The Full Circle Podcast

Coach Laura's Top 10 Fiction Books of 2024

• Full Circle Endurance • Episode 69

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Coach Laura gives an overview of the 10 best fiction books she read in 2024!


Read this Article:

https://www.fullcircleendurance.com/blog/coach-lauras-top-10-fiction-books-of-2024 


Books Referenced During the Episode:

Arc of a Scythe Series (Trilogy + Stories)

Scythe by Neal Shusterman

Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman

The Toll by Neal Shusterman

Gleanings: Stories from Arc of a Scythe by Neal Shusterman


The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon 

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus 

The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon 

Verity by Colleen Hoover 

The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown

America’s First Daughter by Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie

My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah 


Kingsbridge Series

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett 

World Without End by Ken Follett 

A Column of Fire by Ken Follett 

The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett 

The Armor of Light by Ken Follett 


Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White


All Souls Trilogy

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness

The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness


Top Book Lists from Past Years:




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Reach out to Coach Laura Henry: Hello@FullCircleEndurance.com

(0:04 - 0:19)
Hello, and welcome to the Full Circle Podcast, your source for insights into the science and art of endurance sports training and racing. I'm your host, Coach Laura Henry. This year, I read a lot of fiction.

(0:20 - 0:39)
I was in the mood to revisit some books that I really enjoy this year, so half of the fiction books that I read in 2024 were rereads. Since they are beloved favorites of mine, it would not be fair to include any of those rereads in my top 10 for 2024. But I have included the books that I reread that I enjoyed the most at the end of this episode.

(0:39 - 0:58)
Links to all of the books that I referenced in the episode will be available in the show notes. If you would like to see which nonfiction books I enjoyed in 2024, you can listen to Episode 69, Coach Laura's Top 9 Nonfiction Books of 2024. If you are interested in seeing my top book lists from past years, you can check them out via the links in the show notes.

(0:58 - 1:11)
Number one, Ark of a Scythe series. The Ark of a Scythe series, written by Neil Shusterman, was the best new fiction I read this year. It is comprised of four books, a trilogy, plus a collection of short stories from the world of Ark of a Scythe.

(1:11 - 1:25)
I loved all of them. The books that I read were Scythe, Thunderhead, The Toll, and Gleaning's stories from Ark of a Scythe. The first book, Scythe, drew me in from the first chapter, and the entirety of the series was engrossing from that point onward.

(1:25 - 1:40)
Ark of a Scythe was written for young adults, but that didn't stop this adult from loving it. Much like Harry Potter and the Hunger Games, which are series that are also written for young adults, this drew me right in. Ark of a Scythe is set in a dystopian future, and I'm a sucker for this specific type of fiction.

(1:41 - 1:57)
I think that dystopian books tend to point out interesting parts of human nature and the potential consequences of current societal trends. Exploring these ideas is fascinating to me. In my humble opinion, the best thing a fiction book can do is to transport the reader to a different world from the one in which they currently exist.

(1:57 - 2:06)
All of the books of Ark of a Scythe did this wonderfully, and I found all of them to be immersive and diverting. I highly recommend them. Number two, The Winter People.

(2:06 - 2:24)
The Winter People by Jennifer McMahon was a surprise delight for me. It was buried in a bag of books loaned to me by a friend, and I literally just grabbed it off the pile and started reading it without knowing anything about its plot. As a general rule, it's a toss-up about whether I'll read a summary or even the back or the inside cover of a book before I start reading it.

(2:24 - 2:46)
I despise, despise spoilers, so I tend to just give books, especially fiction books, a try and to see if I end up getting pulled in. As a side note, I used to have this ridiculous idea that I had to finish every book I started, even if I hated it. Thankfully, I saw reason a few years ago, and so now I don't mind starting a book blind and then abandoning it if I discover that I think it sucks.

(2:46 - 3:05)
As far as The Winter People goes, I was extremely interested in the story right from the start, and I looked forward to seeing what would happen next each time I needed to leave the book. I remained engaged in the story until the end, so I have to give this one five stars. The Winter People is a ghost story, but it's very creative, original, and different from other ghost stories that I've read before.

(3:05 - 3:17)
It's also very well written. I liked the interweaving narratives of different narrators and from different time periods. It was very suspenseful without being overly dramatic, and it built up well to the book's final conclusion.

(3:18 - 3:29)
Number three, Lessons in Chemistry. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmousse was another book that surprised me this year. It was very popular when it was first published in 2022, and it ended up on a bunch of the bestseller lists.

