When the best books of 2024 meet the most anticipated of 2025
Welcome to the Year in Reading, 2025.
But as we’re still in that odd antechamber of in-between time when year-end book lists bump up against year-ahead ones, this is a good moment to talk about where we’ve been and where we hope to go.
Last year around this time, I mentioned that I don’t enjoy keeping a list of what I have read because it can feel more like a Shadow Accounting of Books I Sadly Failed to Read. Then I fret over the time I spend reading books that I don’t finish – and then fret over fretting. (I realize this isn’t a major problem, just annoying.)
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Innumeracy has its upsides: Since I wasn’t counting, I didn’t have to spend New Year’s Eve speedreading slim poetry volumes, single-issue comics and the coffeemaker operating manual in a last-minute gambit to plump up my score.
As most readers know, New Year’s Eve is best spent falling asleep on the couch, book in hand or film streaming unwatched, in a futile attempt to stay awake until midnight. (It’s on all the other nights of the year that you’ll find me haunting the murky, post-midnight shadows, spookily clacking a booklight on and off as I murmer dark oaths about just one more chapter.)
But after hearing from readers, I see their point. While I still endorse reading as a delicious non-accomplishment that is Just That Thing You Like Doing, I say, keep tabs all you like. Also, thank you; you should know that – with your encouragement – I’m fairly sure I read more books than ever in 2024.
And I suppose three years of yammering about books every seven days is a little bit like keeping accounts, right? RIGHT? Let’s hope so.
Someone who does this really well? Poet, essayist, critic and New York Times On Poetry columnist Elisa Gabbert not only keeps a list of books she finished but she annotates it – and has since 2015. And her just-published 2024 list is a delight: After stumbling upon the piece online in the middle of doing something else, I stood awkward and transfixed over my phone, reading it while getting a crick in my neck.
It was worth it, though she did describe Charles Portis’s “True Grit” as “very cute,” which I may never forgive her for. But I have since started listening to Gabbert’s most recent book, “Any Person Is the Only Self,” and am already enthralled by essays about – wait for it – going to the library, overstuffed bookshelves and her “Stupid Classics” book club. (And all is forgiven.)
Another argument for keeping tabs on the books and passing moments of one’s life came when I got a one-week skip-the-line checkout from the Los Angeles Public Library. The book was Josh Brolin’s “From Under the Truck,” a memoir I’d added to my queue after a recent rewatch of “No Country for Old Men” had coincided with hearing him on a podcast. His memoir was much better than it needed to be. Instead of breezing through a Wiki recap of his highs and lows – he has both – the book was full of evocative detail not typically found in a celebrity memoir, like riding in the backseat as his chainsmoking mother sped from California to Texas to visit a burger chain she liked or the aftermath of a youthful decision to follow up his first acid trip by immediately embarking on another.
Why was this better than most celebrity memoirs? It wasn’t about celebrities, mostly. There are famous names, sure – he gleefully needles the Coen Brothers with a terrible and (one hopes) fake movie pitch or recalls the time he had some drinks before accepting an award and decides to let Hollywood know what he really thought. Sober today, he maintains a mischievous side, such as when he affectionately refers to his stepmother, Barbra Streisand, as simply, “a singer.”
But the richest parts of the book aren’t about fame and I suspect that’s because he’s kept journals, 90 or so of them, throughout most of his life. So the details are more vivid than if he’d relied on memory (which is what I’m feebly doing as I try to recall the audiobook, which I promptly returned last week and now can’t remember everything that stood out).
Whatever. In short, I was reminded of the benefit of documentation, which is something I value in journalism, and also recognize its value when I’m not on the clock, too. So I’ll try to keep better notes about my reading this year. Or I won’t.
But if you’re looking to 1) read more this year as I am; and 2) read the best stuff, I can direct you to some solid recommendations.
In the spirit of starting fresh in the new year, my colleague Emily St. Martin wrote a wonderful piece about how you can read more in the new year and offers solid tips for making it happen. She also occasionally refers to things I’ve written, but I hope you won’t hold that against her. It’s a good one.
And what else? Well, the gift-giving days of the calendar may be on the wane, but correspondent Michael Schaub came up with a list of 36 books worthy of your attention that are publishing – just in the next three months – in 2025.
Schaub, who is National Book Critics Circle vice president, put together a deeply interesting, wide-ranging and richly researched list and I hope you find some gems to read on it. I know I did. (And I’d already interviewed a few authors on the list so expect to see more about them in the near future.)
So let’s get to reading and finding our 2025 favorites – and hey, don’t forget to send in your recommendations, too. I’ll aim to share them with the class as I can.
Thanks for reading in 2024. And here’s to reading in 2025.
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