The Daily - The Year in Books

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

As 2024 comes to a close, critics, reporters and editors at The New York Times are reflecting on the year in arts and culture, including books.The deputy editor of Culture and Lifestyle, Melissa Kirsch, speaks with the editor of The New York Times Book Review, Gilbert Cruz, about the best books of 2024 — and of the century. Also, The Times’s book critics detail their favorite reads of the year.Guest: Melissa Kirsch, the deputy editor of Culture and Lifestyle for The New York Times.Gilbert Cruz, the editor of The New York Times Book Review.M.J. Franklin, an editor for The New York Times Book Review.Jennifer Szalai, the nonfiction book critic for The New York Times Book Review.A.O. Scott, a critic at large for The New York Times Book Review.Sarah Lyall, a writer at large for The Times and the thrillers columnist for The New York Times Book Review.Alexandra Jacobs, a critic for The New York Times Book Review.Dwight Garner, a critic for The New York Times Book Review.Background reading: The 10 Best Books of 2024The 100 Best Books of the 21st CenturyFor more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Hey, it's Michael. Today, our coverage of the year in arts and in culture continues with guest host Melissa Kirsch speaking to Times critics, reporters, and editors. Take a listen. I think you're going to like it. From the New York Times, this is The Daily. I'm Melissa Kirsch, Deputy editor of Culture and Lifestyle. As we close out 2024, I'm talking with my colleagues around the newsroom

about what they watched and listened to and read this year. Today, we're talking about books. I'll talk with Gilbert Cruz, the editor of the New York Times Book Review, about the best books of the year and the best books of the century. Then the Times' book critics will join us with some of their favorites of 2024. And the critic Dwight Garner will share some of the funniest, snappiest, and most insightful writing he encountered this year.

It's Tuesday, December 31st. Gilbert Cruz, hello. Melissa, hi. Okay. So every year, the staff of the New York Times Book Review puts out a list of the 10 best books of the year. It has just come out. Tell me about how that list comes together. Sure. So a bunch of editors and critics,

over the course of the year really are meeting monthly and at every one of those meetings we're discussing books that we think are great and these are books that sort of go through the wringer. We're really debating them over the course of the whole year. At the end of October, which is when this process ends, we take a vote and these 10 books are the result of that vote. Got it. Okay. So let's take a spin through the list. Sure. Let's start with fiction.

Um, the five fiction books, some of them might be familiar to you. All Four by Miranda July. Good Material by Dolly Alderton. James by Percival Everett. Martyr by Kaveh Akbar. And You Dreamed of Empires by Alvaro Enrique. Do you have a personal favorite from that fiction list? I do.

And I think it's the smallest book on this list, actually. It is You Dreamed of Empires by the Mexican writer Alvaro Enrique. And it essentially imagines the first meeting between Hernan Cortez and Moctezuma, the Aztec emperor, in what is now Mexico City in 1519. It is an imaginative, sort of psychedelic look at what that encounter might have been like.

It's very funny. It's very sort of descriptively written, like there are smells and sights that pop off the page. And again, it's slim. And that's important when you're reading a lot of books over the course of a year Right. What about the nonfiction list? What books are on there? Sure. So Nonfiction is a mix of biography History we have stuff like Reagan by Max Boot. It's about Ronald Reagan

Everyone who is gone is here by Jonathan Blitzer the The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides, which I will talk about in a minute because I really loved it. I Heard Her Call My Name by Lucy Sont, and then Cold Crematorium by Youssef Debrezani. And so your favorite nonfiction selection? The Wide Wide Sea. So The Wide Wide Sea is about Captain Cook, Captain James Cook. It's about his third and final voyage. He was sent in the year 1776,

the year that we're all very familiar with, to the South Pacific to return a Polynesian man to his home island in the South Pacific. He was also sent to try to find the Northwest Passage, which is something that many explorers were looking for. It was not accessible at the time. And then something bad happened to him. He died.

