RSM Reads of the Year: 2024 Edition
Celebrating one year on Substack!
It’s time to celebrate! My Substack just turned one year old! And I can think of no better way to celebrate than with:
The First Annual RSM Reads of the Year!
Below, you’ll see my picks (and in the captions those that are on loan from the RSM Library—from my shelves to yours quite literally), and I’ve chosen a Nonfiction & Fiction Best of the Year. There were a lot of great reads this year, so it was tough to narrow down. And apparently, I didn’t get to writing about all of these this year, so you’ll find some new reviews mixed in!
RSM Read of the Year: Nonfiction Pick
Deep Water: The World in the Ocean by James Bradley
A series of essays that are part anthropology, part memoir, part biology, and part philosophy. And so much more. Bradley takes the reader around the globe, from Antarctic krill to the trashed Cocos Islands, showing readers along the way how vast and unknowable our oceans really are. Click the link above for my review from October.
“We share the planet with whales that sing across oceans and navigate by watching the stars, with fish that pass ways of knowing across generations, in webs of culture spreading back millions of years, with turtles that follow invisible patterns of magnetism back to the beaches where they were born.
To contemplate the strangeness and wonder of these other ways of being is to begin to understand our place in the world very differently, to be reminded that we are not separate or different but part of a much larger system of impossible magnificence and complexity.”
RSM Read of the Year: Fiction Pick
The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen
A tale of the far north tundras of Scandinavia, a land with ubiquitous intersections of class, race, and religion where these borders don’t seem to matter…until they do. This tension between the traditions of the indigenous Sami and the culture being imposed upon them by settlers was so familiar, but it was heartbreaking to hear this same drum being beaten around the globe.
The story is told with sweeping and stunning prose, life at the edge of the world filled to overflowing with the beauty of the Aurora and wild places. To read more of my thoughts on this bewitching read, check out my April review in the link above.
Now to honorable mention RSM Reads of the Year…
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
For all who loved Hamnet, O'Farrell has written another unputdownable novel. Lucrezia is the third daughter of Cosimo de Medici (yes, that Medici). When her elder sister dies unexpectedly, the man who was her fiance now asks for the hand of the next Medici in line: Lucrezia. Drama ensues in this whirlwind marriage. To read more from my February review, click the link above.
I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger
This novel was a quixotic tale set against the backdrop of an apocalyptic warning. And it was excellent. I wrote about it on Goodreads but failed to bring it over here in November. And it was a great rec from a work buddy! #fail
Imagine an America not so many years from now, where literacy is passé, a billionaire plutocracy rules while everyone else lives by lawless Darwinian principles, and where infrastructure is literally crumbling.
Enter Rainy. He and his wife, Lark, live a humble existence in a small Michigan town along the shore of Lake Superior. Their lives are irrevocably changed when a stranger comes to board in their spare room, bringing with him a very troubled past.
As events unravel, Rainy is forced to flee, setting off onto Superior in a tiny sailboat in search of his wife. What follows is a journey—so Odyssean—it feels like a myth for our time.
Rainy journeys through impossible odds aboard his craft as Superior’s raucous storms threaten his course and life, long-sunk corpses rise from the warming waters, and shoreside towns that hold harm. But he also comes across folks of immense kindness and generosity, wit and humor, and some very unexpected compatriots.
A work buddy of mine recommended this book to me, and I absolutely loved it. It was an unputdownable, winding journey written for the present moment, with lyrical prose and unforgettable characters. Big thanks, MC!
In fact, I think I’m still a bit seasick from that rollicking boat with Rainy. But seriously, I highly recommend it!
Rewilding Motherhood by Shannon K. Evans
was a balm I didn’t know I needed. I came across her work here on Substack and loved the wit and tenacity of her questions about motherhood, womanhood, and faith. I could see that she was wrestling with these identities too, and when I heard about this book, I knew I’d need to get my hands on a copy.It did not disappoint. This book is extremely well-researched and thought out: the questions about what the world says motherhood is (and often the church, too) and whether there is a way to come home to ourselves as beings created in the image of a Holy God, a God who mothers us too. Evans takes us on a tour of Christian mystics and theologians throughout the ages, pulling the thread of what it means to take up space and find agency in a culture so built on women as a docile, never-angry species.
This book is a litany of questions, but it also comes with practical first steps to re-membering our bodies to our souls. Some of the practices Evans encourages include: setting and maintaining boundaries for our own thriving; reclaiming solitude through prayer practices, nature, yoga, new hobbies, and reading; and traveling past rage (which is inward-focused) to outrage, which works to speak up and challenge oppressive systems.
But Evans gets at the heart of the issue here and says it best:
“But we have to examine the narrative…When the selflessness of motherhood is exalted above all else, value is indirectly assigned to each mother based on how small she can make herself. The result is not true self-giving but needless martyrdom.
I can't tell you how many Sunday homilies I have sat through that have bestowed grandiose praise on mothers for their selflessness and yet have failed to mention the many other qualities that mothers demonstrate: qualities like strength, resiliency, tenacity, leadership, and problem-solving, to name just a few.”
The idea of holding this tension of self-sacrifice and radical self-love in and of itself was worth the cost of the book. If you are a momma in the church wondering how to do it all, this book is for you. It’s a big, deep breath of grace, a reminder that we are upheld daily by sisters throughout the ages. But most of all, we are held by a God who gathers us under safe wings, like a mother hen (Luke 13:34). This is an absolutely revelatory read!
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
Yes, this book technically concerns a hostage situation during an apartment open house. But as with all of Backman, it is about so much more than that. Click above to read my review from November.
Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
Set in the orchards of Michigan and in a summer theater, this book reveled in nostalgia for days gone by while also finding gratitude for the present. Click the link above to read about my February Book Club Pick (which may be one of my favorites we read this year).
Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski, Ph.D.
This book is one I’ll heartily recommend to every woman (and those who love those women). It has been an education, a shift in perspective, and a tool to unpack the narrow view our culture holds about female sexuality. To read more about this September read, click on the link above.
True Biz by Sara Nović
The stories of these students and teachers at a residential school for the deaf in Ohio were so compelling. I learned so much about the deaf community in these pages and I fell in love with River Valley School for the Deaf in a powerful way only fiction can. To read more from my February review, click the link above.
Erosion: Essays of Undoing by Terry Tempest Williams
My entire March substack was devoted to this book (click the link above for more). It was so important that it almost made it to the nonfiction RSM Read of the Year list. Almost. She writes mythically about the landscape of the Four Corners area of the American West, which my husband and I explored on many a long weekend and spring break when we lived in Denver.
Whew, 2024 was chock full of some really good reads. I hope some of these will end up on your shelves this year, dear readers. And if you are getting something out of this, please share it with a friend! See you next month, when I’ll clue you in on how I started My Year of Reading 2025.
Thanks for joining me here for A WHOLE YEAR, dear readers. Happy page-turning!
From my shelves to yours,
-RSM
I'm honored to be included! Love that this book is still finding new readers!