Welcome to a pair of bookends, the book Club you can carry anywhere.

I'm your host, Hannah Matt Donald's, and I'll be bookending the conversation with some of the most exciting voices from the bookish world.

Welcome to our Christmas Special, arguably our most exciting episode of the year, where we look back on all the bookish greatness from our year in reading and try the impossible task of narrowing those books down to a highlight reel of five favorites.

Joining me for this difficult journey is the one, the only, Emma hid.

This is not as hard for me as it is for you, because you have read like eight times more books than I've read.

This There's no way.

Yeah, then that literally is true.

But you've also been writing lots, that's true, lots of great things.

I have some terrible things too, But I was going to ask you, first of all, what your reading year has been like.

Right, So my reading year has not been as busy as your year because I have been writing.

I've written like about three hundred thousand words of fanfic this year, oh my god, because I'm trying to wrap up my series and I have written well I've written a book this year.

So I've written my my next Ya novel, which is about has been about one hundred and twenty thousand words, and then I wrote I've written maybe like fifty thousand words on top of that.

So and you've launched two books.

Yeah, no, nearly, yeah, nearly, around four hundred thousand words written, two books, launched.

Lots of events, including you interviewing others and you being interviewed, lots of interviews.

I have read quite a lot this year, yeah, I think, considering, but I have.

I've read.

I've read a lot of stuff, and some of it has been stuff that I wouldn't necessarily have chosen to read because it's been stuff that I've read for events.

Yeah, that is maybe not like my go to so for the purpose of what we're doing today, there's quite a lot of stuff that I've read this year that was just like never going to be coming up to my Whereas I think for you, you've read like a lot of things where you're like that could have been in my top five.

Yeah.

I really really struggled now at this down, like really struggled.

My main goal for this year reading wise, was to try and read more outside of the podcast.

And I'm not sure how successful I've been with that.

But if you have to read one book a week for the podcast.

Yeah, it's kind of impossible.

How is that?

Yeah, so I've read by the end of the year, I've read about seventy five books, which.

Is honestly mad.

I it's so much I've read.

I'll be I read maybe half of that, but that's still a lot.

It's it's not as but do you see what I mean?

Yeah?

Yeah, thirty five books.

That is actually quite that's that's a lot for a busy person.

You are a really fucking busy person, and you've still managed to read seventy five books.

Yeah.

Do you realize how mad that is?

Yeah?

That is kind of crazy.

Yeah, and I think there's probably only about six or seven of those that have been books that haven't been for the.

Podcast as well.

Or But when you work that out, that's like you've managed you've been reading at a rate, let's be honest, a rate of maybe one and a half books a week.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, And so you've been doing that all year.

Yeah, and then you've managed to sneak in another book for yourself maybe once ever read two months.

Yeah, that's still a really good going, right, Yeah, fair you are you have You have nothing to be ashamed of.

The book police are not coming for you.

They are they are not.

Are you kidding me?

My next question for you is what of the books you've wanted to get to this year but I haven't.

There's been so many, Yeah, I feel you, there's been so many.

But there are a couple who have been like lingering on my back catalog, okay for a really long time.

So there's a book called Neon Roses by Rachel Dawson.

Yes, I remember seeing this on your shelf.

It's over there.

I bought it like last year.

Yeah, so I've managed to get through all of the year without really reading it, which is like a real.

But like one of those where you like stroke it as you walk past.

Yeah, I just haven't done it yet.

The Artist by Lucy Steve, Oh so God, which is just like because you read that this year.

Yeah, yeah, I've been that's been like lingering in my back catalog.

And yeah, there's there's so many.

I could like give you a list of like ten, but those are the ones where I looked at my shelf and I was like, Oh, I really need to like get on with it.

Yeah, those are my big that's probably the big ones.

I mean, there are other books that I've seen this year that have come out this year where I've been like, oh, I really want to read that and I just haven't done it yet.

Yeah, rather than books that I possess which I haven't got around to.

So in terms of books that I don't possess which I haven't got around to yet, which I really want to get around to, Flashlight by Susan Joy, yeah, which I haven't done.

The South by Tashaw, which I haven't done.

Sarah Perry has a new book out about her experience of her father in law dying, which I really.

Have been wanting to get to.

I know, but yeah, that's me.

So what about you confirm books I've wanted to get to this year but I haven't two books by Emily Slapper, one that you got me which was Everyone I know is Dying.

Really wanted to get to that, and also I was sent her newest one, which I think is called It Could Never Happen.

Here.

We'll link all of these and the show notes in case I forget the title gets something wrong.

But they both sound so my street, and I haven't managed to get to them.

Also really wanted to get to fundamentally by really really wanted to read that.

I haven't managed to get out.

I'm devastated about.

Also Private Rights by Julia Anfield.

Oh my god, I still haven't got to that.

I really want to get to that.

Top reads of Blast Blue Sisters by Cocoamellas.

I've not done that either.

Did we go to that event this year?

I was that last year?

Last year?

Last year that was a knowing.

I'm like, what book was I promoting?

