What was the best book you read in 2024? A question, I know, that true book lovers ask themselves and each other at this time of year. Those hot reads inform what to excitedly tackle for book club discussions or add to the to-read list for 2025.
One individual may veer into GoodReads — others may go over to BookTok, the booming TikTok community implementing its sway within the book market. Still, I think nothing can beat going to your neighborhood bookstore, where you can look at the bright covers peeping out from the shelves and talk to a friendly staff member by just saying, “What’s the best book you’ve read this year?”
Behold the inaugural stop Russell Books, a local favorite shortly outside the Victoria News office. Here are five picks from various staff members at the fave local bookstore, and the reasons they’ve each loved the following titles.
Zoe’s choice: Babel, or the Necessity of Violence by R. F. Kuang.
Imagine the industrial revolution but with coal not of use, but of language. A unique alternative history by R.F. Kuang, where the linguistic sparks from mistranslations can be channeled into powering a train the explosion of the engine or just as explosive. The British Empire's colonies were not exploited for fossil fuels but as human resources native speakers of a targeted language. Largely set within an alternative 1830s Oxford University, it follows orphan Robin, plucked from misery in Canton by a mysterious patron into the exclusive Royal Institute for Translation (Babel). A most notably erudite and remarkably engaging exploration of colonialism and its cataclysmic furies. Months later, it haunts me, and I vigorously recommend it to anyone enamored of literary fiction or sci-fi/fantasy!
The Duel: Diefenbaker, Pearson and the Making of Modern Canada by John Ibbitson. Recommended by Jack Knox
For history buffs, especially those interested in Canadian history, this is the jackpot. Ibbitson not just documents the rivalry and careers of Canadian prime ministers Lester Pearson and John Diefenbaker but shows how their mid-20th century dust-ups helped mold the Canada we know today in ‘The Duel.’ Relatively amicable and congenial in his approach to governing, Pearson had an iron fist that he kept hidden from view, while Diefenbaker, an eternal underdog with a glowing chip on his shoulder’s edge for his fellow outsiders, time and again tripped over his own feet. Yet from health care to anti-nuke policies, immigration, and the Canada Pension Plan, these ‘enemies’ came to forge a legacy that by now ‘par for the course’ shapes today’s parliamentary landscape. Impressively researched, clear and balanced in its analysis, concise, and precise in its language.
… and maybe nobody there but us noticed the earth growing tight and summer fading out of sight as we pretended to be enjoying it, but that’s how it seemed to me, and it could easily have snowed, might have snowed, did snow.”
As Joan Didion would say, maybe it didn’t snow that one summer in Vermont. Focusing on snow takes one’s mind off the “real thing” in the topic. Writing is a way for individuals to realize their existence and experience it as it’s meant to be for them. Joan finds majesty in common occasions, in the fixtures of daily life, and even in an anticipated imaginary frostbite in August — that’s exactly where her genius lies. I implore you to read her material. She wowed me in 2023, and she is doing so this year as well. You will not regret it!
