To mark the end of the year, NewsBreaks and Information Today contributors are sharing the books they loved in 2024 and the books they are most looking forward to reading in 2025—whether for pleasure, education, or both. I hope this helps you find your next great read! —Brandi Scardilli, NewsBreaks and Information Today editor
In this U.S. presidential election year, I read two great political memoirs and then was lucky enough to attend live events with the authors: Hillary Clinton with Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Liberty and Doris Kearns Goodwin with An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s.
On the fiction side, I really enjoyed Rachel Khong’s Real Americans, Claire Lombardo’s Same As It Ever Was, and Elizabeth Strout’s Tell Me Everything. All three are multi-generational tales in which deeply-rooted secrets are revealed as the main characters grow and change and ultimately make peace with the past and find a new way forward. It was refreshing to keep ending on a hopeful note!
—Amy Affelt
My list from 2024 features works mainly about the past. The most eye-opening book of the year was Eden Undone: A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II by Abbott Kahler. You may not know the names Dr. Friedrich Ritter and Dore Strauch. The German couple left their spouses and headed off to a remote, unoccupied island in the Galapagos as German society was crumbling. It was very rough going, but there was just enough water to support a modest colony. The undoing of Eden was due to Ritter’s original sin—he couldn’t shut up about his idyllic life. A second couple arrived with their children and moved within shouting distance. A tense relationship ensued, but the families could work with each other in small doses. Then a European baroness arrived to build a luxury hotel (it was crude but did serve its purpose). With her two young lovers added to the mix, the island was on the verge of war. When shots were fired and the baroness disappeared, the list of suspects was pretty much everybody. Kahler has that deft touch to make history into a page-turning thriller. Halfway through the book, I found the island on Google Maps and retraced the scenes of the action.
Honorable mention goes to Marilyn Simon Rothstein for Who Loves You Best. A successful podiatrist living with her husband in Florida gets an invitation to visit the Berkshires for quality time with her granddaughter while her daughter goes off on a mysterious mission. Her idyllic time lasts about a day before strange revelations begin creeping up—and they are revealed like layers of an onion. This should have been the tale of two grandmothers, but there were three, and counting. Beyond the fine humor and lessons in Yiddish, the story takes a somewhat darker turn toward the end, but it all ends well for most of the characters.
In 2025, I am looking forward to reading Shots Heard Round the World: America, Britain, and Europe in the Revolutionary War by John Ferling. As the descendent of 16 Revolutionary War soldiers, I am always interested in this topic. Ferling will balance a history of the events in America with the political wrangling in Europe as France and Spain work to settle a score with Britain. They do it carefully to avoid being drawn into a new war with the British. As 2025 marks the 250th anniversary of the battles of Concord and Lexington, we may expect a generous supply of Revolutionary War titles in our libraries.
—Terry Ballard
2024
Usually, I have hater tendencies. I gave 13 books two stars or fewer this year. Yikes. But I could not abide with my fellow haters because despite popular opinion, I loved Men Have Called Her Crazy: A Memoir by Anna Marie Tendler. No, it’s not about John Mulaney, and the book is all the better for it. The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard blew my socks off. If you could know where you are 20 years from now, would you risk your present to find out? What Have You Done? by Shari Lapena was just as good a thriller as I hoped it would be. As DJ Khaled would say, “Anotha one!” Devrie Brynn Donalson spoke to me deeply in You’re Gonna Die Alone (& Other Excellent News). “How many of my soul’s desires did I yank out of my chest at the root because the wager for happiness was loss?” Who needs therapy when you have Devrie exposing you like that? Finally, The Age of Magical Overthinking: Notes on Modern Irrationality is another entry into the canon of greatest hits by Amanda Montell. Check out Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism as well if you’re unfamiliar with her work!
