It’s once again the most wonderful time of the year… best of the year booklists season!
It’s our annual tradition to say that building a list such as this is an impossible task. There are countless number of books published every year that stick with readers, resonate throughout the culture, and change mindsets. From big 5 to indie publishers, great things are happening in the written word. We’re excited to share some of our favorite books we read, but also here’s to the writers around the world who published this year. Thank you for making your voice heard!
Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil
By Ananda Lima
Tor Books
At this point in the year I’ve written and spoken about this book plenty of times, but I can’t stop. Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil is the most inventive and memorable book I read this year and in recent memory. Ananda Lima brings a poetic approach and a fiction writer’s eye to create a book that is in part a short story collection and part something new entirely. This book in many ways rewired my brain to what’s possible in fiction.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Ananda Lima’s short story collection, Craft: Stories I Wrote for the Devil, wasn’t eligible for a Chirby this year since she’s now employed by our sister organization StoryStudio Chicago, but I’d be remiss to leave it off our best books of the year list. These stories are clever and fun—especially for readers who are also writers, particularly the story “Idle Hands.” (And be sure to check out our interview with Lima!)
— Rachel León, Managing Director
There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension
By Hanif Abdurraqib
Random House
Part chronicle of LeBron’s rise to greatness, part memoir, this gorgeous book captures many emotions—from basketball’s role in his community to what it feels like to believe in a sports team. His coming-of-age in Columbus, Ohio in a rough, Black neighborhood is chronicled in a mixture of heartbreak and hope that is evocative, beautiful, and readable.
— Leah von Essen, Contributor
The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports
By Michael Waters
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The Other Olympians by Michael Waters covers the history of sex and gender in sports, and the violent, dehumanizing policies organizations have used to police athletes. It’s a compelling, compassionate account of trans, intersex, and queer athletes and their experiences, and it (unfortunately) felt incredibly timely as Paris’s 2024 Summer Olympics was rocked by transphobia and misogyny. Simply a must-read.
— Jen St. Jude, Editor-At-Large
The Lucky Ones: A Memoir
By Zara Chowdhary
Crown Publishing Group
The Lucky Ones by Zara Chowdhary is an intricately woven memoir about the author’s experience of growing up in Ahmedabad, India, during the anti-Muslim pograms and riots that began in Februrary 2002, under the watch and tacit approval of current prime minister Narendra Modi. The riots were just a preview of the politics of rage and resentment that the BJP embraced, which would soon swallow the country’s politics after Modi became prime minister in 2014. Chowdhary’s memoir not only gives personal accounts—she includes the voices of other victims of the riots alongside her own—of how the riots ripped apart her city; she also tenderly writes about the strains placed on her family and their relationships, her family’s personal history in the Indian subcontinent, and the enduring social fracture that the events of February 2002 crystalized. This book is not only a beautifully written portrait of family, violence, and girlhood, but an important historical document highlighting one one of the defining events of 21st century Indian politics.
— Farooq Chaudhry, Editor-At-Large
Martyr!
By Kaveh Akbar
Knopf Publishing Group
A wholly original novel about the meaning of life and the meaning of death, the power of language and the inadequacy of language, ass-backwards American values, addiction, art, and so much more. It’s funny, devastating, and simply put, the best reading experience I had this year.
— Greg Zimmerman, Daily Editor
The Hearing Test
By Eliza Barry Callahan
Catapult
An artist in her twenties wakes up with Sudden Deafness, cause unknown. For the next year, you are her companion as she navigates her life in New York City without sound. This premise hinges on the narration, which was expertly crafted; I thoroughly enjoyed being secluded in this narrator’s head as she considered her unexpectedly altered world.
— Shayne Terry, Contributor
Headshot
By Rita Bullwinkel
Viking
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel is more than a sports novel, although the inherent conflict that boxing provides serves as it’s backdrop. Headshot is, first and foremost, a novel of adolescence and a novel of womanhood, how entire lives can be distilled into just a few pages. It deserves every accolade it has received and more.
— Malavika McGrail, Contributor
All Fours
By Miranda July
Riverhead Books
This was the book I pressed into the hands of every woman I know this year. Though I don’t have much in common with July, she somehow managed to hit pretty much every nerve I have about womanhood, sexuality, growing older, and making meaningful art in the world with this novel. It has her trademark compelling oddness, but there’s a searching and generous quality to the narrative that makes it feel like her most expansive work yet.
— Sara Batkie, Editor-At-Large
How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir
By Shayla Lawson
Tiny Reparations Books
I’ve been talking about Shayla Lawson’s How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir all year, but need to shout it out again as it feels especially urgent post-election. At a time when everything feels divisive, they bring a message of love. And I stand by what I said in our interview, I think they’re a literary genius.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
Pink Slime
By Fernanda Trías
Translated by Heather Cleary
Scribner Book Company
Anyone looking for their next Fever Dream fix shouldn’t miss this one from Uruguayan writer Trías, which is set in a South American country ravaged by environmental disaster. Trías is an expert at building atmosphere; I felt like I was breathing in the same viscous poison air as the characters at times. Presciently written before the pandemic but only translated into English this year, it somehow feels like a missive from the future.
