The OffBeat #68: My Favorite Books of 2024 and Their OffBeat Takeaways
The third annual OffBeat Book Roundup
This is The OffBeat, from jazz drummer and marketing leader Allison Stadd: twice-monthly inspiration and actionable guidance on jazzing up workplace leadership—like my 12 favorite team-building exercises.
Book recommendations are my love language. Few things give me more joy than exchanging reading suggestions with people who have compatible book taste. I’ve been known to stand around at a work happy hour with fellow book-obsessed colleagues glued to our GoodReads pages lobbing suggestions for one another’s “to read” lists back and forth like an auditory pickleball game.
Like I said last year, I take my books like I take my music: eclectic, well-written, quotable. So I appreciate having my horizons expanded with reading recs by unfamiliar-to-me authors in little-read-by-me genres. I equally love the mental comfort food of a beautifully written, 200-300-page contemporary page-turner.
A combination of both is enclosed within the below, the third annual OffBeat Book Roundup: my 26 favorite books of 2024 along with their offbeat takeaways.
CONTEMPORARY FICTION
Linda Holmes, Evvie Drake Starts Over: The “yips”—sudden loss of the ability to perform certain skills—can kneecap you in life, not just sports.
Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Long Island Compromise: I was obsessed with Brodesser-Akner’s first book, Fleishman is in Trouble, and this follow-up didn’t disappoint. A quote from the book I can’t stop thinking about: “There has never been, in the history of all human interaction, a way for a woman to explain effectively that she’s calm when a man has suggested she isn’t.”
Chelsea Bieker, Madwoman: Motherhood and madness are inextricably intertwined.
Miranda July, All Fours: How’s this for a lightning bolt: “It’s hard to be knocked down when you’re on all fours.”
Xóchitl González, Anita de Monte Laughs Last: Another second-time author I adore (Olga Dies Dreaming is excellent). This one probes on who gets to be remembered vs. left behind in the world of the elite.
Laurie Frankel, This Is How It Always Is: Families with secrets don’t get to keep them forever—and maybe they shouldn’t get to, anyway.
Gabrielle Zevin, Young Jane Young: The Scarlet Letter for the digital age. What happens when you refuse to be shamed?
Holly Gramazio, The Husbands: There’s no such thing as a single best path forward in any area of life.
Jean Hanff Korelitz, Admission: Expectations of are infinitely more dangerous than expectations for.
Ann Patchett, Tom Lake: Ann Patchett does family dynamics like few others. This one explores the lives parents have led before their children were born.
HISTORICAL FICTION
Geraldine Brooks, Horse: Bigots unwittingly hand an edge to those against whom they discriminate; by thinking they’re lesser than, they underestimate.
Dennis Lehane, Small Mercies: This one features one of my all-time favorite fierce female protagonists, an absolute urban warrior. A great quote from the book: “We’re not one thing. We’re people. The worst of us has good in him. The best of us has pure fucking evil in his heart. We battle. It’s all we can do.”
Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles: Can heroes truly be happy?
Crystal Smith Paul, Did You Hear About Kitty Karr?: “There are as many sides of the truth as people telling the story.”
SPECULATIVE FICTION
Helen Phillips, Hum: The border between utopia and dystopia is hazy and ever-evolving.
Naomi Alderman, The Power: A mic drop of a quote: “The power to hurt is a kind of wealth.”
MEMOIR
Marian Schembari, A Little Less Broken: How an Autism Diagnosis Finally Made Me Whole: So many women are kept in the dark for years regarding their bodies and brains.
Kristi Coulter, Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career: A big “YES!” bell clanged in my brain throughout the day or two it took me to devour this memoir of one woman’s twelve-year toil at Amazon HQ. A favorite quote: “I never fail, because I never take on anything I’m truly unsure I can handle; even when it looks as if I were stretching myself, I keep a secret 10 percent in reserve. So if I take this job and I blow it, will it mean I destroyed myself out of hubris, and deserve whatever misery comes my way?”
Jennifer Romolini, Ambition Monster: It’s not you (us), it’s capitalism.
Lara Love Hardin, The Many Lives of Mama Love: A Memoir of Lying, Stealing, Writing, and Healing: Shame is a poison worse than heroin.
John Hendrickson, Life on Delay: Making Peace with a Stutter: “Trauma creates change you don't choose. Healing is about creating change you do choose.”
Harrison Scott Key, How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told: I laughed out loud a lot at this “wild Pilgrim’s Progress through the hellscape of marriage and the mysteries of mercy” as Key works through if, and how, to forgive his wife for having an affair with a family friend.
BUSINESS
Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect: There’s a difference between being attentive and paying attention; understanding and capitalizing on that is the difference between good and great.
Kyle Chayka, Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture: Algorithms increasingly influence not just what culture we consume, but what culture is produced.
NONFICTION
Andrea Elliott, Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City: So many overlapping systems in the U.S. are so fundamentally broken that, for so many, weaving together a life out of their frayed scraps is essentially impossible.
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being: A meditative contemplation on living as a creative human from the legendary music producer. Too many takeaways to count, so here’s one favorite: “We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output. The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world.”
Happy holidays. Have a great week,
Allison
P.S. My all-time favorite unexpected business-related reads, favorite music-themed reads, and favorite can’t-put-down reads.
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Thanks for this list. Having just skimmed many older OffBeat posts, I'm struck by how you always share a unique idea, or something unexpected that keeps a reader on their toes. Even with this variety, the bi-weekly posts stick to themes of creativity, leadership or being authentic.
What's your reaction to above characterized as "DIGO" - "Diversity In, Creativity Out"...?
p.s. I also discovered Rick Rubin's book, The Creative Act, and thought it was great.
Three book referrals:
"The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto"(fiction, Mitch Albom. Forrest Gump type story about a guitarist orphaned at youth and mentored by a master. Narrated by the character 'Music').
"Herding Tigers" (business, Todd Henry. Ideas on managing creatives...leadership practices blend well with those in "Yes the Mess").
"Workplace Jazz", (business, Gerald Leonard, 2021. Haven't yet read, fyi, he's also done interviews and podcasts. Among the <10 jazz and management / business books published since 2000).
Look forward to exchanging ideas with you in 2025 -- especially around jazz as a metaphor for teamwork amidst uncertainty. Michael