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Every year, my criteria for my favourite books of the year changes. In 2024, after coming out of a long writing drought, I’ve realized that the books that left a long-lasting impression on me were the ones that made say, “Wow! I want to write like that!” or “Wow! I want to live that way!”
I’ve found that feeling in 2 classics, 1 biographical essay collection, 1 dual biography, 2 memoirs, 2 retellings, and 2 novels.
Here are the 10 books that made me struggle between wanting to keep reading and wanting to close the book to go write.
Did you know you can also watch the video version of this post on YouTube? You can watch it here.
1. “Dracula” by Bram Stoker
As most of you know, I’m writing a vampire book which has slowly led me to read all of the classic vampire books. I can assure you “Dracula” is worth the read and it made me want to explore the nature of nightmares in my own book.
I’m not joking when I say that I would describe this book as saccharine. It feels deeply emotional and at times perturbing. As I mentioned in my ‘Dracula’ vlog, this book is deeply sentimental.
All in all, this is not only one the quintessential books for vampire lovers but also for people that suffer from sleep disorders. In my book, you are not allowed to say you love the ‘Nosferatu’ movies without having read “Dracula” first.
No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and how dear to his heart and eye the morning can be. (p. 51)
You can watch that reading vlog here.
2. “Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Brontë
“Jane Eyre” is a beautiful, deeply intuitive, coming of age story of a young orphan girl named Jane. We follow her from her childhood into her early adulthood as she’s known little moments of peace and love in her life. If you enjoy books that delve deeply into the human psyche and concepts of revenge, forgiveness, love, loss, and generosity, you will love reading “Jane Eyre.”
Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key. I never laughed at presentiments in my life, because I have had strange ones of my own. Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal comprehension. And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies of Nature with man. (p. 219)
I had one thought after reading Jane Eyre, which I shared on my TikTok:
To quote myself: “I read ‘Jane Eyre’ two weeks ago and I’m still as lonely and empty as ever – and plus how am I supposed to continue writing when such masterpiece exists.”
3. The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
I will never be ashamed to admit that John Green is one of my favourite authors, full stop. I’ve loved all of his novels when I was a teenager and that trend has continued in my adulthood. John Green writes with a humanitarian and hopeful heart.
“The Anthropocene Reviewed” reminded me of the importance of sharing what I love and what intrigues me not only in writing but also on my YouTube channels and in real life. John Green showed me that essays, like the ones in his collection, can be personal, informational, and transformative all at once.
For those of you who’ve read this book, you will understand when I say: I rate this book 5 out of 5 stars.
Here’s a passage from (p. 7) of the Introduction:
4. “Walk Through Walls” by Marina Abramović
Raised by communist Yugoslavian parents, a father that is emotionally detached and a mother that is overbearing, Marina has made art out of her Balkan upbringing. “Walk Through Walls” is an excellent memoir for all daring artists to read.
Marina Abramović has never let fear hold her back from pushing the boundaries and disturbing the status quo in her performances. Mocked, ridiculed, silenced, loved, praised, and uplifted, she continues to range in extreme spectrums with the critics of past and future present. In a way, she reminds me of the late American filmmaker, David Lynch. May he Rest in Peace.
I put off this book until I was ready to undergo a severe transformation. To remember the place that art, writing, literature, and risk taking has in my life.
As I’ve mentioned before, this memoir made me want to take risks. I want to write and post what I want to write and post about. I don’t care to be a dancing monkey anymore. I don’t care to be seen as vulnerable, deeply emotive, or at times as a troubled or even desperate person. I’m human. I have scars. I have the kind of scars that are not always invisible. I am the dirty reflective art that walks and breathes in this world.
Beforehand, I was so nervous that I was scared I’d get one of my incapacitating whole-body migraines. I could hardly breathe from the idea that I was going to do this. But I was also serious about what I was about to do, 100 percent committed. I was so serious about everything then! Yet I think I needed this gravity. Much later on, I read a statement of Bruce Nauman’s: “Art is a matter of life and death.” It sounds melodramatic, but it’s so true. This was exactly how it was for me, even at the beginning. Art was life and death. There was nothing else. It was so serious, and so necessary. (p. 59)
5. “Just Kids” by Patti Smith
I sincerely don’t know how to talk about “Just Kids.” Everyone has read this and or at least heard of this memoir. It’s a book for all artists and creatives out there. Patti Smith is the embodiment of the artist’s spirit and its uncrushable soul.
