Looking for distractions after an election that didn’t go your way (or maybe even if it did)? Need Christmas present suggestions for your favorite book lover? Open to ideas for something a little different to watch?
We have ideas.
Here are some books we’ve been reading over the past year and, though we’re not much for television, a couple of Netflix series we’ve watched:
› “Eisenhower: The White House Years,” by Jim Newton — The nonfiction book we rated highest in 2024 offers a thorough treatment of the 34th president’s time in office (1953-1961) and refutes, as do most recent biographies, the Republican’s reputation as a hands-off or laid-back administrator.
› “Until the Real Thing Comes Along,” by Elizabeth Berg — The fiction book we rated highest in 2024 just may have hit us at the right time, given that its narrative is a single woman and her best friend, a gay man, deciding to try to have a baby together and eventually to live together. And while the arrangement works out about how you might expect, the woman, with the help of her aging mother, learns a thing or two about commitment.