The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 2,415 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Be Ready When the Luck Happens

Becky M. Nicolaides ❤️ loved this book because...

Ina Garten narrated her story of doing a major life flip to follow her passions - cooking, food, and making a business out of it all. It's my own fantasy do to this one day, so this was full of inspiration and ideas.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Immersion 🥈 Teach
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Ina Garten ,

Why should I read it?

3 authors picked Be Ready When the Luck Happens as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In her long-awaited memoir, Ina Garten—aka the Barefoot Contessa, author of thirteen bestselling cookbooks, beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and cultural icon—shares her personal story with readers hungry for a seat at her table.
 
Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past…


When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times

Becky M. Nicolaides ❤️ loved this book because...

It's pure Michelle - inspirational to the core in our troubled times.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Emotions 🥈 Thoughts
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐇 I couldn't put it down

By Michelle Obama ,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked The Light We Carry as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The powerful, inspiring follow-up to the critically acclaimed, multi-million #1 bestselling memoir Becoming

In The Light We Carry, former First Lady Michelle Obama shares practical wisdom and powerful strategies for staying hopeful and balanced in today's highly uncertain world.

She considers the questions many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much? Michelle Obama believes that we can all lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of The Right to Suburbia

Becky M. Nicolaides ❤️ loved this book because...

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Teach 🥈 Thoughts
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Willow S. Lung-Amam ,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Right to Suburbia as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In recent decades, American suburbs have undergone a so-called renaissance as multiple forces have transformed them into denser urban landscapes. Yet at the same time, suburban racial diversity, immigration, and poverty rates have surged. The Right to Suburbia investigates how marginalized communities in the suburbs of Washington, DC-one of the most intensely gentrifying metropolitan regions in the United States-have battled the uneven costs and benefits of redevelopment.

Willow Lung-Amam narrates the efforts of activists, community groups, and political leaders fighting for communities' "right to suburbia"-that is, their right to stay put and benefit from new neighborhood investments. Revealing the far-reaching…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

The New Suburbia

By Becky M. Nicolaides ,

Book cover of The New Suburbia

What is my book about?

America's suburbs have been transforming. The conventional story of suburbs as bastions of white, middle-class homeowners no longer describes the suburbs of America's cities. Today they house a more typical cross-section of the nation--rich, poor, Black American, Latino, Asian, immigrant, the unhoused, the lavishly housed, and everyone in between. Stories of everyday suburban life, in the process, have taken on new inflections.

Nowhere are these changes more vivid than in Los Angeles. In this suburban metropolis and global powerhouse, lily white suburbs have virtually disappeared, and over two-thirds of the County's suburbs have become majority minority. Examining this vanguard of change from the postwar to the present, The New Suburbia follows the Asian Americans, Black Americans, and Latinos who moved into white neighborhoods that once barred them. They bought homes, enrolled their children in schools, and began navigating suburban life. They faced a choice: would they remake the suburbs, or would the suburbs remake them? In places like Pasadena, San Marino, South Gate, and Lakewood, suburbanites faced the challenges of living together in difference. Historian Becky Nicolaides explores a range of community experiences, from internal resegregation to suburban poverty, an embrace of law-and-order culture to police brutality, friendly neighbors to social withdrawal. In some communities, diverse residents continued longstanding habits of exclusion and perpetuated metropolitan inequality. In others, they embraced more inclusive, multicultural suburban ideals. Through it all, the common denominators of suburbia remained--low-slung landscapes of single-family homes and families seeking the good life.

An authoritative work based on a half-century of quantitative data and unpublished oral histories and interviews, The New Suburbia explores vital landscapes where the American dream has endured, even as the dreamers have changed.

Book cover of Be Ready When the Luck Happens
Book cover of The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times
Book cover of The Right to Suburbia

Share your top 3 reads of 2025!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,211

readers submitted
so far, will you?