Rachel's top three of 2024

December is here and it's time to round up the Lighthouse team's favourite books of 2023! As usual, the brief is simple but strict (although there are those who find creative ways of expanding it…): three books you read, although they may not necessarily have been published, this year. The publishing schedule is swift and unforgiving and we also want to share the love with all those older books we fell in love with in 2024.

These are Rachel's top three reads this year:

There Are Rivers In The Sky by Elif Shafak was perhaps the best book I read all year. Following the lives of four characters, we follow the rain and the story - from the writing of the Epic of Gilgamesh to present day, from London to Kurdistan. Beautiful, devastating, and worth it.

I read How We Named The Stars by Andrés Ordorica in one sitting. About young love, queerness, loss, and getting to know (and accept and love) the person you are.

Heavyweight by Solomon J Brager is a graphic novel about the author’s search to know more about their family’s history during the Holocaust. Gripping and informative, I learned an incredible amount about a slice of history I thought I knew fairly well.

Find more top three lists of 2024 from the team HERE