Library staff across the city weighed in on their favorite nonfiction books published in 2024 — and what a great list we created together! Read on for highlights of the excellent nonfiction included (these are books loved by multiple staff members) or jump right into the full 63 item list. And stay tuned this week and next for staff’s favorite adult fiction, teen books, and children’s books!
There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib
The acclaimed poet and cultural critic uses his lifelong relationship with basketball to muse on the ways in which we grow attached to our hometowns, even when they fail us. Lyrically stunning and profoundly moving, the confessional text wanders through a variety of topics without ever losing its vulnerability, insight, or focus. (Kirkus)
Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna
Bikini Kill frontwoman Hanna’s memoir is a raucous, rousing tale about the power of music and activism. Before becoming a pioneer of the riot grrrl movement of the early 1990s, Hanna grew up in a dysfunctional and abusive household. Hanna’s story is a full-bodied portrait of a fighter and activist who has used music as a way to tackle adversity. A vivid, funny, and powerful memoir that will appeal to rock lovers and music historians. (Library Journal)
Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti
This was unlike any reading experience I’ve ever had before. Heiti breaks out every sentence from her diaries, alphabetizes them, then edits them to create new narratives. 10/10 recommend reading out loud. Felt like techno music for literary ears. (Eliza S.)
Feeding Ghosts by Tessa Hulls
Hulls’s epic, elegantly etched graphic memoir debut tangles with trauma’s long tentacles as she follows three generations of her family from Mao’s China to Hong Kong in the 1960s and eventually to contemporary Northern California. The result is a revelatory work as layered as the history it explores. (Publishers Weekly)
The Light Eaters: How the Unseen World of Plant Intelligence Offers a New Understanding of Life on Earth by Zoe Schlanger
Schlanger, a staff writer at the Atlantic, debuts with an astounding exploration of the remarkable abilities of plants and fungi. There are mind-bending revelations on every page, and Schlanger combines robust intellectual curiosity with delicate lyricism…. Science writing doesn’t get better than this. (Publishers Weekly)
~ posted by Andrea G.
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