Last year I began this list by noting: “As I learned a long time ago, my brain’s ability to absorb other people’s books takes a big hit when I’m working on one of my own.” I certainly did not expect to have my name on the cover of a new book again in 2024!

But in the process of planning a new SABR book and companion website on players from MLB and around the world who hit a home run in their first at-bats, I got a lot more than I bargained for. In addition to designing and building the entire website, I helped edit many of the chapters that appeared online and in the book — oh, and I also ended up writing two chapters myself: a game recap of Kazuo Matsui’s first home run, which was the very first MLB game I ever covered from the press box, and a biography of Atlanta native Jeremy Hermida, who became the first player in 100-plus years to hit a grand slam in his first at-bat. The SABR project, Dazzling Debuts: First At-Bat Home Runs, was published in October 2024 and I’m extremely proud of all the stories we told. Hope you’ll check it out!

Somewhere in the middle of all that, I also read a few good books …

My reading list (non-home run division) was spent almost entirely away from the baseball diamond in 2024. There was some amazing world-building in my fiction, some award-winning and outstanding nonfiction, a few classics that held up and a few that disappointed, and quite a few stories that made me laugh during a hard year.

There were three books that stood out above the rest. Two were histories: Keith O’Brien’s brand-new Charlie Hustle on Pete Rose and the Pulitzer-winning Robert J. Oppenheimer biography, American Prometheus, by Bird and Sherwin. Both were research-heavy tours de force about American icons with extremely complicated legacies. O’Brien does a masterful job exploring Pete Rose’s self-destructive behavior and revealing important details about his baseball betting habits and his statutory rape accusations that destroy any lingering doubts anyone should have about defending Rose. The Oppenheimer film got plenty of buzz last summer, but as usual, the book is far more interesting and informative, especially about his time in New Mexico and the eventual loss of his security clearance during the Red Scare.

Cahokia Jazz, by Francis Spufford, was the best fiction book I read all year. One of the most mind-blowing feats at building an alternative-history world I can ever remember — one in which a Native American tribe, famous for their historic mounds which still stand today, fought off the American military’s attempt at conquering them in the early 1800s and went on to establish their own powerful modern metropolis along the Mississippi River. The rest of the story is a classic noir murder mystery centered around two detectives, but it’s the reimagined indigenous world that I couldn’t stop thinking about for a long time afterward.

More terrific fiction: The Alice Network; Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow; Big Time; and Off the Air.

For nonfiction, I highly recommend A Fever in the Heartland; The Wager; The Bright Ages; The Great Black Hope; and We Don’t Know Ourselves.

I was slightly disappointed in the Pulitzer-winning Demon Copperhead, which was a bit too “Appalachia poverty porn” for my tastes. Also was left wanting from Raymond Chandler and Stephen King this time around. The Brothers K, a baseball sendoff of my all-time favorite Dostoevsky book, has been on my list for years but it dragged on so much that I couldn’t force myself to finish.

Without further ado, here’s my full reading list for 2024:

• The Simple Art of Murder, by Raymond Chandler
• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, by Gabrielle Zevin
• The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder, by David Grann
• Myth America: Historians Take on the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past, edited by Kevin M. Kruse and Julian E. Zelizer
• Hamnet, by Maggie O’Farrell
• A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, by Timothy Egan
• Bat Kid, by Kazuo Inoue
• Cahokia Jazz, by Francis Spufford
• The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West, by Sara Ackerman
• Off the Air, by Christina Estes
• Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire, by Jonathan M. Katz
• Starter Villain, by John Scalzi
• Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s “Girl Stunt Reporters,” by Kim Todd
• The Woman in the Library, by Sulari Gentill
• The Brothers K, by David James Duncan
• Charlie Hustle: The Rise and Fall of Pete Rose, and the Last Glory Days of Baseball, by Keith O’Brien
• Holly, by Stephen King
• Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America, by Candacy A. Taylor
• American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
• The Guest List, by Lucy Foley
• The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe, by Matthew Gabriele and David M. Perry
• Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver
• The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammett
• Eden Undone: A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II, by Abbott Kahler
• The Alice Network, by Kate Quinn
• The League of Lady Poisoners: Illustrated True Stories of Dangerous Women, by Lisa Perrin
• The Great Black Hope: Doug Williams, Vince Evans, and the Making of the Black Quarterback, by Louis Moore
• Big Time, by Rus Bradburd
• Malört: The Redemption of a Revered and Reviled Spirit, by Josh Noel
• We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland, by Fintan O’Toole

And finally, here’s the book I spent the most time with in 2024:

• Dazzling Debuts: First At-Bat Home Runs, edited by Giselle Stancic, Bill Nowlin, and Jacob Pomrenke