Books books books! Our top picks from 2024
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Welcome to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I'm Lila Raptopoulos, and this is our Friday Chat Show. Today, I am thrilled because in annual tradition, we are talking through some of the best books of 2024. It's been a very exciting year for books. We got a new Sally Rooney, Elizabeth Strout, and Miranda July. We got memoirs from Alexei Navalny, Salman Rushdie, Ina Garten, and Al Pacino. We've seen a host of great debuts and nonfiction releases. And the best are

collected, as always, in the FT's annual Books of the Year special, which is out now. Here to talk through the year in books and share their top recommendations are two of our dear friends joining me from London for our final ever Books Extravaganza. It's literary editor Fred Studeman and until just recently our deputy books editor Laura Battle. Friend Laura, hi, welcome. Hi Lila. Hi Lila. Good to have you both. Thank you. It's great to be here. All right, so why don't we

start by talking about this year in books. It feels like it's been a pretty blockbuster year. I felt like for the first time in a long time, there were a number of really buzzy standout books that everyone seemed to be reading. What did you both notice about this year? Well, I think you've nailed it. It was quite a sort of busy year. I thought, you know, we saw a lot of big names in fiction coming out. I mean, you know, Sally Rooney, Pat Barker, Alan Hollinghurst, Colm Toibin,

Percival Everett, I mean, I could go on. So it just sort of felt on that basis very strong. And then if you're moving out of fiction and you, you know, if you're trying to look for trends, the picture becomes a bit more complicated. I think there's a lot of books about AI. There was a lot about the geopolitical environment in the US, then what's happening in Ukraine, Russia, Russia.

future of democracy. And then in Britain, we had a lot about, because we had an election this year, obviously, so there was a lot of books tilted towards that, biographies of Keir Starmer, who since then has become the Prime Minister, but also a lot of meditations and analyses of the

the state of Britain, the problems the country faces, how to fix it. Yeah, so there's a lot to get stuck into. And the prizes were, what did you think of the prizes? You know, I think they were actually really strong this year. People always like to sort of bellyache about the prizes and sort of, in a way, it's a bit of a parlor game, but I thought the Booker was very strong.

I think the International Booker, so the prize for fiction and translation was a good, you know, Jenny Erpenbeck was a good shout. And I also think, spare a thought for the Nobel, which can often surprise because it's an award for life's work. So sometimes it might be given to someone who isn't really on everyone's minds right now, but, you know, their greatest writing happened years, possibly even decades ago. And I think the choice this year of the South Korean writer Han Kang was really well received. So, yeah,

Yeah, it's been a very sort of busy year. Lots of different things happening. Yeah, yeah. Laura, how about you? How did you feel about this year? Yeah, well, Fred's covered it very well. I mean, I think it was noticeable that there were some really big name authors with books out this year. You know, you mentioned Sally Rooney. But the Booker Prize, you know, itself went to Samantha Harvey, who's...

really not very well known and was awarded for her book Orbital, which was published rather quietly about a year ago. There wasn't a kind of wild rush on it. Right. And Laura, what was Orbital about? I love when a prize does that, when it elevates a book that people that didn't really get a lot of buzz. Yeah. I mean, I still haven't read it. Fred has, but it's set in one... It's set on the International Space Station and it is...

it is in a 24-hour period of

which for us mere earthlings covers the full sort of day and night. But if you're spinning around the globe, you actually get 16 dawns and 16 sunsets, which I never knew until I read this book. Oh, wow. But yeah, it's sort of taking to space to look down on the human race and humanity and what we're doing to the planet and how the planet is occupied. Oh, I love that. Great, great. Okay, now before we get into sort of categories of recommendations, I wanted to ask both of you,

something that's probably not easy to do, which is to narrow it down to your number one favorite book of this year. Fred. I'm really torn by this one because it's a difficult topic. It's Patriot by Alexei Navalny. Obviously, he is now no longer with us in that he died in very suspicious circumstances in a penal colony in Russia up in the Arctic North.

And it's an extraordinary book because we know the persecution that he endured throughout his life. And yet this is a memoir that manages to be funny. It manages to be quite joyous when he writes about his childhood. And yet it also is unflinching in the way it kind of holds up a

mirror to oppression. So I could name some others, but if you're going to make me say one, I'll say that one. That book, I've been so looking forward to reading. I'm glad to hear you loved it. Laura, what about you? Well, it's become almost a cliche for women or even middle class women of a certain age to recommend All Fours by Miranda July. So I sort of hesitate to recommend it here, but it really was a standout novel that I read.

read this year. It's a sort of semi-autobiographical novel about a woman in her 40s who sets out on a road trip across the US, leaving her husband and her young child behind.

