Goal is to read 8 books this year/eliminate my backlog, after completely dropping off in 2021. In 2020 my employer had a book club which made things easier.

Currently reading Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson.
Also plan to read:
Yellowface by RF Kuang
True Love Experiment by Christina Lauren
Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Vanishing Half by Britt Bennett
How to be an Antiracist by Ibram Kende
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
One book of the month selection— waiting to see their Feb selections

Lesser known golden age mystery writers and and for non fiction a lot of history starting w a history of the Viking age Children of Ash and Elm.

Anonymous wrote:I read the most 2023 Mark Helprin novel, The Ocean & the Stars, my first by him. I always assumed he wasn’t for me, but now want to spend the rest of the winter working through his other (long) novels.

My favorites by him are Freddy and Fredericka, and A Winter's Tale

I typically try to run through whatever literary award winners from the past year looked good. I just finished The Book of Goose, and I'm starting on The Return of Faraz Ali.
And I round it out by whatever just comes up topically throughout the year that piques my interest (Napoleon: A Life, after the terrible biopic movie; Saving Time by Jenny Odell on a friend's recommendation, etc).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:More non-fiction, at least compared to the zero I read in 2023. A few on my TBR list include:

A Fever in the Heartland;
Cabin Fever: The Harrowing Journey of a Cruise Ship at the Dawn of a Pandemic;
Killers of the Flower Moon;
Know My Name

If you haven't read Erik Larson, I would suggest checking out some (or all!) of his non-fiction books. He writes really well.

Agree about Erik Larson. The Splendid & the Vile was excellent. Well told.

Popsugar comes out with a yearly reading challenge that gives you prompts to help choose a variety of books.

https://www.popsugar.com/entertainment/reading-challenge-2024-49318757

Anonymous wrote:More non-fiction, at least compared to the zero I read in 2023. A few on my TBR list include:

A Fever in the Heartland;
Cabin Fever: The Harrowing Journey of a Cruise Ship at the Dawn of a Pandemic;
Killers of the Flower Moon;
Know My Name

If you haven't read Erik Larson, I would suggest checking out some (or all!) of his non-fiction books. He writes really well.

Anonymous wrote:In 2022, I read most of Erik Larson's books and really enjoyed them. In 2023, I read a bunch of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I've enjoyed picking an author and going on a spree.

If you want another author to go on a spree with, I would suggest Stephen King. His books are actually quite wide-ranging (they are not all blood-soaked girls!), and you could read plenty of them (or even just his short stories) and get a lot of different tales.

I'm trying to read what I own. I'm starting with the books I got for Christmas because people like to hear that I've read these gifts.