(3:30 - 3:47)
That being said, sometimes I completely love a book that is popular with other people, and other times I cannot for the life of me determine what made a given book so popular. But Goldfinch, which is arguably the worst book I've read in the last decade, is one such example. It even won the Pulitzer Prize, something I still don't understand to this day.

(3:47 - 3:57)
I loved everything about Lessons in Chemistry. I cannot think of one thing that I did not like. I loved the premise, the main characters, the story, and how it was narrated.

(3:57 - 4:09)
I most especially loved the character of 630. Lessons in Chemistry is original, engaging, and honestly, an incredibly well-written debut novel. This is a book that I looked forward to reading as I was reading it.

(4:09 - 4:16)
Each time I had to step away, I looked forward to coming back to it later. It was a wonderful read. Number four, The Frozen River.

(4:16 - 4:33)
The Frozen River by Ariel Lahan was another best-selling, popular book that I wasn't sure I'd actually enjoy. However, I was engaged with this book right from the beginning. I loved the inspiration for it, the real-life Martha Ballard, who was a midwife in the colonial and then early days of the United States of America.

(4:33 - 4:47)
Lahan uses real events to inspire this fictional story, which was compelling, and it really drew me in. I thought it was a beautiful book. As a trigger warning, the book does contain depictions of sexual violence, which may be difficult for anyone who has experienced that.

(4:47 - 4:56)
Number five, Verity. Verity by Colleen Hoover was incredibly engrossing for me. If my schedule and life would have allowed it, I would have finished it in one sitting.

(4:56 - 5:15)
That wasn't possible, but I did end up finishing it within a single day. This book is a mystery and thriller, and it pulled me right in from the first chapter, and it had me guessing and trying to figure out what was going on throughout the entire book. One of my guesses ended up being right, but it was only partially right, and I ultimately found it fun that I could not completely figure out what was really going on.

(5:15 - 5:27)
While parts of the book were very disturbing, it's not super often that an author can successfully surprise me. So for that reason, it gets to occupy a spot on the list of my top ten fiction books of the year. Number six, The Book of Doors.

(5:27 - 5:41)
The Book of Doors by Gareth Brown is a book that I judged by its cover. I was at the library with a friend, and I happened to see it sitting on one of the featured shelves towards the front of the library. It had a beautiful cover, so I did actually open the jacket and read the inside cover.

(5:42 - 5:56)
The premise of the story seemed original and intriguing, so I decided to give it a go. I ultimately loved the entire story and the magic of The Book of Doors. Full disclosure, I did go back and forth between being completely annoyed with the protagonist and then liking her.

(5:56 - 6:12)
When I encounter a character that I feel this way about, this phenomenon is always interesting to me. An author's ability to successfully provoke such conflicting emotions and reactions from their reader is always intriguing to me. Overall, I thought it was fun, and it was an easy read that was thoroughly enjoyable.

(6:13 - 6:32)
Number seven, America's First Daughter. America's First Daughter by Stephanie Dre and Laura Kamoi, while a novel, is incredibly well-researched. In fact, when new letters written by Martha Jefferson Randolph came to light after the manuscript was finally submitted, the publisher allowed the authors extra time to study those and to include what they learned from those letters into the book.

(6:33 - 6:46)
The authors did not take too many liberties with what actually happened historically. As they say, history provides drama and intrigue enough to make fiction writing unnecessary. I enjoyed reading a story about Thomas Jefferson told from the perspective of his daughter.

(6:46 - 7:12)
Martha Jefferson Randolph is an incredibly interesting and important figure in American history, but because of her gender, her contributions were greatly overlooked both during her lifetime and immediately after it. That being said, what we know of Thomas Jefferson is filtered through what she allowed the world to know. As Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote in Hamilton, Martha Jefferson Randolph controlled and told the story of Thomas Jefferson.

(7:12 - 7:41)
So while this was a novel, I loved how rich it was and how much it made me appreciate this complex time in America's history even more than I already did. After really enjoying America's First Daughter, I was interested to read My Dear Hamilton, also written by Stephanie Dre and Laura Kamoi, where Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, wife of the now-famous founding father Alexander Hamilton, is the protagonist. I enjoyed seeing the story of Alexander Hamilton through Eliza Schuyler Hamilton's perspective.

(7:41 - 8:15)
Like America's First Daughter, My Dear Hamilton is very well researched, and while it does take some liberties with historical elements, it definitely provokes a lot of interest in the time around America's founding and in the events that led to and immediately followed the creation of the United States. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and other books by these same authors are now on my to-read list. 9. Tomorrow, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabriel Zebin is an imaginative story about two friends whose friendship develops as coding and creative partners in the world of video game design.

