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From a submarine survival adventure during World War II to an exploration of the dark side of a Catholic convent on the Irish countryside, our staff has wide-ranging taste for their favorite book they read in 2024. Check out the following suggestions (and maybe focus on the Minnesota authors first, eh?). 

Note: Not all of these books were released this year. We instead opened submissions to include any book a staffer read this year.

Full disclosure: I worked with Leif while he was a reporter extraordinaire here at MPR many years ago, so I have a natural bias. But his dystopian novel of life around Duluth and on Lake Superior in a not-so-distant future is a remarkable, if occasionally shocking, read. 

His housepainter bass-playing hero Rainy suffers an awful calamity and sets off in a small boat across the big lake on a trip to find redemption. However, the sense of darkness which slowly emerges in the early chapters develops into a dreadful realization of evil which threatens Rainy and everything he loves. 

Enger’s prose builds this world on rocks and water that many of us will recognize and that’s what makes the story such an adventure, and the underlying sadness and conflict so relatable. After decades of reading Enger’s books I have to say this is my favorite.     

Leif Enger’s ‘cheerful refusal’ to accept despair infuses his new dystopian adventure novel

‘Where Wolves Don't Die’ by Anton Treuer

My favorite recent read is “Where Wolves Don’t Die” by Anton Treuer. It’s a young-adult novel, but I was pulled in by the writing, captivated by the story and informed by the Ojibwe history, culture and humor woven into the story. A really enjoyable but thought-provoking read.

I am not sure who else could write so beautifully about land and North Dakota but Erdrich. To me, the heart of this novel was the mother-daughter relationship. At times it reminded me of the movie “Ladybird.” Everyone in the book is fairly ordinary. It is a story that feels familiar and almost comforting, like it could be unfolding anywhere in the Midwest on an average day. Even so, I couldn’t stop reading. 

Erdrich is so talented at bringing in-depth stories to areas that others just think are “flyover land.” Across the prairie and Midwest, there are complex people with big feelings working blue-collar jobs who deserve representation in literature as well. 

Talking Volumes: Louise Erdrich on ‘The Mighty Red’

I’ve read many books but there are few books that I have read where the main setting was in northern Minnesota, where I consider home. “Native Love Jams” follows the story of an Indigenous woman, Winnow, hired to forage and cook at an Indigenous food festival. There, she meets an attractive, yet annoying, Niigaanii.

This book has become a favorite of mine because it is both funny yet also gives Indigenous people the spotlight when it comes to contemporary romance! Plus it’s written by a Minnesota author — what’s there not to love?

— Chandra Colvin, radio reporter intern

‘I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff’ by Abbi Jacobson

I have read this and listened to the audiobook (read by Jacobson!) countless times, including revisiting it this year. It follows a solo road trip Jacobson commences on after a gutting break up and the end to her wildly important show, “Broad City.” 

She discusses the fluidity of sexuality, the power and delicacy of love and the role of grief in growth. If you have ever been existentially lost, deep in heartbreak or just needing a reminder to chill, it’s for you.

— Anika Besst, temporary digital producer

‘Erosion: Essays of Undoing’ by Terry Tempest Williams

A glimmering tribute to the earth, a powerful call to action and an invocation to change the course we are on. Williams’ heartbreakingly brilliant essays overflow with admiration and respect for public lands, the natural world and its inhabitants.

‘The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism’ by Tim Alberta

I’m originally from Michigan, and Michigan author Tim Alberta has written the best book explaining the overwhelming Christian support for President-elect Donald Trump. The book delves into what’s happening at evangelical churches when it comes to the blending of religion and politics. Alberta is the son of a pastor and his insight sheds light on what’s happening on the ground in these places of worship.

‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’ by Jane Jacobs

I read Jane Jacobs’ 1961 urban planning classic for the first time a decade ago. I wanted to read it again because American cities are going through an enduring identity crisis in the aftermath of the pandemic and the rise of the remote worker. Many of her design ideas are evergreen. Mainly: healthy, vibrant city neighborhoods are walkable and home to a diversity of uses and people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. 

I wonder what Jacobs, who died in 2006, would say about the state of cities today and the major strains they face, like the vacant office spaces in city high rises and the rise in the cost of housing and the decrease in supply.

