Since there may be more books per square foot of land in Berkeley than anywhere else in the United States, getting a finger on the pulse of what people read this year isn’t the worst way to find great reads from 2024.
At the celebrated Moe’s Books on Telegraph Avenue—which has an inventory of mostly used books and new titles by Bay Area authors —owner Doris Moskowitz (the youngest daughter of Moe himself) had a difficult time narrowing her choices down.
“I’ve worked here at the bookstore for 35 years this year and I read a lot of books, not always the things that just came out this year, but I did read a few really good ones,” she says.
Moskowitz’s recommendations include 2022’s “The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture” (released in paperback in 2024) co-authored by Gabor Maté, who wrote “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.”
She calls “The Myth of Normal” an “important work on addiction and how to really heal the world of issues that we really struggle with.”
She calls “Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI” by Noah Harare another important nonfiction title. But she adds, “‘Nexus’ is about AI and how that’s kind of always been with us and how has that looked over time. I didn’t read this one, my husband did, but I’ve heard all about it. So I suggest you look it up.”
Moskowitz, who reads lots of novels, says, “James McBride is a wonderful author, and I really enjoyed ‘The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.’ I like to read in the backyard. There’s a tree I like to sit under. … a novel satisfies that need to comfort and relax.”
She also wants to plug Steve Wasserman’s “Tell Me Something, Tell Me Anything, Even If it’s a Lie: A Memoir in Essays.” She says, “He’s the editor at Heyday Press, which is local. He’s also somebody who grew up in Berkeley. This is a wonderful collection of essays related to all kinds of things literary, and it’s really well worth reading.”
Moskowitz also recommends Tommy Orange’s 2024 “Wandering Stars,” the sequel to “There There,” calling it “a wonderful novel that ties the story together.”
Moe’s bookseller Jazkin Phillips’ best of 2024 is “Reading the Room: A Bookseller’s Tale” by Paul Yamazaki, which, unsurprisingly, is attached to her profession: “I chose it as my favorite book because it kind of just gives an insight to the longer history of bookselling in the Bay Area—specifically in San Francisco. I learned a lot from it the interviews that he did here were really insightful for me as a bookseller.”
Stanley Sobolewski, who has worked at Moe’s for 25 years, discovered what’s perhaps his favorite book of the year recently: “I came on my shift this week and was very happy to see this book ‘Selected Amazon Reviews’ on the shelf, by Kevin Killian, who was local poet and passed away a few years ago. In fact, I spoke with him once here in the in the basement of Moe’s.”
“It’s an incredibly subversive book,” Sobolewski says. “….Basically, in later part of his life, he used the Amazon comment section to just review all manner of products: movies, CDs, records. books, car seats, you name it. And he used the platform to publish his completely unrelated crazy stories. … It’s a wonderful collection.”
Sobolewski adds, “He used a huge platform but then took advantage of it and just created this incredibly whimsical and interesting title.”
The staff at the downtown Berkeley branch of Pegasus Books also chimed in with selections.
According to manager Hannah Sharafian, more than one employee loved “The Seventh Veil of Salome” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and “Rakesfall” by Vajra Chandrasekera.
“Silvia Moreno-Garcia is a store favorite, and her new novel is a sweeping Hollywood epic full of her usual incredible characterizations,” Sharafian said.
“Rakesfall,” Chandrasekera’s second fantasy novel after his Hugo-nominated “The Saint of Bright Doors,” is an “eerie, multi-layered exploration of Sri Lankan history and mythology that defies description but made two of our top 10 lists this year.”
Another Pegasus pick is Kelly Link’s first novel “The Book of Love,” which Sharafian says is “exactly what the title says: a gorgeous exploration of love in all its shifting forms, written with the beauty and clarity that makes her short stories such gems.”
Also on the list is Elif Shafak’s “There Are Rivers in the Sky,” which Sharafian calls “a sweeping novel of the past, the present and how water holds us all together.”
Sharafian also recommends “Hail Murray! The Bay Area Punk Photography of Murray Bowles 1982-1995,” which she calls a “fabulous collection by the late Murray Bowles, a true local legend. If it happened, he was there taking pictures.”
But she concludes, “Finally, the book I personally have been trying to shove into everyone’s hands is ‘The Empusium,’ Olga Tokarczuk’s horror-tinged historical novel that is deeply philosophical without losing its bitter edge of humor.”
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