Staffers at The Times on the Books They Enjoyed in 2024

Elizabeth Kennedy, White House editor

I don’t know why I picked up LOVED AND MISSED. It must have caught my eye through some sort of bookstore magic, because I had never seen it before and I didn’t recognize the author’s name. I had a professor in college who said novels remind us of what it means to be human. This is a book that does exactly that. It’s about a woman named Ruth who takes in her granddaughter because her daughter is hopelessly addicted to drugs. Actually, she doesn’t just take her in. Ruth hands over an envelope of cash to her addled daughter and backs away fast with the baby in her pram.

If you think that sounds sad, you’re right. But Ruth carries on, warmly and often hilariously. I have never read a better account of loving an imperfect, damaged person. The years roll by and normal things happen, but there is always an undercurrent of “nerves pulsating; love and anxiety plaited with fright.” Life plows relentlessly on, whether we are sad or not.

Some of my favorite scenes in the book involve food: jam tarts, roasted potatoes, flapjacks with raisins, steamed clams, a perfect little roast turkey. Those scenes — and this book —- remind me of what it means to be human, like my college professor said. Whether in the face of calamity or continuity, everyone still has to eat.

Carolyn Ryan, managing editor

I found CHASING BEAUTY captivating. Isabella Stewart Gardner lived a dramatic, almost revolutionary life. She shocked 19th-century Boston society with her eccentricities, infidelities and fierce intellectual spirit.

But after suffering a series of losses in her 20s, including the death of her toddler son, she threw herself into the world of art: seeing it, collecting it and eventually sharing it with the public. This biography sweeps you into her world. Some of it is exhilarating. Some of it is troubling, such as Gardner’s apparent indifference to major social issues of her time, including the Civil War.