— Alex V. Cipolle, senior arts reporter and critic

Australian writer Richard Flanagan calls “Question 7” a memoir, but it is so much more than that. It’s a study of the human interconnections of family, history, culture and love, while showing the way operations of chance can scatter and change everything. Flanagan links how an illicit kiss between authors H.G. Wells and Rebecca West led to the creation of the atomic bomb, then the deaths of thousands in Japan — and, in time, his own birth. And that’s just the beginning. 

It’s a wild ride, pulling in his heritage, questions of the human condition and his brush with death as a young man. A historian by training, he weaves events of the past with the possibilities of the future and the impacts these have on the personal lives of ordinary people. It’s breathtaking. I have never read anything like it.  

Richard Flanagan’s exploration of history, family and human interconnection in ‘Question 7’

‘The Devil’s Broker: Seeking Gold, God, and Glory in Fourteenth-Century Italy’ by Frances Stonor Saunders

“The Devil’s Broker” focuses on British mercenary John Hawkwood to tell the story of 14th century northern Italy, the papal schism, the power vacuum it created and the feuds among Italy’s city-states that Hawkwood exploited. It’s a smart storytelling technique that helped me grasp a complicated piece of history.

I’m a big Sonny and Cher — as well as a Cher — fan. She’s such an icon to have survived in the music and entertainment industry (including winning an Academy Award) for more than five decades. Her story is incredible and her memoir does not disappoint with a mother who married about as many times as Elizabeth Taylor and at times the family struggled to have reliable shelter. 

Cher is brutally honest in the book and doesn’t hold back. With 600-some pages, the memoir only goes through the 1970s. She’s lived quite a life. You’ll have to wait for Memoir Part 2 for the rest of her story.

‘There Are Moms Way Worse Than You: Irrefutable Proof That You Are Indeed a Fantastic Parent’ by Glenn Boozan

I absolutely loved this book because, as a mother, I know how challenging and tough parenting can be at times. This book is a hilarious reminder that no matter how much you might doubt yourself, there are always other moms out there who are doing even worse.

‘Taking On the World’ by Ellen MacArthur

I learned about this book while following Cole Brauer, the first woman from the U.S. to sail solo around the world nonstop and unassisted. When Brauer finished her race in March of 2024, I needed another sailing story to follow. 

I found it in “Taking On the World.” British sailor Ellen MacArthur describes her early passion for sailing that inspired her to save her lunch money to buy her first boat when she was eight. 

With excerpts from her sailing journal, she describes the grit and perseverance it took for her — at age 24 — to become the youngest person ever and the fastest woman to circumnavigate the globe alone in 2005. 

Escape From The Deep: The Epic Story of a Legendary Submarine and Her Courageous Crew’ by Alex Kershaw

Their submarine was dead, 180 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. Somehow they survived. They were tortured and beaten. Somehow they survived. Alex Kershaw has done it again as he brings to life World War II’s greatest submarine survival adventure.

‘All This Could Be Different’ by Sarah Thankam Mathews

This book made me more hopeful than maybe any other book I’ve ever read. It follows Sneha, a college grad stumbling through the recession in Milwaukee (Midwest shoutout!) alongside a vibrant cast of supporting characters in similar states of limbo. 

The novel really puts Sneha through it: she’s saddled with family trauma, a terrible employer, a racist landlord, a sexuality crisis and her tendency to self-sabotage. But I was struck by the space the novel gives its characters to forgive each other and carve out a beautiful little community. It’s part social drama, part political manifesto, part coming-of-age tale and I can’t stop recommending it to every fellow 20-something I know.

‘Small Things Like These’ by Claire Keegan

This book was actually released in 2021, but received new attention this year due to a film version starring actor Cillian Murphy. This beautiful novella is just over 100 pages. It’s the story of an Irish coal merchant with a wife and five daughters in the 1980s who discovers disturbing secrets about a local Catholic convent. The school for girls it runs is actually a Magdalene laundry, where unwed pregnant women and girls were forced to work under often brutal conditions. 

The main character, Bill Furlong, is himself the son of an unwed mother and undergoes an internal moral struggle over whether to get involved. As he prepares for Christmas with his family, he wrestles with the same question humans have been asking themselves throughout history: How much of our own comfort and security would we be willing to give up to help another? There were lines I stopped to re-read because they were so poignant.

This beautiful book really grew on me. The writing vividly paints a man’s moral dilemma and, as a result, it invites the reader to question their own everyday decisions and their impact. I appreciated that the novel was so short because it left room for interpretation while still giving us a clear picture of the character's world. I look forward to re-reading this soon so I can pick up on subtle nuances I likely missed the first time!

