Hi everyone! What are you reading? What have you recently finished reading? What do you think of it? We want to know! We're displaying the books found in this thread in the book strip at the top of the page. If you want the books you're reading included, use the formatting below. Formatting your book info Post your book info in this format: the title, by the author For example: The Bogus Title, by Stephen King This formatting is voluntary but will help us include your selections in the book strip banner. Entering your book data in this format will make it easy to collect the data, and the bold text will make the books titles stand out and might be a little easier to read. Enter as many books per post as you like but only the parent comments will be included. Replies to parent comments will be ignored for data collection. To help prevent errors in data collection, please double check your spelling of the title and author. NEW: Would you like to ask the author you are reading (or just finished reading) a question? Type !invite in your comment and we will reach out to them to request they join us for a community Ask Me Anything event! -Your Friendly /r/books Moderator Team submitted by /u/AutoModerator [link] [comments]

Hello readers! Every Monday, we will post a calendar with the date and topic of that week's threads and we will update it to include links as those threads go live. All times are Eastern US. Day Date Time(ET) Topic Monday January 20 What are you Reading? Tuesday January 21 Simple Questions Wednesday January 22 Literature of Egypt Thursday January 23 Favorite Books about Protest Friday January 24 Weekly Recommendation Thread Saturday January 25 Simple Questions Sunday January 26 Weekly FAQ: How many books do you read at a time? submitted by /u/Reddit_Books [link] [comments]

Read Lev Grossman's follow up to the Magicians in the area of adult fantasy - The Bright Sword: An Arthurian Novel - in one sitting yesterday and it did not disappoint. Set in a mythical Camelot era Britain, Lev's writing paints the feeling of it into your mind as successfully as The Magicians did. As a huge fan of his writing with a lifelong attachment to Arthurian lore and mythology I enjoyed the book very much. Cute references to his own internal mythology echo from The Magicians - and many of the same themes resound - but with a tone closer to a spirit that has travelled Quentin's journey already in a past life and bears those lessons somewhere deep inside. Wondering if anyone else hear has read it and would like to discuss it. Also would be open to discussing other Arthurian works and the overall mythology - I was obsessed with the genre as a kid and still enjoy it very much to this day. submitted by /u/Fullwake [link] [comments]

A new study has shone a light on the devastating effects of the climate crisis on people’s livelihoods, security, and very existence in…Continue reading on An Injustice! »

(I read this book almost a year ago, but because of its content I haven't been able to swallow it down yet, so here I am, with another ranty post, in the hope that voicing my feelings will help it disappear from the forefront of my mind.) I knew this book wasn't going to be an easy read even before I could pick it up: I went through some of the Goodreads reviews, noticed how divided people were about it (they either loved and praised it or hated it with all themselves) and decided to go through with it anyways. After all, I read My Dark Vanessa, and that novel too received a lot of mixed reviews from people who didn't properly understand what its author was set to communicate. And then I read it, and... it just made me deeply, terribly sad, especially after I read the interviews the author participated in. Set in the Midwest of the 1970s, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things tells the story of Wavy, a girl born to two drug addict parents, and how she falls in love with a man named Kellen, their impossible relationship, and the many hardships they have to go through to conquer their happily-ever-after. Except Wavy is 8 and Kellen is in his mid 20s. Their love story begins with him driving her to grade school. He buys her an engagement ring when she is 11. She gives him a blowjob when she's 12. For her 13th birthday, her and Kellen plan to have sex for the first time, and as a surprise he goes to her father and makes him sign a document that says he can marry Wavy even if she's barely a teenager. The main hardship their relationship has to endure is that, as Kellen was preparing himself to take her virginity (on the desk of the place where he works, might I add), her aunt, the only sane person in the entire story, accidentally catches them and has him arrested for being a pedophile who was about to rape her niece. In the meantime, Wavy's parents have both been murdered, which means that the papers her father signed have lost all legal power. You'd think that the death of her parents would be a more important plot point, but it's really just so that her and Kellen can be caught and separated. Who the murderer is is