Reading Wrap-Up: 2024 (Awards Edition)

Roll up, roll up: it’s awards season!

Introducing our nominees: every book I’ve read in 2024. There’s 25 in total — coincidentally, exactly the same number as 2023. But given the kind of year it’s been, alongside keeping my Year of Words on the go, I’d say that’s a grand success.

Of those 25, I granted 11 of them the prestigious 5 Star Rating. Initially, this statistic stunned me: that’s just shy of half of everything I read. I don’t think I’m more generous than I used to be: if anything, I’m more critical (many thanks to my English degree). But actually, on reflection, it shouldn’t be that surprising. I think — I hope — I’m just getting better at selecting books I think I’ll enjoy, and the higher percentage of higher ratings is somewhat proof of that.

However, stars don’t matter hugely here, on tonight’s glitzy bookish stage. In fact, not every award-winning title in the upcoming announcements was given the coveted 5 Stars, but each is notable in its own way, and deserves recognition for its strengths. Are the upcoming categories more like Yearbook Superlatives rather than actual accolades? I suppose so. Is every single one of these honours tailored to match a book I liked and wanted to talk about? Perhaps. Either way, are these trophies completely arbitrary? Absolutely.

Now without further ado, let’s hand out some awards!

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Best Re-Read: Circe, Madeline Miller

Starting off strong with an absolute classic. I must preface this with the fact that I never re-read books, aside for two exceptions. The first is a given: I recently tackled Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings for the second time in my life. But that’s more of a pilgrimage, a faith-bound rite of a fantasy writer who must pay her dues to the man who almost single-handedly founded her genre. The second, though, was a test: was Circe as life-changingly stunning as I remember it being, when I first read it five-ish years ago? Or was it simply lodged in my brain because I was small and stupid (and now, as my dear father would say, I am not quite as small) and had never really read good literature before?

The answer, my dear audience, is that it is just as great, and perhaps greater, than I ever remembered.

It’s a melting pot of everything I adore: ancient Greek mythology, experiences of womanhood — daughter, sister, mother — explorations of mortality and divinity, deliciously rich prose. Just thinking about it makes me want to grab it off my shelf and double-check I’m not fooling myself. I’m currently attempting to write a longer piece about why it’s so brilliant, but I’m struggling because there is simultaneously so much to say and yet so few words available to describe the magnitude of its magnificence. Circe is heart-wrenchingly wonderful and, dare I utter the words, perhaps my favourite novel.

Best Pageturner: Beach Read, Emily Henry

I read a metric ton of what is now categorised as ‘Romantasy’ at secondary school. Since those glory days when I devoured a book a week, I haven’t felt hugely drawn to romance novels. But I’d been meaning to see what all the fuss about Emily Henry was, and so I picked up the one I thought I’d relate to most, about writer’s block and genre swaps, and I was pleased by how much I enjoyed it.

The protagonists aren’t the tropes-on-legs I’d thought they might be, their budding relationship was compelling, and the twists and turns of the narrative felt effortless. That’s one of the joys of entering a new genre: all the expected narrative hallmarks a seasoned reader could see from a mile away tended to take me by surprise. I think I could learn a thing or two from it, actually. It isn’t trying to be awe-inspiring or blindingly beautiful or needlessly complicated. It’s just heartfelt and genuine and fun. Sometimes you just need to read some easy, feel-good fiction. Which was, in the end, a good idea, considering the book I read directly after it…

Most Thought-Provoking: Piranesi, Susanna Clarke

I must admit, it’s definitely not for everyone. It’s a slightly nutty stew of philosophy and mythology, mixed in with a cartload M C Escher paintings, a splash of surrealist thriller, and a pinch of Sci-Fi for good measure. Despite the vast array of forms represented in one way or another, it has a firm handle on its own ideas, and every element is incredibly vivid, despite its dreamlike construction.

I only wished the mind-melting madness of it all was preserved slightly more through the conclusion. Sometimes leaving things unexplained is cleverer than constructing a grand solution to the puzzle, which in the end isn’t that robust anyway. But for me, the epilogue redeemed this slight fumble: it’s one of the most thoughtful conclusions to a story I’ve ever read. I suppose that’s what the entire book is about, the terrible wonder of thoughts and thinking.