I was promoting the knowing it was last year.

But yeah, I've not managed to get to those either.

So you know, there's like a handful and the oh my god, what's the time travel one?

The Ministry of Time?

The Ministry of Time?

Yeah that as well.

So not much to get to any of those.

And they're just one of those that like sat like that they've even made it into the bedroom, like there's an attempt of like shuffling them about and be like, I have.

This, this is my that's my situation right next to you.

You're writing, like if.

It's in that if it's in that range, it might be it's a painful reach.

It might it might get read, hopefully at some point.

My last question before we dive into our top five is what are you hoping to dive into with a Christmas if anything?

So, I, well, this isn't actually a Christmas.

It's more like this week I'm trying to do the Nighthag by Hester Muscin, which is coming out next year.

Yes, I've heard about those February twenty twenty six, so I'm really excited about that.

I like Hester Muscin and I don't There are like some Christmas books that I'm thinking about, but I'm trying to keep it chill.

Yeah, I'm trying to keep it chill.

I won't be able to read a lot when I'm having next week having family time in the South.

That seems very unlikely.

Also, probably I'm going to be trying to spend some time at the Welcome Collection with some manuscripts.

Fun years be looking at some diaries from the nineteenth century.

And the special little reading room.

Wow, I can't spell liquids on it.

Got any special stuff?

Maybe I'll get some gloves.

Oh my god, I love it.

I won't be able to read and the handwriting is going to be so difficult to decipher.

Is talking incredibly excited about that?

I know, I was just like, oh, geeking out.

So yeah, but when we get back, I think what we're going to do is we're just kind of going to look at the books and just be like, just take the ones that appeal to you right now.

Yeah, that's nice.

That's nice.

Or I'll go to a bookshop and.

You are feral for doing that.

To be fair, do not put Emma in an indie book shop.

It's game over.

But I love it, so yeah.

I also just picked up the other day.

She says, fully aware that she has so many books on the shelf, she doesn't hear it anymore.

I picked this up from the Lovely House of Books and Friends, signed amazing Arianna our witzesiem My Love, translated by Sarah Moses and Carolina.

All off So, which has recently been adapted into a film starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson.

Exactly, and I thought I might want to see the film, So yeah, I do, and I want to read that as well.

I'm hoping to dive into over Christmas.

On the calculation of Volume Volume one, which I was gifted by Favor and haven't got too yet, So I'm about to get in trouble with Favor.

I get into that.

Yeah, yeah, maybe I could throw that over to you.

Well, I have you got it now.

I hear rumors from certain parties that someone might be gifting it to me for Christmas, some family.

So going to do something very exciting and also hamner by my ufrrol.

I'm going to be trying to read because I want to.

I want to read it before we watch it.

It's a lovely book.

Yes, I might reread it actually for the funds.

That would be a nice thing to do next week, because I've read it already, so it's not like, yeah, it's.

Not like you're missing if you have to leave it.

And maybe even Wuthering Heights, Okay, I've never read whether before I watched the film.

I know.

I know that's otherwise I will literally beat you with a copy.

I will beat you.

I will read it before I watch.

It, like a reenactment of the nineteenth century beating too.

I will scold you.

I know you will.

So that is what I'm going to attempt to do.

Let's get into our top five top five, So We're going to do this in no particular order, but I am going to hold a gun Tom's head at the end and ask what you're going to put as your top read of the UKA, which is very difficult.

I have found this unbelievably hard.

I set myself some parameters to make it easier.

Okay, go on, what were they?

So?

Obviously it has to have been read this year, that's the first one that helps.

I decided that I was only going to put things in the top five that I've been published this year.

Oh okay smart, Yeah, to give myself the okay, fair, you're smart for that.

I was just like having a complete meltdown, sat on my bed, rereading openings and endings and looking through my notes that I'd made, like one upe for the podcast and be like, oh my god, like but I love this one.

But did I love it more than this one?

It was it was just it.

Was you traumatized yourself, I really did.

Yeah, so my boundaries where it has to be published this year, and then yeah, I guess we should talk about like what makes something a top read for each first?

Yes, if you want to go first, what makes your top reader top read?

So I was thinking about what are the books?

Because I do read so much and my memory is famously shocking.

I was like, what are the books that have stayed with me?

They have to have stayed with me.

I have to still think about elements, be able to think about elements of that book and not be fighting for my life, try and remember what possibly happened, Which doesn't mean a book is bad, it's just my brain is not quite worth it.

So it has to have like impacted me in a way that I'm like, I still think about those characters, or I still think about specific moments in those books.

It also, I mean, there's different reasons that I will go through for each book of why I specifically chose them, but it was a very difficult task, and I think for some like for one of these, it's that, you know, I was particularly surprised by it, you know, if it's not a genre that I would usually go for.

So there's like a number of things, Like one of them is like I don't really cry at books, but that book moved me to tears, and like that's a really rare thing.

One of them is like because they were all going to end up being really sad books, or like books that had moved me in a particular way.

There was one that's in there that like is probably the book that made me laugh the most this year.