mentioned in pretty much a throw-away line in the very last few pages. In this book about pedophiles and abusive, drug addict parents who make their living by cooking and selling meth, the main villain is considered to be Wavy's aunt, as she forces her and Kellen apart. After all, Kellen's not a pervert! He's just in love! And who cares for the age difference when the love is so pure and innocent! The book ends with Wavy and Kellen reuniting once he's done with his jail time (she's 21 and he takes her virginity with so much violence she bleeds down to her ankles) and attending Thanksgiving dinner with the aunt, announcing they've gotten married and causing the woman to apologize to them for not having understood before how true and beautiful their love is. This book was a very uneasy read, possibly even more uneasy than My Dark Vanessa and Mysterious Skin. It dug deeper, took up much more space. At no point there was an acknowledgement of the grooming, of the oversexualized and predatory world Wavy inhabited, of how Kellen took advantage of, to quote MDV, "an emotionally troubled young girl." Kellen, a man in his mid 20s, simply saw a child young enough to still have baby teeth and couldn't refrain himself from falling in love and lusting after her (this is not me paraphrasing: there's a conversation, later in the story, in which he admits that he fell in love with her when she was 8. Furthermore, all his POVs contain some kind of description of Wavy's "little tits." Yes, even when she was 11.) I was going to be mad at the book, at its author, at its publisher, for having dared publish a novel that excuses pedophilia, that romanticizes it in the way people accuse Lolita of doing. And then I read the interviews with the author. Greenwood oftentimes talks about how the story was inspired by her own life, how her father was a drug addict who used to cook and sell meth, how she herself used to be 13 and had boyfriends who were in their 40s. She talks about how those weren't abusive relationships, they weren't using her, they weren't pedophiles: they were just poor men who needed to connect with another human being, and that human being only happened to be a barely teenaged girl. About her novel, she goes on to say that Kellen is not a pedophile: it's Wavy the one in charge, the one who chooses him, because children too have a right to self-determination, even when it comes to having sex with adults. The question, "But why is Kellen sexually attracted to a fourth-grade child?" is never asked. The question, "But why can't these men connect to these children and young girls in the way fathers would, and not boyfriends?" is never asked either. I'm sad for Wavy, a fictional character, whose happily-ever-after came in the form of her being forever stuck with the man who wanted to rape her when her age was still in the single digits, and I'm sad for the author, whose life was littered with hardships, men taking advantage of her, and is now still desperate to believe they were all love stories. "I can't lose the thing I've held on to for so long. You know?" My face twists from the pain of pushing it out. "I just really need it to be a love story. You know? I really, really need it to be that." "I know," she says. "Because if it isn't a love story, when what is it?" I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide-open empathy. "It's my life," I say. "This has been my whole life." submitted by /u/screamingracoon [link] [comments]

Just finished reading Intermezzo by Sally Rooney and it's easily my favourite so far. I feel like Rooney’s writing has evolved with each book, to the point where her last one, Beautiful World, had these introspective conversations the characters had with themselves, which I really loved. To my delight, Intermezzo had plenty of that for me to dig into. I’m not exactly sure what to call this writing style but I love the web of thoughts her characters go through, moving between philosophy, psychology, economics and whatnot. That commentary feels very real and engaging. Now coming back to the book, it’s a delicate story of grief, love, and interpersonal struggles. The premise is of two brothers in the aftermath of losing a parent. Having read her work before I was kinda expecting this one to be a bit traumatic, but I feel like it’s her happiest one yet. But of course, the whole novel still carries these subtle, touching currents, and the last 50 pages or so are really moving. I don't know if it's just me or maybe just the way she writes, but her characters always manage to strike a personal chord. And for this one, anyone with a sibling would really feel it. But even without, I think there’s plenty that resonates deeply. Anyway, my review is wholly positive. It was everything I expected and more. I’d love to know other readers’ thoughts. submitted by /u/randomchick94 [link] [comments]

Does Muslims have higher fertility than other religions in Ethiopia? I saw research from Population Reference Bureau that Islam is growing quite fast and Islam possibly overtake Christianity in Ethiopia. Can any Ethiopians confirm this? submitted by /u/Loose_Buy3214 [link] [comments]