But she sort of loses her nerve about 20 minutes down the road and ends up checking into a motel where she starts a passionate but unconsummated affair with a Hertz employee called Davey. Like the rental car employee. Hertz rental car. Yeah. And much has been made, I think, of Miranda July's kind of confidence in addressing the main themes of the book, which are sexuality and female desire. Yeah.

But actually what really struck me was the confidence of style. It's an amazingly inventive book. And just the way she writes is, it's just a fully realized voice that feels...

Totally original. And I just found it a really enjoyable read. Yeah, I totally agree. A lot of novels also, I feel, that have like a very strong style. It takes a while to get into that voice. Yeah, I think that's right. But with hers, it just goes down really easy. Yes, so such an easy read. You're immediately swept up in it all. And yeah, very funny. It's pretty shocking. It's not one to give...

Your mother-in-law, necessarily, at Christmas. Oh, go on. It's one to give a close friend. I have sent it to my cousin. He said that he was unshockable. Okay, so in annual tradition, now I will throw a few scenarios at you that we may find ourselves in in December and ask for your top book recommendations for those situations. Are you ready?

This is like a game show, isn't it? I know. We're ready. Is there a prize at the end? Yes, there's a grand prize. Yeah, I don't know. Glory. Okay, so Christmas and the holiday season is coming up. It is a cozy time. It is also a hectic time. Do you have a good book to use as an excuse to sort of get away from the family hysteria, take some time for yourself? What would be a book to sort of escape with?

Fred. Okay. I will name one, which is a book by an author called Sam Leith, and it's called The Haunted Wood, and it's about books for children. And he draws on almost encyclopedic knowledge of this whole genre and explores that whole world. And I think if I needed to withdraw from the chaos of our normal Christmas story,

fun fights, that would might be quite a good place to go. Amazing. Laura, what about you? I would recommend this novel called Rosarita by Anita Desai. And the setup is a young Indian woman called Benita who travels through Mexico and she suddenly comes across this older mysterious woman in a city park who claims to have known her late mother.

And this is a jumping off point for all sorts of reminiscences about her upbringing in India and her own family history. It's, I think, only just over 100 pages, but it's absolutely beautifully written. And it's narrated in the second person, which is really unusual. But it gives it a real directness. So if you have problems concentrating, focusing on a book, this is one where you're absolutely grabbed by...

the first few paragraphs and swept up in. All right. Incredible. Incredible. Um,

My next topic is books that make history feel compelling and alive. I just read Alif Shafak's novel, There Are Rivers in the Sky, which came out this year. Big, beautiful epic. It really did that. That spans centuries, doesn't it? Totally. It spans centuries. And you just like feel like you're on the streets in London. You feel like you're at the River Tigris. You just kind of like you get the history through the story. And it made me cry.

crave a nonfiction book that really made history feel alive, not just facts, but sort of almost written in a novelistic way. And I was wondering, Fred, if you came across anything like that this year. Well, I'd also agree with you about Alif Shafak. He's a wonderful writer, and I think he's sort of going from strength to strength. One book that really caught a lot of people's imagination and attention is a book called Revolucy.

came out at the start of the year by David van Raybroek. And it is the history of Indonesia right at the end of the Second World War, previously a Dutch colony. The Dutch were trying to reassert themselves. And yet what was happening was you had an independence movement. And I think what's extraordinary is it's something that I think most people had not been thinking a lot about, if we just put that sort of

diplomatically, but yet manages to take you somewhere else into this big, big swirling narrative of geopolitics and then very local and tell a very dramatic story. And it is history in its most sort of violent and

at times possibly also a bit uplifting form. So I think that's quite incredible. Laura, what about you? There's a book called A Voyage Around the Queen by Craig Brown, which is a really fun and quirky biography of the late queen. Fun. Yeah, it's filled with gossipy anecdotes and stories

and personal reflections. And his conceit is basically because the queen was completely unknowable. She revealed almost nothing of her inner life. She has to be defined by the sort of negative space around her or by other people's accounts of meeting her because she lived for such a long time. There are just, this is an incredible story

range of people that wrote about her. Virginia Woolf compared the young queen to a caterpillar in her writing, and Picasso had a sort of pornographic dream about the queen. It's just sort of filled with all these extraordinary details. It's so great. It's great fun. I'm curious if you've both noticed your own reading habits change that much this year. I found myself gravitating towards older books, like picking things up that...

or 10, 15 years old. Are you doing that? Are you reading less? Laura, you've mentioned that you're reading a lot of tiny novellas. Well, I left the books desk and immediately picked up Robert Carrow's volume one of the LBJ biography, which is 800 pages, which I was reading throughout the run up to the US election. So yeah, I kind of did very slim novellas and then huge great tomes this year.

