24 Books to read in 2024

Like most readers I know I have a TBR (To Be Read) list as long as my arm. Unfortunately like most readers I know I am all too often drawn from my carefully constructed list by the siren song of new releases and shiny covers. So many of the presumably excellent books that make it on to the TBR never transition to the coveted "read" list.

This lingering fate is most often dealt to those books that I add after seeing them on a SFF round up post on REACTOR or i09 but never find in a physical bookshop. I can easily walk into any bookstore in the world and pick up a copy of Fourth Wing (and yet haven't!) but tracking down a copy of Armed In Her Fashion by Kate Heartfield took years of questing. But the prize was well worth it and so in 2024 I am determined to get through at least two of the most recent TBR additions every month. Since I read about 50 books a year this gives me half of my reading time to the list and half to whatever else takes my magpie mind's fancy.

So what to add to the list? There's little rhyme or reason to it but I suspect many will require a bit of sleuthing to track down. That doesn't bother me, it's all part of the fun. Check in with my monthly reading round ups to see how I progress with these and all the other things I've been reading recently.

Fantasy & Science Fiction

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries - Heather Fawcett The Spear Cuts Through Water - Simon Jimenez Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea - Rita Chang-Eppig City of Last Chances - Adrian Tchaikovsky The Road to Roswell - Connie Willis The Darkness Before Them - Matthew Ward The Water Outlaws - SL Huang Heavenly Tyrant - Xiran Jay Zhao Daughter of Calamity - Rosalie M Lin Sign Here - Claudia Lux The Archive Undying - Emma Mieko Candon A Season of Monstrous Conceptions - Lina Rather The Familiar - Leigh Bardugo The Hunger of the Gods - John Gwynne Exadelic - Jon Evans Liberty's Daughter - Naomi Kritzer The Water Outlaws - SL Huang Empire of the Damned - Jay Kristoff

Fiction

The Bandit Queens - Parini Shroff Y/N - Esther Yi Tom Lake - Ann Patchett

Non Fiction

The Middle Kingdoms - Martyn Rady A Paradise Built in Hell - Rebecca Solnit The Eagle and the Lion - Adrian Goldsworthy