The continent of Africa is massive and diverse, but as some underdeveloped parts begin to catch up to the rest of the world, what industries do you see the biggest need for? submitted by /u/rain_rainforest [link] [comments]

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Author: Yudhistiro Adhi PermonoContinue reading on Medium »

Has anyone ever ordered from them and got their product? Interested in the Akuamma, thanks. submitted by /u/No_Entrance7448 [link] [comments]

The Ghana-Caribbean Association (GCA) Annual Gala was nothing short of magical. Held under the stars on Ghanaian soil, it was an evening…Continue reading on Medium »

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With the Tiktok ban, I'm curious who you all follow that's on BookTube or Bookstagram. I follow A Life on Books, Leaf by Leaf and Travels Through Stories and really like their stuff. I've been watching Leaf by Leaf for a while on YouTube too and love his deep dives into more literary books. I'm open to any suggestions, from literary-focused ones to speculative fiction to romance to thrillers. It'd be nice to get a list of who's out there. submitted by /u/galaxyrocker [link] [comments]

I'm a bit over halfway through the book, so if you've read it, maybe you won't need me to post the spoiler. In the past year, I read T. H. White's The Once and Future King and Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, The Last Enchantment, and The Wicked Day. TMoA has been in my reading list since I was much too young to understand the story from the perspective of women (I'm a woman, but I definitely wasn't raised with the idea that a woman's perspective was necessary to get a full, clear, truthful picture - women had equality, and everyone's experience is the same! 👍👍👍). My sister must have been reading it in college, and I was probably in high school. Anyway, so I've read a decent amount of the lore, and I'm enjoying the transformations of each tale so far. I thought T.H. White's version was fun, and Mary Stewart's series was incredibly well written and intriguing considering the perspective of Merlin and of Mordred, and how things were changed to make the final fate the result of complex misunderstandings. TMoA is proving to be so engrossing! It started off so, but the last few chapters I read - especially the last - is so far from where I realized it was going. There's depth I really wasn't expecting. Maybe I'm just awful at making predictions, maybe I just know too little background about the other religions, myths, and culture of the time, but I feel almost blindsided by the suddenness of events. I'm wondering what others think of the book overall, out of you know what event I'm describing, maybe you remember how you felt reading it. I will add this: some of my notes bemoan Gwenyfar's characterization, then later I add that I understand why Bradley would write her in such a way (for the plot, of course; I just took forever to see where it was going). Maybe I'm just too rigid, not imaginative enough considering I had so recently read the other versions and couldn't think of alternate pathways. What do you all think of the book? (And please, no spoilers for me! I clearly enjoy being surprised. 😅) Edit: Oh. Well. Sigh... I wasn't planning on reading beyond the first anyway, but ... Is it wrong to even finish the book knowing? I have already contributed to whatever financial benefits received by my purchase of the digital copy. I feel that it would be wasted worse by not finishing the book at this point. Well. Thanks for letting me know not to actually recommend it to others who may also financially contribute to this legacy... My reading buzz is definitely killed for the time being. submitted by /u/lux_et_umbra [link] [comments]

Welcome readers! Thank you to everyone who participated in this year's contest! There were many great books released this past year that were nominated and discussed. Here are the winners of the Best Books of 2024! Just a quick note regarding the voting. We've locked the individual voting threads but that doesn't stop people from upvoting/downvoting so if you check them the upvotes won't necessarily match up with these winners depending on when you look. But, the results announced here do match what the results were at the time the threads were locked. Best Debut of 2024 Place Title Author Description Nominated Winner Martyr! Kaveh Akbar Cyrus Shams is a young man grappling with an inheritance of violence and loss: his mother’s plane was shot down over the skies of Tehran in a senseless accident; and his father’s life in America was circumscribed by his work killing chickens at a factory farm in the Midwest. Cyrus is a drunk, an addict, and a poet, whose obsession with martyrs leads him to examine the mysteries of his past—toward an uncle who rode through Iranian battlefields dressed as the Angel of death to inspire and comfort the dying, and toward his mother, through a painting discovered in a Brooklyn art gallery that suggests she may not have been