I'm still very much chained by the day job to having to try and... The hopeless attempt to try and keep up with the... There's way too many books published, as you know. Yeah. It felt like a distracting year as well with all the elections going on. You know, it was particularly...

difficult to focus on reading, I found. Yes, I have a bookmark in about 15 books right now. I mean, there's one trend that's interesting. It's what the publishers are saying is very broadly. I mean, we started by talking about it's been a big year for fiction. Nonfiction has had a much more lumpy year and sales have not been as strong. And what

The publishers are saying is some things are just not being, some subjects or ideas are now being accessed via, wait for it, podcasts.

And then, or possibly audio books. But, you know, podcasts are just being, it's a different way to tell the story. And whereas previously someone might have written a book about it or read a book about that subject, they're now, you know, maybe something that's dealt in a podcast series or something. So people that, you know. Right. That's really interesting. It's a way to learn history. Exactly. That would be one of the genres. Yeah.

I would love to ask you both for books that will get you to love reading again. I know a lot of listeners go through phases like we all do, as we were saying, where you sort of you're reading, you're reading, you're reading, and then you take a break and you need something to just really get back in. I just read Alan Bennett's latest little novel. It's about 100 pages. It's about 10 quid or 12 quid over here.

called Killing Time, and Alan Bennett's turned 90 this year. And it will feel very familiar to fans of his fiction and his plays and his...

because it's got a sort of mix of rather quaint Britishness and also quite bawdy humour, but it ends up touching on quite difficult and disturbing subjects. It's set in a nursing home with quite a large cast of quirky residents and it has a sort of cosy crime feel almost, except there's no murder here. It's a very easy read. It's funny in lots of places. And, you know, you wanted to just take an hour or two out of your day.

It's very portable. Yeah. Here's a question for you, actually, Fred. I feel like the...

The publishing industry is such an interesting one because there's such a long run up to the publishing date that when you're dealing with topics where there's a lot of change or that are very current, they can quickly feel old. For example, when a book about COVID comes out now, everyone's like, oh, God. Or when a book about AI comes out, we're like, I don't know if we're really ready for this. It's all changing so fast. A book about politics, you know, I just got a publisher sent me a book of

Kamala Harris on the campaign trail portraits. And I thought, I know, I know, I feel for the author. So are there? I know, I feel for the author, too. I guess my question is, are there any books that have come out this year that are about a very current topic that do feel like they've paid off, like they really work, that they don't feel sort of off the moment? Wow. Um,

I mean, I think, okay, what people are talking about, if I just name in slightly sort of random order, Jonathan Haidt's book, Anxious Generation. You know? Yes. Now, you could say, how many books have I read about smartphones, about social media, about technology, about anxiety, about, about, about? And somehow that one seems to have...

I can't say is that the book, but it seems to be the one that everyone feels, oh, he got it. You know, he nailed something. It's also launched a kind of movement over here, grassroots movement to produce smartphones in schools. Exactly.

There you go. Yes. You know, I've been enjoying Oliver Berkman's new book, Meditations for Mortals. Yeah. It's sort of, it's another topic. It's about how to make time for what actually counts and how to give yourself a break. And there's so many millions of books about that. But he's so good at that, that you really, it really does, it really does hit. I mean, another one I would...

Throw into the mix is a novel called Wizard of the Kremlin by a writer called Giuliano de Empoli. And the interesting thing is, is he's not normally a novelist. He's a political scientist who wanted to write a book about power and in particular power in the Kremlin. And he felt the only way he could properly do this was to go into fiction and use the powers, the license you get with fiction.

And also probably, given the subject matter, the protection, because he can just say, well, it's not, this is all invented. And it's about a real character who was sort of ominous grease for Putin until he withdrew, Vladislav Surkov, who was sort of not a puppet master, but he was kind of

the guy who did a lot of the staging for Putin and the instigation of how you project power, how you present it. I mean, very manipulative, you know, like we need to have an election, so we need an opposition, so we'll just invent an opposition party that we can control, that type of thinking. And I think that is a book, it's a huge bestseller in France, bestseller in a couple of other European countries, then comes into English.

It's one of those word-of-mouth things. Everyone is sort of passing it on. Well, Jonathan Coe, I heard an interview with him the other day, and he was really interesting about this because his latest novel, Proof of My Innocence, is just out in the last few weeks, which is set, I think, during Liz Truss's 30-day stint as prime minister. And he was asked about this. He was really interesting, sort of saying, you know, in this era of...

fake news, you know, this post-truth era, perhaps the role of the novelist who is not making any claims to truth. You know, that's where the truth can be conveyed through novels, through fictional accounts of kind of contemporary life. Yeah, that is really interesting. I mean, part of the problem maybe is that a lot of what's happening currently is full of unknown. Yeah. And the better way to handle it right now is through fiction. Yeah, to just sidestep that debate entirely.

