Carla Jean Whitley on Her Best Books of 2024

My annual “Best Books of the Year” episode with Carla Jean Whitley is always such a highlight for me (and I know for all of you)! Below are her picks for 2024. Enjoy!

The Best Books She’s Read This Year:

Nonfiction —

Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts by Oliver Burkeman (also adding in Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals for good measure, as well)

Heartbreak is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music by Rob Sheffield

Memoirs —

Just Like Glass: A Family Memoir by Amy Wight Chapman

Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley

Fiction —

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

Sandwich by Catherine Newman

The Best Books She’s Reread This Year:

Looking for Alaska by John Green

The Giver by Lois Lowry

We All Want Impossible Things by Catherine Newman

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year by Margaret Renkl

The Books She Is Anticipating for 2025:

Mothers and Other Fictional Characters: A Memoir in Essays by Nicole Graev Lipson (coming March 4, 2025)

The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff (coming April 22, 2025)

The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland by Nan Shepherd (coming March 18, 2025)

The Lost Trees of Willow Avenue: A Story of Climate and Hope on One American Street by Mike Tidwell (coming March 25, 2025)