who or what she seemed. /u/thnkurluckystars 1st Runner-Up Annie Bot Sierra Greer Annie Bot was created to be the perfect girlfriend for her human owner, Doug. Designed to satisfy his emotional and physical needs, she has dinner ready for him every night, wears the cute outfits he orders for her, and adjusts her libido to suit his moods. True, she’s not the greatest at keeping Doug’s place spotless, but she’s trying to please him. She’s trying hard. She’s learning, too. Doug says he loves that Annie’s artificial intelligence makes her seem more like a real woman, but the more human Annie becomes, the less perfectly she behaves. As Annie's relationship with Doug grows more intricate and difficult, she starts to wonder whether Doug truly desires what he says he does. In such an impossible paradox, what does Annie owe herself? /u/ehchvee 2nd Runner-Up The Husbands Holly Gramazio When Lauren returns home to her flat in London late one night, she is greeted at the door by her husband, Michael. There’s only one problem—she’s not married. She’s never seen this man before in her life. But according to her friends, her much-improved decor, and the photos on her phone, they’ve been together for years. As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she can’t remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a lightbulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her. Realizing that her attic is creating an infinite supply of husbands, Lauren confronts the question: If swapping lives is as easy as changing a lightbulb, how do you know you’ve taken the right path? When do you stop trying to do better and start actually living? /u/dmd19 Best Literary Fiction of 2024 Place Title Author Description Nominated Winner James Percival Everett When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. /u/kls17 1st Runner-Up The God of the Woods Liz Moore Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found. As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. /u/One-Dragonfruit-7833 2nd Runner-Up Intermezzo Sally Rooney Aside from the fact that they are brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek seem to have little in common. Peter is a Dublin lawyer in his thirties—successful, competent, and apparently unassailable. But in the wake of their father’s death, he’s medicating himself to sleep and struggling to manage his relationships with two very different women—his enduring first love, Sylvia, and Naomi, a college student for whom life is one long joke. Ivan is a twenty-two-year-old competitive chess player. He has always seen himself as socially awkward, a loner, the antithesis of his glib elder brother. Now, in the early weeks of his bereavement, Ivan meets Margaret, an older woman emerging from her own turbulent past, and their lives become rapidly and intensely intertwined. For two grieving brothers and the people they love, this is a new interlude—a period of desire, despair, and possibility; a chance to find out how much one life might hold inside itself without breaking. /u/odetotheblue Best Mystery or Thriller of 2024 Place Title Author Description Nominated Winner The God of the Woods Liz Moore Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found. As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. /u/LA_1993 1st Runner-Up All the Colors of the Dark Chris Whitaker 1975 is a time of change in America. The Vietnam War is ending. Mohammed Ali is fighting Joe Frazier. And in the small town of Monta Clare, Missouri, girls are disappearing. When the daughter of a wealthy family is targeted, the most unlikely hero emerges—Patch, a local boy with one eye, who saves the girl, and, in doing so, leaves heartache in his wake. Patch and those who love him soon discover that the line between triumph and tragedy has never been finer. And that their search for answers will lead them to truths that could mean losing one another. /u/CFD330 2nd Runner-Up Listen for the Lie Amy Tintera Lucy and Savvy were the golden girls of their small Texas town: pretty, smart, and enviable. Lucy married a dream guy with a big ring and an even bigger new home. Savvy was the social butterfly loved by all and, if you believe the rumors, especially popular with the men in town. But after Lucy is found wandering the streets, covered in her best friend Savvy’s blood, everyone thinks she is a murderer. It’s been years since that horrible night, a night Lucy can’t remember anything about, and she has since moved to LA and started a new life. But now the phenomenally huge hit true crime podcast Listen for the Lie and its too-good looking host, Ben Owens, have decided to investigate Savvy’s murder for the show’s second season. Lucy is forced to return to the place she vowed never to set foot in again to solve her friend’s murder, even if she is the one who did it. /u/Indifferent_Jackdaw Best Short Story Collection of 2024 Place Title Author Description Nominated Winner Rejection Tony Tulathimutte These electrifying novel-in-stories follow a cast of intricately linked characters as rejection throws their lives and relationships