Monday, June 3, 2024

Books of the Year (So Far)

 



The Best Books of the Year (So Far)

The nonfiction and novels we can’t stop thinking about.

We’re almost halfway through 2024 and we at The Book Review have already written about hundreds of books. Some of those titles are good. Some are very good. And then there are the following.

We suspect that some (though certainly not all) will be top of mind when we publish our end-of-year, best-of lists. For more thoughts on what to read next, head to our book recommendation page.



ImageThe cover of “James” is black. The title is in yellow, and the author’s name is in white.

In this reworking of the “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Jim, the enslaved man who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi River, is the narrator, and he recounts the classic tale in a language that is his own, with surprising details that reveal a far more resourceful, cunning and powerful character than we knew.

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The book cover for “Good Material” is modular, with the title and author name appearing in brightly-colored rectangles. There are also two illustrations: one of a person pulling on socks while seated on a bed and another of another person slipping off a pair of socks.

Alderton’s novel, about a 35-year-old struggling to make sense of a breakup, delivers the most delightful aspects of romantic comedy — snappy dialogue, realistic relationship dynamics, funny meet-cutes and misunderstandings — and leaves behind clichéd gender roles and the traditional marriage plot.

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The cover of “Martyr!” features the title and author’s name in black type on a mustard background. A small illustration of an armored knight on horseback thrusting his sword into the air sits atop the first letter of the author’s name on the bottom left.

A young Iranian American aspiring poet and recovering addict grieves his parents’ deaths while fantasizing about his own in Akbar’s remarkable first novel, which, haunted by death, also teems with life — in the inventive beauty of its sentences, the vividness of its characters and the surprising twists of its plot.

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The cover of “The Hunter” features a white house against an orange backdrop. The title and the author’s name are in white.

For Tana French fans, every one of the thriller writer’s twisty, ingenious books is an event. This one, a sequel to “The Searcher,” once again sees the retired Chicago cop Cal Hooper, a perennial outsider in the Irish west-country hamlet of Ardnakelty, caught up in the crimes — seen and unseen — that eat at the seemingly picturesque village.

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The cover of Tommy Orange’s book, “Wandering Stars,” is blue. The name of the author and the title are in black, taking up much of the cover. Spangled across the letters are a series of red stars that could also be interpreted as bullet holes.

This follow-up to Orange’s debut, “There There,” is part prequel and part sequel; it trails the young survivor of a 19th-century massacre of Native Americans, chronicling not just his harsh fate but those of his descendants. In its second half, the novel enters 21st-century Oakland, following the family in the aftermath of a shooting.

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The book cover for “Headshot” shows a woman in boxing gloves and a helmet sparring. The background is a psychedelic swirl of color, including bright green, red and pink.

Set at a women’s boxing tournament in Reno, Nev., this novel centers on eight contestants, and the fights — physical and emotional — they bring to the ring. As our critic wrote: This story’s impact “lasts a long time, like a sharp fist to your shoulder.”

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The cover of “Beautyland” is in various shades of purple. Near the bottom is what looks like a shining star. A beam of purple stripes fans out from it toward the top of the cover, where the book’s title is printed in very pale lavender type.

In 1970s Philadelphia, an alien girl sent to Earth before she’s born communicates with her fellow life-forms via fax as she helps gather intel about whether our planet is habitable. This funny-sad novel follows the girl and her single mother as they find the means to persevere.

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The book cover for “Knife” is beige, with the I in “Knife” rendered as a slit in the page.

In his candid, plain-spoken and gripping new memoir, Rushdie recalls the attempted assassination he survived in 2022 during a presentation about keeping the world’s writers safe from harm. His attacker had piranhic energy. He also had a knife. Rushdie lost an eye, but he has slowly recovered thanks to the attentive care of doctors and the wife he celebrates here.

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The pale pink cover of “Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here,” by Jonathan Blitzer, portrays an image of a bird, collaged from bits of map, what looks like a vintage postcard and a blue U.S. visa stamp.

This urgent and propulsive account of Latin American politics and immigration makes a persuasive case for a direct line from U.S. foreign policy in Central America to the current migrant crisis.

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The cover of “The Wide Wide Sea” is a photograph of the sun setting over the sea. The title is in white, and the author’s name is in blue.

By the time he made his third Pacific voyage, the British explorer James Cook had maybe begun to lose it a little. The scientific aims of his first two trips had shifted into something darker. According to our reviewer, the historian Hampton Sides “isn’t just interested in retelling an adventure tale. He also wants to present it from a 21st-century point of view. ‘The Wide Wide Sea’ fits neatly into a growing genre that includes David Grann’s ‘The Wager’ and Candice Millard’s ‘River of the Gods,’ in which famous expeditions, once told as swashbuckling stories of adventure, are recast within the tragic history of colonialism.”

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The cover of “The Rebel’s Clinic” features the title, subtitle and author’s name in blood red letters on a pale green background above a black-and-white photo of a Black man in tie and jacket ascending with other passengers the gangplank of a ship.

This absorbing biography of the Black psychiatrist, writer and revolutionary Frantz Fanon highlights a side of him that’s often eclipsed by his image as a zealous partisan — that of the caring doctor, who ran a secret clinic for Algerian rebels.

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The cover of “Fi” is an outline of a woman standing in front of low hills. Two outlines of birds fly above her. The title and author’s name are in black.

In her fifth memoir, Fuller describes the sudden death of her 21-year-old son. Devastating as this elegant and honest account may be — it’s certainly not for the faint of heart — it also leaves the reader with a sense of having known a lovely and lively young man.

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