In this memoir, Patti Smith details her life as a starving artist starting out in New York City. She recounts her loving and supportive relationship with the artist-turned-photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the late 60s and 70s. Together they are plunged in the world of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and they emerge as fully-formed artists.
“Oh, take their picture,” said the woman to her bemused husband, “I think they’re artists.”
“Oh, go on,” he shrugged. “They’re just kids.” (p. 47)
6. Romantic Outlaws by Charlotte Gordon
“Romantic Outlaws” is a biography that outlines The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley.
I believe one day I will have the guts and strength to make a full video on Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley.
Drama, tragedy, love, loss, grief, loneliness, the rights of women, it’s all in this book. Although mother and daughter never meet, Wollstonecraft died mere days after delivering Mary Godwin, the parallels between their lives are insane and tragic. I still can’t wrap my head around how much these two Marys gave to us.
I’ve noticed a trend. When I really love a book, I often post some quick furtive thoughts online and then log back off:
Quoting from my TikTok again: “I love being a reader because sometimes I’m so unwell that reading about two women who’ve felt the same way as I do two centuries ago and still persisted in writing ground-breaking work makes me feel inspired and less alone in my suffocating misery.”
By connecting Frankenstein to her own genesis, Mary hints at the many ties she felt to her story. Like the creature, she felt abandoned by her creator. Like Frankenstein, she felt compelled to create. Her own birth had caused the death of her mother, but it had also brought life to her characters. (pp. 242-243)
7. “Mary & the Birth of Frankenstein” by Anne Eekhout
“Mary & the Birth of Frankenstein” written by Anne Eekhout and translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson, is a beautiful reimagining of two timelines of Mary Shelley’s life that enabled her to write “Frankenstein.”
In the first timeline, we follow Mary during her 1816 stay at the Villa Diodati, in Lake Geneva. This is the Year Without Summer after the unsettling volcanic eruption in Indonesia. Mary is 18, she’s with Percy Bysshe Shelley and her stepsister Claire who’s pinning over the playboy poet extraordinaire Lord Byron. Mary’s dealing with the grief from the loss of her child. One night, bored out of his mind, Byron challenges the group, including his physician and biographer John Polidori, to write the best ghost story.
In the second timeline, we follow Mary in 1812 while she’s a guest of the Baxter family house in Dundee, Scotland. She becomes close to Isabella Baxter, who just lost her mother and is the youngest girl of the family. The girls are inseparable and both their desire and imagination run wild. They uncover Scottish mythical figures, creatures, and ghosts while they are wandering through the fields and forests of Scotland’s Lowlands.
To quote myself from my book review: “this is a great work of imagination. And not only that, this is a wonderful book about imagination and the necessity of imagination in the creative journey.”
You can read my book review here.
“I was proud of myself for inventing something that gave people pleasure. I had taken something from real life and twisted it and spun it out until there was more to it than had really happened. Until it was more than the truth.” (p. 36)
8. “Wicked” by Gregory Maguire
This is a reimagining of The Wicked Witch of the West’s life before the arrival of Dorothy from Kansas in L. Frank Baum’s classic “The Wizard of Oz.”
“Wicked” is a story of love, cruelty, injustice, abuse, violence, class and racial division, amongst other similar themes. We follow Elphaba, the green ‘wicked’ witch, as she’s mistreated her entire life for the color of her skin. We briefly watch the events of her childhood and teenage years shape Elphie into the witch we come to know her as, one that pushes back against the discrimination and crimes against the talking animals of Oz.
This story was so rich. The language, the psychology, the politics, all of it was crafted with meticulous care and attention. It reminded me of why I love storytelling. It also reminded me that some stories truly can deliver on every front – character, plot, style, and worldbuilding.