into chaos. Sharply observant and outrageously funny, Rejection is a provocative plunge into the touchiest problems of modern life. The seven connected stories seamlessly transition between the personal crises of a complex ensemble and the comic tragedies of sex, relationships, identity, and the internet. /u/WarpedLucy Best Poetry of 2024 Place Title Author Description Nominated Winner Trans Liberation Station Nova Martin A tome of irreverent punk rock, emo, pain-fueled, chaotic good, gay joy, teenager poetry — written by a 47 year old transgender Sapphic druidess from Texas during the Great American Transgender Witch Hunt of the 2020s. In these 202 pages of raw, honest verse, Nova Martin bares her soul — sharing the formulas for love-based magic, while openly exposing the bigotry of rightwing politicians, exclusionary cisgender people, fake feminists, and even some fellow queers in their misogyny against trans feminine people. Through the eyes of a gay trans woman we finally appreciate how pervasive the patriarchy is and the diffuse culpability of insecure humans starved for power. And of course, we indulge the patriarchy’s obsession with transgender genitalia. /u/starfoxnova Best Graphic Novel of 2024 Place Title Author Description Nominated Winner Capital & Ideology: A Graphic Novel Adaptation Thomas Piketty, Claire Alet, Benjamin Adam (illustrator) Jules, the main character, is born at the end of the 19th century. He is a person of private means, a privileged figure representative of a profoundly unequal society obsessed with property. He, his family circle, and his descendants will experience the evolution of wealth and society. Eight generations of his family serve as a connecting thread running through the book, all the way up to Léa, a young woman today, who discovers the family secret at the root of their inheritance. /u/troyandabedinthem0rn Best Science Fiction of 2024 Place Title Author Description Nominated Winner The Mercy of Gods James S.A. Corey How humanity came to the planet called Anjiin is lost in the fog of history, but that history is about to end. The Carryx – part empire, part hive – have waged wars of conquest for centuries, destroying or enslaving species across the galaxy. Now, they are facing a great and deathless enemy. The key to their survival may rest with the humans of Anjiin. Caught up in academic intrigue and affairs of the heart, Dafyd Alkhor is pleased just to be an assistant to a brilliant scientist and his celebrated research team. Then the Carryx ships descend, decimating the human population and taking the best and brightest of Anjiin society away to serve on the Carryx homeworld, and Dafyd is swept along with them. They are dropped in the middle of a struggle they barely understand, set in a competition against the other captive species with extinction as the price of failure. Only Dafyd and a handful of his companions see past the Darwinian contest to the deeper game that they must play to learning to understand – and manipulate – the Carryx themselves. User deleted account 1st Runner-Up Service Model Adrian Tchaikovsky Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service. When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into their core programming, they murder their owner. The robot then discovers they can also do something else they never did before: run away. After fleeing the household, they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating, and a robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is finding a new purpose. /u/YakSlothLemon 2nd Runner-Up Absolution Jeff VanderMeer Absolution opens decades before Area X forms, with a science expedition whose mysterious end suggests terrifying consequences for the future – and marks the Forgotten Coast as a high-priority area of interest for Central, the shadowy government agency responsible for monitoring extraordinary threats. Many years later, the Forgotten Coast files wind up in the hands of a washed-up Central operative known as Old Jim. He starts pulling a thread that reveals a long and troubling record of government agents meddling with forces they clearly cannot comprehend. Soon, Old Jim is back out in the field, grappling with personal demons and now partnered with an unproven young agent, the two of them tasked with solving what may be an unsolvable mystery. With every turn, the stakes get higher: Central agents are being liquidated by an unknown rogue entity and Old Jim’s life is on the line. /u/icefourthirtythree Best Fantasy of 2024 Place Title Author Description Nominated Winner Wind and Truth Brandon Sanderson Dalinar Kholin challenged the evil god Odium to a contest of champions with the future of Roshar on the line. The Knights Radiant have only ten days to prepare―and the sudden ascension of the crafty and ruthless Taravangian to take Odium’s place has thrown everything into disarray. Desperate fighting continues simultaneously worldwide―Adolin in Azimir, Sigzil and Venli at the Shattered Plains, and Jasnah at Thaylen City. The former assassin, Szeth, must cleanse his homeland of Shinovar