Hello and welcome back! This is our final category in these prestigious literary awards and the one I personally find the hardest. Fiction by far dominates my reading each year and I think I read a fairly wide variety of fiction which also makes it hard to choose my favourites. This year I’ve narrowed it down to my top 9 fictional reads of 2024.
The Coast Road – Alan Murrin
The Whalebone Theatre – Joanna Quinn
The Husbands – Holly Gramazio
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store – James McBride
Lincoln in the Bardo – George Saunders
Intermezzo – Sally Rooney
The Fox Wife – Yangsze Choo
Margo’s Got Money Troubles – Rufi Thorpe
Brotherless Night – V.V. Ganeshananthan
It’s always interesting to me to look back over my top picks and see what I’ve been drawn to over the year. Often, I find myself choosing books that have a somewhat surreal or magical feel. Something like The Fox Wife or Lincoln in the Bardo definitely fits that category, where reading requires some suspension of disbelief. I also love books where I feel like I learn something about the world or about history. Almost all of these books taught me something, whether it was about the history of legal divorce in Ireland or behind the scenes of pro wrestling.
Happy New Year’s Eve! Wishing you all a wonderful new year and many fabulous books in 2025!
Karissa Reads Books 
Looking at your authors’ names, I would argue you read from a diverse group of authors. You’ve always been good at that, from what I remember.
Thank you! I do try. Even making a small effort at being aware of the books I pick up has made a difference, I think.
Looks like you had a good year of reading! Happy New Year! I hope 2025 is good to you!
I’ve been curious about Intermezzo – I haven’t read it, but I’ve enjoyed her other books. I tend to miss out on books for the entirely random reason that publishers don’t send it to me, so my reading tends to be dictated by what shows up on my doorstep. It’s a frugal way to be, but I also miss out!
I’m going to be reviewing this shortly, but I just finished the Ministry of Time, and based on your love of The Husbands, I think you’d really like this one too. It’s by Kaline Bradley.
The reviews of Ministry of Time seemed really mixed at first but now I feel like I’m hearing from more and more people that they liked it. I think I’ll try and get my hands on a copy!
Belated Happy New Year! I’m quite tempted by Lincoln in the Bardo – my library has the audiobook and I loved Saunders’ non-fiction book on Russian short stories that I am keen to read anything else he’s written, even if it’s something totally different.
I listened to Lincoln in the Bardo on audio and it was quite excellent in that format. It had a full cast and the various voices really added to the experience.