That is bad. That is bad. And I love this book so much because I just love tales set on the high seas. I love books about what it's like to be on a big boat with big sails, drinking grog, possibly getting scurvy, and not knowing what you're going to encounter the next day. I would love to read about possibly getting scurvy. So, those are the best books of the year. But I want to talk to you about another project the book review tackled this year.

You put out a list of the best books of the 21st century so far. How does one determine the best books of the last 25 years? Well, the secret is that one does not. One relies on many other people. We decided to take advantage of the fact that we have access to thousands of authors who write reviews for us all the time and sort of lean on their expertise. These are all people that are extremely well read. So we sent a survey out to 1200 or so people. A lot of them were authors, you know, Stephen

King, Bonnie Garmis, Curtis Sittenfeld, R.L. Stein, then we had editors in the publishing industry, people that own bookstores, librarians, famous people who read a lot of books like Sarah Jessica Parker. We asked them what their 10 best books published in English since January 1st, 2000 were. We didn't define best for them at all. We got back their responses, we added them all up, and we published a list of a hundred, which is a lot of books, to be fair. So it seems to me that if you're looking for a book to read, you could do a lot worse than to start with the number one book on the list, which is...

My Brilliant Friend by Alina Ferrante. My Brilliant Friend is a book in translation. It's translated by Anne Goldstein. And it's the first in a four book series that we now refer to as the Neapolitan Quartet. The first book is about two young girls growing up in post-war Italy in the 1950s. And why do you think this book emerged as the number one book of the 21st century?

Well, so I don't know if you can cast your mind back to the time when like Ferrante fever was was sweeping the literary world. I can. These books were coming out and people were obsessed with them. And I think something that is undeniable about these books for people who love them is that they capture female friendship in a way that is truly unique in 21st century literature. There is something sort of realistic about the way that these two young girls and the group over the course of these four books come together and pull apart and love each

other and hate each other. I think the first book takes a while to get into, but once you get into it, if you connect with it, you sort of just want to keep reading all four books. Yeah. Everyone I know loves these books. So were there any surprises on the list? Absolutely. There's a book that came in at number 6, 2666, by the Chilean writer Roberto Balaño, and

it is one of these massive, slightly impenetrable literary works, partly having to do with the murder of hundreds of women in Mexico and partly to do with lots of other stuff. The fact that it came in so high was surprising to me. There was a book that came in at number eight called Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald, which is a book about a young man in mid-century Europe, sort of lusciously and beautifully written novel. This book came out in 2001. It was one of the oldest books on the list. I don't know that it's particularly well known these days.

I was surprised by how high it placed. The list has a feature where you can check off the books that you've read and at the end it gives you a tally, like a score of how conscientious a reader you've been. So when this list was originally published over the summer, there were a lot of people online bragging about how many of the books they'd read. But some of us were a little surprised at how low our number was. I was wondering what you would say to somebody who was feeling perhaps a little surprised at how low our number was. I was wondering what you would say to somebody who was feeling perhaps a little bit sheepish about how few of these books they'd read.

I would say flip that on its head and think about how much reading, how much wonderful, delightful reading is ahead of you. You can feel badly about this or you can say, oh my God, look at all these amazing books I want to read. But I did not. I'm looking at my tally right now, which I'm 100% not going to tell you what the number is. And it's embarrassing. I'm the editor of the New York Times Book Review. I should have read more books on our list than this. But what I want to say is you can still be a reader who reads widely and curiously and not have read many books on this list, right? Yeah. I mean, look, I bring up all the time. I still have not read Middlemarch by George and curiously and not have read many books on this list, right? Like...

Yeah, I mean, look, I bring up all the time I still have not read Middlemarch by George Eliot, but I have read, I don't know, the amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, right? So which is more valuable? I don't think there's an answer to that. I think it's just where your taste leads you. And I will say, if you look at this list a hundred and you see only one or two books that you Want to read that you've never read before then we succeeded we did this whole thing and We found one book for you the right book for you success

Did you find a book on this list that you ended up really loving? Absolutely, the one that stuck with me above all is Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, a beautiful book, a book I should have read a long time ago. And it's a book that imagines Abraham Lincoln going to the cemetery where his son has been interred and he is surrounded by cacophony of voices, all these ghosts in the cemetery. And it was just so moving, so beautiful, so odd and bizarre in its own way. I was like, everyone needs to read this immediately. I just, I did. I fell in love with it.

