What I read in 2024

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The reason to write this list, again this year, was a new bestseller that my husband gifted me: What You Are Looking for Is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama. I too am trying to channel my inner librarian Komachi, the protagonist of the book, possessing the uncanny ability to recommend the perfect books for the patrons. Like her library visitors and readers, I hope this list helps you know yourself, just a little more.The ClassicsThe finest books I read this year, once again, were not published this year. This seems to be my habit now; perhaps that is why they are called classics. The first is George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London. Orwell has been a part of my reading life since I was eight or nine when I first encountered Animal Farm. Back then, it was mostly a tale of barnyard creatures to me. Over the years, I have read much of Orwell, yet somehow this memoir escaped me. It is a two-part account of his hardscrabble days in London and Paris, chronicling the grind of poverty with an unflinching eye.I stumbled upon the book almost by accident. Passing Bookmarks, a socialist bookstore in Bloomsbury, I saw it on the shelf and could not resist. The act of reading it stirred something I had not felt in a long time, a resonance that brought me back to the experience of reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. In both, as the world crumbles in the background, the protagonist’s gaze narrows to the struggle for a warmer coat, a small victory at the pawn shop, or just enough bread to make it through the day. These are stories of survival par…