(8:15 - 8:32)
I am not a gamer, though I have actually played one or two of the games referenced in the book, but I loved this book. The story itself was so creative, both in terms of the plot and in terms of how the author chose to tell it. Told from alternating perspectives and through different mediums, the story really made an impact on me and it sucked me in.

(8:33 - 8:50)
At times, I was honestly very annoyed with one of the protagonists, Sadie. As you might be beginning to see, my being annoyed with or frustrated with protagonists isn't necessarily a rare occurrence. I think that the author did a nice job of developing the characters and getting the reader invested in them, even if you didn't really like them all the time.

(8:50 - 8:57)
At times, I was actually even a bit teary-eyed as I read this book. All said, it was immersive and it was imaginative. It was wonderful.

(8:57 - 9:10)
Number 10. Winter Garden. I started reading Winter Garden by Kristen Hanna on the morning of a day when I ended up purely by random chance going to the Chicago Public Library and discovering the Winter Garden that they have on the 9th floor there.

(9:10 - 9:29)
What a serendipitous happening and sign. So, I ended up reading Winter Garden on my Kindle in the Winter Garden. I felt so literary while I was there. 

It was lovely. It took me a bit to get into this book, especially because I did not necessarily connect with, and if I'm being honest, didn't necessarily like, the two main protagonists. There's that theme again.

(9:29 - 9:41)
But the story grew on me and I'm really glad that I stuck it out. The second half was beautiful and heartbreaking all at once and I absolutely loved the ending. So, here's the books that I've reread in 2024 that I like the most.

(9:41 - 9:57)
The first is the King's Bridge series by Ken Follett. I've read a lot of books, but to this day, The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett remains my all-time favorite book. It is a story about a fictional community in England called King's Bridge, the people who live there, and the building of a cathedral there in the 11th century.

(9:57 - 10:29)
The Pillars of the Earth, and the series that it then inspired, is immersive and incredibly well-researched with shockingly good character development, especially considering that there are many characters in each book. Much like how I prefer to view the movies and the stories within the Star Wars canon, I prefer to read the King's Bridge series in the order that they were published, not in the series' story chronological timeline. For those who would prefer to read the books in chronological order, in terms of storyline, that order is The Evening in the Morning, The Pillars of the Earth, World Without End, A Column of Fire, and The Armor of Light.

(10:30 - 10:47)
However, they were published as The Pillars of the Earth, World Without End, A Column of Fire, The Evening in the Morning, and The Armor of Light. I actually hadn't read The Evening in the Morning and The Armor of Light until this year. My grandfather, who I called Boppy, and I are massive fans of Ken Follett's novels.

(10:47 - 10:59)
When he was alive, Boppy and I would eagerly await any new release by Ken Follett. Boppy would purchase the book, and he would read it first. He would then save it for me until the next time I visited him in South Carolina, when he would give it to me to read.

(10:59 - 11:19)
After I read it, we would discuss the story and what we liked and didn't like about it. The Evening in the Morning was released in September 2020. Since going out to buy books in person was still relatively taboo then, due to the ongoing restrictions imposed by the government due to the COVID-19 pandemic, I decided to surprise Boppy and have the book delivered to him at home on the day of its release.

(11:20 - 11:36)
Boppy was a man who liked planning and predictability, and that is the understatement of the century. Getting the surprise package in the mail threw him for a massive loop. Once he saw what the package was, he was delighted, but I have to admit that I love that I caused him some disruption in his otherwise mundane, predictable daily routine.

(11:37 - 11:49)
Boppy read the book that fall, and he gave it to me to read. He contracted COVID-19 in December 2020, and I contracted it while I was caring for him when he was sick. Three weeks later, Boppy died due to complications from COVID-19.

(11:49 - 12:05)
While I was incredibly sick, I did survive the virus. Especially because of how I had contracted it from him, I had some guilt over my surviving COVID-19 while Boppy had died from it. For a long time, my long COVID symptoms prevented me from being able to read long-form novels like The Evening and the Morning.

(12:05 - 12:26)
It was also so incredibly sad that I'd never get a chance to talk over a Ken Follett book with Boppy ever again, so I put it on a shelf until The Armor of Light was released several years later. I read both The Evening and the Morning and The Armor of Light for the first time this year. While they were both good, they have the misfortune of being directly compared to the three books that came before them, including The Pillars of the Earth.