So like that's it's a very chaotic way of thinking, but that's why I went.

So I think it's kind of what moved you.

Yes, yeah, yeah, it's a very like emotionally, yeah, some lead choice respond what was how did you come to your decision?

Mine is the ones where I there's something in them that I take forward and I puzzle over and I keep returning to mentally in my mind as a reference usually or my own writing or my own work.

So it's it's kind of it's something that I've spoken to other writers about as well.

Is that feeling of like going to books hoping to learn something, yes, that you can take forward craft wise.

And I think, yeah, all of these, even when I didn't expect it, there was something in them that I kept returning to throughout the year in terms of the craft of them that drew me back.

And some of them emotionally resonated more than others, and some of them I liked more than others.

But like, they all have something in them that, like, when I'm working on my next book, I am kind of carrying something forward from these books into that.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's my criteria.

So I'm just going to say before we go into the top five that I am doing a specific special shout out to Emma's books.

Yeah, it would be weird to talk about you would have to have like two spots open for my books that I'd.

Just probably also be like breaking a sweat talking about your books in front of you, because that's not fair.

Nobody needs to.

But I, of course I've always said that one of my favorite writers, and I knew this before I even read a book of yours.

It was from your days as a playwright, which I hope on over, I hope you'll return to that one day.

Yeah, I would like to.

But both books of yours that I've read this year is The Quick and the Dead and Witch Law.

And did a little podcast we have done Which Law, Which Law?

The witchlo episode will come out before this episode, so that is nice.

So if you've not listened to that, give this a pause and go and listen to that.

Do get yourselves copies of the book and the Dead and Witch Law.

I think they're both brilliant in very different ways.

I mean, The Quick and the Dead is is it Tudor?

Yeah, tudor ultram It's Tudor.

It's dual narrative, it's third person, it's historical.

And then yeah, which law is the wait?

Which law is?

Gay's gallivantiger on Manchester with a big sprinkle of magic.

Yeah, but it couldn't be more different.

It's contemporary, it's first person.

Yes, it's only one narrator, it's yeah.

The only thing they have in common is both a bit magical and gay love for very magical, very gay.

I love them both in very different ways.

I think if I was held at one point, I'd say which story is my fav out of the two.

But I don't know if that's because of I mean, I love contemporary fiction anyway, you know this, so it could be that I've got a bias there.

But also the Manchester setting and how how many sort of I said touch points?

I think in our podcast the vid is it touched touch point?

Like, say, either how many places that like we.

Know when I've been to that we've hung out?

Yeah, they just made it like a really fun read because I was like, wait, we've been there.

Wait, that's our favorit recovery.

Shop like we do.

So I just thought like that was such a nice like torch, and even down to like the fact that I knew what the lift was going into, like the college, that.

Was really funny.

You're the only person who's which is funny because I was literally in there on Saturday in the exactly I forgot to send you a picture of the staircase.

That's so funny.

Anyway, that special shout out aside, go buy a books.

Let's get into our top five?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, do you want to kick us off?

Okay?

Sure?

My first top five is Old Sold by Susan Barker, who is a power of mine.

Shall I read the bio?

Yes?

Okay, Susan.

When two grieving strangers meet by chance in Osaka Airport, they uncover a disturbing connection.

Jake's best friend and Mariko's twin brother each died six thousand miles apart in brutal and unfathomable circumstances.

Each encountered a mysterious mesmerizing women in the days before their deaths, a woman who came looking for Marico and then disappeared.

And it's I genuinely found this book so scary.

It's so great, though, I think it's I've thought about it so much this year.

I read it at the start of the year, and when you were like, we're going to do our round up, I was like old alls there, like it's really knew.

I thought about it so much.

She's so clever.

She has all of these different kind of testimonies with so there's seven different account It's so uncanny woman, and all seven are so different and so wild.

Some of them are really like factual, some of them refer to like different things at different times.

And then it's just it's it crosses like oceans, it crosses like hundreds of years.

It's it's impeccable.

And I'm just going to read like a little bit from So this is from testimony three, which is Bedwill and he he has a daughter called Carol Dwin and they live in Wales, and Carol Dwen is in a wheelchair and a strange woman comes into their community called Leasel.

She appeared in church one day.

She's meant to be from East Germany and she comes to stay with them.

And this is it a bit I'm going to read the next morning he woke earlier than usual, around four or five, with a nameless dread.

He went straight to Carol Dwen's room and was thrown into a panic by her empty bed.

Keroed Dwin couldn't move around without her father's assistance.

Her paralysis was such that she couldn't even crawl Liezel, He thought Lieesel has taken her.

He burst into the spare room.

The narrow guest bed was empty too, the quilted bedspread thrown back.

He was about to rush downstairs when someone when some noise outside sent him to the window.

He yanked aside the curtain and was astounded to see in the weak light carried when and Liezel at the back of the garden under the crab apple tree.

Astounded because his daughter was standing in front of her wheelchair as Liesel held up a camera taking her photograph.

Bedweer stared.

The last time he had seen Carevuen on her feet by herself was before the accident, eight years earlier.

