After falling prey to overhyped books on the internet over the last few years (and consistently being disappointed by them), I made it a goal to source books from places other than social media. My 2024 reading year was immensely more satisfying. If you're curious as to how I find the books on my TBR list, I will link an old post here.
For the last year, I've frequented my DC bookstores, perused the shelves for books that sound interesting, avoiding the stations of popular books. I've joined a local book club that showcases small press publishers or fiction that I have never heard of. I've scoured library book sales, picking up books that are intriguing and unknown to me. I've gone through lesser known titles of authors I enjoy, watching their writing arc develop over the years of publishing.
Don't get me wrong, I've found a few favorites by picking up the overhyped Bookstagram books, but in general, I've realized that my expectations are usually too high when I see people rave about books on social media. Plus, I can get stuck in genre echo chambers when I focus too much on the content everyone is talking about. When I pick up a book I've never heard of, my expectations are lower and my mind is more open to the unknown. I encourage you to look outside of your comfort zone recommendations to explore what could be waiting unassuming in the background.
So, here are the best books that I often don't see hyped up on the internet.
With this goal of reading more books that aren't talked about as much on social media, I knew I could find some great ones by looking at backlisted titles. Backlisted is just a publishing term for books that have been in print for longer than a year, but I was looking for books that were published over a decade ago. I've had a lot of luck reading Pulitzer Prize winners from the 1990's and early 2000's (other favorites include The Goldfinch, The Road, and Middlesex), and picked up A Thousand Acres from the library one summer day a few years ago. Another amazing thing about backlisted books is they tend to be readily available at the library without an insane waitlist.
This 1992 Pulitzer Prize winner snuck up on me slowly ---- it was a slow burn of characterization, anticipation, and tragedy. This was the novel that made me realize how much I enjoy a well-written and fleshed out family drama.
A Thousand Acres is a modern and feminist take on the Shakespearean play King Lear. It centers around the Cook family whose patriarch owns a thousand acres of farmland in Iowa. When he unexpectedly decides to split the land up between his three daughters, it ignites a fire that spreads to each member of the family, slowly burning each character and causing the family and the land to disintegrate.
I have an affinity for stories that are set on a farm. When an author describes the way the sun warms the ground when it's beginning to rise, the smell of grass and wheat on a summer day, or the sense of space when looking out over a field, I can't help but feel nostalgic. I'm Polish and spent my summers in the Polish village my mom grew up in, where her family still owns and works a farm. I was reminded of those summers with this story -- riding the tractor, smelling the dill that is grown and harvested, and grilling kielbasa in the evenings, surrounded by my chaotic Polish family. But even more so, I thought of how important that farm is for my family's identity and history, and the pain and resentment that grew out of trying to split the farm up between siblings when my grandparents passed away.
This novel showed how cutthroat farm life can be, from predatory lenders to abusive family members, and it did not shy away from the Cook family's harsh realities. It revealed how vital land is to some people's identities, like my family's, let alone their livelihoods. A farmer loses his land and he loses a part of his soul. The descent into madness looks different for each member of the Cook family, but no one is immune to the slow-burn destruction. It was an unnerving journey to watch unfold, but it was done masterfully, making this novel and its characters unforgettable.
Thrillers and mysteries feel entrenched in the BookTok or online book communities. I thoroughly enjoy a good mystery but find that the ones I've been recommended on social media often feel similar to one another and leave me dissatisfied. Once There Were Wolves had a more unique premise that I found intriguing when I first picked it up.
Inti Flynn is a biologist who moves to Scotland to continue her attempt at reintroducing wolves back into different wildlife areas. Inti also has a rare neurological condition called mirror-touch synesthesia, complicating her professional and personal life. Her brain makes her believe she is physically feeling the sensory experiences of other beings and animals. If she watches a deer get gutted by a hunter, she feels the knife going through herself as well. All of this, in addition to secrets that are revealed slowly throughout the story, mold Inti into a private and overly cautious woman. But she begins to open herself up to friendship and love in this little Scottish town, until the mysterious death of a local pushes her to protect the things she loves most.
The mood and tone of this book was spectacular. I was glued to the page, both by McConaghy's beautiful descriptions of the wolves and native lands of Scotland, and the captivating storyline that weaves in and out of timelines. I felt like the characters were realistic and fleshed out. Inti is a flawed but likable character ---- I held onto the hope that she would find peace and happiness in the end. There are twists and turns, and I felt that secrets were revealed at perfect points in the story. Some readers may find certain scenes disturbing or gruesome, so a warning there, but I was able to get lost in Inti's world, which is exactly what I hope for in a fictional book.
I have been a lover of public radio since I was a kid. My dad used to drive me to school everyday and he would always have on the local NPR station in Durham, WUNC. When I listen to NPR, I think of him and those mornings.
I originally wanted to work in radio and podcasting after discovering Radiolab in college. It still is, in my opinion, the gold standard of journalism, period. Even above all other kinds of mediums.... even books. There's something about hearing people's stories and learning about the world through voices that I believe is the most affecting. I have been moved to tears more times than I can count with Radiolab's stories of science, technology, and the human condition.
Lulu Miller has been a reporter for Radiolab since I started listening a decade ago. She is an expert at crafting a beautiful story with her voice, experiences, and interviews. When I found out she published a book, I was ecstatic. I made sure to listen to the audiobook because I knew it would be remarkable.