2025
On the thriller end, I can’t wait to read Nothing Ever Happens Here by Seraphina Nova Glass. A snowy Minnesota town with a healthy dose of suspense? Sign me up. What if you could pay someone to deliver bad news on your behalf? Elisabeth Dini launches her story with this conceit in Bearer of Bad News. John Green apparently decided to invade my brain and write about my favorite topic with Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection. Send it to me, Rachel! Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty Year Trail to Overnight Success will give me a much-needed dose of Jeff Hiller after Somebody Somewhere closes its final season this year (**commences sobbing**). And last but never least, Crossings: How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by Ben Goldfarb is a back catalog pick I want to get to in 2025 because I'm endlessly intrigued by the intersections of planning and our natural world. Nerd alert!
—Jessica Hilburn
In 2024, I was trying to finish writing my book, and leisure reading took a bit of a back seat. But I managed to keep up with the steady stream of books on artificial intelligence (AI) released this year.
My two top picks for this year are:
Another highlight of 2024 was spending several blissful hours in London’s famous brick-and-mortar outlets like Foyles and Waterstones. Nothing like flipping through the pages of several books before making your choice. Good to see these stores bustling in the age of online retail.
With my new book, A Short and Happy Guide to Artificial Intelligence for Lawyers, co-authored with professor James Cooper, hitting the shelves in November 2024, I hope to have more time in 2025 for reading.
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, Salman Rushdie’s new memoir after surviving an attempt to kill him in which he lost an eye, is on my to-read list. I am also looking forward to reading 2024 Nobel literature prize winner Han Kang’s works, starting with The Vegetarian.
I wish you all a happy 2025, filled with a lot of enjoyable reading.
—Kashyap Kompella
While I have looked at upcoming books to read 2025, I haven’t put those that look promising down on paper yet. (I guess this means I am feeling a bit listless as 2024 comes to an end.) However, I did read some interesting and worthwhile books this year and am going to highlight two.
The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, by Heather McGhee, came out in 2021. While the title was familiar due to all the press coverage it garnered, I would not have read it had it not been for the Social Justice book club I joined this spring at my church. While all of the books the group has discussed have been enlightening (and even spurred me to read others referenced by the authors of those books), this one stands out the most. In large part, this is due to the background of McGhee. Not only is she an economic and social policy expert, she also chairs the board of directors for the Color of Change, which, according to the book jacket, is “the nation’s largest online racial justice organization.”
In the 10 chapters of the book, which range from “An Old Story: The Zero-Sum Hierarchy” to “Never a Real Democracy” and “The Solidarity Dividend,” McGhee conveys a compelling story, weaving together historical events with personal narratives and statistics from reports she studied on a variety of subjects related to her overall theme: how too many people (particularly white people) in the U.S. think if others get more [fill in the blank], it means they get less. McGhee was so thorough, she often tracked down those who conducted the research to ask them follow-up questions to get an even better understanding of their findings.
McGhee’s engaging writing style enabled me to digest all the information she shared without getting a headache or brain freeze. That did not mean The Sum of Us was an easy read. It was hard to move through the pages to repeatedly see how many times BIPOC were denied rights, possessions, education, assistance, and funding for so many “reasons” that boiled down to skin color. The chapter about how public pools were shut down in towns across the country to keep Black children from using them left me dumbfounded and outraged. The rationale was basically, “If it means Black kids would be able to use the same pools in the summer as my kids, I’d rather have them all shut down so no one can swim in them.”
This quote from chapter 8, “The Same Sky,” may help us make sense of the 2024 presidential election outcome. As McGhee explains it, “For most of our history, the government was the racist. But many white people now believe, consciously or unconsciously, that the government has taken the other side and is now changing the ‘proper’ racial order through social spending, civil rights laws, and affirmative action. This makes the government untrustworthy. And so, racial resentment by whites and distrust of government are very highly correlated.”
McGhee shows us, through all the details and statistics and stories she connects, how when one of us does better, we all do better. It’s a simple concept that could literally change how different groups of people interact with and accept (if not embrace) each other as equally deserving of all the opportunities life has to offer, no matter where you live, what you believe, or what you look like.
