Alison Stewart: This is all of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. As the year comes to a close, it's fun to look back and think about all the new books you've read this year. Perhaps you heard about many of them from our show. And it's the holiday season, so you may be looking for the right book to gift a certain person. Not to worry, we have you covered. NPR has just released its books we love 2024 app that offers a wide variety of recommendations and staffs picked by genre. Andrew Limbong is the NPR arts reporter who covers books. He also hosts the Book of the Day Podcast and is here to give us some selections and to take your calls. Hi, Andrew.

Andrew Limbong: Hey, Allison. What's up? What's going on?

Alison Stewart: It's going forward. Let's talk about 2024.

Andrew Limbong: As time must mark on. Yes, let's go.

Alison Stewart: You read a lot for a living. If you're thinking back on 2024, what themes come to mind?

Andrew Limbong: What themes come to mind? I think a lot of the books I've been gravitating towards in my reading life have been in some way about the very act of reading and writing. I think a popular book from 2024 is Percival Everett James that just won the National Book Award. It is-- if I were to rank them, not that books or art is meant to be ranked, I think it might be my favorite book of the year.

Everett has been on a massive-- pretty big come up. For listeners who aren't familiar, this book is a retelling of Mark Twain's Huck Finn, but from the point of view of Jim, who is Huck's friend, that is escaping slavery. What it is, it's actually very thoughtful meditation on the power of writing because one of the jokes in the book is that all the Black characters in the book speak let's call it like the queen's English, "proper English". I'm putting very heavy quotes over the word proper there.

Yet they hide it from all of the white people or else they'll be found out as being well read. It's such a fascinating take on why we read. I think it's something that we take for granted all the time and we also take for granted the power of reading and I think it's a theme that I've noticed not just from Everett and we can go into more details about some of these books, but it's a detail I noticed in the Salman Rushdie memoir, which is Knife: Meditations after an Attempted Murder, which is his memoir after being attacked.

You can find it in that Ta-Nehisi Coates book, The Message, similarly about the power of writing and the power of storytelling. I just think it's something that writers are really grappling with.

Alison Stewart: Hey listeners, we want to get you in on this conversation. What was your favorite new book that you read this year? A book that came out in 2024. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Tell us, what did you like about the book and why? Is it fiction or nonfiction? The number is 212-433-9692. Finally, as we head into the holidays, are you planning to buy a book for a family member or a friend, but you're not sure what they like? We can try to give you a recommendation.

Our number is 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. On that tip, Andrew, we want to start with sets up the Books We Love website. What will we find on the Books We Love?

Andrew Limbong: We do our year end lists a little differently. I know everyone is coming out with theirs. You're probably being inundated by them. How we differentiate is that we're not giving you a message from on high going here ye, here ye. Here are the 10 best books of the year. Instead, what we do is around the fall, we send an email to all NPR staff and all of our book critics and be like, hey, give us like a handful of books that you loved from this year.

Then we compile that into a massive Excel spreadsheet and we do some editing, we do, we do some trimming and then what we have left for this year is a list of 351 books-

Alison Stewart: Wow.

Andrew Limbong: -from this year that we recommend. What it is, it's not like, obviously, you're not going to love every book on this list. I haven't read every book on this list but the philosophy behind it is that it's pretty much guaranteed that you will find a book that you love in this big pile. I know 350 sounds like a big number.

There are filter tabs you can use to narrow down your search and find something special for either you or like you said, if you're shopping for someone or that you love or someone that you just happen to have to buy a book for, we can help you find some.

Alison Stewart: What are some of the filter tabs?

Andrew Limbong: What's that?

Alison Stewart: What are some of the filter tabs? What are some of the filter tabs that you mentioned?

Andrew Limbong: Oh, yes. You can filter down from like just the staff picks. There are some filter tabs you can do biography and memoir, love and Roman. There is identity and culture, the states we're in, tales from around the world. My favorite filter tab is the rather long or rather short ones, so you can pretty much narrow them down to-- I love a short book. Give me a two hour movie and 150 page book. That's my sweet spot.

If you're just looking for a quick read, you can filter down from rather short and find a couple options there or if you want something chewy, you can go for rather long.

Alison Stewart: We've got a list of some of your favorite books, books you just really love this year. Victim by Andrew--

Andrew Limbong: Andrew Boryga, yes.

Alison Stewart: Thank you. What is the Victim about?

Andrew Limbong: This is a debut novel by Andrew Boryga. It's about a kid named Javi who comes up in the Bronx who fudges how hard his childhood was in order to get ahead in the writing game. He comes up in this time-- Remember when personal essays were all the rage?

