The Best Books of 2024
The novels and nonfiction that offered unique robotproof perspectives.

By Maris Kreizman
Additional contributors: Emma Alpern, Maddie Crum, Tope Folarin, Emily Gould, Christopher Bonanos, Isle McElroy, Jasmine Vojdani, Anusha Praturu, Emily Heller, Bethy Squires, Erin Schwartz, Tolly Wright, Ashley Wolfgang, Andrew Marzoni, Lauren Ro, and Adriane Quinlan
December 3, 2024

It has been a rough year for makers of original media, with the increasing use of generative AI threatening the livelihood of writers, editors, and artists of all kinds as well as the intelligence of readers. What a joy it is, then, to consider the books of 2024, the best of which have a specific point of view that is robotproof: a unique perspective on what it’s like to experience the world in all of its sorrow and wonder.

2 . An Image of My Name Enters America, by Lucy Ives (Graywolf)

My favorite kind of writing is the kind that, through the seamless blending of high and low culture and all the beautiful muck in between, shows how everything is connected: our personal biographies, the art we consume, literary theory and philosophy, and historical context. It is a pleasure to follow Lucy Ives’s big, dazzling brain in this collection of five interconnected essays as she takes us from My Little Pony and Alanis Morissette to Lacan, Derrida, and Freud to cover topics like the insufficiency of language in talking about mental illness and the ways pregnancy and birth are an affront to reason. Part criticism, part personal essay, part intellectual jubilation, An Image of My Name Enters America is the most inventive and exciting work of nonfiction this year.