I was right. Why Fish Don't Exist weaves together Lulu's own personal life, a scientific adventure, and the biography of a man who lived 100 years ago. It's a strange marriage of storylines but it comes together in the end in a way that made me cry. I'm in awe of the real people in this book. Despite heartache, despite grief, despite circumstances that seem unable to bear, these people are able to find beauty and joy every single day.
It's books like this that give me perspective, it shows me how important it is to be resilient, to not let life beat you down, and to forgive and find a way to love and be gentle, even if the world hasn't been to you. If you're looking for an incredible story about human resilience, you have to try Why Fish Don't Exist, preferably as an audiobook, as Lulu's voice will make this book even more unforgettable.
I am a big fan of science fiction but over the years, I began to notice there were less women authors being acclaimed in this genre. I wanted to specifically search out female authors in this category, and came across this short novel from the 90's.
I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting novel about a group of women living underground in a cage. It is guarded every minute by unknown keepers, and years pass without any markers. The story is told from the point of view of a young girl who cannot remember life before this grim reality, until one day, everything changes.
This is one of the most eery and disturbing books I have ever read. I had an uneasy feeling in my stomach from the first page --- the details of the grim world were poignant and gripping. I don't want to give too much away but the ending was heartbreaking yet beautiful. I still can feel the weight of this book even a year after reading it.
For fans of dystopian worlds full of grit and heartache, I highly recommend Harpman's evocative novel.
There was a period in 2023 where I got very into feminine rage books (if you read my last post, you'll know I was avoiding books that felt personal to my grief that year). I derived strange satisfaction from reading stories where women were angry, violent, even cruel. Perhaps it was my way of channeling my own anger and frustration at the world, and it felt very cathartic.
My favorite of the handful I read was A Certain Hunger. Dorothy, a food critic and sexually liberated woman living in New York City, details her life and what eventually leads her to killing and eating men for pleasure.
Okay, you might be shocked and disgusted and I will admit, the gruesome nature of this novel is not for the faint of heart. But this story was incredibly absorbing and fun. I did not take it as a call to action, literally or figuratively. Summers gracefully weaves a narrative whose content might be grotesque but the unfolding is delicious (pun intended). I loved seeing an intelligent, successful, charming woman become unhinged, finding power and vindication in the strangest of ways. I tend to enjoy morally gray or entirely dark characters, and there was so much to explore in Dorothy's psyche. If any part of this description intrigued you, I think you would be enraptured by this imaginative story.
I have never seen anyone on social media talk about this book, and the only reason I came across it was because my sister sent me a list of books that were recommended for dealing with grief, and this happened to be on it.
Lost & Found is Kathryn Schulz's account of losing her father and finding her soulmate. The similarities between her situation and mine felt uncanny. Her father was a Jewish and Polish immigrant, who was loud and charismatic and was constantly forgetting where he put things. She has an older sister and grounded mother, the four of them being a tight knit group that, though not perfect, was loving and precious. If all these parallels weren't enough, the way her father passed was so eerily similar to mine that it was almost difficult to read. I cried very, very hard reading this book.
But it might be one of the few books I will ever read that wholly understands my pain. Schulz was able to voice her grief in a way that I still can't do. I was shocked at how similarly we reacted to losing our dads --- with exhaustion and a painful quiet. Her words are haunting, beautiful, powerful, brilliant. Her grappling of death and what it means to those still living, was miraculous to read. Her realization of how precious life is, how fleeting, helped me process my own grief. I wish I could say we had even more in common. I desperately wish I could've met my partner before my dad passed, that he could've met the person I would spend my life with, the way Schulz's dad did. Those were perhaps some of the more painful parts to read. I felt jealous and crushed, the way I do every time I realize my dad will never know the person I marry, and that person will never experience the wonder that was my incredible father. He is such an integral part of who I am, let alone where I get my name from, that it haunts me knowing my future partner will never understand that precious piece of me.
But to see Schulz find happiness and love after such intense sadness and loss gives me hope. And if I ever feel alone in my grief, I know I can turn to her to feel a little more understood.
I knew this book would become a favorite of mine by the second chapter. When I was browsing a shelf of memoirs at a used bookstore in DC one day, I stumbled across this one.
MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager chronicles her life, from gazing upon the stars when she was young, to dedicating her career to finding life and planets elsewhere in the universe, to building a family with her partner from college. When both her father and husband succumb to cancer, she struggles to grieve while taking care of her two young children and keep her career afloat.
It always amazes me when people can be incredibly intelligent, experts in their field, and somehow ridiculously talented writers. I have always had a love for the stars, and like Seager, still gaze upon them with reverence and wonder. The fact that Seager's story included the incredible determination to find exoplanets that could sustain or contain life made my nerdy, space-loving brain jump for joy. And yet, it's her story of grief, of losing people so precious to her, that shook me to my core. Seager's prose is direct, funny, somehow familiar. She speaks about grief in a way I have never been able to yet she could've taken the words from my own soul. She writes, “But when you lose someone, you don’t lose them all at once, and their dying doesn’t stop with their death. You lose them a thousand times in a thousand ways. You say a thousand goodbyes. You hold a thousand funerals.”
Books like The Smallest Lights in the Universe help me come to terms with the reality of grief. I never thought about it as holding funerals and saying goodbye a thousand times, but it is absolutely true. By Seager putting words to my pain, she told me she understands, it's okay, I'm not alone. And after all, isn't that the whole point?
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Happy reading, y'all.