I never got to read them when I was young – I know I would’ve adored them. However, as an adult and a writer, I am better able to appreciate Le Guin’s craft and the Jungian nature of the stories. What a gift to the world these books are.

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Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel

There’s just something about Mandel’s writing that makes me feel so… relaxed. As though I can ease into it as easily and pleasurably as if it were a bubble bath. And this novel, being about time travel, was most definitely my cup of tea. I read it in the period between Christmas and New Year, when I was feeling a bit sorry for myself as I’d been ill with a cold and cough over Christmas, and I really do think it was the perfect medicine.

Here’s to discovering and reading more wonderful books in 2025!