Oh, how I love George Saunders. Me too. So on that note, we're going to take a break. And when we come back, we're going to hear from some of your book review colleagues about the best books they read this year. I can't wait to hear that. Thank you so much for being here, Gilbert. Melissa, thank you for having me on. We'll be right back. 2024 for me as a reader was an abundance of riches.

Today we're talking about the best books of the year. We asked our colleagues at the book review to recommend some of the books they loved in 2024. My reading in 2024 was chaotic. My reading in 2024 was kind of all over the place because my job is kind of all over the place. I read 70 books this year. I'm not telling you how many I read for pleasure.

I read more than 100 books this year. You never ask a books editor how many books they read. Listeners, that is a mystery that we'll have to talk through in person. I'm MJ Franklin. I'm an editor at the New York Times Book Review. And a book I loved in 2024 is Margo's Got Money Troubles by Rufy Thorpe. It is about a 19-year-old student, Margot, who gets pregnant by her college professor, then gets dumped and loses her job.

So to make ends meet, she starts an account in OnlyFans, which is a website best known for sex work. And you just follow Margot as she's trying to step into adulthood, as she's trying to make ends meet, as she's trying to kind ends meet, as she's trying to kind of come into her own power. Underneath this very playful, zany, colorful plot, there's a really sharp commentary about gender and power, about sexuality and shaming, about the demands that we put on young women

to become mothers, but then how as a society we don't support motherhood. And it all comes together in this book that is playful and layered and smart. I've been recommending it to everybody. Hi, I'm Jennifer Sillai and I'm the nonfiction book critic for the New York Times Book Review. And a book I loved in 2024 was When the Clock Broke, Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s by John Gans. As somebody who grew up in the 1990s, I had this idea of what the 1990s was.

It was about Bill Clinton, it was about the end of the Cold War, there was a sense of just sort of this bland consensus that was coalescing around the middle. This book just shows us that there was a bunch of just stranger, weirder stuff that was happening back then. You know, you have David Duke, who was a grand wizard of the KKK,

who thought he might become president. Ross Perot actually ran as a third party candidate. You know, you had these right-wing thinkers coming up with what was actually like an intellectual apparatus for the radical right. So when I first read the book in the summer, I was thinking, I think of course, to the election ahead, but no matter who was going to win in the November election this year, this is a book that will continue to be relevant and I think provides like an interesting light on the sort of bewildering moment that we live in.

Hi, I'm A.O. Scott and I'm a critic at large for the New York Times Book Review. A book that I really loved in 2024 was a collection of poetry by Diane Seuss. The book is called Modern Poetry. And the thing that I really like about this book is that it's very accessible. The thing that I really like about this book is that it's very accessible. This book, in a very unusual and original and I think moving way, says, reader, you may have no idea what the hell modern poetry is, but here's what it means to me. And what it means to her is so personal and revealing and funny. She's such an inventive poet, just in terms of what she does with form, with rhyme, with language.

And I think that you don't have to care or know anything about poetry to enjoy it. It serves almost as a kind of introduction to poetry in a funny way. Great book, great book, highly recommended. Hi, I'm Sarah Lyle, and among other things, I'm the Thriller's columnist for the New York Times book review. And a book I loved in 2024 was The Hunter by Tana French. It's a mystery set in rural Ireland. A previous resident of this small community suddenly returns with a get-rich-quick scheme that upends everything

and leads to calamities both small and large. A lot of thrillers really rise and fall in plot. You read them really to kind of find out what happened next. But what makes this book stand out to me is it's just exquisitely written. Every turn of phrase has had care put into it. It heightens your senses, I think, to the nuances of people's behavior and appearance.