Yet there she was standing five feet too.

She looked weightless, as though levitating, and more beautiful than Bedweer had ever known her to be, long pale hair shimmering down her back, cotton nightgown hanging loosely over the pubescent swell of her breasts and hips to graze her ankles.

Even from the upstairs window Bedwea could discern a dangerous sensuality about her.

Her lips parted, as though in some lustful state.

It snapped Bed, we're out of his trance.

He hurtle down the stairs two at a time and out into the garden to the innocuous sight of Liesel pushing Colonel Gwynn in her wheelchair across the lark grass back towards the door.

I love it.

I love it so well nerving.

Yeah, it's such a For some reason, the Whales stuff really like in formed in my mind.

I can see it all really visually.

And there are there are other moments in this book which are more violent and more disgusting, like there's real body horror moments come later on.

It it's a horror book.

But the unsettling encounters in Whales, with the levitation and the trees and the strangeness like it really it really stays stayed with me for a really long time, and it's it's it's just haunting.

It's a haunting book.

I I have kind of like gone back to it a couple of times just to kind of study it.

She's so great at writing tension and like building that that pace and that light.

Yeah, and I read it all in one gasp, like I couldn't put it down so tense.

So yeah, it's my my favorite horror of the year.

Yeah, Okay, tell.

Me my first one that I'm going to mention.

We've got our stacks of books here, crazy people.

First one I'm going to talk about is Hot the Lover by Lily King.

I just started reading it.

Lily King writers Mothers.

Yeah, I love that.

I'm not feeling it as much.

Maybe i'd like this one more interesting?

Is it about a writer?

This is about a writer, but it's it's a prequel.

And sequel to so I really have to finish, which I didn't realize until after the fact.

And lots of people have been speaking about this book like.

It's on a lot of Favorites of the Year list.

It's so beautifully written.

This was published in October this year, so it was quite a late entry to my favorites, But it is the book that I was speaking out before, where like it made me cry and very few things make me cry.

So this is a sort of love triangle between two friends, Sam and Yash, and the narrator, who for the majority of the book is called Jordan, and they meet because Jordan is a student and she so she's a student and Sam and Yash are these star students on her course in the year above, and she ends up having relationships with both of them at different times, and we sort of moved through her life from when she's with them and involved with them as a student, but then we also jump forward in time to when she's married and has children, and we sort of see obviously how much she kind of grows and changes, and we see her relationships with these individual boys that become men, and there's such a beautiful exploration of love and of yearning and the sort of betrayals that happen, and what her life is like now as a mother and a writer, and how like when she's a student and she really wants to become a writer, like what that means to her, and then what it's actually like, like how that changes when she actually is a writer, If that makes sense, You know, like, not everything is as excited as you hope it will be, which you will know, do you think you need.

To have read writers and lovers to read Heart the Lover.

No, I think it can be a standalone for sure.

I'm wondering if maybe I try Heart the Lover and I like it better than it might help me.

I think, yeah, I think I would really like you to read this.

I just think it's such a good punch of a book.

And I just think it's so magic, how like she's able to say so much in so few words, Like it really feels like her sentences are really stripped back, but like you get more than enough.

And I've got a quote that I want to read.

I love that we both brought quotes.

Oh yeah, so this is She has started a relationship with Yash and has gone off to work as an ere for a little bit in France, and she's talking about being away from him and working as an o pair.

I found some cheap French classes and make a few friends in them.

I bring the kids, Luke and Delphine to their lessons and playdates all over the city.

I tried to study grammar.

I try to read in my tiny room.

I start to write a couple of short stories, but don't finish them.

Most of my writing comes out in the form of letters to Yash, in which I tried to stay upbeat and anecdotal and not overwhelm him with my longing for him, and the journal I keep for the overspill of that emotion.

I am so in love with him, it is hard to take a full breath, I write in the journal.

His absence feels like losing a lung.

My life is pending, suspended.

It swings from letter to letter.

When one arrives, I saw for a week straight.

Over the next week, I come down slowly.

Once back on the ground, I fear the worst.

He's met someone, someone who makes him feel different, new, even more alive.

She's Brazilian, She's a dancer.

She's a Brazilian dancer.

And I will never hear from him again.

Then a fresh letter arrives, and go again.

His first packet from Knoxville and in June is exuberant.

He's graduated with highst honors, he says, a table and chair in his father's barn, and he's made about to start a novel five pages a day.

This makes me so happy.

I don't force myself to wait a few days.

I write back immediately.

I have so much I want to say, I tell him that everything is bubbling up fast and jamming together, and still I write, there is this sense that I could express it all in just one non existent word and you would understand exactly what I mean.

You would love I loved it so much because I think it's just sort a perfect like expression of what it feels like to fall in love and how much of a roller coaster of emotions it is, and that whole like I love him so much is.

Hard to take a full breath.

Oh my god.

And there's also a really weird thing that when I was talking to Lee on the podcast, there's a really weird moment in the book where there's a scene where somebody is sat with someone that is dying and they're holding their hand and the hand changes and feels like the hand of a parent that they've lost, and it gives them that comfort in that moment.