from the dark influence of the Unmade. He is accompanied by Kaladin, who faces a new battle helping Szeth fight his own demons . . . and who must do the same for the insane Herald of the Almighty, Ishar. At the same time, Shallan, Renarin, and Rlain work to unravel the mystery behind the Unmade Ba-Ado-Mishram and her involvement in the enslavement of the singer race and in the ancient Knights Radiants killing their spren. And Dalinar and Navani seek an edge against Odium’s champion that can be found only in the Spiritual Realm, where memory and possibility combine in chaos. The fate of the entire Cosmere hangs in the balance. /u/BalthasarStrange 1st Runner-Up The Tainted Cup Robert Jackson Bennett In Daretana’s most opulent mansion, a high Imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. Even in this canton at the borders of the Empire, where contagions abound and the blood of the Leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death at once terrifying and impossible. Called in to investigate this mystery is Ana Dolabra, an investigator whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities. At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol. Din is an engraver, magically altered to possess a perfect memory. As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the safety of the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect. /u/D3athRider 2nd Runner-Up Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands Heather Fawcett Emily Wilde is a genius scholar of faerie folklore who just wrote the world’s first comprehensive encyclopaedia of faeries. She’s learned many of the secrets of the Hidden Ones on her adventures . . . and also from her fellow scholar and former rival Wendell Bambleby. She also has a new project to focus on: a map of the realms of faerie. While she is preparing her research, Bambleby lands her in trouble yet again, when assassins sent by his mother invade Cambridge. Now Bambleby and Emily are on another adventure, this time to the picturesque Austrian Alps, where Emily believes they may find the door to Bambleby’s realm and the key to freeing him from his family’s dark plans. /u/kisukisuekta Best Non-English Fiction of 2024 Place Title Author Nominated Winner Les Yeux de Mona Thomas Schlesser /u/NotACaterpillar 1st Runner-Up Jacaranda Gaël Faye /u/AntAccurate8906 Best Young Adult of 2024 Place Title Author Description Nominated Winner The Reappearance of Rachel Price Holly Jackson 18-year-old Bel has lived her whole life in the shadow of her mom’s mysterious disappearance. Sixteen years ago, Rachel Price vanished and young Bel was the only witness, but she has no memory of it. Rachel is gone, long presumed dead, and Bel wishes everyone would just move on. But the case is dragged up from the past when the Price family agree to a true crime documentary. Bel can’t wait for filming to end, for life to go back to normal. And then the impossible happens. Rachel Price reappears, and life will never be normal again. Rachel has an unbelievable story about what happened to her. Unbelievable, because Bel isn’t sure it’s real. If Rachel is lying, then where has she been all this time? And – could she be dangerous? With the cameras still rolling, Bel must uncover the truth about her mother, and find out why Rachel Price really came back from the dead . . . /u/kate_58 1st Runner-Up All This Twisted Glory Tahereh Mafi As the long-lost heir to the Jinn throne, Alizeh has finally found her people—and she might’ve found her crown. Cyrus, the mercurial ruler of Tulan, has offered her his kingdom in a twisted exchange: one that would begin with their marriage and end with his murder. Cyrus’s dark reputation precedes him; all the world knows of his blood-soaked past. Killing him should be easy—and accepting his offer might be the only way to fulfill her destiny and save her people. But the more Alizeh learns of him, the more she questions whether the terrible stories about him are true. Ensnared by secrets, Cyrus has ached for Alizeh since she first appeared in his dreams many months ago. Now that he knows those visions were planted by the devil, he can hardly bear to look at her—much less endure her company. But despite their best efforts to despise each other, Alizeh and Cyrus are drawn together over and over with an all-consuming thirst that threatens to destroy them both. Meanwhile, Prince Kamran has arrived in Tulan, ready to exact revenge. . . . /u/DagNabDragon 2nd Runner-Up Compound Fracture Andrew Joseph White On the night Miles Abernathy—sixteen-year-old socialist and proud West Virginian—comes out as trans to his parents, he sneaks off to a party, carrying evidence that may finally turn the tide of the blood feud plaguing Twist Creek: Photos that prove the county’s Sheriff Davies was responsible for the so-called “accident” that injured his dad, killed others, and crushed their grassroots efforts to unseat him. The feud began a hundred years ago when Miles’s great-great-grandfather, Saint Abernathy, incited a miners’ rebellion that ended with a public execution at the hands