2024 had all the things: great opportunities, abundant travel, adventure, quality time, many firsts, and a few lasts. We shared the year with new and old friends, lots of family, and great love. Generally, I felt distracted this year (empty nesting? politics? snuggling my cat?) and thought I read less than in prior years. However, I still managed to finish 28 great books this year, leaning heavily on older titles, poetry, and plays. My favorites are listed below in random order.

My Top 5+ reads this year were:

Go as a River by Shelley Read

The Importance of Being Ernest (play) by Oscar Wilde – BANNED

Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman

Into the Magic Shop by James R. Doty

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald – BANNED

+ A History in Stories by Eugene L. Schuler

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My dad became a published author for the first time this year at age 81!

• What is sure to be one of the greatest honors of my life happened in 2024 – the unique opportunity to edit and design my father’s book. A History in Stories by Eugene Louis Schuler was published in September this year by my small printing company, GoTimbalero Press. I started designing books in the early 2000s, a skill I am grateful to have and thoroughly enjoy. My dad wrote for an entire year (answering questions my siblings and I gave him) by cursive hand, in a black-marble-college ruled notebook. Then, we spent another year in edit and design, looking for photos, telling stories, laughing, crying. It was an amazing process and something I will never forget; I truly did not want it to end. A History in Stories is a charming memoir about growing up and coming of age in a small town in southern Indiana. A love-letter to family heritage, the question-answer format provides a structure for nearly eighty years of life, wisdom-sharing, and hometown relations.

• • Both Go as a River (Shelley Read) and Mrs. Mike (Benedict and Nancy Freedman) are captivating stories that beautifully highlight the richness of the north-west landscape. Each story is steeped in vivid descriptions of nature, painting a picture of rugged mountains, sprawling plains, and the serene flow of rivers. Go as a River, written in 2023, is set in 1948 Colorado and beautifully written with unforgettable characters on an epic life journey. Mrs. Mike, an innocent, adventurous love story set in the Canadian north-west, was first published in 1947. It’s old and charming and lovely. I looked forward to curling up at night in my favorite chair, losing myself in the enchanted wild of these two books!

• An authentic rom-com from 1895, Oscar Wilde’s play, “The Importance of Being Ernest,” was a delight. I have always loved Wilde’s work (The Picture of Dorian Grey = perfection, amiright?). Ernest was a cheerful and witty character, full of surprise. After reading the play, Oliver and I found an old film from 2002 starring Colin Firth as Jack Worthing, Rupert Everett (Algernon), Reese Witherspoon (Cecily), and Dame Judi Dench (Lady Bracknell). Watching some of our favorite actors splash about in this moral paradox of Ernest v. earnestness was super fun. The play was banned in the UK soon after its success due to its immoral conduct, like lying and deceiving – though more likely because of its author’s sexual preference.

• Another oldie I treasured was The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. I loved it from beginning to end and appreciated the succinct clarity of Fitzgerald’s descriptive and fluid writing style. An easy read, Gatsby is a gorgeous story, a true classic—also a bonafide crime that it is a banned book—and has inspired me to track down more of Fitzgerald in 2025.

• Into the Magic Shop (James Doty) holds a special place in our family library. We have all read it and refer to it often. I have gifted this book many times over, as it speaks to the extraordinary possibilities in our lives when we connect our hearts and brains for good, harnessing the power within us to manifest what we want out of life. Doty is an interesting neuroscientist; this is his fantastic life story, and could easily be an annual re-read for everyone. I followed this read with a newer book by Doty called Mind Magic, a more scientific dive on the same subject.

Complete List of books read in 2024! ≥

Writers & Lovers by Lily King; Tiffany’s Table Manners by Walter Hoving; Go as a River by Shelley Read; Gmorning, Gnight by Lin-Manuel Miranda; The Importance of Being Ernest (play) by Oscar Wilde (2x); Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman; The Way Forward by Yung Pueblo; Big Two-Hearted River by Earnest Hemingway; Little by Little by Taj Arora; Happy Place by Emily Henry; How to Love by Thich Nhat Hanh; One thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd by Jim Fergus; BeaverLand by Leila Philip; Book of Virtues by Benjamin Franklin; When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams; Long Island by Colm Toibin; A History in Stories by Eugene L. Schuler; Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson;  Into the Magic Shop by James R. Doty; Mind Magic by James R. Doty, MD; Envelope Poems by Emily Dickinson {transcriptions by Marta L. Werner and Jen Bervin}; The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright; Absolution by Alice Mcdermott; The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; In the Dark Streets Shineth by David McCullough; Cat Poems edited by Tynan Kogane; Letters from Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien; Another America (poetry in English/Spanish) by Barbara Kingsolver.

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PSA: There is no higher order in the interest of books, reading, and random quests for knowledge than openly discussing the absurdity of banning books in our country. This reprehensible idea happened in Cervantes’ fictional Quixote in the early 17th century, Hitler’s actual Germany during the 1930s and 40s—and here we are ninety years later, banning books again. In America.

History has spoken on this issue, and let’s let the butt-end of 2024 speak truth to the ridiculous. To anyone who thinks this is a good idea, just stop. Leave it alone. Walk away; do something else. To the rest of us – critical thinkers and book lovers everywhere – let us rejoice that we still live in an era of free speech, free press, and mostly free choice. *Please, let’s keep working on that last one.

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Wishing you the happiest of winter holidays, and joyful hours of reading throughout. My hope for all is a beautiful and healthy winter season and a glorious 2025 full of love, laughter and always a variety of books on your nightstand.

With love always,

Lynne