From Machiavelli to musketeers, it was a memorable year for literature. Here’s my list of 51 books read and rated in 2024.
(* Indicates it has been read before.)
Five stars
The Tale of Genji, Murasaki Shikibu, c. 1021
The Inheritors, William Golding, 1955
The Satyricon, Petronius, c. 63-65
Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, 1599*
Oedipus Rex, Sophocles, c. 429 BC
The Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri, c. 1321*
The History of Alexander, Quintus Curtius Rufus, 1st cent. AD
Pincher Martin, William Golding, 1956
The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas, 1844
The Symposium, Plato, c. 385-370 BC
Four stars
Machiavelli: A Very Short Introduction, Quentin Skinner, 1981
The Black Lizard, Edogawa Rampo, 1934
African History: A Very Short Introduction, John Parker and Richard Rathbone, 2007
The Red Badge of Courage, Stephen Crane, 1895
Maigret’s Revolver, Georges Simenon, 1952
The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, Yukio Mishima, 1963
Pan, Knut Hamsun, 1894
Maigret and the Headless Corpse, Georges Simenon, 1955
Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction, Malcolm Gaskill, 2010
Imperial Taste: The Beauty of Painting, Lu Suhfen, 2015
Ways of Seeing, John Berger, 1972
Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell, 1851-53
History of Estonia 1918-2017, Ago Pajur and Tõnu Tannberg, 2017
The Tin Drum, Günter Grass, 1959
A Short History of Finland, Jonathan Clements, 2022
The Devil’s Atlas, Edward Brooke-Hitching, 2021
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey, 1962
Gold Mask, Edogawa Rampo, 1930
Fathers and Sons, Ivan Turgenev, 1862
King Solomon’s Mines, H. Rider Haggard, 1885
Planet of the Apes, Pierre Boulle, 1963
Viper’s Dream, Jake Lamar, 2020
Payment Deferred, C. S. Forester, 1926
The Man Who Fell to Earth, Walter Tevis, 1963
Night at the Crossroads, Georges Simenon, 1931
Emphyrio, Jack Vance, 1969
Journey into Fear, Eric Ambler, 1940
Blind Owl, Sadeq Hedayat, 1937
The Penguin Book of Demons, Edited by Scott G. Bruce, 2024
The Spire, William Golding, 1964
The Motorcycle Diaries, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, 1993
Newton: A Very Short Introduction, Rob Iliffe, 2007
The Postman Always Rings Twice, James M. Cain, 1934
Three stars
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath, 1963
The Dogs of War, Frederick Forsyth, 1974
Legends and Tales of Old Tallinn, Jüri Kuuskemaa, 2012
Julia, Sandra Newman, 2023
Two stars
The Door into Summer, Robert A. Heinlein, 1956
Good, C. P. Taylor, 1981
The Left-Handed Woman, Peter Handke, 1976
Taiwan: A History of Agonies, Ong Iok-Tek, 1964
One star
N/A
Previous years: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023.
