2024 on Goodreads

The astonishingly glitchy GR is making it difficult to read the reviews of GR Friends. I seem to have had a few friends disappear entirely off my feed, and this is very frustrating. I try and keep up by periodically backtracking and looking up my friends list and seeing what they have been reading. This is not easy as the point of being a book reader is the obvious, reading books! The idea of Goodreads, I would have thought, was to assist the reader by making it easier to connect with other like minded readers.
Enough of the moaning!

55 books this year. https://www.goodreads.com/readingchal...

My fiction of the year. Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew by Shehan Karunatilaka. A 2010 novel that I thought was magnificent in the audio telling and the concept.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I have to add Death of A River Guide by Richard Flanagan as a joint fiction of the year. An incredible book.

The surprise of the year was Timeless Land by Eleanor Dark. I did know that this was considered an important novel in Australian literary circles but was surprised that it was actually as good as it was. Historical fiction that makes the reader learn!


Fiction honourable mentions. How good just about everything by Kurt Vonnegut Jr is. I have 2 more to finish reading him out and will do so in the coming months. The man was an extraordinary storyteller who could turn his hand to the mainstream or weird, and his observational ability of the human condition makes him one of the great writers of the 20th century.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

I read all of Tasmanian author Robbie Arnot's works. A very good storyteller.
N by John Scott, an alternate history of WW2 Australia, was thought-provoking.


Nonfiction honourable mentions. Ultra-Processed People: The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food by Chris van Tulleken was an excellent audio and should be read by us that eat, in other words everyone.
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa by Adam Hochschild was a horrific read on mankinds's never ending inhumanity to each other.
Plagues Upon the Earth: Disease and the Course of Human History by Kyle Harper was a must-read by anyone interested in the subject.

Fun book of the year was What's in a Surname?: A Journey from Abercrombie to Zwicker by David McKie. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...