The second book is one I actually did learn about from a “What to Read” article a month or so ago in The Philadelphia Inquirer. 54 Miles: A Novel piqued my interest both by its story arc—events leading up to and the walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge—and its author, Leonard Pitts Jr. I became acquainted with and a fan of Pitts on the op-ed pages of The Inquirer decades ago. (In the short bio at the end of the book, I learned that his journalism career spanned 40 years and that he was awarded the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary.) I think he and I actually had an email back-and-forth about one of his columns that I thought to be especially profound.
In this fictionalized account of what happened in and around Selma, Alabama, in the spring of 1965, Pitts, through compelling backstories of several characters who were either related through blood, marriage, or circumstance, made me feel like I was walking alongside them, watching as events, and their aftermaths, unfolded, sometimes eavesdropping on very private, heart-wrenching conversations. There were so many characters, it took me a few chapters to finally keep them all straight, but once I did, I had a hard time putting the book down each time I picked it up. I think I finished all 322 pages of it over a weekend. If you love a well-told story and want to get a more detailed, beyond-the-news account of how the walk first failed in a violent altercation between police and walkers but then triumphed weeks later, get a copy of 54 Miles.
—Lauree Padgett
I “read for the moment,” much like I watch movies. While I’m reading a book, I’m immersed in it but, relatively soon after I’m done, it’s gone from my memory. So, when I began to think about the best books I read in 2024, I had to look back on Goodreads to jog my memory!
I don’t give five stars readily on Goodreads. My process is something like this: Most books get a three because they’re just “okay,” sometimes, I like a book better than “okay,” but it’s not “one of the best” I’ve ever read, so I give it a four. Fives are reserved for books that really make an impact on me or that I keep thinking about. Sometimes, I’ll go back and change a four to a five because I keep thinking about a book.
I don’t give ones or twos because I don’t want to offend the writers or be unnecessarily negative. I’m a writer myself, so … if I really didn’t like a book, I just don’t rate it (although sometimes I forget to give a rating so no stars doesn’t necessarily mean I didn’t like a book).
Best Books I Read in 2024
Anyway, in looking back on the year, my five-star books were:
- A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara—I really loved, loved, loved this book. It was tragic and haunting and very well-written. The characters were very well-developed, especially the main character Willem. Really just a heartbreaking book, but I couldn’t put it down.
- All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker—This is one that I changed from a four-star to a five-star. I really enjoyed the book and couldn’t put it down; there were just a few things that “bugged” me, which I can’t share for fear of revealing spoilers.
- The Running Grave: A Cormoran Strike Novel—I really liked all of the Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling) books and can’t wait for more to come out. This one, though, really made an impact. I thought it was a very compelling plot with a lot of action and potential danger. I liked the cult aspect of it as well; I’ve always been kind of interested in (and scared of) cults, so I found the details here very interesting (and scary).
Once again this year, I’m feeling guilty because there are no business books on my list, just fiction. I really need to read more business books but, somehow, at the end of the day, I’m just ready to fade into some fiction!
Books I’m Looking Forward to in 2025
In 2025, I’m looking forward to some books that were recently released or that are coming out from authors I really like:
And I really need to commit to a few business books, so I’m thinking about:
—Linda Pophal
In 2024, the best novel I read was The Measure by Nikki Erlick. The world-building in this book is exquisite. Erlick dreamed up an entirely new society that emerges when mysterious boxes begin appearing on people’s doorsteps. Having multiple narrators whose stories intertwine can be tricky, but how the characters weaved in and out of each other’s lives was wholly satisfying—every chapter brought new connections and twists and turns that were at times deliciously soapy and at times melancholic, but always welcome. I am in awe of how well-plotted this book is. It also generated great conversation at my library book club due to its central question, “If you could learn exactly when you will die, would you want to know?”
When you call your novel One-Star Romance, you really have to write a five-star romance. And Laura Hankin did! I love a crackly, quirky rom-com, and this one kept the central couple apart for believable and relatable reasons while infusing the story with humor and warmth. There are also some very serious topics dealt with in this book that almost made me stop reading—I do not want real-life traumas in my escapist fiction—but I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did, because the ending made the hard parts worth reading.
