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#3 – The Known World by Edward P. Jones – 2024 Best Reads
It’s the kind of longing to speak truth that brings humanity to situations of profound injustice. And this is the kind of book that does the same, looking back into the past and finding the fire that still burns today. →
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#5 – The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
The class and race lines are complicated. It’s America, after all. One of the Jewish characters wonders if becoming part of the American stewpot is worth the cost. “We are integrating into a burning house,” he says. But there is life bursting out everywhere, despite the trials. →
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#6 – The Ninety-Third Name of God by Anya Krugovoy Silver – 2024 Best Reads
What to do with these strangely limited bodies? Perhaps poetry is the best defense we have against oblivion. As Krugovoy Silver shows, God is found in the reflected light of passing things. →
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#7 – Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel – 2024 Best Reads
Mantel makes Thomas Cromwell a charismatic and sympathetic figure, even if he has some undeniable rough edges. You get the sense that it took a man like him to make a nation out of England. →
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#9 – Larry McMurtry by Tracy Daugherty – 2024 Best Reads
Texans today are noted for loud self-assertion, but just below the surface is an unfinished project—to make a place out of the disparate dreams and violent expeditions that have led people here. And in the nascent Texas literary world there is a recognition that its chroniclers are still waiting to be celebrated. →
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#10 – Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson – 2024 Best Reads
We have been reading and, as we’ve done since 2017, we’re ready to spill some tea on the 2024 reading campaign. →
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#1 & A Recap & A Few More Best Reads of 2023
Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life was a doorstop of a book, coming in at 688 pages, but I wouldn’t have wanted it to be any shorter than it was. →
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#2 – big wonderful thing by Stephen Harrigan – Best Reads of 2023
Mary Austin Holley, author of the first English history of Texas, (and cousin to Stephen F. Austin), said “One’s feelings in Texas are unique and original…and very like a dream or youthful vision realized.” (116) Many a Texas visitor or emigré has discovered the same thing about the state, despite its outsized contradictions. →
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