The books I enjoyed most this year, 2024.
In no special order and not necessarily published recently.
The Golden Bowl
The Golden Bowl, Henry James. One of the all time great novels. The Equal Of Bleak House. It gets a category all on its own, before everything else, because there is nothing like it, nothing that can quite touch it. It’s as close and thorough an examination of four people as the novel can achieve. (You may want to say five people….) You will need to stop and re-read so many splendid pages. Some days I read a hundred pages in breathless, unpausing rapture. Some weeks I read a chapter a day (before I did anything else). I will read it again soon. I would usually write more about a book like this, but it is hopefully going to have its own short chapter in my book. If you don’t want to read James’ “late style” start with Washington Square, Daisy Miller or The Aspern Papers. (I’m fond of The Spoils of Poynton.) The prose style really is not for everyone, but if you simply want to read the very, very best, you have to sometime read The Golden Bowl.
Non-fiction 2024
Goethe, A.N. Wilson. I have enjoyed every A.N. Wilson book I have read and this was no exception. Wilson’s contention is that we in Britain are simply not familiar enough with this major figure. Goethe was poet, scientist, courtier, drinker, so his life provides much good material for a biography. He got a lot done. Here’s my interview about this book (and many others) with Wilson. I also very much enjoyed Wilson’s memoir (very English, very funny, very poignant) and his Iris Murdoch biography, one of my favourites. And here he is on Substack.
Heaney’s Letters. I read the whole thing with deep interest and admiration; it sent me back to the poems frequently, and I never regret time with Heaney, one of our best poets. (Yes, I know he became an Irish citizen.) Still I wanted more from this book. Heaney was so present in his poems and the life of a great writer is a matter of importance for their culture and their times. Plenty was left out here, but not everything can be Froude’s Life of Carlyle. I now await the biography… Here’s my review.
How to Know a Person, David Brooks. Hail the revival of morality in self-help! My review.
Mozart in Italy. Jane Glover’s new book has lots of insight about how Mozart became Mozart. I gulped it down. Some thoughts here.
The Marriage Question, Clare Carlisle. I like this book so much I re-read parts of it before my Five Books interview just for the pleasure of it. Paperback this year.
The Bookmakers, Adam Smyth. Full of interesting information about the people who worked in printing from the sixteenth century to today. It really brought the workshop and the process alive for me. My review.
Fiction 2024
James, Percival Everett. This is easily the novel I enjoyed most that was published this year. (But I felt like I read the wrong things in general; I am planning to try a couple of other new releases soon.) If you know Huckleberry Finn, this novel gets better and better, but even if you don’t it’s a page-turner. My wife loved it too. James is clever, entertaining, well-paced. As well as Twain, it draws on slave literature, and has both a very lively argot and compelling plot points for dealing with how people “pass”, how they adjust their speech to their superiors, how people are controlled by language, how that can be turned around… Here’s a good review. And if you haven’t read Huckleberry Finn, do yourself a favour and make it your Christmas read, along with Tom Sawyer. Twain makes you laugh, makes you cry, makes you wait. And if you like It’s A Wonderful Life, Tom Sawyer is a very good pairing.
Intermezzo, Sally Rooney. If you don’t like Rooney, this novel won’t convert you, but I thought the haters were wrong. My review was about neurodiversity and Wittgenstein. Here’s a round up of some other reviews.
Biography of X, Catherine Lacey. There is no other novel that I know of written in the last few years in English that is as so full of research and imagination, written on so large a scale. Thoroughly absorbing, unsettling, and very clever. From 2023, but I read it when it came out in paperback this year. Here’s my interview with Lacey. And here’s her very cool website. She also writes on Substack: .
Green Water, Green Sky, Mavis Gallant. A masterpiece of the 1950s, reissued by Daunt. Made me want to read all of Mavis Gallant’s stories. As Fran Lebowitz said, “She is the stand out.”
The Time of Cherries, Montserrat Roig. A Catalan classic, about the intergenerational clashes of 1970s Barcelona. I don’t love it in the same way as many others, but it is excellent. So much good dialogue. Reissued by Daunt.
Non-fiction not published this year
Poetic Justice, Martha Nussbaum. Nussbaum’s always good, but this is very, very good indeed. Someone I met at a party recently, with much better philosophy credentials than me, agreed that it’s a splendid book.
The Oxford History of Witchcraft and Magic ed. by Owen Davis. Exactly the book you want it to be.
In Praise of Shadows, Tanizaki. A study of the traditional Japanese aesthetic, written by an idiosyncratic novelist who is clearly a genius. Good for those interested in art, classic movies, Japan, or all three. You must get this illustrated edition. I am now very eager to read Tanizaki’s novels.
An Experiment in Criticism, C.S. Lewis. Possibly one of my favourite works of criticism.
A Reading of Sir Gawain, John Burrow. The perfect companion to this great poem.
Ruskin, Edinburgh Lectures. We should make architecture an art again!
Fiction not published this year
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. O’Donoghue translation. One of the greats. My son has been enjoying the Selina Hastings version.
The Pilgrim’s Progress. A highpoint for the English plain style, an important root for many children’s books, and generally fascinating on its own terms as well as historically. Whoever is responsible for the modernised “easy to read” versions on Amazon deserves to stub their toe. I’m still reading this one.
Shakespeare. Yes, he should have his own section, but he does!—a whole section of this website. As well as the ones we discussed in the book club I read and/or watched All’s Well, Coriolanus, Pericles, Cymbeline, Merry Wives, Comedy of Errors, Henry V. I have been enjoying the Globe Player a lot for the traditional dress productions. And we’re reading him again in 2025.
The Shipman’s Tale, The Physicians Tale, The Book of the Duchess, Chaucer. I’ll be reading more of the tales next year too.
Emma. Read it twice. Loved it each time. Austen is so good at writing about economics and moral philosophy: we give too much attention to dresses, carriages, manners, and mores.
Brideshead, Helena, Sword of Honour, Evelyn Waugh. One of my favourite authors. Read anything. You cannot go wrong. The thunderbox section of Men at Arms is so funny I thought I might burst a kidney laughing.
The Good Apprentice, The Philosopher’s Pupil, The Black Prince, The Sea The Sea, Iris Murdoch. I wrote a long essay about Murdoch for her anniversary, and a shorter piece about why she’s a “novelist for now”. When the dust settles, Murdoch’s work will last.
Pale Fire, Nabokov. Maybe this should have its own section too, but it’s not (quite) The Golden Bowl.
Piranesi, Susanna Clarke. Surely one of the best books of the century so far.
Tell Them of Battles, Kings and Elephants, Mathias Enard. A novel about Michelangelo in Constantinople. What more do you need to know?
Mating. One of the best modern novels. My review. Should have it’s own section etc. etc.
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if you have the time/inclination, i urge you to watch the Globe Henry IV with Jamie Parker & Roger Allam. I think Allam might be my favourite Falstaff and Parker's a terrific Hal. regardless, they're a wonderful pairing and i think you'll be sure to have a blast
What perfect timing, I was just trying to figure out what to get at the library.