The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life With Friendship at the Center by Rhaina Cohen reminds me of Rebecca Traister’s excellent All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, which I just reread this year. Like Traister, Cohen writes about her own life as a jumping-off point to talk about people who don’t live by the rigid rules our culture sets. It was lovely getting to know the people she interviewed and see the warmth of their friendships shine through the pages, all while Cohen is using research to back up her argument that we need to allow for friendships to be our most important relationships—not in place of, but in addition to, if applicable, romantic relationships. She shows how putting marriage at the center of society does more harm than good—and she’s married herself (as is Traister, FWIW). It’s really nice to read about all of the ways people have decided to walk through life together.
Viewfinder: A Memoir of Seeing and Being Seen by Jon M. Chu, the director of current box office smash Wicked, was an excellent account of growing up dreaming of making movies and then getting to achieve it—not without some bumps in the road. I did not expect a Hollywood memoir to make me tear up multiple times. Chu’s story (written with help from Jeremy McCarter) is so beautifully told. There is so much hope, heart, and good intentions in these pages. It’s very Hollywood inside baseball, but it’s not gossipy. Instead, Chu shares how lions of the industry such as Steven Spielberg and Steve Jobs have been kind to him. It’s wonderful to see him grow and change as a filmmaker throughout this book as he figures out what he has to offer the world. We experience his failures and his triumphs alongside him, and he is someone who is so easy to continue rooting for. The chapter where he tells his parents’ love story as if he’s making a movie about it is an absolute joy to read, and I loved that we got a full chapter of behind-the-scenes stories from Crazy Rich Asians. I was already a fan of Chu’s work, but this book cemented it.
Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of ’80s and ’90s Teen Fiction by Gabrielle Moss is the kind of book I think of when I think of Stephen King calling books uniquely portable magic. There is delight on every page of this wonderful history of young adult literature. First, it’s one of the most beautifully designed books I’ve ever read, with full-color covers of the books discussed (where even the ISBNs are legible), well-organized sections, and a tween sleepover design aesthetic. Second, it’s so funny. I really vibe with Moss’ sense of humor. Third, it’s a nostalgia-fest. I was constantly turning pages and exclaiming, “Oh my gosh, I remember that book!” (And then getting flooded with warm fuzzies.) A true gem for elder Millennials like myself!
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan was nothing like what I expected. I thought, when I finally decided to close this particular gap in my primary sources reading, that I’d be picking up a slim manifesto urging women to fight the power in 100 pages or less. I was wildly, wildly off base.
As a history major, I learned a lot about first-wave feminism in college, but what I know about second-wave feminism is mostly from pop culture and random interviews with Gloria Steinem. Given the decidedly mixed state of women’s rights in 2024, I wanted to finally read this, and I am so, so glad I did.
Here’s what surprised me:
- This thing is a brick. It’s 400-plus pages of meticulously researched journalism full of well-reasoned arguments. The fact that I’m surprised that women not only bought this gigantic tome, but read it cover to cover, betrays my own bias about the literacy levels and attention spans of ’60s housewives.
- Any good writer knows you have to look backward to go forward. I love that Friedan devotes an entire chapter to the women’s history movement all the way back to Seneca Falls.
- Friedan reads Sigmund Freud for filth, and it is glorious.
- The book features quotes from countless women. Friedan did years of interviews with hundreds of subjects who were living with the problem that has no name. I love that she gave the women so much room to shine, in their own words.
- There is a fantastic chapter on consumerism and how advertising creates a vicious cycle that traps women into cleaning nonstop. All of these products get invented to make housework easier, freeing up time, which makes women think they have to spend more time on extra chores nobody wants or needs to do. Friedan explains it much better than I ever could, and I was riveted.
- I love that Friedan so strongly advocated for women to take charge of their own sexual pleasure and focused on the importance of mutually satisfying sex lives for couples. I didn’t expect that in a published work in 1963. I thought maybe housewives whispered to their friends about it, but it’s right there in black and white, threaded throughout the entire text as a major throughline. No wonder women loved this book!
