My Favorite Books from 2024, Part I — January through June
Here we have the 15 books I read in the first half of 2024. I also have a companion piece on the 16 books I read in the second half of 2024. And in a first for me, after writing up these summaries I hope to write a third piece on what I learned from all these books, in particular as it relates to my own writing.
And so we begin…
McMurtry, Talese, Hall
I read a fair amount of Larry McMurtry and Gay Talese this year, as well as a heck of a lot of Donald Hall.
- Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections at Sixty and Beyond — Larry McMurtry
2. Unpacking the Boxes — Donald Hall
3. Essays after Eighty — Donald Hall
I read these three books in January-February 2024, which feels like a lifetime ago for some reason. “Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen” came on the heels of two other Larry McMurtry memoirs that I read last year, and I almost didn’t finish it but I persisted and it was overall very good. It’s a nice mix of his life story and more philosophical musings- I suppose I just like his relaxed style of writing.
Donald Hall was a poet who also wrote lots of non-fiction essays, and both of these works are excellent- he writes about ordinary life and aging with great humility and skill. I found a used copy of “Unpacking the Boxes” at the Lost Bookstore in Montrose, and then ordered the second Hall book from the library. I would go on to read a lot of Donald Hall this year- three more books in the second half of 2024. Five Halls in total. He’s dead now, but I feel like at times I practically lived in his New Hampshire house this year.
4. Bartleby and Me — Gay Talese
5. Fame and Obscurity (the portraits section) — Gay Talese
“Bartleby and Me” was one of my absolute favorites this year. This is a book made up of three sections that don’t really have a strong connection (Talese’s early writing career at the NY Times, his time writing a famous profile of Frank Sinatra, and then switching to an oddly compelling portrait of a man who blew up his own house in Manhattan), yet it reads beautifully. I could not put this book down for some reason- I just fell into the excellent writing.
“Fame and Obscurity” was excellent as well- I loved the profiles of aged athletes and actors like Joe DiMaggio, Floyd Patterson, and Peter O’Toole. That said, I only read two-thirds of the book because I couldn’t get into the last section of the book that focused on different urban topics rather than people. I also tried four other books by Talese this year, yet I couldn’t get into any of these others.
Window to Another World
I found all three of the following books, and the first Donald Hall book above, at the Lost Bookstore in Montrose. I clearly need to go back to that bookstore soon, because these memoirs were definitely some of my favorites of the year.
6. Winifred: A Wiltshire Working Girl — Sylvia Morrow
7. Message from My Father — Calvin Trillin
8. Wait Till Next Year — Doris Kearns Godwin
“Winifred: A Wiltshire Working Girl” tells the story of a lower-class woman who worked as a servant for her first two decades of life in early 1900’s England. A younger woman spoke to Winifred about what life was like back then, so it’s not exactly a memoir so much as an oral interview put into prose, but it’s a remarkable window into a different world in which people in the servant class had far fewer freedoms.
“Message From My Father” and “Wait Till Next Year” both offer wonderful glimpses of the past. Trillin’s book is mostly about growing up in Kansas City and Godwin’s book is about growing up on Long Island. Both use a constraint to guide the narrative along — Trillin’s is his father, Godwin’s is the Brooklyn Dodgers — but it’s the small details that bring these books to life.
Perhaps only of interest to me is that after enjoying the Calvin Trillin and Doris Kearns Godwin books, I went on to try others by these authors and couldn’t get into them. The same thing happened with Gay Talese. But not Donald Hall. I’ve loved everything I’ve read by him.
Graphic Novels
9. Alan’s War — Emmanuel Guibert
10. The Photographer — Emmanuel Guibert
11. Paul at Home — Michel Rabagliati
All three of these graphic novels are terrific — “The Photographer” being the stand out. “The Photographer” is a mix of narrative graphic novel and real photographs taken by a French photographer who accompanies a Doctors without Borders group to villages in Afghanistan during the 1980’s. I found the quiet way it tells the story of a person encountering an entirely different culture to be mesmerizing.
“Alan’s War” is by the same author, and it is similarly beguiling in that it depicts an innocent young man caught up in the randomness of WWII.
“Paul at Home” is a more simple read about late middle-age melancholy, and the struggles the author experiences connecting to his mother, daughter, and ex-wife.
Important Life Advice
12. The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness — Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz
13. Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers: A Retirement and Aging Roadmap for Single and Childless Adults — Sara Zeff Geber
“The Good Life” is a decent read- I can’t say I remember much from it, but basically all the research on living a good life comes down to the importance of nurturing the relationships in your life. More than diet, exercise, money, status….connecting to other people in a meaningful way is the single most important thing you can do to make your life better.
“Essential Retirement Planning for Solo Agers” is a strange choice I picked off the shelf. For some reason I’ve been interested lately in how one plans for getting older. I’m super curious about how people make decisions on where to live in particular, and whether one opts to live in a house or a retirement community.
Imperfect Books I Read
14. Freedom — Sebastian Junger
15. The Hope Circuit: A Psychologist’s Journey from Helplessness to Optimism — Martin Seligmann
I’m including these books here because I finished them, but I honestly can’t say I recommend either of them. I like Junger as an author, so even though this book is a bit all over the place, I found enough to enjoy along the way. It’s basically a book about him traveling like a historic hobo with some ex-army friends along the railways of New England, interspersed with philosophical musings and historical notes about what he sees. Not as good as his superb book “Tribe,” but not bad either.
As for “The Hope Circuit,” I didn’t find the prominent psychology researcher Martin Seligmann to be a particularly interesting guy, nor is the writing very good. But I am fascinated by research into the areas of happiness and well-being, and in that sense I found enough here to keep going. I don’t remember a lot of the book though, which is not a good sign.
You can find a piece about the second half of my reading year in 2024 here.
