Francesca's Thoughts

Lo, the time of year when GoodReads earns its keep. I hope everyone is having a peaceful end of year break!

I wrote a best books of 2024 so far at the end of June, where I said I wanted to read Shuggie Bain before the end of the year. I have not yet. Sorry, Shuggie. I did get an email confirming I finished my bachelor’s degree, so, yay! Here are my favourite reads of the year with links to any Read, If You Like posts, plus some titles I’m hoping to read in 2025.

Best Non Fiction

My dissertation (kidding) (not really). From Here to Eternity, Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? and Dark Archives were top notch. Jews Don’t Count is crucial. Welcome to St Hell is as good a memoir as you’ll find anywhere (it’s definitely more worth your time than the ninety fourth ghost-written celebrity autobiography you were gifted at Christmas).

Best Series

The Sandman really is as good as everyone says it is, although I’m glad I’d read most of it before Neil Gaiman turned out to be Neil Gaiman, even though he was already a slime bag when I first read Good Omens a decade ago and that knowledge becomes a bit of a mind fuck if you think about it, so let’s move on with this list with a resolution to never put a writer on a pedestal even if their work is a cultural touchstone. Honourable mention to Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone series, which I started back in 2021 and finished this year, the concept is spectacular.

Best Contemporary Fiction

Yellowface by a country mile, although I’m making my way through Gone Girl at the moment and it’s every bit as good as everyone said it was ten years ago.

Best Light Read

The Witches books in Discworld, which single handedly saved my sanity while I was finishing my dissertation. I also read The Hogfather, Reaper Man and The Wee Free Men this year, apparently, and I’m not disputing how much I love Death of Rats, but there’s no one like Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax to improve your mood.

Best Re-Read

I’d genuinely forgotten how much I adored The Night Circus.

The Ever-Hopeful 2025 Reading List

I’d like to read more Laini Taylor, and more RF Kuang. I’m excited for Maggie Stiefvater’s first adult novel, The Listeners – I’m holding out for a UK edition that’s signed. It’s entirely possible that in 2025 I will finally decide that the hype around Normal People has quietened enough for me to read Normal People.

For anyone hissing through their teeth at my snobbishness: it’s not snobbishness! I’ve been burned by so many viewings or readings of media that everyone has said you will absolutely love this it is the best thing ever made and precisely your cup of tea. And because so many people have said that, the actual experience has always fallen a bit flat. It happened with Fleabag, it happened with Monty Python and the Holy Grail, it happened with Heartstopper. Well, I was probably ten years too old for Heartstopper from the get go and also my heart is covered in barnacles, so it was never going to capture what remains of my soul, but I wish I’d waited until people stopped talking about all of those to consume them. There’s nothing like someone telling you ‘this bit’s really funny’ and quoting you the punchline before it happens on screen to think, this is the most shit thing I’ve ever seen. So I usually avoid extremely hyped work until the noise has quietened, hence why I’ve only just reached for Gone Girl, although I probably didn’t need to leave it ten entire years.

So, yeah, maybe Normal People or anything by Sally Rooney. I’d like to read more Discworld, because life can only be improved with a trip to the Disc, and I’d like to finish Tasha Suri’s Burning Kingdoms trilogy. I started the final book when it was released, but I had too many deadlines to sink into it, and I should reread the first two novels before I get to book three. It would be fun to read a few books in translation too. I was hoping Tamsyn Muir’s Alecto the Ninth would be out in 2025 so I could gift myself a thirtieth birthday present of a nice set with sprayed edges, but I’d rather wait until the book’s ready for publication than I would read something rushed to print.

(That’s a joke, kind of, because I’m not as far as I thought I would be with mirrornovel by now. I wouldn’t usually compare my work with something as fantastic as the Locked Tomb, but I think they are both possibly series that get continuously weirder until you have to have a conversation about what’s too weird and while I think weird is exactly what Locked Tomb fans want and expect, I do wonder if the length of time between Nona the Ninth and Alecto the Ninth is partially down to publishing professionals reading drafts of Alecto and saying, ‘ma’am, what the fuck’ and asking if it’s not too late for a rewrite, and then other publishing professionals who have taste and good sense are saying ‘NO MAKE IT WEIRDER.’ I sort of hope there is, you know? Anyway, point is, no one wants a rush job.)

I think that’s it! I’ll be sharing a handful of my reads on this blog, under the books tag. An intention for 2025 is to spend less time scrolling or posting to social media and more time reading and writing here and at my newsletter, so I’ll probably share my thoughts on at least a few of the books I’ve mentioned wanting to read. Maybe I’ll even get to Shuggie Bain…

Happy new year and look after yourselves,

Francesca

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Here are the books I’ve published so far and where you can find them. If you enjoy my book recommendations, browse my Bookshop.org page here.

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