In 2024, I broke a reading record. 61 books. Mostly fiction.

I had to read a lot of titles last year for comps on Toward Another Shore, the novel I wrote with my late husband, Alex Turner. Quite frankly, many of them were duds. I love books thick with observation and word play. That doesn’t seem to be the norm these days.

Even so, here are a handful of books that grabbed me this year. Fiction: You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue, Less is Lost by Andrew Sean Greer, A Russian Sister and A Way to be Happy by Caroline Adderson, The Cosmopolitans by Sarah Schulman, Cocktail by Lisa Alward, Days Without End by Sebastian Barry, In Memoriam by Alice Winn, Another Country by James Baldwin, Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss, What Can You Do by Cynthia Flood. Non-fiction: Straight Acting by Will Tosh and The Light Eaters by Zöe Schlanger.