The Editors' Best of 2024
From used bookstore finds, to bedside table reads, to long-awaited releases, we hope our favorites from the past year will inspire you to pick up something new. Merry Christmas from the editors at Fare Forward!
Ponds by J.C. Scharl
Sarah Clark, Editor-in-Chief
Though I often find my favorite books of a given year by chance, my pick for this year—J.C. Scharl’s first poetry collection, Ponds—came as no surprise. Scharl is a frequent Fare Forward contributor, valued both for her poems and for her warm, insightful prose, and Ponds is one of the most uplifting books I’ve read in a long time. Scharl confronts the threads of sorrow and longing in our lives—her Widow of Cana concludes, “Water into wine is not enough.”—while allowing for the golden threads of goodness to shine through just as strongly, as when in “After the Funeral,” she pushes back the shadow of death: “The smallest evil / mended. In the dark, pinpricks of candles.” I read these poems over the course of a couple of weeks, forcing myself to slow down and savor the verses. I recommend you do the same.
We are all fellow travelers making our way back home.
Winters in the World: A Journey Through the Anglo-Saxon Year by Eleanor Parker
Sara Holston, Managing Editor
Recommended to me by our very own Managing Editor Emerita, Moriah Hawkins, Winters in the World hit several of my abiding loves: the church’s liturgical calendar, Anglo-Saxon poetry and language, medieval history and culture, stories about the saints—and had just the right amount of armchair philosophical reflections sprinkled in. These may not seem like wildly different topics, but Parker manages to unify them into a uniquely robust and vibrant picture of “the Anglo-Saxon year.” As she brings to life the day-to-day practices of medieval citizens, their feelings and reflections on each season, and the festivals they celebrated, she invites readers into a re-imagination of life as a journey through time, paradoxically cycling and progressing. As we now embark on another winter in the world, this book is a good reminder that, even across centuries and seas, we are all fellow travelers making our way back home.
If you and your partner love this show, we should get drinks sometime.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (Amazon Prime)
Whitney Rio-Ross, Poetry Editor
This year I read at least ten books that deserve to be on this list, so I’ll go with a television show that I would recommend to anyone—but especially people who are, have been, or are considering getting married. When I hear people say a movie is “about marriage,” I usually cringe. It seems that Hollywood thinks marriage is interesting only when it includes something devastating—infidelity, the loss of a child, debilitating illness, or divorce. Yes, these things happen in many marriages. But what about the good, mundane, or weird parts? Mr. And Mrs. Smith—a different take on the 2004 movie’s premise—manages to look at the dark and light of lifelong partnership while also offering an intriguing spy narrative. Donald Glover’s mix of dark and absurdist humor balances scenes of passion, pain, and uncertainty. The combo yields remarkably keen insights while bullets fly. The “Do You Want Kids?” episode mostly involves the titular couple dealing with an elderly hostage and assassins, but it is the best television I’ve ever seen about that question. It’s also my new double date litmus test: If you and your partner love this show, we should get drinks sometime.
Labatut demonstrates what happens when we cease to understand the world, not through argument, but by way of four personal accounts.
When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut
Will Bryant, Editor
I recently moved to Washington, DC, for my first job after college. By God’s good sense of humor, the book I have loved the most since moving is When We Cease to Understand the World, a short, semi-fictional volume about the lives of four scientists who “go crazy.” Fritz Haber, the creator of Zyklon B. Alexander Grothendieck, a genius mathematician-turned-monastic. Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger, the physicists who named the hard limits of human perception, quantum uncertainty, and black holes. Labatut demonstrates what happens when we cease to understand the world, not through argument, but by way of four personal accounts. He avoids philosophical speculation, because the (stylized) lives of these scientists are shocking enough on their own. It is left to the reader to wrestle with the reality that the brightest human minds of the past century were driven mad by the incomprehensibility of their discoveries. Labatut does not take these questions head-on; rather, he ends the book with a personal epilogue about his own life in Chile and the dying lemon tree in his backyard. It is comforting to know that even the furthest reaches of the human mind can be brought home by the stories of four men and a dying tree.
Kisner’s formidable writing talent alone makes Thin Places worth the read.
Thin Places by Jordan Kisner
Jake Casale, Editor
In conversation earlier this year with some of my especially prayer-oriented friends, I was introduced to the idea of “thin places,” which I understand as physical places or locations where the presence of God seems more manifest and substantive. As I privately pondered this concept in the following weeks, a different friend recommended journalist Jordan Kisner’s 2020 coincidentally named book of essays. Kisner employs the phrase as a gesture toward liminality, the in-between spaces of life where binaries break down. Exploring the social textures of a wide range of topics, from religion to economics to medicine, Kisner seeks out apparent contradiction, characterizes it with a wit that is at once dispassionate and deeply attentive, and then sits in the presence of the weight she has just uncovered. If you squint your eyes and tilt your head, this contemplative quality seems just a little bit prayerful—an intriguing posture from an author who presents herself as rather areligious. Kisner’s formidable writing talent alone makes Thin Places worth the read, but I’m also quite curious to see how, drawn as she is toward inhabiting tension and paradox, her metaphysical perspectives might evolve as she continues to interrogate the layers of being human in future writings.
I found Being Christian to be an elegant and straightforward description of what it means to live the Christian life.
Being Christian by Rowan Williams
Anna Heetderks, Editor
I came across this slim volume when my priest quoted the following line from its pages: “Holy Communion changes the way we see things as well as people… One of the most transformingly surprising things about Holy Communion is that it obliges you to see the person next to you as wanted by God.” As someone perpetually fascinated by the mystery and meaning of the Eucharist, this framing of the sacrament as a thing of importance for our relationship with others as well as God piqued my interest enough for me to buy the book. I found Being Christian to be an elegant and straightforward description of what it means to live the Christian life. Williams identifies four central elements of such a life—baptism, the Bible, Holy Communion, and prayer—illuminating each in ways that changed how I consider it. Across these elements, the unifying theme is that the Christian life is inherently sacramental—it is about accepting the good gifts of God to the people of God. This book is one of them.
I love stories that show a window into someone’s life: their struggles, their joys, their loves, their fears.
On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Najma Zahira, Editor
I love stories that show a window into someone’s life: their struggles, their joys, their loves, their fears. For me, it’s an important reminder that we are all human and flawed but we have such a great capacity to recognize beauty and to show love. On Beauty was my first foray into Zadie Smith’s work after the cover caught my eye in a bookstore, and it was a truly worthy impulse purchase. Smith throws the audience into the inner workings of a mixed-race-and-nationality household in a quaint Massachusetts college town just outside of Boston. Her characters, like most people, are complex and flawed, each searching for a way to be understood, loved, and acknowledged. As I read, I felt my allegiance bounce between characters and rationalities before landing somewhere in the messy middle. I saw aspects of myself mapped onto each character, from my anxieties to my celebrations. This is why, almost 20 years after its release, On Beauty is still incredibly poignant.
