My 2024 Reading List
It was not easy for me to concentrate in 2024. I have been fairly obsessed with what has gone on in Israel since October 7, 2023, and it was hard to do what I preach: to settle down with a book and to just breathe, to sit quietly, to shut out the noise of the world. I definitely struggled to do that this year, but there were occasions where reading is definitely what got me through, whether fiction, poetry, or nonfiction. I took three courses towards the Certificate of Narrative Medicine (offered by Columbia University), and some of my reading was guided by readings from that program. I also read some novels recommended to me by my niece who took a course called “Existential Despair” at the University of Pennsylvania. I would have loved a class like that as an undergraduate — I’d love it now. It met one evening a week for seven hours, and the students read the assigned novel during half of the seminar time, and then discussed it for the remaining half. I still have it in the back of my mind that I’d like to do this with a group of people, even virtually. The professor took away their phones, and they were graded on attendance and participation. No exams. What a wonderful way to be immersed in literature and thinking! Some of my reading also stemmed from a six-week Moral Injury workshop I offered to vets. And some of my reading (still ongoing) was a way of trying to process the events of 10/7 (Lee Yaron’s 10/7: 100 Human Stories; Yair Agmon & Oriya Mevorach’s One Day in October: Forty Heroes, Forty Stories; Shiva: Poems of October 7 edited by Rachel Korazim). But the majority of my reading was just organic, or because I’d gone down a rabbit hole (new or old, like the Holocaust, especially because of my trip to Poland this summer), or in a couple instances because I had a craving to re-read something (eg. Malamud’s The Fixer, a great birthday gift from my daughter Ariel, who gave me four books all written in 1966, the year I was born; or Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin which brought me to one of his earlier books; or James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, just because).
2025 has started off with a couple memoirs: Annie Ernaux’ The Years, which completely blew me away and Hua Hsu’s Stay True, a moving memoir about friendship. I’m still finding comfort in poetry and short stories (and am looking forward to reading aloud to my friend from a new translation of Kafka that I got after seeing an exhibit on him at The Morgan Library & Museum). I’m sure the course I’m taking on illness narratives will guide some of my reading for the next couple months. Here’s to a new year of reading…
Here’s the 2024 list:
Agmon, Yair and Mevorach, Oriya. One Day in October: Forty Heroes, Forty Stories
Akbar, Kaveh. Martyr!
Baldwin, James. Giovanni’s Room
Banville, John. The Book of Evidence
Barnes, Julian. Sense of an Ending
Bartov, Omer. Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz
Butler, Blake. Molly
Cunningham, Michael. Traveling Light
Debreczeni, Jozsef. Cold Crematorium: Reporting From the Land of Auschwitz
Didi-Huberman, Georges. Bark
Dolan, Naoise. The Happy Couple
Dubus, Andre III. Such Kindness
Englander, Nathan. Kaddish.com
Erneaux, Annie. The Young Man
____________. Happening
Erpenbeck, Jenny. Kairos
Everett, Percival. James
Gluck, Robert. Margery Kempe
Gunty, Tess. The Rabbit Hutch
Halevi, Yossi Klein. Letters to a Palestinian Friend
Hermann, Nellie. The Cure For Grief
July, Miranda. All Fours
Junger, Sebastian. In My Time Of Dying
_____________.Tribe
Kavakami, Mieko. Heaven
Kingsolver, Barbara. Demon Copperfield
Kingsworth, Paul. Savage Gods
Korazim, Rachel, Ed. Shiva: Poems of October 7
Lerner, Betsy. Shred Sisters
Levy, Bernard-Henri. Israel Alone
Long Soldier, Layla. Whereas
Louis, Edouard. History of Violence
McCann, Colum. Let the Great World Spin
_____________. American Mother
_____________. This Side of Brighteness
Machado, Carmen Maria. In the Dream House
Malamud, Bernard. The Fixer
Ndiaye, Marie. Self Portrait in Green
Nolan, Megan. Acts of Desperation
November, Yehoshua. The Concealment of Endless Light
O’Brien, Tim. America Fantastica
O’Connell, Mark. A Thread of Violence
Pastan, Linda. Traveling Light
Rankine, Claudia. Don’t Let Me Be Lonely
Susann, Jacqueline. Valley of the Dolls
Toibin, Colm. Long Island
Turner, Brian. Here Bullet
__________. Phantom Noise
__________. My Life As a Foreign Country
Van Der Wouden, Yael. The Safekeep
Yaron, Lee. 10/7: 100 Human Stories