Saturday, February 1, 2025

The Best Book I Read in 2024


Since I shared a review of the best book I read in 2023 exactly a year ago today, I thought I'd share the best book I read in 2024 to celebrate reading.

In early 2024, I set a goal to increase the number of books I read from 50 in 2023 to 60 in 2024, and not only did I reach that goal, but I surpassed it! I read 74! The majority of the books were fiction, and some were leadership non-fiction, but all captured my attention.

Since 2024 turned out to be such an important political year in the United States, I read five books that featured the American political landscape as an important theme. Two works of fiction were "Charlotte Walsh Likes to Win" by Jo Piazza and "Behind Every Good Man" by Sara Goodman Confino. Two works of non-fiction were "Attack from Within, How Disinformation is Sabotaging America" by Barbara McQuade and "Inclusion on Purpose, An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work" by Ruchika Tulshyan Malhotra. The fifth book was a work of fiction, and my favorite read during 2024: "LULA DEAN'S LITTLE LIBRARY OF BANNED BOOKS" by Kirsten Miller.

I don't want to give away too much, but the gist of the story is that a closed-minded lady in a small Southern town wants to ban books that she personally thinks are inappropriate. So, after removing a myriad of books from the local library, she places what she thinks are appropriate books in a small lending library display outside her house for anyone to borrow - books that most people would not be interested in, such as, how Southern ladies behave. But what she doesn't know is that two members of the community placed the banned books from the library inside the book covers outside her house.

On a side note, have you ever wondered how important book covers are on hard-back books, also referred to as first editions? After you finish this book, you might spend more time thinking about the cost and design that publishers allocate to book covers. And swing by my blog on February 26th to read my post on this topic.

Anyhow, back to our book, for example, the book cover for "The Diary of Anne Frank" did not match the content, and the book cover for "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret." did not match the content. Imagine people's surprise when they opened those books and many others!

To quote K.E. Creighton, "This novel touches on the impact books have on us as human beings, how and why we crave them, how they connect us, and how they can literally change our lives for the better. It reminded me of why we all read, why I read, why we need to read, and how reading and talking about what we read with others is as essential to survival as breathing in a lot of ways...This novel also reminds us that books, especially banned books, never make people do anything, as no book can do that. A book can only allow you to see and understand yourself or another human being a little more fully, but it cannot cause someone to be gay, commit a crime, or start a feminist revolution."

So, if you have not yet read this book, add it to the top of your MUST-READ LIST. You'll be glad you did!


SHARE THIS: Fiction helps us to understand the world around us better. ~@JosephLalonde #Reading #DebbieLaskeysBlog


SHARE THIS: If you give a person a book, you give him the world. ~@KristinHarmel #TheParisDaughter #Reading #DebbieLaskeysBlog


SHARE THIS: Reading fiction or watching a film that portrays a life very different from ours can help build empathy. ~@rtulshyan #ReadingOpensMinds #Leadership #DebbieLaskeysBlog


Image Credit: Instagram.


Check out my review of my fave book from 2023: Remarkably Bright Creatures:

https://www.debbielaskeysblog.com/2024/02/the-best-book-i-read-in-2023.html


No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for your comment!