It's a great book for when you have a little bit of extra time and really want to enjoy what you're reading rather than race through it. I'm Alexandra Jacobs, and I'm a critic for the New York Times Book Review. And a book I loved in 2024 was Candy Darling, Dreamer icon superstar by Cynthia Carr. Candy Darling is a biography of the transgender pioneer and Andy Warhol intimate who lived only till 29 but had a sort of blazing event-filled life. This is someone who was radical in her very existence at an extremely conformist time in America. She was insisting

on not only going through life as a woman but as a star. And you know, I think this book did her justice. It showed the beauty of her gorgeous, challenging, ironic, sardonic life. It's just a sparkling book. It sparkles like Candy Darling would wish. If you were scrambling for a pen to write down those titles, here they are once again. Margot's Got Money Troubles by Rufy Thorpe. When the Clock Broke, Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s by John Gans. Modern Poetry by Diane Seuss. The Hunter by Tana French. Candy Darling, Dreamer, Icon,

Superstar by Cynthia Carr. When we come back, Dwight Garner cracks open his commonplace book. What's a commonplace book? We'll tell you all about it in just a minute. My colleague Dwight Garner is a book critic at The Times, and he's also a kind of literary scavenger. As he reads, he collects sentences that move him, and he keeps them all in one huge document. This practice actually has a name. It's called Keeping a Commonplace Book. And Dwight is here today to talk about his Commonplace Book. Dwight, hello. Thank

you for being here. Thank you. Okay. Let's start with the basics. Explain the concept of a commonplace book. Well, it's a book of quotes and lines and aphorisms. Often they're philosophical or they're humorous or they're literary. Normally they're kept by one person. It's just humans have had written language for 5,000 years,

and during most of that time, people have had written language for 5,000 years, and during most of that time, people have written down or kept in some form observations and bits of books that really appeal to them and stuck with them. And commonplace books have been around forever. I mean, Thomas Jefferson kept a famous one, and so did Virginia Woolf, so did W.H. Auden. And it's just a place to keep track of things that meant something to you while you're reading a W.H. Auden, and it's just a place to keep track of things that meant something to you while you were reading a book. And talk about, like, what spurred you to start writing down snippets that jumped out

at you while you were reading. Well, I was pretty young. I was in my teens, and I was just this huge reader. And once in a while, I would come across a line that really stood out for me, and I thought, well, this is why I'm reading, you know, for a sentence like this that really shakes me awake and opens my eyes. And I would start writing them down. And you know, when you're a teenager, the things you think are cool and interesting, you know, life is like a box of chocolates, you know, how true.

They're not the things you think are cool and interesting when you're 59 as I am now. And so my taste has grown over time. But I started doing this when I was pretty young. And I just, you know, some people collect stamps. I collect sentences and observations, and I find that I'm always sort of moved by them. So, do you have any idea of how many quotes or sentences or lines you added in 2024? Oh, God. I would say probably a thousand, you know, at minimum, because...

Wow. Wait, a thousand, you know, at minimum because. Wait, a thousand? Okay, I need you to like break down to me, Dwight Garner reading, because I'm imagining you like with a keyboard next to you while you're reading, or are you highlighting in the book? I'm reading the book and I'm highlighting, and then when I'm done with the book, I slap it down next to my laptop

and I flip through it page by page and I type out the best quotes that I've marked in there. I find the act of typing something, typing a line, typing an observation, typing a great word, sort of fixes it in my mind a bit. I'm more likely to remember it. Okay, so let's take a look at your commonplace book for 2024.

Give me a line that you added to the book this year. One of my favorite books this year was Sheila Heddy's alphabetical diaries. You know, Heddy is a really talented young Canadian novelist, and she had a nifty idea. She printed her journals, her diaries, in alphabetical order. So the sentences all just run from A to Z. And she wrote, no one at this point in history knows how to live. So we read biographies and memoirs, hoping to get clues. I love that line, not because it's funny,

but because it's the reason I think I started reading. Once upon a time in America, before Netflix, before the internet, fiction was where we went to get news about how other people lived. Food-wise, sex-wise, relationships, marriages, that's where news was delivered. It's not so true anymore, but for me it still is. I look for novels to understand why we're here,

A, and B, to understand how can I live better? That means just what lessons do you have Sheila Heddy for me? She tends to have a lot. The title of her 2010 novel was great. It was How Should a Person Be? In a way, I think every novel asks that. And the fact that she was great enough to title a novel that is really terrific.