And it's really really strange because my Nanna always talks about this moment where she was sat with her dad when he was dying.

Was it a dad or a mom?

I can't which of them?

Dad first.

That's awful, But the hand changed and it went from being I think it was it changed from like her mum's hand to a dad's hand, and it was the really it was such a really, like a specific experience.

I was like, how mad that, Like, that's also happened to Lily King, because Lily King said, no, that was an experience that actually happened to her, and it's in this book.

And it was such a beautiful moment.

And I was like, oh, just a cap to that.

But this is only like two pages, and I felt so many emotions in that time, and I just loved it so much.

So yeah, I.

Really wanted to read this next up.

Okay, I'm going to do this one for a tonal shift.

The Pretender by Joe Hopkin, Yes, which you loaned me and I did loan to you because I loved it.

I'll just give a little out.

The description is Wolf Hall meets Dephen Copperhead in the story of a young man tossed into the Chaosti the history which is very true.

This is about Edward Plantagenet, the seventeenth Earl of Warwick, who was called very historically called the Pretender, inspired by the real life, real life pretender Lambert Simnel.

The Pretender is the sharply ambitious, brilliantly imagined, and hugely entertaining story of intrigue, deceit, and ambition and revenge.

Yeah, basically suns up.

It's a period of history that I love to explore.

But I just thought it was so funny.

I had so much fun reading this.

It made me so happy, and I feel like it just got me from the first opening, which is I'm going to read, which is just perfect?

Was this the first thing he wrote of his own?

I am John Colin today, in the year fourteen eighty three.

I will defeat the goat in the name of honor and glory to God Highest.

And for reason that it knocked me in the mud again today has trodden churlishly over my back, has just spoiled an insult that cannot be born.

Like.

It's just a perfect I think it's perfect opening.

It looks beautiful on the page as well, because it's got that classic language thing.

And it made me laugh so much.

And I understand that things that I find funny other people don't necessarily find that it's funny, but it made me really happy.

It made me laugh.

I think it has a really sweet ending as well, and it is a lovely chunk.

Of a book it is.

That's count four hundred and fifty pages.

I think there's a lovely feeling when you're in a book and it's really long, but you're like, I don't care to be a thousand pages long, and I'll still be happy.

And that's sort of how I felt about being in this world and the world that she created.

I think she did a beautiful job of reimagining the particular particular part of the Tudor conflict.

I knew as soon as I saw the Will the Wolf the Wolf Hale comp Yeah, you were like.

I was like, this is for Emma.

Yeah, bloomsbo is such pretty proofs.

I'm looking at the Bloomsbury Proof right now.

I just think it's so stylish.

But yeah, I me and my dad we both love Hilary Mantle, and I sent him a copy of this book for his birthday because I thought he would like it.

And I was like, how did you like it?

Did you get on with it?

He was like no, I thought it was a bit sentimental.

I was like, great, isn't it so funny how different people responded?

Yeah, And I know why.

It's because it has like a love narrative in it, so he's like sentimental garbage.

But yeah, it's it made me really happy, and I've thought about it a lot.

I've thought about the way that she manages history, and for somebody who writes historical fiction, it's so inspiring when you see a writer creating the world that feels so thoroughly lived in and relevant in the way that their characters speak and what their characters care about, and it just feels like it could be today even though it's not.

But it doesn't lose any of its historicity, because that's another thing.

If people, if you have historical fiction rights, writers write too much like it's today, then that just makes me want to kill them.

So it's a perfect, perfectly balanced book.

And I had a lot of fun with it.

I'm so glad.

So that was my fun, fun read.

And this has a new home with you.

Yeah, so this is my best historical fiction of the year.

Love that because you spoke about best.

It has the best opening.

I'm next going to talk about Finding Grace by Loretta Roth's Child, which I thought.

I've raved about this book so much this year, and specifically the opening chapter that was like it would be stupid of me not to put this on my top reads, and when I, of course.

I'm just gonna We're just going to interrupt to declare that, of course, this is one of Hannah's books of the year.

It has a bright front cover and it has a close up picture on the front cover of a woman's face and she looks I would say, quite anguished.

I feel attacked.

That's Hannah's favorite type of book.

It is a contemporary.

They're always contemporary, aren't they?

Never historical vis never where they have a excuse you.

There is actually two historical books on my I know, but the historical books never have the anguished woman's never would never.

It's always a photograph or a very highly stylized this is true.

This was This had a quote on it from an endorsement from Jody Pickle, who was one of my favorite writers as a teen, who said it's one of the best books that she's read the year.

So this book came out in June this year, and I'm going to read the blurb because I'm really scared about spoiling anything to do with this.

So The Blood is Honor's life is nearly perfect.

She adores her bright and beautiful daughter Chloe and a charming, handsome husband Tom, even if he works one hundred hours a week.

Yeah, Honor's longing for another baby threatens to eclipse all that is wonderful, until a shocking event changes everything.