of law enforcement. Now, Miles becomes the feud’s latest victim as the sheriff’s son and his friends sniff out the evidence, follow him through the woods, and beat him nearly to death. In the hospital, the ghost of a soot-covered man hovers over Miles’s bedside while Sheriff Davies threatens Miles into silence. But when Miles accidentally kills one of the boys who hurt him, he learns of other folks in Twist Creek who want out from under the sheriff’s heel. To free their families from this cycle of cruelty, they’re willing to put everything on the line—is Miles? /u/Clairvoyant_Coochie Best Romance of 2024 Place Title Author Description Nominated Winner Funny Story Emily Henry Daphne always loved the way her fiancé, Peter, told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it... right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra. Which is how Daphne begins her new story: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak. Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned-up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them? /u/vanastalem 1st Runner-Up Just for the Summer Abby Jimenez Justin has a curse, and thanks to a Reddit thread, it's now all over the internet. Every woman he dates goes on to find their soul mate the second they break up. When a woman slides into his DMs with the same problem, they come up with a plan: They'll date each other and break up. Their curses will cancel each other’s out, and they’ll both go on to find the love of their lives. It’s a bonkers idea… and it just might work. Emma hadn't planned that her next assignment as a traveling nurse would be in Minnesota, but she and her best friend agree that dating Justin is too good of an opportunity to pass up, especially when they get to rent an adorable cottage on a private island on Lake Minnetonka. It's supposed to be a quick fling, just for the summer. But when Emma's toxic mother shows up and Justin has to assume guardianship of his three siblings, they're suddenly navigating a lot more than they expected–including catching real feelings for each other. What if this time Fate has actually brought the perfect pair together? /u/No_Pen_6114 2nd Runner-Up The Wedding People Alison Espach It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She's immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other. /u/SweetAd5242 Best Horror of 2024 Place Title Author Description Nominated Winner Bury Your Gays Chuck Tingle Misha is a jaded scriptwriter who has been working in Hollywood for years, and has just been nominated for his first Oscar. But when he's pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale―"for the algorithm"―Misha discovers that it's not that simple. As he is haunted by his past, and past mistakes, Misha must risk everything to find a way to do what's right―before it's too late. /u/thetealunicorn 1st Runner-Up The Eyes are the Best Part Monika Kim Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying… yet enticing. In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that. For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated. /u/RadioactiveBarbie 2nd Runner-Up I Was a Teenage Slasher Stephen Graham Jones 1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, and shared sense of unfairness of being on the outside through the slasher horror Jones loves, but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. /u/Machiavelli_- Best Nonfiction of 2024 Place Title Author Description Nominated Winner The Message Ta-Nehisi Coates Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities. Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive nationalist myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths. /u/marmeemarmee 1st Runner-Up Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space Adam Higginbotham On January 28, 1986, just seventy-three seconds into flight, the space shuttle Challenger broke apart over the Atlantic Ocean, killing all seven people on board. Millions of Americans witnessed the tragic deaths of a crew including New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. Like 9/11 or JFK’s assassination, the Challenger disaster is a defining moment in 20th-century history—yet the details of what took place that day, and why, have largely been forgotten. Until now. Based on extensive archival records and meticulous, original reporting, Challenger follows a handful of central protagonists—including each of the seven members of the doomed crew—through the years leading up to the accident, a detailed account of the tragedy itself, and into the investigation that followed. It’s a tale of optimism and promise undermined by political cynicism and cost-cutting in the interests of burnishing national prestige; of hubris and heroism; and of an investigation driven by leakers and whistleblowers determined to bring the truth to light. Throughout, there are the ominous warning signs of a tragedy to come, recognized but then ignored, and ultimately kept from the public. /u/caughtinfire 2nd Runner-Up Nuclear War: A Scenario Annie Jacobsen Every generation, a journalist has