Most Beautiful: The Mythmakers, John Hendrix

The Mythmakers is a completely unique work of art. On the face of things, it’s a biographical graphic novel, following the intertwining lives and works of C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien. A lion and a wizard embark on an adventure through these two men’s lives, quoting their own words from letters and diaries, and exploring the structures of stories as they go. Alongside the absolutely gorgeous illustrations, Hendrix weaves a masterful story that blends the theory, history, and mythology (I’m starting to sense a slight theme in my favourites here) that led to the making of some of Britain’s finest fantasy realms, Narnia and Middle-Earth. However, despite its whimsical frame, it doesn’t shy away from hard truths: the harrowing events of their lifetimes, their complex relationship with each other and their peers, the academic and spiritual issues that divided them. It’s a brutally honest portrait of two imperfect storytellers, and it’s unlike anything I’ve read before.

Most Heartbreaking: Hamnet, Maggie O’Farrell

I’ve talked about this book already, so I’ll just say this: I completely bawled my eyes out. Hamnet is a perfect exercise in the unsaid: the playwright it refuses to name, the emotions it steps carefully around, the details it passes over in favour of the small, the unnoticed, the missed. It’s unbearably beautiful, and my heart hurts just thinking about it. Now, moving swiftly along…

Most Surprising: Anxious People, Fredrik Backman

This year, we started a little book group on my street, which gathers every few months to exchange bookish recommendations. It’s comprised of mostly older ladies with plenty of time on their hands, and their consumption of books always completely dwarfs mine. But a few months ago, one endorsement caught my attention. Frustratingly, Anxious People is one of those books where the less you know about it before you read it, the better. Regardless, I think I summarised it best in my review:

this is a story about a bank robber. but it’s really a story about idiots, and a bridge, and marriage and parenthood and how none of us really know what we’re doing. faultlessly honest, abundantly funny, and perfectly constructed, anxious people stunned me at every turn.

Most Marvellous: The Paradise King, Blaine Eldredge

This final book takes some explanation, because it’s a difficult one to describe. I’ll let its subtitle do some of the lifting: The Tragic History and Spectacular Future of Everything According to Jesus of Nazareth. It’s a complex compilation of different types of writing: dramatic retelling, historical research, literary analysis, and theological theory. As I wrote in my review: a vivid blend of stunning storytelling and supernatural scholarship.

Although it primarily follows six central characters, it uses them to explore the entirety of biblical history, from Adam to Jesus. Eldredge takes scripture — highly culturally loaded and utterly overwhelming in scope, sacred to billions of people — and makes it completely accessible by showing the reader what it truly is: a story. Prophets, warriors, sorcerers, mothers, nomads. People, trapped in circumstance, making choices. It’s a profound drama, a study of humanity and their reaching for the divine. A unique translation of an ancient story, real and raw.

I'm not doing it justice. So here's a taste of how the book opens — thematically appropriate for Christmastime:

'If ghosts, and not men, had appeared in the perimeter towns of Judea, they could scarcely have inspired more fear. Not that everyone in the border country wrote off ghosts as a possibility, especially those who heard the news secondhand, for these men were relics indeed.

They wore tall, narrow headdresses of gold fabric. They wore curved kopis swords, and the pommels of those weapons were fashioned like eagles. Black paint outlined their piercing eyes, perfumes scented their long robes, and behind them there trailed the strange, otherworldly aura of the sorcerer. When one bent down from his mount and asked, "Ubi est rex qui natus?" the Jew on the road could hardly reply, and so the question was repeated in heavily accented Aramaic. "Where is the king who was born?"

"The lord of the kingdom was born in Idumea," the Jew finally stammered. "But he's not there now."

The rider did not reply. He spun on his horse and, with an almighty flapping of fabric, galloped back to the caravan.'

And yet this only one face of many. There are sections of modern prose, personal anecdotes from the author's research, close readings and translations of ancient language, each part cut with a classical Chorus. Ultimately, marvellous is the only word I can think to describe it: achieving excellence, evoking great wonder. Even if you’re only vaguely interested in this kind of thing, and of Abrahamic faith or of none, I could not recommend anything more than exploring how this story has shaped our world. It's phenomenal. I will personally buy it for you, if you want one.

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All in all, it’s been a wonderful year of reading. I’ve started to stretch beyond my comfort zone, to take recommendations from friends, and found some gems along the way. The plan, as ever, is to read more in the new year, especially with the titanous TBR still looming at my back. I didn’t quite strike the balance between my reading and my writing that I wanted to this year, but committing to writing every day had to shift my priorities. Maybe a Year of Pages is in order…

One last thing: this wrap-up is a little earlier than I want it to be. Last year, it arrived on New Year’s Eve, as it should, but something else rather exciting has already stolen that spot this time. I may well have time to read another book or two before the year is through, and I may well come back to update this. But maybe not, we’ll see. Instead, I think it’s only fitting for a certain finale to take the coveted 31st. Brace yourselves for statistics, people.

Until then, fare well, wherever you fare!

— H