My Favourite Reads of 2024 [December 24]
I am very grateful to have been able to share this newsletter with you for another year! It was almost certainly the busiest year of my life so far, and I sometimes struggled to find time and energy to write. Looking back, I’m glad to have these 12 newsletters to mark that time.
Just like December last year, I’m using this newsletter to highlight my five favourite books from the year, out of a total of 43. I include a short passage from each book to help you get a sense of the writing styles. I’ve also added a full list of my 2024 reads at the bottom of the newsletter. If you’d like to chat about any of these, please do reach out. I hope you all have a lovely end to the year.
The Shadow of the Sun — Ryszard Kapuściński (336 pages)
In this masterwork, Ryszard Kapuściński draws on a lifetime covering Africa's 54 countries as a foreign correspondent. Kapuściński was perhaps the most engaged external witness to the continent's dramatic transformation in the second half of the 20th century. Clear eyed vignettes, brimming with sensitivity and affection.
‘Our world, seemingly global, is in reality a planet of thousands of the most varied and never intersecting provinces. A trip around the world is a journey from backwater to backwater, each of which considers itself, in its isolation, a shining star. For most people, the real world ends on the threshold of their house, at the edge of their village, or, at the very most, on the border of their valley. That which is beyond is unreal, unimportant, and even useless, whereas that which we have at our fingertips, in our field of vision, expands until it seems an entire universe, overshadowing all else. Often, the native and the newcomer have difficulty finding a common language, because each looks at the same place through a different lens. The newcomer has a wide-angle lens, which gives him a distant diminished view, although with a long horizon line, while the local always employs a telescopic lens that magnifies the slightest detail.’
How Westminster Works . . . and Why It Doesn't — Ian Dunt (496 pages)
A straightforward and careful critique of one of the world's oldest, dustiest, democratic institutions. Surprising throughout, and just a little hopeful.
‘Any vote for a candidate who fails to secure the constituency is wasted. It did not elect the MP and it does nothing to get the party closer to power. It disappears into an electoral vacuum. This accounts for millions of voters, whose democratic wishes are ignored. In the 2019 election, 14.5 million people were disenfranchised in this way, amounting to 45.3 per cent of all voters.’
Disgrace — J.M. Coetzee (224 pages)
At once a grimly pessimistic novel, and a tender study of human vulnerability. Coetzee’s tale transcends its post-apartheid South Africa to probe at the ugliness of pride and power.
‘He would not mind hearing Petrus's story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa. Stretches of English code whole sentences long have thickened, lost their articulations, their articulateness, their articulatedness. Like a dinosaur expiring and settling in the mud, the language has stiffened. Pressed into the mold of English, Petrus's story would come out arthritic, bygone’
Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food — Fuchsia Dunlop (384 pages)
A book full of sensitive appreciation for Chinese culture and cuisine. Appealing and careful writing throughout by the Sichuan-trained Chef. The 384 pages challenged me to approach the experience of food with more seriousness, curiosity, and purpose.
‘Trying to categorize Chinese regional cuisines makes me dizzy. You can travel and travel and travel around China and taste new foods every single day, which is pretty much what I have been doing for the last thirty years. And after all this time, I still find myself in the same state of wonder and bewilderment. Chinese cuisine is like a fractal pattern that becomes more and more intricate the more closely you examine it, to a seemingly infinite degree. The more I know, the less I feel I know. When it comes to Chinese food, I see myself increasingly as a small insect scaling a great mountain of human ingenuity.’
Pedro Páramo — Juan Rulfo (124 pages)
A gorgeous, stylised novel that stacks a half century of Mexican history onto one little town, then fades into a chorus of echos.
‘There you'll find the place I love most in the world. The place where I grew thin from dreaming. My village, rising from the plain. Shaded with trees and leaves like a piggy bank filled with memories. You'll see why a person would want to live there forever. Dawn, morning, mid-day, night: all the same, except for the changes in the air. The air changes the color of things there. And life whirs by as quiet as a murmur...the pure murmuring of life.’
Say Nothing - Keefe; Bald Dandelions With Their Wishes Blown Clean Off - Liban; East of Eden - Steinbeck; A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing - McBride; Master Harold and the Boys - Fugard; The Shadow of the Sun - Kapuściński; Braiding Sweetgrass - Kimmerer; Intermezzo - Rooney; The Divine Comedy, Vol. 3: Paradise - Alighieri; Waiting for the Barbarians - Coetzee; My Grandmother: An Armenian-Turkish Memoir - Çetin; Regarding the Pain of Others - Sontag; Disgrace - Coetzee; The Twilight World - Herzog; When Breath Becomes Air - Kalanithi; Open Water - Nelson; The Hour of the Star - Lispector; Anima: A Wild Pastoral - Kassabova; Another Day of Life - Kapuściński; Women & Power - Beard; Tell Me How It Ends - Luiselli; The Trial - Kafka; How Westminster Works - Dunt; A Man's Place - Ernaux; The Famished Road - Okri; A Wild Ride Through the Night - Moers; The General in His Labyrinth - García Márquez; Working - Caro; Canción - Halfon; Besieged - Demick; Time Is a Mother - Vuong; Dante's Purgatory - Alighieri; Like Water for Chocolate - Esquivel; Chip War - Miller; The Time Machine - Wells; The House on Mango Street - Cisneros; On Power - Caro; Pedro Páramo - Rulfo; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - Douglass; A Thousand Moons on a Thousand Rivers - Li-Hung; Dreaming in Cuban - García; Convenience Store Woman - Murata; Invitation to a Banquet - Dunlop.
P.S. This year I also used a language model to create a rough table tracking the demographic makeup (country, gender, age) of authors, and implemented this retrospectively for my 2018-2023 books; you can find the spreadsheet here.
Cover photo - Pembrokeshire, Wales.
