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The Most Popular Nonfiction Books of 2024 So Far, According to Goodreads

Here are the most popular nonfiction books of 2024 so far, according to Goodreads. Titles span from essay collections to memoir to science.

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Goodreads editors have crunched some more numbers to give us a list of 51 of the most popular nonfiction books of 2024 (so far). To do so, they looked at which titles their members had saved under the Read or Want to Read sections on the site, which boasts more than 150 million members.

They’ve organized the list into categories that may overlap a bit: Essays, History & Biography, Memoirs, Science, and General Nonfiction.

A sampling of Goodreads’ 51 most popular nonfiction books of 2024 is below:

Essays

cover of There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib; photo of a Black boy sitting in a basketball hoop

There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib

cover of Thunder Song

Thunder Song: Essays by Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe

Memoirs

a graphic of the cover of My Side of the River: A Memoir by Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

My Side of the River by Elizabeth Camarillo Gutierrez

cover of The House of Hidden Meanings

The House of Hidden Meanings by RuPaul

History & Biography

cover of Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum

Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum by Antonia Hylton

cover of Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong by Katie Gee Salisbury

Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong by Katie Gee Salisbury

Science, Technology & Health 

cover of Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation by Jen Gunter

Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation by Jen Gunter

cover of Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher

Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher

General Nonfiction

Why We Read cover

Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out by Shannon Reed

a graphic of the cover of Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts

Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Stories and Recipes from Five Generations of Black Country Cooks by Crystal Wilkinson

To see the complete list, visit Goodreads.com.

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