— Sara Batkie, Editor-At-Large
Blue Light Hours
By Bruna Dantas Lobato
Grove Press, Black Cat
I love complex mother-daughter relationships, but this novel made me realize how much I craved reading about a loving, tight-knit one. The story follows a Daughter leaving Brazil for college in Vermont, with her main connection to her mother through weekly Skype calls. At under 200 pages, it’s a novel to savor, filled with elegant prose and a beautiful exploration of family, loneliness, and the evolving sense of home. A gentle, sometimes sly campus-adjacent immigrant coming-of-age story.
— Ariana Valderrama, Contributor
The Eighth Moon: A Memoir of Belonging and Rebellion
By Jennifer Kabat
Milkweed Editions
Subtitled “A Memoir of Longing and Rebellion,” this capacious and generous study of Kabat’s move to the Catskills and discovery of an 1840’s rebellion there is rambling in the best possible way. By collapsing time so the past lives beside the present, Kabat’s deeply kind and questing book is an essential read for anyone who’s feeling lost in our new normal. You might find your new best friend in its pages.
— Sara Batkie, Editor-At-Large
The West Passage
By Jared Pechaček
Tordotcom
Serious though whimsical, packed with horrors and wonders, The West Passage is the kind of story that makes you feel like you’ve actually gone on a journey. Charmingly illustrated throughout, with inventive details and fascinating characters, this feels like an instant classic for anyone who loves fantasy. Highly recommended.
— Casella Brookins, Contributor
We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance
By Kellie Carter Jackson
Seal Press (CA)
I read this over the summer but plan to re-read it early next year to fortify myself for the turbulent times ahead. It’s a sweeping accessible look at the history of Black resistance with a particular emphasis on Black women’s leadership in combating white supremacy. Kellie Jackson Carter also includes autobiographical anecdotes to further emphasize the personal is political and we can draw strength from the stories of our ancestors.
— Ariana Valderrama, Contributor
You Dreamed of Empires
By Álvaro Enrigue
Translated by Natasha Wimmer
Riverhead Books
Álvaro Enrigue’s latest is a remarkable work of historical reimagination that is simultaneously suspenseful and contemplative in its musings. Exploring the first contact between Hernán Cortés and Moctezuma, You Dreamed of Empires does something that I won’t soon forget—it subverts our understanding of this fateful conquest and offers a powerful rebuke to the colonial project.
— Michael Welch, Editor-In-Chief
Flowers From The Void
By Gianni Washington
Clash Books
Call me biased, but CHIRB-contributing writer Gianni Washington published a short story collection and it’s a stunner. Washington is an inventive and talented writer, elegant on the line level, emotionally intelligent with her characters, no matter how monstrous, and able to weave unforgettable macabre stories that linger, but also should be pondered. (Washington also wrote a fantastic feature essay on our site about her experience with this book debuting in the UK first.)
— Rachel León, Managing Director
Village Weavers
By Myriam J.A. Chancy
Tin House Books
This book reminded me why historical fiction, when done well, is my favorite genre. The story begins in 1940s Haiti with Sisi and Gertie, childhood best friends torn apart by secrets, imperialism and classism. The story follows the girls through Papa Doc (Duvalier’s) brutal regime in Haiti to exile in Paris and eventually the United States. Over six decades Chancy writes movingly about the importance of friendship and community and the constantly reverberating impacts of colonialism. I appreciated the elegant and evocative writing while also being swept away in an incredible story.
— Ariana Valderrama, Contributor
My Heavenly Favorite
By Lucas Rijneveld
Graywolf Press
My Heavenly Favorite by Lucas Rijneveld (Graywolf Press), translated from the Dutch by Michele Hutchinson, is a book I found myself thinking about long after I finished it. Narrated from jail by a veterinarian who falls in love with a farmer’s young daughter just as she is entering adolescence and dreaming of becoming a boy, it’s a work that is both endlessly nauseating and compulsively readable, forcing the reader into the mind of a rapist who believes himself to be the lovesick hero of the story. Certainly not for everyone, My Heavenly Favorite turns the May December romance trope on its head, then kicks it down a hill.
— Christina Drill, Social Media Manager
What’s Not Mine
By Nora Decter
ECW Press
I have lost of how many times I’ve read Nora Decter’s What’s Not Mine, and yet I continue to return to it. Decter’s prose is electric and masterfully weaves this story about family, addiction, inheritance, trauma, and survival. (Don’t miss this featured book list Decter put together of books about addiction.)
— Rachel León, Managing Director
Thanks For This Riot
By Janelle Bassett
University of Nebraska Press
One last short story collection because they don’t get enough love. Janelle Bassett’s Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prize-winning Thanks for This Riot is a delightful and tender collection dealing with family and femininity. Wickedly smart and filled with humor, this is a story collection you don’t want to miss.
— Rachel León, Managing Director