Alison Stewart: Yes.

Andrew Limbong: Everybody was writing personal essays. He comes up in this time during the personal essay and he's encouraged to fudge here, fudge there, and it grows and grows and grows. Then he finds himself becoming deemed as the voice of a marginalized community, coming out of the, the Latinx neighborhoods of the Bronx where he suffered violence. He's here like to tell us what's really true.

It's a really funny takedown of for lack of a better term, let's call it like the literary elite culture or the publishing industrial complex or whatever. It's a really enlightening and hilarious read. It's also big hearted. It's not mean for the sake of being mean. I think a lot of the characters come from a good place, but they're just goofy about it and goofy and corny, which I love dunking on corny people. It's always hilarious to read.

Alison Stewart: Let's say a call. Ken is calling in from Park Slope. Hi, Ken.

Ken: Hey, Alison. How's it going? Very good. Great to great that you're back and in good health and best wishes for the holiday season.

Alison Stewart: Thank you. What are you reading?

Ken: My book choice is Drafted by cartoonist and artist Rick Parker. It's a graphic memoir of his time growing up in Savannah, Georgia. He's born in the '40s and he and he served during the Vietnam War era and his humorous and not so humorous memories of his time in the army and how it led to the next stages in his career.

Alison Stewart: Thank you so much for calling, Ken. Let's talk to Jade in Brooklyn. Hi, Jade. Thanks for calling All of It.

Jade: Hi, Alison. Thank you so much for taking my call.

Alison Stewart: What do you read? What have you been reading?

Jade: I'd love to recommend a book by the author Robert Sullivan. The book is Double Exposure: Resurveying the West with Timothy O'Sullivan, America's most mysterious war photographer. The book looks at O'Sullivan's photographs, which are some of the iconic 19th century images. And he is known for his pictures of corpse strewn battlefield from the Civil War, but then brings in the war-like aspect of the American West via the geography and topography.

So really looking at the human elements of the landscape, what's hidden in the photographs and then additionally, brings in his own personal experience of the terrain as a writer as he's resurveying himself, these photographs and these places that O'Sullivan visited in the 19th century.

Alison Stewart: Love that recommendation. Thank you so much. My guest is Andrew Limbong. He's NPR arts reporter and host of the Book of the Day podcast from NPR. He's here to give us his favorite books of 2024. We want to know what was your favorite new book that you read this year? New keyword, I should say new. What do you like about that book and why? Fiction or nonfiction? We want to hear it all. 212-433-9692. 212-433- WNYC.

Andrew, I want to get your take on this because someone texted us Sunny Boy by Al Pacino. It seemed like after the pandemic, everybody wrote a memoir. Everybody wrote a memoir.

Andrew Limbong: Everybody had a lot of time on their hands.

Alison Stewart: A lot of time on their hands. Are there memoirs that you would recommend from this year?

Andrew Limbong: Yes, there are. There is one that I have-- actually, it's on my to-read list. I haven't read it yet, but I'm pretty stoked about it. It is the Billy Dee Williams memoir. He is obviously, Lando Calrissian, but he's like so much more. In putting this list together-- by the way, the book is called What Have We Here? Portraits of a Life. He's obviously-- I'm a 35 year old man. He means a lot to me. You know what I mean?

He's so much more than just Lando. In putting this list together, there's always a couple of books I add on my TBR and that's definitely one of them. The other memoir, I think, for people who hadn't read it, I'd mentioned this before, but the Salman Rushdie book, Knife.

Alison Stewart: Oh, I'm just in the middle of it right now.

Andrew Limbong: Oh, yes. How do you feel? How are you feeling about it?

Alison Stewart: Oh, it's a lot, but it's good.

Andrew Limbong: Yes, I know. And I think here's-- And I won't spoil. Not that you can really spoil it for you, but the thing that surprised me most about it is that it is sneakily a love story. It's obviously about this tragedy and all the attacks and all this-- the big picture high minded stuff about freedom of speech. I think you're there by the middle of the book, but there's a lot of stuff about him and his wife and I'm just like, oh, wow.

I don't know why, but it took me by surprise. Real talk, I'm medium on his big swinging fiction and I think the love story in the middle of this really grounded it for me.

Alison Stewart: Something else that's on your nonfiction book is Defectors: The Rise of Latinos and what It Means for America by Paolo Ramos. We had her on the show. What was it about that book that stuck with you?

