Bonus Cocoon: The Best Books I Read in 2024
plus 2 last-minute gift ideas
I read 66 books in 2024 (at least so far—there’s a week and a half left!). And because I’ve kept a reading journal since 2004, I know what they were, the date I finished them, and a little bit about what I thought.
Here are my 10 favorites in the order in which I finished them. (Note that I read them all in 2024, but that’s not necessarily their original publication year.)
You might notice that 1) all of these books are by female authors, 2) they’re almost evenly split between fiction and nonfiction, 3) most of the nonfiction is memoir, and 4) many of them are about difficult women. I am who I am.
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown (1973)
Molly Bolt is one of my favorite narrators of all-time. She’s bold, irreverent, hilarious, and refuses to be anything other than who she is. I read this while coming to terms with my tendency to minimize my desires so they’ll fit within the limitations of what I think I can actually have. Molly was my medicine.
Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski (2015)
This is a tremendous book so full of wisdom, encouragement, reassurance, and love that by the end I felt super-saturated by it. My most important takeaway: I am normal.
All Fours by Miranda July (2024)
Yes, it’s over-exposed and controversial. I don’t care. I’m still recommending it to everyone I know and love.
Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani Shapiro (2019)
A masterful, riveting narrative with too many reveals to say anything more.
The Women by Kristin Hannah (2024)
If I was a novelist I might have given up writing after I finished this book. It’s about lots of things, but most interesting to me is that it’s about how we endure unspeakable loss. I will never get tired of reading about that.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Allison Bechdel (2006)
Virtuosic. Masterpiece. I would not have suspected that a memoir told in graphic novel form could be a mentor text for me, but it is.
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (2016)
There have been a couple of times in my life when I’ve read something that feels like the author is trying to write the fuck out of every page, and this book is one of them. The last 20 pages about death and childbirth absolutely gutted me.
Giving Up the Ghost by Hilary Mantel (2003)
This memoir includes the best writing about the science and suffering of endometriosis I’ve ever read. And to think her Thomas Cromwell trilogy was still several years ahead of her.
The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon (2023)
I loved this feminist historical thriller’s characterization of its protagonist, based on an actual midwife my college professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich memorialized in her biography A Midwife’s Tale.
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (A Biomythography) by Audre Lorde (1982)
This tribute to the women who made Audre Lorde is an intimate look at her ferociously independent early life. Her portrayal of her unyielding warrior of a mother especially leaps off the page but so do Lorde’s many, many loves and lovers.
Last-Minute Gift Ideas
1. A paid subscription to The Cocoon
For anyone who’s heading into their second act, pressing the reset button, or determined to live the next half very differently from the first. Coming in January for paid subscribers only: weekly posts on the pleasures and politics of mid-40s, post-divorce, perimenopausal, red-state dating!
2. A Bookshop.org gift card
For anyone who reads. Every purchase supports locally owned independent bookstores like Boogie Down Books.