‘Bright Young Women’ by Jessica Knoll

I have never been the biggest true-crime person, but, as many did in 2019, I got sucked into a particular movie Zac Efron played the lead of: “Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.” The book, while fiction to a point, tells the stories of the real-life murders of America’s first celebrity-status serial killer through two narrators while reimagining the aftermath from the point of view of a survivor and, earlier, the life of a victim who is later killed.

In the ‘70s, this man whose name I will not use (Knoll did not name him once in her book) was often rewarded for his good looks while he was kidnapping, raping and murdering women across the Pacific Northwest. While the murderer was on trial a judge called him a “bright young man.” I cried a lot, and was left speechless often.

“He wants to extinguish us,” Knoll wrote about the murderer targeting a sorority on a college campus in Florida. “We are the ones who remind him that he’s not that smart, not that good-looking and there’s nothing particularly special about him.”

The main character of this novel is a yellow house in the Massachusetts woods which is built and lived in by centuries of people, starting with two lovers escaping a Puritan village. Later an orchardist moves in, a pair of spinster sisters, artists and a family dealing with schizophrenia. I could not put it down. 

The writing was beautiful and it read like a series of short stories about vengeance, love and insanity. Most of all, I loved the writing on nature which was somehow, depending on what type of story it was, by turns sensuous, terrifying or melancholy. This was one I thought about for weeks after I finished it. LOVE.

— Elizabeth Shockman, education reporter

This is a fascinating reimagining of the classic “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” from the perspective of the character Jim, who has escaped from slavery. It is full of satire of some pretty extreme codeswitching and constant action. Even if you’re familiar with Huck Finn’s adventures, “James” has something surprisingly moving or funny around every corner.

The National Book Award this year for “James” placed a long-deserved spotlight on one of the most interesting of U.S. writers. In his re-imagining of Twain’s “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” Percival Everett peels back the realities Huck’s friend Jim faces as the two take off down the Mississippi into the everyday horrors of enslavement in 19th-century Missouri. 

Far from Twain’s barely educated Jim, Everett’s James is a deep thinker who covers his intelligence and ability to read, knowing they are likely to get him killed. He’s just trying to reunite with his wife and daughter and keep Huck and himself alive. 

Everett’s genius is in the way he can make a reader laugh out loud, and then wince at the violence, always present just below the surface, with the capacity to erupt at any time. It is a story that will return to a reader’s mind for a long time to come. It’s also an entry into the worlds of his previous exceptional novels. 

‘The Personal Librarian’ by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray

This book is historical fiction, based on the true story of Belle Greener, a Black woman who changed her name to Belle da Costa Greene and passed as white in the early 20th century and became J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian. It’s a fascinating and deeply engaging story about a woman’s love of the history of the printed word — and the lengths she has to go to pursue her passion in a racist world (and I love that two authors wrote this novel together).

— Emily Hanford, senior producer and correspondent at APM Reports

Obviously, this isn’t a new book since it was published in 1997. But the story is captivating from the first few pages. Who knew that page after page describing how gloves were made could be so fascinating (with echoes of Herman Melville diving deep into the business of whaling in “Moby Dick”). 

It’s a magnificent, ambitious novel that runs through three generations. Roth manages the nearly impossible: Marrying sensitive portraits of individual characters with attempts at trying to understand the forces behind the big upheavals and unsettling changes in American society and economy between World War II and the Vietnam War.

— Chris Farrell, senior economics contributor, MPR and Marketplace

When I first read an excerpt that was published as a short story, I just wanted to spend more time with the narrator, nine-year-old Swiv, and her brilliantly funny grandma Elvira. Their antics together made me laugh out loud and I loved being let into their private jokes. As children and old people are often ignored in American — or in this case, Canadian — society, this book brings these generations to the front. 

But it’s really a poignant story of three generations — three vivid personalities who love each other fiercely and who have spent their lives learning to fight through all the pain and loss that comes their way. I was so into this book that I recommended it to my own cool grandma. Just a week later, she responded, “Finished Fight Night. A crazy book.”

‘The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches’ by Sangu Mandanna

This was the perfect cozy read for October, or any month of the year. I loved the depth of all of the characters and the world the author built. I felt like I was a kid again, reading Harry Potter for the first time and believing magic is real.

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From a submarine survival adventure during World War II to an exploration of the dark side of a Catholic convent on the Irish countryside, our staff has wide-ranging taste for their favorite book they read in 2024. 

The 41 best books MPR News staff read in 2024

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