(12:26 - 12:39)
While I did enjoy both of them, I didn't think that they were quite as good as the first three books in the series. On their own, I probably would have liked them more, honestly. But as part of the series, The Armor of Light is probably the weakest book out of the five that have been released so far.

(12:40 - 12:58)
It was engaging and it was enjoyable, but I felt like it was a bit more superficial than the other books in the series, and that I wasn't quite as invested in the characters. This may be due to the period of time that it takes place during and the issues that the author focused on. I found the books set in the Middle Ages to be more engrossing, and this one is set in 1795 to 1825.

(12:59 - 13:21)
The Evening and the Morning was interesting to me because it was a prequel to The Pillars of the Earth. I enjoyed the story of how Kingsbridge came to be, and I liked this book better than The Armor of Light. That being said, while I enjoyed The Evening and the Morning and The Armor of Light, I am not necessarily going to want to rush back to rereading either of them the way I have with other books, namely The Pillars of the Earth and World Without End, within this series.

(13:21 - 13:47)
Happily, my reread of this series did confirm that The Pillars of the Earth is still my all-time favorite book. Charlotte's Web While The Pillars of the Earth is my all-time favorite book, Charlotte's Web by E.B. White is an extremely close second to it, if not tied with it for first place outright. Yes, Charlotte's Web is a children's book, but the intended audience is honestly irrelevant as long as the story being told is good, and in my humble opinion, the story told in Charlotte's Web is excellent.

(13:47 - 14:02)
I first read this book as a kid, and I've reread it many times since then, including listening to the audiobook version of it, which E.B. White himself recorded. The story has always connected with me on a personal level. When I was a kid, my next-door neighbors had pet rabbits, and my brother and I would go over and play with them.

(14:02 - 14:16)
One day, when I was eight years old, my next-door neighbor asked me if I wanted to play with the rabbits. Of course, I replied. They led me into the garage and opened up their chest freezer to reveal all of the rabbits that I had gotten used to playing with, all frozen, just sitting there, waiting to be eaten.

(14:16 - 14:41)
From that point onward, I couldn't separate food animals from companion animals in my heart and mind, which would ultimately lead me to making the choice to become vegan when I became an adult. So I suppose that I really relate to Fern when she sees Wilbur as a sentient being and a friend, and when she can't bear the thought of eating him at Christmas. I also think that the book explores some really important themes, innocence and the inevitability of change and death among them in a very real way.

(14:41 - 14:58)
These themes are so important for children, and truly adults as well. As always, I thoroughly loved my reread of Charlotte's Web, and I'm sure I'll be rereading it again within a year or two. I first read A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness when it was first published 12-13 years ago.

(14:58 - 15:15)
It merges fantasy with historical fiction in a creative, immersive way. I loved it so much then, and I quickly moved on to the second book in the trilogy, Shadow of Night. I was just as enraptured by that book, but then I had to wait a couple years to find out how the story concluded because The Book of Life was not published until 2014.

(15:16 - 15:40)
I loved The Book of Life as well, and the All Souls trilogy has remained one of my favorite book series since then. I knew that they had produced a TV series based on these books, but it was hard to figure out how to watch it because I don't have cable, it was on AMC, and it wasn't readily available on any streaming services in the United States at the time that it was being produced, which was between 2018 and 2022. I reactivated my Netflix account this autumn, and I noticed that it was available there, so I watched it.

(15:40 - 15:56)
It was such an excellent adaptation of the books for so many reasons. Some of the dialogue in the show is literally taken straight from the book. Each of the three seasons of the show is based on one of the books in the trilogy, which allowed the producers of the show to really dive into the story without having to cut out major plot elements.

(15:56 - 16:12)
Anyway, watching the show motivated me to reread the trilogy, which was just as excellent this time around. It's a wonderfully imaginative story with likable characters that just really draws you in and has you heavily invested in them. I highly recommend it and the TV series that it inspired.

(16:14 - 16:29)
That was another episode of the Full Circle Podcast. Subscribe to the Full Circle Podcast wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. If you like what you listen to, please be sure to leave us a rating and review, as this goes a long way in helping us reach others.

(16:29 - 16:47)
The thoughts and opinions expressed on the Full Circle Podcast are those of the individual. As always, we'd love to hear from you, and we value your feedback. Please send us an email at podcast at fullcircleendurance.com or visit us at fullcircleendurance.com backslash podcast.

(16:47 - 16:58)
To find training plans, see what other coaching services we offer, or to join our community, please visit fullcircleendurance.com. I'm Coach Laura Henry. Thanks for listening.

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