The Book Report: Ron Charles on the best books of 2024

By Washington Post book critic Ron Charles

2024 was full of fascinating (“Creation Lake”), moving (“Someone Like Us”), alarming (“Eruption”), entertaining (“All Fours”), educational (“What the Chicken Knows”) and enjoyable (“Colored Television”) books. 

As we look back over the last 12 months, here are five of the best of the best:

“Playground,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Richard Powers, is a brilliant novel about artificial intelligence and the race to save the Earth’s oceans. The story involves a computer genius, a famous oceanographer, and a tiny island in the South Pacific.

Powers draws these stories together in a mind-bending way that will transform the way you see the world.

READ AN EXCERPT: “Playground” by Richard Powers

“Playground” by Richard Powers (W.W. Norton­), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org

Richard Powers (Official site)

Move over, Mark Twain: Percival Everett’s novel “James” is a revolutionary response to “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

Everett retells Twain’s story from the perspective of Huck’s enslaved friend, Jim. You won’t believe how that change in perspective alters everything in this sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying satire of racism and American culture. 

READ AN EXCERPT: “James” by Percival Everett

“James” by Percival Everett (Doubleday), in Hardcover, Large Print Trade Paperback, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org

Also by Percival Everett: “Dr. No” (Book excerpt)

Every family has secrets. Claire Messud has built a gorgeous novel around her own family’s hidden incidents. “This Strange Eventful History” follows three generations as they move around the globe from World War II into the 21st century.

The narrator is a curious young woman determined to be a writer – not unlike Messud herself.

READ AN EXCERPT: “This Strange Eventful History” by Claire Messud

“This Strange Eventful History” by Claire Messud (W.W. Norton), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org

clairemessud.com

Here’s a memoir by a writer who wrestled for decades with a sense of mistaken identity. Finally, in 2021, at the age of 66, she wrote to about two dozen friends and announced that she was transgender and would be known as Lucy.

“I Heard Her Call My Name” is a brave and timely book that describes Lucy Sante’s life and her struggle to be true to herself.

READ AN EXCERPT: “I Heard Her Call My Name” by Lucy Sante

“I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition” by Lucy Sante (Penguin Press), in Hardcover, Trade Paperback, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org

You may think you have a pretty good idea of the world map, but Atossa Araxia Abrahamian explains how special economic zones, tax havens, and free ports are carving up the planet for the highest bidders – and leaving millions of people worse off.

“The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World” makes a very complicated financial and legal subject clear, exciting … and deeply troubling.

READ AN EXCERPT: “The Hidden Globe” by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

“The Hidden Globe” by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian (Riverhead Books), in Hardcover, eBook and Audio formats, available via Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Bookshop.org

atossaaraxia.com

That’s it for the Book Report. It’s been great fun to talk with you all year long about good books. Here’s to many more in 2025.

I’m Ron Charles. Until next time, read on!

     
For more info: 

      
For more reading recommendations, check out these previous Book Report features from Ron Charles: 

     
Produced by Robert Marston. Editor: Joseph Frandino.