Mm-hmm. And it seems sort of like that's what you do when you're reading and when you're keeping your commonplace book. You're sort of taking notes on how to live. Do you think that way when you're reading, that you're getting instructions? You know, I really am. I think that a lot of people read and think about what the world means and why we're here and how we can, you know, experience life a little

more fully and that means the small things and the large things and that's sort of what I look for and the kind of things that I put into my commonplace book. Mm-hmm. Can we hear another one? Let me see. One book I read this year that's really remained with me is Salman Rushdie's memoir, Knife. It's about how he was stabbed on stage in upstate New York in 2022. And it's a very dark and moving book.

And it goes through enormous personal pain, physical pain. And yet, the book is weirdly very funny. As he was being stabbed, he found himself thinking, oh no, my Ralph Lauren suit. He laughs about the fact that his surgeon's name was James Beard, like the chef and cookbook writer. He writes, Dear reader, never get a catheter. He wrote that his attacker looked like Novik Djokovic, the tennis player.

He wrote that on the upside, he lost 55 pounds and his snoring and asthma improved. Did it strike you while you were reading the Salman Rushdie book that like, because his sense of humor was intact, like his vitality was intact? Yes, it was a sign of his sanity. You know, you felt, Salman, you're still with us, you know?

And he, you know, sometimes in his work, his humor fails him a bit, at least in recent years. So it was great to see him in his full glory in this recent memoir. All right. Let's hear another one. This is from Honor Levy's book, My First Book. He was giving Knight Arendt, organ meat eater by Ronick Hero, haplogroup R1B. She was giving damsel in distress, pill popper, pixie dream girl, haplogroup K. He was in his fall of Rome era.

She was serving sixth and final mass extinction event realness. His face was a marble statue. Her face was an anime waifu. They scrolled into each other. Okay, Dwight. Can you explain to me what any of that means? Well, we're talking about two young people who are texting and using emojis and in reality what these characters are, they're just kids and this is the dance of their courtship in

a way online, their mini courtship. It's a book largely about, you know, kids being online, young people being online, and what that feels like now to be sort of almost permanently online. And a lot of the sentences, she's so up-to-date on the language and the lingo that half the time you barely understand what she's saying. I had to run to the dictionary, or at least to Google, several times to sort of understand what she was saying. And the more you learn, the more you like it, because she just has a way. I feel like you're reading Ann Beatty about hippies in the early 70s,

or reading Honour Levy on these young kids online now. There is something pleasurable about spending time in that sort of like an unfamiliar world and steeping oneself in the lingo of that world. Yeah, you know, it's just, we're all there, right? We all are online like half the time. And yet, you find a it's just, and we're all there, right? We all are online, like half the time. And yet, you find a writer who can really describe it, who can really get you there. And that's what writing does for us. It's the thing where things you felt, but never had anyone just nail it down, just like to get it right. And you say, holy cow,

that's good writing. That's the kind of thing I want in my commonplace book. Dwight, this has been fascinating. Thank you for letting us peer inside your commonplace book. Oh, what fun. Thank you. Today's episode was produced by Tina Antolini and Alex Baron with help from Kate Lopresti. It was edited by Wendy Doar with production support by Franny Carr Toth and original music by Diane Wong, Marian Lozano, and Dan Powell. It was engineered by Daniel

Ramirez. Special thanks to Sam Sifton, Tina Jordan, Lauren Manley, Alicia Baetube, Sarah Curtis, John White, Elissa Dudley, Olivia Waite, Paula Schuman, and Sam Dolmick. That's it for the daily. I'm Melissa Kirsch. Thanks for listening.