Years later, Tom makes a decision that ripples through their family's life in ways he could never have predicted.

As the consequences of his choice continued to unfold, two women's paths become irrevocably interwined, blending a page turning moral dilemma with a sweeping love story.

Finding Grace explores the price of secrets and asks whether it's ever too late to tell the truth.

So that's how they've managed to write that blurb without giving anything away?

Is really?

Is it full of spoilers?

It's so hard to talk about this book without giving a spoiler.

What are you going to do?

The opening chapter is like you think the book is going in one direction, and then it literally like swerves, the car flips over and you're off somewhere else and you're like, what the hell just happened?

Like it really threw me, Like I finished the first chapter and then Billy came to bed, and I was like I needed to read this, and I explained, it's fine, it's fine.

She has lots of feelings.

She has so many feelings.

She's been so terrible anyway.

Carry So I explained, like I gave a quick brief explanation of what happened in the chapter so far, and then got Billy to read the final few pages of the chapter and he was like, what the fuck just happened?

And I also got two girls that I work with to do the same thing the next morning because I was so blown.

Away by it.

So the pov of this is also such a unique one, but I think it's pulled off brilliantly.

But again, I can't.

Even go into detail about that.

But it is a novel about grief, and it's a novel about relationships and about finne love, and it's also about betrayal and secrets, and it's about fertility and parenthood, and I think all of those things are handled really well with a lot of care.

I love the way that she writes about characters, and I think we learned so much about them with how details she makes them.

Like there's a detail in this that always sticks out to me, which is about how honor leaves half empty coffee cups scattered around the house, and I just thought it was a really nice detail.

It's a bit brutal.

Who else is feeling called out by?

Yeah?

I feel called out by that.

But it felt like every word mattered in this And I obviously read so many debut novels for the podcast, and I do think this was my.

Favorite debut of the year.

Wow.

Okay, but the first line of the book is the last time we were at the Ritz in Paris, I had my fifth miscarriage at breakfast.

Oh that's a great opening line.

That's a stunning opening line.

I love that, isn't it.

That's great.

That's like there are some people who just have killer opening lines, and that is it.

Yeah.

I really want you to read this.

So yeah, excellent pressure, really excellent book.

What's next for you?

Okay, Well we're talking about debut.

This is the debut and he shall appear by Cate vanderbook.

I've read a lot of debuts this year as well, and I was looking at my list of debuts and it was hard to come up with I have got some honorable mentions in the debuts, and the reason that this one is on my top is because I've thought about it, probably the most.

Yes, she Kate, So I'll give you a little bit of an explanation from the back.

When an unnamed outsider falls under the spell of Britn Cavendish, a magnetic party boy and skilled occultist, it seems nothing could ever go wrong, But as Brin's allure intensifies, the lines between myth and reality begin to blur.

The Secret History meets Saltburn in this decadent tale obsessive friendship.

I think that's a bit unfair.

I don't.

I haven't read the Secret History, but I have watched Saltburn and I was unimpressed.

So I feel like that that's unfair.

My think I read the Secret History.

No, and I'm not going to do.

You know what you're about to start reading.

I've said it.

Yeah.

The thing is like, if you write fantasy fiction in this day and age, somebody always asks.

You, have you read the Secret History?

Oh?

Okay, because some people believe that literally every fantasy that came after Donna Tarte must be based on the seek History.

Somehow it must be influenced on the secre History.

And nothing I write is influenced by the Secret History, because I haven't read it, so I'm not going to read it so that I can avoid that question.

I think the notes on this well, I did an event with her, so it came out in January, and I think my closest I think the closest comp to this book is actually Angle by by Sebastian Fawkes.

But this is like a mystical angle be by Sebastian Fawks.

And the reason I have thought about this one so much is because she does a beautiful job of managing an unreliable narrator, which I think is something that I'm looking into in my own work right now.

So I've thought a lot about it, and I've thought about a lot about her book, how it is in discourse with other unreliable narrator stories like The Talented myster Opley and things like that.

So it's doing all of these things.

It's also very Gothic, which obviously I love, is like Go the Occult and all of that.

But it's also got an incredible tenderness to it.

And I'm just going to read a little bit from the end.

So he's talking about he's a musician.

So he's a musician.

He went to a university for music, and he's he's listening to a song, and he says, but terrible as this moment of loss may be.

I press a button to begin the song again, for the tenth twentieth time.

I don't know, because I too am forever on that hill.

Memory is whipping about me like leaves ripped from ancient trees, the sky like a face I almost recognize, never getting any closer to the summit, However hard I climb, the rain beating me back, beating on my window as I look at that bone shard of the past.

It's not healthy, they say to dwell.

But even if I wanted to leave it behind, I couldn't you know why, because he always comes back.

I pour another drink, begin the song again.

The feeling in this music it isn't nostalgia, because nostalgia is a simple longing for the path even SWARDI oh, I can't say that word, the word I learned from Warlock, grief for something lost, doesn't affect what I hear in these transcendent sounds.

But there is a word from Wales, born of the exquisite wild landscapes, Warlock or Dwarf hereth, A whisper of a word, a word to seal a hex.