I believe more than anything, this story left me changed. For the better and for the worse.
I will definitely be reading the entire series at a later date.
“It’s people who claim that they’re good, or anyway better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.” (p. 401)
9. “When We Lost Our Heads” by Heather O’Neill
When I read “When We Lost Our Heads” and witnessed the deeply rich portrayals of all the women’s lives and desires involved, all I felt like doing was opening up my manuscript to write.
We primarily follow two main characters Marie Antoine (loosely inspired by Marie Antoinette) and Sadie Arnett. As I’m writing this, I’m realizing the cleverness given to the girls’ names.
When Sadie’s middle-class parents move to the Golden Mile, 12-year-old Marie and Sadie become instant frenemies – their desire and passion for each other lead them to a deadly act and they’re instantly separated.
As I said, they live in the Golden Mile of Montreal in the 1870s. On the other side of the stripe lays industrial destitution; brothels are in full-swing while factory girls are starving, dying, and losing their little fingers. After Marie Antoine’s father passes, she becomes the head of his sugar empire while Sadie returns from overseas as an outcast and aspiring novelist.
Let them eat cake? Off with their heads? Questions of female empowerment, sexuality, desire, and authorship are at the forefront of this tale.
Once again this is from a TikTok I posted while reading this book:
“Do you want to know how I know a book is fantastic? When it makes me want to stop reading it instantly, get up, and go write. When a book slightly leaves a door ajar and the flood claims me again, when the dam I created is decisively destroyed.”
There were such new possibilities in writing from a perspective of female desire. That excited Sadie as an artist. Sadie wanted to put things in literature that had never been there before. In fact, putting experiences into books that hadn’t been there before was the modus operandi of a writer. It was like being a butterfly collector. You didn’t want the same common butterflies every collector had. You wanted the rare butterfly with black spots on its wings that only emerges at the witching hour and sheepishly tucks its antennae into the closing mouth of drowsy flowers. (p. 276)
10. “A Study in Drowning” by Ava Reid
I read this at the beginning of the year of 2024. I was coming out of 3 years of pure disenchantment, obsessed with self-help books and crushing anything that made me feel real or creative. Can we just appreciate for a second that magic cannot be squashed?
“A Study in Drowning” was the perfect read to make me believe in magic, to make me believe in stories. The story follows Effy Sayre. She’s tasked, along with her nemesis Preston Héloury to redesign Hiraeth Manor which is the family home of deceased author Emrys Myrddin.
Effy, who’s always believed in the stories of the Fairy King, venerates this author for his fable called Angharad in which he writes about a mortal girl who falls in love with the Fairy King before destroying him. But in this tale, all is not as it seems and the stakes run high as the manor is literally collapsing into the sea.
The way the main character Effy feels about the fictional manuscript Angharad is the way Alexander the Great felt about the Iliad and is the way I feel about Frankenstein and Mary Shelley.
Here is another story about stories. It’s also about believing in magic while simultaneously seeking the truth. Questions of female power, survival, and voices come up in this one as well.
Actually, if I dig deeper, I can see the invisible thread between ‘Romantic Outlaws’, ‘Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein’, ‘When We Lost Our Heads’, and ‘A Study in Drowning.’ As I was thinking about my Vampire book this past year, I unconsciously picked up and loved books that had similar motifs, themes, and plotlines.
A notable mention is “Lady Macbeth” which was also released and published in 2024 by Ava Reid. As you can imagine this “Macbeth” retelling has similar themes to these books as well.
Effy hated that she couldn’t tell right from wrong, safe from unsafe. Her fear had transfigured the entire world. Looking at anything was like trying to glimpse a reflection in a broken mirror, all of it warped and shattered and strange. (p. 105)
The truth was very costly at times. How terrible, to navigate the world without a story to comfort you. (p. 375)
Thank you for reading my Top 10 Books of 2024. There were truly the books that made me want to keep writing. I hope you enjoyed this post and found some new books to add to your reading list and inspire you to write. Have you read any of these books? If so, what did you think of them?
Please feel free to recommend me books that are similar to the ones listed above.
Happy New Year of reading! 📚
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