Best Books I Read in 2024

My Favorite Fiction of 2024:

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

James by Percival Everett

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry

Germinal by Émile Zola

My Favorite Nonfiction of 2024:

How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen by David Brooks

The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan

Ben & Me: In Search of a Founder's Formula for a Long and Useful Life by Eric Weiner

The Year of Living Constitutionally: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning by A. J. Jacobs

Cheerfulness by Garrison Keillor

Somehow: Thoughts on Love by Anne Lamott

The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians by James Patterson

Three Simple Lines: A Writer's Pilgrimage into the Heart and Homeland of Haiku by Natalie Goldberg

Sapiens: A Graphic History: The Birth of Humanity by Yuval Noah Harati

The Well-Lived Life: A 102-Year-Old Doctor's Six Secrets to Health and Happiness at Every Age by Gladys McGarey

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism by Tim Alberta

The Underworld: Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean by Susan Casey

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.   

The Sunday Salon: Starting My 2025 Reading a Little Early

 

Welcome! I am delighted that you joined us here at the Sunday Salon. 

What is the Sunday Salon? 

The Sunday Salon is a place to link up and share what we have been doing during the week. It's also a great opportunity to visit other blogs and join in the conversations going on there. 

We had a lovely Christmas get-together with family this week.

Now we are off having a late Christmas with family this weekend.

What I Read Last Week:

I finished my Christmas picture books.

I'm stopping at 315 books.

 

What I'm Reading Now:

I like to do this thing 

where I stop reading for the year mid-month in December,

and start reading for next year.

I save the last page of each book for January 1.

It starts my year off big.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin

The Day the World Came to Town by Jim DeFede

Hiroshima Diary by Michihiko Hachiya

Now or Never by Janet Evanovich

1984 by George Orwell

Zen Bender by Stephanie Krikorian

One Bird, One Stone by Sean Murphy

Best of the Best American Poetry edited by Robert Pinsky

Baking with Dorie by Dorie Greenspan

Glinda of Oz by L. Frank Baum

Kokoro by Beth Kempton

I began to list 3 Good Things every day during the pandemic. Now I've established a regular routine of writing down my 3 Good Things. Here are 3 Good Things from last week:

Good Thing #1:

Bald eagles are nesting 

in our county.

Good Thing #2:

My friend, Lori, gave me

one of her beautiful paintings.

Good Thing #3:

I finished the Duolingo

December Challenge.

Weekend linkup spots are listed below. Click on the picture to visit the site.

        

I hope you will join the linkup for Sunday Salon below.

The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami: Book Beginnings on Fridays, First Line Friday, The Friday 56, and Book Blogger Hop

     

Today's Featured Book: 

The City and Its Uncertain Walls

by Haruki Murakami

Genre: Fantasy

Published: November 19, 2024

Page Count: 445 pages

Summary: 

We begin with a nameless young couple: a boy and a girl, teenagers in love. One day, she disappears . . . and her absence haunts him for the rest of his life.

Thus begins a search for this lost love that takes the man into middle age and on a journey between the real world and an other world – a mysterious, perhaps imaginary, walled town where unicorns roam, where a Gatekeeper determines who can enter and who must remain behind, and where shadows become untethered from their selves. Listening to his own dreams and premonitions, the man leaves his life in Tokyo behind and ventures to a small mountain town, where he becomes the head librarian, only to learn the mysterious circumstances surrounding the gentleman who had the job before him. As the seasons pass and the man grows more uncertain about the porous boundaries between these two worlds, he meets a strange young boy who helps him to see what he’s been missing all along.

 

BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY is hosted by Rose City Reader. What book are you happy about reading this week? Please share the opening sentence (or so) on BOOK BEGINNINGS ON FRIDAY! Add the link to your blog or social media post and visit other blogs to see what others are reading.

Happy Friday and welcome to the FIRST LINE FRIDAY, hosted by Reading is My Superpower! It’s time to grab the book nearest to you and leave a comment with the first line.

You were the one who told me about the town.

THE FRIDAY 56 is hosted by Anne of Head Full of Books. To play, open a book and turn to page 56 (or 56% on your e-reader). Find a sentence or two and post them, along with the book title and author. Then link up on Head Full of Books and visit others in the linky. 

There was no mistake about it---Mr. Koyasu was no longer a person in this world. The person I had sat across from and spoken with was, in fact, his ghost.

The purpose of THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is to give bloggers a chance to follow other blogs, learn about new books, and befriend other bloggers. THE BOOK BLOGGER HOP is hosted by Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer.    

December 27-January 2. Do you have any reading goals for the new year?

My only goal is to read anything I want, any place I want, any time I want!

Books I Got for My Birthday...Dare I Ask for More for Christmas?

I just celebrated my birthday in November. 

I got these books for my birthday...

Would I sound greedy if I ask for more books?

Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together. Each Tuesday That Artsy Reader Girl assigns a topic and then post her top ten list that fits that topic. You’re more than welcome to join her and create your own top ten (or 2, 5, 20, etc.) list as well. Feel free to put a unique spin on the topic to make it work for you! Please link back to That Artsy Reader Girl in your own post so that others know where to find more information.