This is the kind of book that, as soon as I finished, I wanted to go back to the beginning and start again. It’s not perfect; gay people aren’t treated with any kind of dignity or respect, and women of color were never mentioned in any more than a passing way. But to have been there when women were discovering this and saying, “This is exactly how I feel!”—it must have been thrilling. I think all women (and anyone!) should read this book to better understand how we got to where we are today. We still have a long way to go, but we can draw a direct line from this book to the Barbie movie, the major feminist event of last year, and Kamala Harris’ historic presidential bid, the feminist event of 2024. The patriarchy won out for 2025, though, underscoring the continued importance of this book. It’s amazing that something describing how terrible it is to be a woman in a country run by men actually makes me proud to be a woman standing on the shoulders of someone like Betty Friedan. She opened the door that millions of women walked through to help create a better world.
Here’s what I’m looking forward to reading in 2025.
Falling in Love at the Movies: Rom-Coms From the Screwball Era to Today by Esther Zuckerman is officially licensed by Turner Classic Movies (TCM), so I’m hoping it will dig into some lesser-known titles that I can set my DVR to catch on the channel. And I’m always up for an exploration of my favorite usual suspects (When Harry Met Sally …, Sleepless in Seattle, etc.) by a new-to-me author.
I can’t wait for In Gad We Trust: A Tell-Some by Josh Gad. I met Gad at the stage door of The Book of Mormon in 2012 (photo evidence at right), and I’ve been following his career ever since. He’s funny, he seems like a good guy, and he makes stuff I want to watch—so I think it’s a safe bet that he wrote something I want to read.
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins is the next book in what has become the ongoing Hunger Games series. This time, we’ll get to see the 50th Hunger Games, 24 years before the first novel takes place. It’ll be fun to see which characters who were alive back then Collins will bring into the new novel.
The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue seems right up my alley. It’s set in 1895, it takes place on a train, and it features a motley crew of passengers who have their own storylines that should intersect in interesting ways. It seems similar to Murder on the Orient Express, without the killing … or maybe with, who knows?!
I have a Goodreads shelf for my favorite space books, and I’m hoping Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid—about a woman participating in the space shuttle program in the 1980s—will join it in 2025. (The other titles on it include Project Hail Mary, Endurance, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth, and Apollo 13.) I love anything to do with NASA and space, even though I’d never want to actually go up there myself. The closest I’ll get is my family’s group chat tracking the movement of the International Space Station; we go outside to wave hello to the astronauts whenever it’s a clear-visibility night. Atmosphere’s cover, with the main character’s wavy brown tresses evoking both Sally Ride and Christa McAuliffe, is a nice touch.
I’ve been an Apple TV+ devotee since its launch in November 2019, so I’d like to think that I was one of the first to discover the beauty of Ted Lasso when I watched its premiere on Aug. 14, 2020. But it didn’t take long at all for the story of a scrappy English football (soccer) team learning about teamwork and believing in themselves, thanks to an unconventional American coach, to become a juggernaut. If you haven’t watched it yet, why are you sleeping on a show that’s all about healthy masculinity, taking responsibility for your choices, and upholding the virtues of kindness and curiosity instead of cruelty and judgment? The first season is perfect, and the second and third seasons are flawed but still wildly entertaining. I look forward to reading Believe: The Untold Story Behind Ted Lasso, The Show That Kicked Its Way Into Our Hearts by Jeremy Egner to learn more about one of my favorite series.
—Brandi Scardilli
**slides in** Friendly book nerd, reporting for duty! One of the best books I read in 2024 was Long Live Evil by Sarah Rees Brennan. It is delightfully fun, funny, and engrossing. I don’t want to spoil any of the plot, but I laughed out loud a lot. Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword was a master class of storytelling, making the story of Arthur and the Round Table feel fresh. “He’s a lazy Cassandra” was a line from the audiobook that nearly made me laugh myself off the treadmill.
In 2025, my TBR pile is … okay, rather endless? Sorry, not sorry. I’m deeply looking forward to Amal El-Mohtar’s The River Has Roots (her prose is always beautiful and powerful), Deanna Raybourn’s Kills Well With Others (the highly anticipated sequel to Killers of a Certain Age), and The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw.
—Alison Trotta