There's no direct English equivalent, but people describe it as the feeling of longing to be where your spirit lives.

It can describe anything you yearn for a person, a place, an era, even places you've never been and times you've never experienced.

And it's just it has you know, you talked about like books that are about yearning and longing.

This is such a yearning book if you want, like a kind of a book that's about admiration for a person that borders on the homo erotic.

Yeah, this is where you want to be.

And so I don't know if it's my favorite like debut of the year, but it's just the one I've thought about the most and far.

Yeah, I just keep coming back to her how she managed to do this?

And you've read that in January, and I read that in January.

So that's like, you know, I always think that's a really good sign.

If it's staple you until the end of the year.

Yeah, yeah, and it's it's yeah, it's maybe if old All was my favorite Gothic, it's my favorite.

Old Tel was my favorite horror.

This is my favorite gothic.

Love that keeping the boundaries cliar clear.

Okay, this looks like a historical fiction.

This is a balance.

Oh, we love it of historical and contemporary fiction.

This is such an accomplishment of a novel.

This is There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak.

We love her, adore her so much, and god, I felt.

Like such a fang girl.

And she came on the podcast, I was just beside myself with delight.

So this was published in August twenty twenty four, I believe, but I interviewed her in April.

I think it was for the paperback publication.

Firstly, I admire her so much because she writes so beautifully in a language that isn't her native tongue, so I think, like, that's just magical.

But with this, it's multiple POV, which I'm ada pickup before.

That's one of the reasons why I used to love Joda Picolet's writing when I was younger is because she wrote really multiple POV.

So well, yeah, but this is multiple POV.

But it also jumps across various timelines and locations.

So this is a story of how all of the characters in this book are connected by a single drop of water, which I don't know, in.

The wrong hands.

Yeah, in the wrong hands.

That's some wonky bullshit, isn't it.

But this is like, it's written so well.

And this was another one that really moved me.

I just want to say, well, she's generally one of the greatest writers of our time, like hands down, and she really really cares about literature, like she's so passionate about it.

She's just been announced as the Royal Society of Literature.

Is like, there's something of that love that.

Wait, let me see because I don't want to say this is wrong and get absolutely canceled on the podcast.

Named new president of the Royal Society of Literature.

So I wasn't wrong.

Also, ten minutes thirty seconds in This Strange World is such a banger of a book.

But that's a story for another day.

So we go from the ruins of nineve an ancient city of Messapatit.

And Mesopotamia.

Yes, that where lies fragments of a long forgotten poem, the epic of Gilgrimash Gilgamesh.

Sorry, we moved from there to Victorian London, where a child Arthur is born at the edge of the filthy river that is River Thames and his only chance at escaping poverty is his incredible memory, which is like next level incredible, and his gift allows him to become an apprentice at a printing press and he's then sent on this epic journey because of one book.

We then go to Turkey in twenty fourteen, where we meet Narrin, a Yazidi girl living by the river Tigris.

Her and her grandmother have to escape their waterman's and it's a really harrowing journey for them both, and there's like isis involved.

It's like really it doesn't shy away from the kind of brutality that they experience, and it's like it is really haunting.

But again, I think Lift handles it with such thought and care.

We also see London in twenty eighteen where meet Zealika, who is a hydrologist living on a houseboat in the Thames who's recently heartbroken having left her marriage when she gets the opportunity to return to her homeland, and I just think it's so incredible the way that she writes about the character sort of inner lives and then the sort of world that's happening around them and the sort of political climber of their situation, the sort of current and social events that are happening.

I just think she's such a powerhouse of a writer, and I never expected to feel so connected to a Victorian child.

There's a quote that I've got that I read out on the podcast with that lift Shark, but I'm going to read it again.

So this is Arthur and he is going into the British Museum and he says, sir, I'm looking for the Lamassis from Neve.

Are they still here?

Where else would they be?

Lad says the man.

Did you expect the wind creatures to have flown away?

Arthur stutters.

He does not belong in august institutions, and he worries that people can sense it.

It occurs to him in that moment that poverty has its own scent and odor that emanates from his paws, easily detected.

It is an awful, debilitating thought during in a sharp breath, he turns around and hurries in the direction he assumes to be the exit.

The man calls after him, perhaps in sympathy, but the boy does not wait.

The divisions that make up class are, in truth, the borders on a map.

When you're born into wealth and privilege.

You inherit a plan that outlines the paths ahead, indicating the shortcuts and byways available to reach your destination, informing you of the lush valleys where you may rest and the tricky to rain to avoid.

If you enter the world without such a map, you're bereft of proper guidance.

You lose your way more easily.

Trying to pass through what you thought were orchards and gardens, only to discover they are marshland and peat bogs.

And I just was like, like, that is exactly how it feels.

I literally, like.

Can't explain how much that experience resonates with me, of like walking into somewhere and immediately feeling the class divide, and like immediately feeling like you're somewhere you don't belong and feeling shot out.

And yeah, I've never expected to have a Victorian child's experience resonate with me.

