Tim Weed

Last year I put together a list of three of the books I most enjoyed reading for this interesting emerging literary organization called Shepherd (Now Book DNA), which has been conceived as a competitor to Goodreads. This year’s selection was harder to narrow down, but here it is, my list of my three top reads for 2024! (Note that these are books I read in 2024, not necessarily ones that were published in 2024. I tend to read new books a year or two after they come out.)

I think it’s important for writers and readers to support organizations that are trying to get the word out about good books. For one thing, it’s a way to circumvent the powerful media channels dominated by conglomerate publishing; instead of the books they say we should be reading, why not listen to each other? Word of mouth, not well-funded marketing campaigns, after all, is a much more reliable way to find good books.

Of course anyone who loves to read is going to be relying to a major extent on the conglomerates; it’s just baked into the system. I try to buy books from small and independent presses whenever possible, but many of my favorites were put out by the Big 5 corporate imprints. And while it’s true that Goodreads is owned by the Amazon corporate empire, Goodreads and Amazon offer some of the best (and often the only) ways for relatively unknown writers to make their books discoverable to the world at large. This is why I’m pretty assiduous about rating and briefly reviewing the books I’ve read and enjoyed on these sites—and if you care about books and authors, you should too!

Still, Book DNA is a refreshing upstart, and I love what they’re doing for books and authors, so I tend to respond when they approach me to make this kind of list. Some time ago I compiled my list of the best historical novels of early colonial New England; and here are my three top fiction reads of 2023. Enjoy!