Andrew Limbong: I've been thinking about it a lot after the election for whatever reason and I think there are groups that people can generalize and take for granted. I think we have that this listed tagged under our eye opening reads, which you just learn a lot about the political movements of a demographic that people tend to, I think, take for granted or just assume a lot of things about without actually knowing anything about them and so yes, it's for lack of a better term, an eye opening read.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Andrew Limbong, NPR arts reporter and host of the Book of the Day podcast. We'll have more with Andrew and we'll take more of your calls. What favorite book did you read this year? 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC. We'll be back after a break. You are listening to All of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart.

My guest is Andrew Limbong, NPR art supporter and host of the Book of the Day Podcast. We want to know, what new book did you read this year? What did you like about it? Was it fiction? Was it nonfiction? Do you need help buying a book for the loved one in your life? Our number is 212-433-9692. 212-433-WNYC.

Once again we should point out that you have a list of 350 plus books on this on your site. Would you give me the website somebody called in and wanted it exactly.

Andrew Limbong: You could just look up books we love or npr.org/books. We're not trying to hide it.

Alison Stewart: Well, you mentioned it had these filters. Let's go through a couple of the filters. You have an eye opening reads filter. What was your most eye opening read?

Andrew Limbong: One that's on this list was Fire Exit by Morgan Talty. This is a fiction book from a Penobscot writer named Morgan Talty. And it is about blood quantum, which is how indigenous Americans assign or decide who is native and who isn't. Just pretty much based on your bloodline, how much of-- pretty much what your family looks like and the family lineage looks like.

This novel is about technically a non-native person, a "regular degular white guy". But only by because of his like bloodline is so let's call it like thinned out. That he's not a part of the tribe and yet his child is. And so there's a couple of different rules about what they can or can't do or where they can and can't go and what happens.

As an eye-opening read, blood quantum is not something I think about on a daily basis and it goes into the nitty gritty of the law, but it maintains a pretty compelling family narrative.

Alison Stewart: You also had one filter that was about a good book club read. First of all, what makes an excellent book club read?

Andrew Limbong: It's a talkie book, I think any book-- And obviously every book club is different and depends on the vibe, depends on the people you got in there but it's one that can spark-- when you're done with it, you got three questions. What I love about book club picks is that it doesn't even necessarily-- you don't even need to like the book.

You can hate a book and that also stirs up a lot of questions and conversations. I think you can have strong reactions, you can have mixed feelings about a book. That's probably even the best and you just come to the club and be like, ah, I don't know, what are we doing here? What's happening? What's going on?

Alison Stewart: What's a good example from your list of a good book club read?

Andrew Limbong: A good book club list is, I think-- I'm looking through the list right now. All right, here's a good one. Us Fools. It's by Nora Lang. It's about the Iowa farmers crisis and it's about these two girls who grow up one, they call each other junk kids. They're invested in the pop culture of the day. We're talking about mid-80s.

They're invested in the pop culture of the day, but they're also interested in high minded things like they're discussing feminism, but also talking about their crushes and stuff like that and how they intersect. I think there's a lot here in this book about politics. You can see the farm crisis of the '80s and of the small Midwestern farms and how that completely shattered small communities.

You can see ripple effects of that today and seeing it through the eyes of these two daughters who are trying to pretty much-- they have a front row seat to what their parents are going through but you can't do anything about it. You're 13. If your dad can't get a bank loan for the farm and they got to sell the farm, you see that you're aware enough to know that it's happening, but you don't have any agency.

And so you're in this tricky position. What else is there to do but to goof off with your sister? I think there's a lot there talking about not just family relationships, but like I said, politics and the economy and farms in general and the cultural divides in America. That makes it for a really good book club pick.

Alison Stewart: Here's a text. I found Garth Greenwell's Small Reign to be a sweet, poetic story about pain and navigating a hospital stay during COVID. Really enjoyed his reading on the audiobook. It led me to discover more of his writing. By the way, we had Garth Greenwell on the show. You can check that out. She also says-- he/she/they.

This is I am also looking for a book for my grandma celebrating her 93rd birthday today. Happy Birthday, grandma. She likes historical fiction and nonfiction. What would you recommend?

Andrew Limbong: All right. That's great. Thank you. I can show off this machine in real time. So nonfiction. Let's do staff picks, let's also click on some eye opening reads. All right. I've got two here that could be good. One is the Wide, Wide Sea, Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook by Camden Sides.

This one was recommended by Steve Inskeep, host of Morning Edition, and it's about James Cook, who was this explorer who eventually landed on the Polynesian Islands. I was actually chatting with Steve about this book and I think what he likes about it is it brings so much of the sea of that time, of what exploring is like to life. It's not a fuddy duddy history book. It's a pretty gripping narrative, even though it is pretty chunky.

