One of my absolute favorite things that comes with the end of the year is all of the best book lists. Between finding out what everyone loved to read over the year, and the reasons why. So when I saw Amazon had put out the best books of 2024 list, I actually had assumed it would be a list of the highest-rated or most-read books on Amazon. However, instead, their editing team put together a list of the books they liked the best for the year - which still left me intrigued as to what they picked.
So here are Amazon's top 10 books for the year:
- The Boys of Riverside: A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory by Thomas Fuller
- The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
- James by Percival Everett
- The Women by Kristin Hannah
- The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, From the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement by Sharon McMahon
- Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar
- Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten
- The Wedding People by Alison Espach
- I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger
- The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo
Now when it comes to this list, I was actually shocked at how few of these books I had heard of - in fact, four were familiar, and one I was sure I had heard about in passing. But even with that, of the few I had heard of, I had only attempted to read one - and had DNF'ed it because I found it incredibly slow and it felt like nothing was happening.
To be honest, I found this list to be disappointing, as most of the books skewed towards more serious literary fiction than popular fiction. This continues the annoying trend within the book industry as a whole: the idea that popular fiction can't be good. I would have loved to have seen some of the books that had gone viral on BookTok or Bookstagram on this list, because while The Women and James definitely deserve to be on this list, so do books in the vein of Batman: Resurrection, Five Broken Blades, and Snowglobe.
Overall, I feel like this list is a direct counter to the Goodreads Awards, which ironically is owned by the same company. And while I do think there are times and places for a list like this, I really wish they had added in some more popular books. I want to see more editors try and fix the blend between serious and pop fiction - and I hope next year, that will start to happen. And I can't wait to find out if there's a huge disconnect between the most-read books on Amazon once that list becomes available.