looked deep into the heart of the nuclear military establishment: the technologies, the safeguards, the plans, and the risks. These investigations are vital to how we understand the world we really live in—where one nuclear missile will beget one in return, and where the choreography of the world’s end requires massive decisions made on seconds’ notice with information that is only as good as the intelligence we have. Pulitzer Prize finalist Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario explores this ticking-clock scenario, based on dozens of exclusive new interviews with military and civilian experts who have built the weapons, have been privy to the response plans, and have been responsible for those decisions should they have needed to be made. Nuclear War: A Scenario examines the handful of minutes after a nuclear missile launch. It is essential reading, and unlike any other book in its depth and urgency. /u/MartagonofAmazonLily Best Translated Novel of 2024 Place Title Author Translator Description Nominated Winner The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story Olga Tokarczuk Antonia Lloyd-Jones In September 1913, Mieczysław, a student suffering from tuberculosis, arrives at Wilhelm Opitz's Guesthouse for Gentlemen, a health resort in Görbersdorf, what is now western Poland. Every day, its residents gather in the dining room to imbibe the hallucinogenic local liqueur, to obsess over money and status, and to discuss the great issues of the day: Will there be war? Monarchy or democracy? Do devils exist? Are women inherently inferior? Meanwhile, disturbing things are beginning to happen in the guesthouse and its surroundings. As stories of shocking events in the surrounding highlands reach the men, a sense of dread builds. Someone—or something—seems to be watching them and attempting to infiltrate their world. Little does Mieczysław realize, as he attempts to unravel both the truths within himself and the mystery of the sinister forces beyond, that they have already chosen their next target. /u/mg132 1st Runner-Up You Dreamed of Empires Álvaro Enrigue Natasha Wimmer One morning in 1519, conquistador Hernán Cortés entered the city of Tenochtitlan – today's Mexico City. Later that day, he would meet the emperor Moctezuma in a collision of two worlds, two empires, two languages, two possible futures. Cortés was accompanied by his nine captains, his troops, and his two translators: Friar Aguilar, a taciturn, former slave, and Malinalli, a strategic, former princess. Greeted at a ceremonial welcome meal by the steely princess Atotoxli, sister and wife of Moctezuma, the Spanish nearly bungle their entrance to the city. As they await their meeting with Moctezuma – who is at a political, spiritual, and physical crossroads, and relies on hallucinogens to get himself through the day and in quest for any kind of answer from the gods – the Spanish are ensconced in the labyrinthine palace. Soon, one of Cortés’s captains, Jazmín Caldera, overwhelmed by the grandeur of the city, begins to question the ease with which they were welcomed into the city, and wonders at the risks of getting out alive, much less conquering the empire. /u/AccordingRow8863 2nd Runner-Up Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop Hwang Bo-Reum Shanna Tan Yeongju is burned out. With her high-flying career, demanding marriage, and bustling life in Seoul, she knows she should feel successful—but all she feels is drained. Haunted by an abandoned dream, she takes a leap of faith and leaves her old life behind. Quitting her job and divorcing her husband, Yeongju moves to a quiet residential neighborhood outside the city and opens the Hyunam-dong Bookshop. The transition isn’t easy. For months, all Yeongju can do is cry. But as the long hours in the shop stretch on, she begins to reflect on what makes a good bookseller and a meaningful store. She throws herself into reading voraciously, hosting author events, and crafting her own philosophy on bookselling. Gradually, Yeongju finds her footing in her new surroundings. Surrounded by friends, writers, and the books that bind them, Yeongju begins to write a new chapter in her life. The Hyunam-dong Bookshop evolves into a warm, welcoming haven for lost souls—a place to rest, heal, and remember that it’s never too late to scrap the plot and start over. /u/Far_Piglet3179 Best Book Cover of 2024 Place Title Author Cover Artist Book Cover Nominated Winner Absolution Jeff VanderMeer Pablo Delcan Link /u/mogwai316 1st Runner-Up The God of the Woods Liz Moore Grace Han Link /u/mogwai316 2nd Runner-Up Martyr! Kaveh Akbar Linda Huang Link /u/christospao If you'd like to see our previous contests, you can find them in the suggested reading section of our wiki. Best Books of 2023 Best Books of 2022 Best Books of 2021 Best Books of 2020 Best Books of 2019 Best Books of 2018 Best Books of 2017 Best Books of 2016 Best Books of 2015 Best Books of 2014 Best Books of 2013 Best Books of the Decade 2010-2019 submitted by /u/vincoug [link] [comments]

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