I think it's under our-- yes, it's under our rather long tab, so feel free to chew on that. It's also like any good biography, it treats its subject in its entirety. The good and the bad and the great things they did and the darker sides that he did and the complicated history he has with the Polynesian islanders.

Another book under non-fiction is by Bianca Bosker. It's called Get The Picture. She did some reporting about the New York art world and there's this vibe that all the art world is just money laundering or something or you know what I mean? She chooses to try to take it seriously and so she does the bootstraps reporting to-- she starts working as an assistant for an artist and starts working at galleries and starts trying to really understand this world and what it means. She's also a really entertaining writer.

Alison Stewart: Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America. An essential read on an industry that is overtaking American economy from the shadows. Thanks for texting that in. Let's talk to John. Hey, John.

John: Hi. How are you?

Alison Stewart: Doing great.

John: Good. I called in to talk about Song of Myself, a novel by Arnie Kantrowitz.

Alison Stewart: All right, give me the elevator pitch on the novel.

John: Okay. It's a history of what it was like growing up in the '30s, '40s, '50s, and '60s for a gay man in America.

Alison Stewart: Good pitch. Thank you, John. Let's talk to Mark. Hi, Mark.

Mark: Hi.

Alison Stewart: What did you read?

Mark: Yes, I would like to recommend Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Capó Crucet, which I learned about on WNYC and it is a sprawling-- I wouldn't say it's a sprawling novel. It's a novel that somehow manages to tackle many disparate themes. Climate change, identity, family, immigration, all against the backdrop of Miami and I guess, the future of that city. It was extraordinary.

I heard about it on your station and made a beeline to my local bookstore to see if she could succeed in pulling all of those themes together.

Alison Stewart: That sounds like everything right in that sentence. This text says, my mom grew up in the Bronx in the 1950s, and I was thinking of getting her Ian Fraser's Paradise Bronx for Hanukkah but after hearing Frasier on a couple of your shows, I worry the book might be too academic and maybe too much about today's Bronx for her.

I love Fraser's writing, but wonder if it's the right choice for my mom. Well, I got an answer for you. Jose wrote, I was driving, and he called in to say that he recommends Paradise Bronx by Ian Frazier. He loved reading it and learning more about his home and we spent an hour on this book so I think it's okay for your mom. Let me ask you this, Andrew. Debut authors. It's a tough world out there. Who is a debut author who really just hit it out of the park?

Andrew Limbong: Oh, that's interesting. I was going to say-- So for debut authors, like I mentioned, Andrew Boryga, he's a debut author that I thought really was really lovely. I did speak with Chanel Miller. She had previously written non-fiction. You might know her. She had written about her or sexual assault and coming out public with that.

She wrote her debut middle-- can we call it middle [inaudible 00:23:23]. It's 7 to 11, whatever you want to call that. For it for young readers. She wrote this book called Magnolia Wu unfolds It All. It's about a little girl, and I know people in New York would love to hear it. It's about a little girl who tries to match lost socks.

Her mom works in a laundromat. She has a lot of friendless socks, and she tries to find its partner. And it's her traversing through the city in such a wholesome and delightful way that I thought for her first crack at a young kid's book, I thought was really impressive. As also like a native New Yorker, I really was charmed by it. I was like, oh, wow, this makes me miss home a lot.

Alison Stewart: Three people here, including myself, yelled Martyr by Kevin Akbar.

Andrew Limbong: Did you read it? What'd you think about it?

Alison Stewart: Oh, yes. It was so good. That's all I'm going to say.

Andrew Limbong: Wow. That's it. Leaves you speechless. [laughs]

Alison Stewart: If you're looking for a book to recommend to somebody, to think about, what should you think about? What should a person think about when they're picking up a book?

Andrew Limbong: For someone else?

Alison Stewart: Yeah. And you got about 30 seconds.

Andrew Limbong: Okay. Be completely egoless. Don't try to assign homework. You want to give them a gift so make sure that's tailored to their interests and not something that you want to impress. Half of the conversation is the book, and the other half of the gift is the conversation itself. You should also read it, too, so that way you guys can have something to talk about.

Alison Stewart: Andrew Limbong is NPR arts reporter and host of The Book of the Day podcast. Andrew, thank you so much for sharing your reporting with us.

Andrew Limbong: Yes, thank you so much. This is a lot of fun.

Alison Stewart: And that is All of It for today. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening, and I appreciate you. I'll meet you back here next time.