Okay, so as we start to close up our conversation, I would love to ask you to look ahead, if you don't mind, with a crystal ball into next year. I'm curious if you have any predictions for what the publishing world and books will look like in 2025, or you have any titles that you think will excite our listeners. What do you think 2025 will look like?

Well, I mean, January is traditionally a bit of a slow month, but I've noted that The Pope has a book coming out called Hope.

Wow. That's what we all need in January. And I think the way, at least the publishers are selling it this way that, you know, this is the first memoir by a sitting pontiff or whatever. I don't know, do pontiffs sit or do they rule or I don't know. I hope it doesn't get him in trouble. Exactly. There's some fun titles, I think, around. Well, I mean, to go a little bit glossy, Graydon Carter, the great legendary magazine editor is...

got a book out which will probably be full of one hopes will be full of juicy anecdotes um

Good gossip in fiction. I mean, I would say, Laura, wouldn't you, that the big... Yeah, the biggest one is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dream Count, which is coming out in... Yeah, so it's Dream Count. It's coming out in March. She's, of course, one of the most beloved writers. She wrote Americana and We Should All Be Feminists.

Okay, this is very exciting. I have a list the length of this table of books to read and books to buy. Fred and Laura, thank you so much for all your recommendations. I will put them all in the show notes. And now for the tradition of all our Friday shows, we will be back in just a moment for more or less. ♪

Welcome back for more or less the part of the show where each guest says one thing they want to see more of or less of in culture. Laura, what do you have? Well, mine is a less. I would like to see fewer of those really annoying sharing plates that you get at trendy restaurants. They really they really bug me. You know, there's places where you go and there's a sort of tiny sheet of paper with a minimalist menu that sort of says, you know,

Yeah.

They drive me crazy and I would rather have steak and chips that I don't have to share with anybody. That's so funny. That feels very British. I remember when I lived in the UK, I was very surprised that like everybody ordered their own starter, their own main and their own dessert. That is as it should be. Like.

My family, no one has any boundaries about anything and we're all eating off each other's plates in perpetuity. So that's amazing. I had a very selfish one for this, which is probably also very banal. Yes, please. I have a personal, you know, just because sort of the feeling that this year was a bit...

For various reasons, quite sort of busy, stressy, and not always getting around to things I wanted to do. And I've sort of made a resolution that next year I want to get back into the rhythm of trying to get out more to theater and concerts, which is a really stupid thing to wish for, to do more of, because it will bankrupt me.

because London today's theater prices so more live performance I can't bring the same passion that Laura brings to the hatred of sharing plates negativity yeah exactly I'm just trying to be positive I want to see real performers in person yeah that's a great one um I have a it's

of a more and a less. It is book related. It's kind of like less books, but more books. My partner, Larry, and I have this rule, which is if you really want a book, you should just buy it, like ideally from an independent bookstore, ideally secondhand, all that stuff. But just like buy the book. You know, there's like so many ways to be guilt free. There are so many ways that you can be thrifty in your life. But it seems good to like support books existing. And it feels good to have bought the book.

So more books. But then we moved. We've been following this. Congratulations. I love what you did with the stairwell, Lila. Thank you so much. More pictures, please. Thank you. I've been posting about it. But the move took forever because we have this unhinged library of so many books. And it made me think in the moment, less books. I don't know. Where I landed was just like...

Buy the book, read the book, share the book with your friends, let their underlines mix with your underlines, have them pass the book around. Like, just move your books. So, yeah, that's my... Not fewer books, just more bookshelves. Yes, more bookshelves. There you go. Fred and Laura, this was so much fun as usual. Thank you for all the years of doing this. And thanks for coming on the show. Thank you, Laila. It's been great fun. It's been wonderful. We're going to miss it.

That's the show. Thank you for listening to Life and Art from FT Weekend. I have put the names of all the books that we recommended in the show notes for easy grasping. I've also put links to the book special in the show notes. It's full of ideas and the lists are quite specific. We have economics recommendations from Martin Wolf and cookbooks is a list and music books is a list and architecture books and fiction and poetry and audio books. Anyway, they're great. And every link that I've included in the show notes gets you past the paywall.

We are also still collecting your cultural predictions for 2025 for an upcoming episode. Tell me what you think is going to happen in culture or what you want to happen in culture next year, whether it be in music, in film, in television, in sports, the arts, books,

Send me an email at lilarap at ft.com. That's L-I-L-A-H-R-A-P. I'm also at Instagram at the same name, lilarap, and I can't wait to hear them. I'm Lila, and here is my incredible team. Katya Kamkova is our senior producer. Lulu Smith is our producer and produced this episode. Our sound engineers are Joe Salcedo, Sam Jovinko, and Breen Turner with Original Music by Metaphor Music.

Our executive producer is Topher Forges and our global head of audio is the great Cheryl Brumley. Have a lovely weekend and we'll find each other again on Monday.

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