5 of My Favorite Books of 2024

For Time's annual 100 Must-Read Books list, I got to write about 5 of my favorites

I love to read. Obviously! We’re here for a reason. Reading is an escape, yes, but it’s also a destination. Just by reading one book you can live an entirely different life, at least for weekend (or maybe a month—Intermezzo was long!). Reading is a solitary activity that makes you feel less alone. You open a book and suddenly you’re in Ireland, Monrovia, Brooklyn, Graceland. And you are reminded of your own life! Even when the book is set 200 years in the past, or 200 years in the future and about people that are nothing like you. There is no better feeling than opening a book and being completely sucked in. You’re gone! Good luck to anyone trying to reach you. I am desperate for that feeling. Which is probably why I read so much! And even books that don’t give you that feeling can be pretty good. And if a book isn’t good, you can just put it down. Nobody’s watching! Even better: Nobody really cares! Imagine realizing earlier in life that nobody really cares what you do….

I’ve read a lot of books this year—I’m like an addict seeking that state of rapture—but these are five of my favorite that were published in 2024. And of course I have many more favorites which I’ll write about next time.

The Coin by Yasmin Zaher

Yasmin Zaher’s debut, The Coin, is a surreal trip of a novel about one woman’s pain and isolation, along with her compulsive cleaning obsession and Birkin bag-selling scheme. The protagonist is a wealthy Palestinian woman living in Brooklyn whose inheritance is all tied up. Despite the couture hanging in her closet, she is forced to live on a small, monthly stipend doled out by her older brother and she works as a schoolteacher in a city that is covered in inescapable grime. The emotional turmoil of her homeland is catching up with her, and she starts to unravel. Suddenly, she’s imparting unorthodox wisdom to her middle-school students and embarking on the Sisyphean task of cleansing herself of the filth that follows her everywhere. In a battle against chaos and consumerism, the narrator becomes obsessed with purity and a desire to find some semblance of control in an overwhelming world.

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

In Kaveh Akbar’s debut novel, a National Book Award finalist, Cyrus Shams is sleepwalking through life. He’s a poet, newly sober, obsessed with death, and deeply depressed. When Cyrus was an infant, his mother boarded a plane in Tehran to visit her brother in Dubai. A U.S. missile mistakenly shot it down, and she was gone. His father, suddenly a widower and single parent, moved himself and his young son to the American Midwest. While his father headed to work on a poultry ranch, young Cyrus was plagued by night terrors, and nearly 30 years later, he’s still grappling with existential questions and overwhelming grief. Forever shaken by the senselessness of his mother’s death, and reeling from the recent passing of his father, he decides he wants his own death to matter. He reads about an intriguing exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, where an Iranian artist with terminal cancer is living out her final days on display, promising conversations to all patrons who make the pilgrimage. So Cyrus travels from Indiana to New York City, determined to talk to the artist about his desire for a meaningful death. In Martyr!, Akbar delivers a wrenching story of one man’s quest for connection and purpose in what can be a lonely world.

Perfume and Pain by Anna Dorn

Struggling author Astrid Dahl is living in a Los Angeles bungalow, struggling through the throes of her addiction to a cocktail of substances she has deemed the “Patricia Highsmith.” Her love life is in shambles and her career is on the brink of cancellation after a Barnes & Noble event gone wrong—but at least she has her online writing group, Sapphic Scribes, to fall back on. Soon, Astrid is lusting after her Gen-X, lesbian neighbor Penelope while also engaging in an obsessive affair with Ivy, an agent of chaos and PhD student in her writing group, all while balancing the prospect that a young starlet wants to adapt her latest novel. Anna Dorn’s latest is a fever dream that pays homage to the lesbian pulp fiction of the 1950s.

Grief Is for People by Sloane Crosley

In 2019, Sloane Crosley’s home was burglarized. On a nondescript afternoon, a robber broke into her New York City apartment and stole all her jewelry—41 pieces, including her grandmother’s vivid green cocktail ring. A month later, her good friend and former boss Russell died by suicide. Crosley’s memoir, which loosely follows Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief, is a meditation on and exploration of these compounded losses. Crosley flips between past and present day, exposing the threads that make up the fabric of her and Russell’s relationship, and sharing their enmeshed history. She’s a detective in death as she reexamines their final interactions and ponders questions about loss that plague us all. With her signature wit and sardonic style, in Grief Is for People, Crosley captures the complexities and aches that come with losing someone.

More, Please by Emma Specter

Emma Specter weaves together reportage and autobiography to examine her battle with binge-eating disorder and unpack fatphobia in her debut memoir, More, Please: On Food, Fat, Bingeing, Longing, and the Lust for “Enough.” Specter’s writing is unflinching and insightful: she pulls no punches when writing about disordered eating, long absent from the cultural conversation, and its vicious, cyclical nature, bringing readers with her into Weight Watchers meetings, through grocery store aisles, onto the scale, down spirals of shame, and into the recovery process. Gone are the days when exercise was punishment. Specter shows readers how she reclaimed movement in all forms, celebrating long runs and walks to the coffee shop alike. Through excerpts and interviews, she includes perspectives from experts like activist Virgie Tovar, writer Aiyana Ishmael, artist Lee Price, and more—a testament to those who have come before her.

Find TIME’s complete list here.