January, 2025 | LeslieDinaberg.com

French Braid

So many books, so little time—part 18.

My son started keeping a reading list in third grade, so I did too. This is the 18th year I’ve done this. He still reads quite a lot, but I don’t think he catalogs it the way I do anymore. It’s been another really busy year, but I still managed to read a LOT, and listened to a number of audiobooks as well.

I’m usually a completist when it comes to my reading — when I find an author I like I try to read everything they’ve ever written and have to really force myself to read other things in between each book so I can savor them a little longer. I did that with Anne Tyler’s early work many years ago, and I loved The Accidental Tourist, Celestial Navigation, Breathing Lessons, The Amateur Marriage, which are just a few of her many, many excellent titles. For some unexplainable reason she slipped off my radar in the past few years and I only recently picked up her 2022 title, French Braid. She’s 83 years old now but I’m happy to report that Anne Tyler hasn’t missed a beat.

The Winners

This novel — a multigenerational story set in Baltimore, which could describe every one of her books — is a beautifully written, slyly subversive character study in the hands of a master. It doesn’t really matter what happens. Plot is almost beside the point with characters so real and vivid. This was definitely one of my favorite books of the year.

I also really enjoyed two Fredrik Backman titles: The Winners, and Us Against You, which both are continuations of his excellent Beartown series. Set in rural Sweden in a hockey town with as much commitment to the sport as the Friday Night Lights of Texas, I thought this intensely gripping series was excellent. Fair warning it is pretty graphic and can be quite brutal at times (I gave it to my dad for Father’s Day and he hated it), but to me the violence was warranted and true to the characters. And the books are hard to put down.

The Rom-Commers

On the lighter side, also on my list for this year are three titles from Emily Henry: Happy Place, Book Lovers, and Funny Story all of which are romantic and funny.
A really good romantic comedy by Katherine Center was The Rom-Commers, about an aspiring screenwriter who is hired to help a big name writer write a romantic movie, even though he despises the genre. If you groan at that premise you might like the one for Alison Espach’s The Wedding People a

The Wedding People

little better: a newly divorced, suicidal woman decides to splurge on a ridiculously luxurious hotel as a place to commit suicide, only to find that she’s the only person there who’s not affiliated with a wedding party that’s bought out the place, and preventing her from ruining the picture perfect celebration becomes the bride’s mission.

Other favorites this year were Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason, about a woman who suffers from X (a non-specified mental illness), and how she learns to cope; an adult book called In the Unlikely Event, by my beloved Judy Blume of Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret fame; and Alice Sadie Celine by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright, a great story about a young woman who has an affair with her best friend’s mom.

Alice Sadie Celine

A few of my other most liked from this year’s list were books I read in order to prepare for speakers that came to town via UCSB Arts & Lectures. These included the wonderful The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (read my story about the lecture here, Oprah liked this book too), and two books by Xochitl Gonzalez, Olga Dies of Dreaming and Anita De Monte Laughs Last (read my interview with her here and report on her lecture here).

I’d love to hear what everyone else enjoyed. Here’s my 2024 list:

Turn of the Key	Ruth	Ware
It Starts With Us	Colleen	Hoover
The Lying Game	Ruth	Ware
Lost and Found in Paris	Lian	Dolan
How to be Perfect	Michael	Schur
In a Dark, Dark Wood	Ruth	Ware
It Ends With Us	Colleen	Hoover
Bright Young Women	Jessica	Knoll
Bad Summer People	Emma	Rosenblum
A Long Petal of the Sea	Isabel	Allende
The Covenant of Water	Abraham	Verghese
Fellowship Point	Alice Elliott	Dark
November 9	Colleen	Hoover
First Lie Wins	Ashley	Elston
Maybe Not	Colleen	Hoover
Poor Ghost	David	Starkey
Everyone in my Family has Killed Someone	Benjamin	Stevenson
Maybe Someday	Colleen	Hoover
Maybe Now	Colleen	Hoover
Without Merit	Colleen	Hoover
All Your Perfects	Colleen	Hoover
Float	Neal	Rabin
Confess	Colleen	Hoover
This Bird Has Flown	Susannah	Hoffs
Losing Hope	Colleen	Hoover
Happy Place	Emily	Henry
The American Roomate Experiment	Elena	Armas
Ugly Love	Colleen	Hoover
Slammed	Colleen	Hoover
Finding Cinderella	Colleen	Hoover
Big Swiss	Jen	Beagin
Anita De Monte Laughs Last	Xochitl	Gonzalez
Olga Dies Dreaming	Xochitl	Gonzalez
Book Lovers	Emily	Henry
Blue Skies	T.C.	Boyle
Spoiler Alert	Olivia	Dade
You, Again	Kate	Goldbeck
Love, Theoretically	Ali	Hazelwood
Beware the Woman	Megan	Abbott
Us Against You	Frederik	Backman
What Happened to Ruthy Ramiriez	Claire	Jimenez
The Boyfriend Candidate	Ashley	Winstead
Nothing Special	Nicole	Flattery
Moonglow	Michael	Chabon
Come and Get It	Kiley	Reid
Never Ever Getting Back Together	Sophie	Gonzales
With a Kiss We Die	L.R.	Dorn
Hypnotized by Love	Sariah	Wilson
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers	Jesse Q.	Sutanto
How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water	Angie	Cruz
Everything Nothing Someone	Alice	Carriere
The True Love Experiment	Christina	Lauren
Mrs. Caliban	Rachel	Ingalls
Didn’t See That Coming	Jesse Q.	Sutanto
Dial A for Aunties	Jesse Q.	Sutanto
The Winners	Fredrik	Backman
Funny Story	Emily	Henry
The Graham Effect	Elle	Kennedy
The Rewind	Allison	Wiin Scotch
Pachinko	Min Jin	Lee
Point of Retreat	Colleen	Hoover
Practice Makes Perfect	Sarah	Adams
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store	James	McBride
The Lonely Hearts Book Club	Lucy	Gilmore
The Magician	Rebecca	Searle
Slow Dance	Rainbow	Rowell
Demon Copperhead	Barbara	Kingsolver
Fourteen Days	Margaret	Atwood
Expiration Dates	Rebecca	Searle
Margo’s Got Money Troubles	Rufi	Thorpe
Cancer Moon	Jenna	Tico
This Time Tomorrow	Emma	Straud
Reunion Beach	Elin	Hilderbrand, Adriana Trigiani, Patti Callahan, Mary Alice Monroe
Four Aunties and a Wedding	Jesse Q.	Sutanto
Husbands	Holly	Gramazio
The Five-Star Weekend	Elin	Hilderbrand
The Seven Year Slip	Ashley	Poston
The Love of my After Life	Kirsty	Greenwood
Housemoms	Jen	Lancaster
The Garden of Small Beginings	Abbi	Waxman
Head Over Heels	Hannah	Orenstein
Society of Lies	Lauren	Ling Brown
The Fake	Zoe	Whittall
The Good, the Bad, and the Aunties	Jesse Q.	Sutanto
The Turn of the Screw	Henry	James
One Italian Summer	Rebecca	Searle
French Braid	Anne	Tyler
Zero Days	Ruth	Ware
Always Only You	Chloe	Liese
Transcendent Kingdom	Yaa	Gyasi
Before the Coffee Gets Cold	Toshikazu	Kawaguchi
The Divorcees	Rowan	Beaird
The Mostly True Story of Tanner & Louise	Colleen	Oakley
How to End a Love Story	Yulin	Kuang
The Borrowed Life of Frederick Fife	Anna	Johnston
Just for the Summer	Abby	Jimenez
The Rom-Commers	Katherine	Center
Meet Me in the Margins	Melissa	Ferguson
Be Ready When the Luck Happens	Ina	Garten
None of This is True	Lisa	Jewell
Sorrow and Bliss	Meg	Mason
Here One Moment	Liane	Moriarty
Stuck with You	Ali	Hazelwood
Under One Roof	Ali	Hazelwood
You Have Arrived at Your Destination	Amor	Towles
Night Music	JoJo	Moyes
The Friend Zone	Abby	Jimenez
The Name of This Band is R.E.M.	Peter	Ames Carlin
Check & Mate	Ali	Hazelwood
From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir	Lisa Marie	Presley & Riley Keough
In the Unlikely Event	Judy	Blume
Yours Truly	Abby	Jimenez
The Wedding People	Alison	Espach
City of Night Birds	Juhea	Kim
Alice Sadie Celine	Sarah	Blakley-Cartwright
Our Beautiful Boys	Sameer	Pandya
Awake Forever in a Sweet Unrest	Chuck	Rosenthal
How to Age Dis-Grace-Fully	Clare