Finally! The list you’ve all been waiting for! It’s all the books I read in 2024 alongside very vague ratings.
In 2024 I tried to read more of the stuff that was already on my shelves, but also feel like the most interesting things I read were in audiobook form, rather than the physical ones I was trying to clear out. I only had a dozen or so moments when I had to turn off a Sara J Maas book before my colleagues at the day-job heard anything extremely inappropriate. Favourite books this year are mostly novels, including Miranda July’s All Fours (feel like I need to hold onto it for a few years and read it again when I’m the same age as the protagonist), and Gabriela Garcia’s Of Women and Salt, which I’d acquired from a feminist book subscription a while ago and forgotten about.. It’s… just a really good novel! Like, sorry, I told you this was vague okay. Again I’ve not read as much non-fiction as I thought I would, but NF highlights were Helen Mort’s A Line Above the Sky and Abi Palmer – Slugs: A Manifesto. In Poetry, my favourite thing was Elspeth Wilson’s Too Hot to Sleep. I met Elspeth through the Neuk Collective in Edinburgh in the summer, and her poetry speaks to my past confused, vampire-obsessed teenage self.
Anyway, the list! Enjoy!
🩵 DNF / load of crap / no thanks
🩵💚 Meh
🩵💚💛 Fair to middling
🩵💚💛🧡 Pretty good
🩵💚💛🧡❤️ Great, would recommend
🩵💚💛🧡❤️❤️🔥 New favourite
Sara J Maas – Crescent City – House of Earth & Blood (audiobook) 🩵💚💛
Nick Hayes – The Trespasser’s Companion 🩵💚💛
Sara J Maas – Crescent City – House of Sky & Breath (audiobook) 🩵💚💛🧡
Katherine May – Wintering (book club) 🩵💚💛🧡
Iain Reid – I’m Thinking of Ending Things (audiobook) 🩵💚
Jasper Fforde – Red Side Story 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Dianna Wynne Jones – Howl’s Moving Castle (audiobook) 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Half of a Yellow Sun 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Helen Mort – A Line Above the Sky 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Monica Heisey – Really good, Actually 🩵💚💛
Bernadine Evaristo – Manifesto 🩵💚💛
Greg Bear – Eon 🩵💚💛
Bonnie Garmus – Lessons in Chemistry (audiobook) 🩵💚💛
Cassandra Clare – City of Bones (audiobook) 🩵💚💛
Bob Mortimer – The Satsuma Complex (audiobook) 🩵💚💛🧡
Martha Wells – All systems Red (audiobook) 🩵💚💛
Patrick Süskind – The Pigeon 🩵💚
Hiomi Kawakami – The Nakatano Thrift Shop 🩵💚💛
Leonie Charlton – Marram 🩵💚💛🧡
Paul Murray – The Bee Sting (audiobook) 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Sara J Maas – A Court of Thorns & Roses (audiobook) 🩵💚💛
Sarah Perry – Melmoth 🩵💚
Jessie Greengrass – The High House (audiobook) *
Sara J Maas – A Court of Mist & Fury (audiobook) 🩵💚💛🧡
Emma Gray – One Girl and Her Dogs 🩵💚💛
Grady Hendrix – Horrorstör (audiobook) 🩵💚
Martha Wells – Artificial Condition (audiobook) 🩵💚💛🧡
Shion Miura – The Great Passage 🩵💚💛🧡
Sara J Maas – A Court of Wings & Ruin (audiobook) 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Claire Keegan – Small Things Like These 🩵💚💛🧡
Christa Woolf – Cassandra (book club) 🩵💚💛
Jen Williams – Talonsister (audiobook) 🩵💚💛🧡
Emilia Hart – Weyward (audiobook) 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Rebecca F Kuang – Yellowface (audiobook) 🩵💚💛
Tamsin Calidas – I am an Island 🩵💚
Natalie Haynes – Pandora’s Jar 🩵💚💛🧡
Gabriela Garcia – Of Women and Salt 🩵💚💛🧡❤️❤️🔥
Kurt Vonnegut – Cat’s Cradle 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Garth Nix – The Sinister Booksellers of Bath (audiobook) 🩵💚💛🧡
Madeline Miller – Circe (audiobook) 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Keanu Reeves & China Miéville – The Book of Elsewhere 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Sara J Maas – A court of Frost & Starlight (audiobook) 🩵💚💛
Jasper Fforde – Early Riser 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Ben Okri – Tiger Work (book club) 🩵💚💛🧡
Sara J Maas – A Court of Silver Flames (audiobook) 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Tara Westover – Educated (book club) 🩵💚💛🧡
Andrey Kurkov – Death and the Penguin 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Paul Lynch – Prophet Song (audiobook) 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Amy Jane Beer – The Flow (audiobook) 🩵💚💛🧡
Paula Hawkins – Slow Fire Burning (audiobook) 🩵💚💛
Kiran Millwood Hargrave – The Mercies 🩵💚💛
The White Pube – Poor Artists (book club) 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Abi Palmer – Slugs: A Manifesto 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Miranda July – All Fours (audiobook) 🩵💚💛🧡❤️❤️🔥
Elspeth Wilson – Too Hot to Sleep 🩵💚💛🧡❤️
Shelby Mahurin – Serpent & Dove (audiobook) 🩵💚💛🧡
Sir Edmund Hillary – View from the Summit 🩵💚
* I can’t bear to give this a ❤️ because… while well written, it set me off on an anxiety spiral.
Jessie x
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Jessie Growden 