But it could again feel like very chaotic, having so many different timelines and locations and characters in the wrong hands.

But it doesn't feel like that with this book.

And it's a really long book.

I think it's like six hundred pages or something, and it didn't.

I could have read more.

I could have read more from her.

I just think she's an incredible writer.

And also how beautiful is that cover?

It's beautiful.

And it also as well made me appreciate nature a lot more, which I don't often do very much.

A hermit who is specifically in the city hermit rather than like a hermit who lives in the woods.

Yes, yeah, I.

Mean, like I say hermits in the phrase that like as well a word as like somebody that stays inside.

But I don't know if I've used the wrong term there, but I do like I'm very much Yeah, I've maybe used the wrong term, but like I very much hide a way because I think I have such a busier life, and I yeah, recluse, I'm out and about constantly, but like head down, onto the next thing, onto.

The next thing.

It's like never looking around appreciating.

Yeah, but why should we not like to be at home?

We pay enough to be here, don't we We.

Do exactly, But it really made me appreciate nature and think a lot about what connects us all.

You know the book that did that for me, I don't think it was this year that When did it come out?

Last year.

Last year, Yeah, there was a lot of nature writing and in okayans good next up for me?

Yeah, okay, since we are on writing.

So I love that you just shouted out to Sally Rooney.

Yeah, writers who we believe are like the best writers of our time.

Yes, Aaron Dodty Roy mother Mary comes to Me, which is my non fiction, which was a surprise.

And also I listened to the New York Times.

Did the obviously top one hundred most NOTEPBB books the year, didn't they?

But in their pod cast they did their top ten books of the year, and they did five fiction, five nonfiction, and this was one of their five non fiction.

Yeah, I would agree.

I think Aaron Darty Roy is an incredible writer.

She could write a postcard and I would read it.

But this is a beautiful and moving account of her life and of her mother's life and is incredibly powerful.

And we've talked about this.

I've talked about this book on the podcast already, so I won't like go into it.

I will just read the quotes that I wrote in my notebook, which means they are like quotes that I'm trying to take into my life.

Basically, she said, I learned that most of us are a living, breathing soup of memory and imagination, and that we may not be the best arbiters of which is which.

And I think that's just like such a profound comment on how we live our lives in terms of how we relate to our past, because a lot of what she's talking about is how do we relate to our own past, and how do we understand ourselves?

And how do we map our own trauma?

And some of it is memory and some of its imagination, and sometimes we don't see the truth of who we are.

And sometimes the further away from geting we get, further away we get from it, the less truthful it becomes.

I also really liked this quote, which was my commitment was to writing, to being a writer, not a leader or an activist.

To do that, I could not be weighed down by the burden of a following or fulfilling people's expectations.

I had the right to be unpopular.

Oh, I love that.

Yeah, And I think that's when I read it at the time, I was like they felt it felt very It sort of settled on me as like I need to release myself as a novelist.

From the expectation of what being a novelist means in this century.

Yeah, I am not a good social media person.

You are, but I get it.

I get it.

It's like the amount of mental energy it takes to do this morning so far.

Yeah, and and so much of online culture is about popularity.

It's about being popular, being liked.

And I'm not always a likable person, and I have that right.

You do have that right.

I have the right to be unlikable.

And the habits that people find unsociable or undesirable, like the fact that you know, I don't really like to hang out with lots of people, and I'm quite choosy about who I want to spend time and energy on me.

And when I'm done, I'm kind of done.

You're done.

This is one of my favorite things about going out with you, by the way, is that you will just be like, Okay, I'm done.

That I'm like, great, Like we're done.

But I just appreciate.

She obviously is not talking about social media.

She's talking about a huge like political following.

Yeah, yeah, that she has became a political force in her country.

But I think the lessons from the extremists of these models of popularity work on every level, like me with nobody's following me doing anything, which is great that that's generally probably for the best because who knows where I'm going.

But yeah, I find it incredibly meaningful.

And I think she's also just so much about a relationship with the mother, and you know, we can all relate to that.

Yeah, we can't in our own ways.

One hundred percent Okay, You're.

Is the Safe Keep by Yale vonder Wooden.

I don't know if I said that right, also has become a writer about times this year.

One hundred percent won of the Women's Prize for Fiction this year, so it was actually published I think in May last year.

Yeah, they definitely wasn't published this year because I looked at it for my list.

Oh interesting, And I read this at the start of the year whilst I was in Amsterdam, which was a perfect setting.

Different book.

So this I would describe as both a kind of political family drama if you can mix those two things, a family drama that is political, and also a queer love story.

Yeah, definitely disagree, a queer love story.

I think it's interesting because I don't think it is a political It's one of those books that's about the how we live our lives in political times, whether we're political or not.

Okay, So you wouldn't say it's political.

I don't know, because it's not setting out it's I know what you mean.

Though politics becomes a key component.

It does become a key component, but it's.

A very human angle.

But this is one of another book like Fanning Grace, where you have to describe it carefully because you don't want to give spoilers.

Yeah, because it is a book that you could spoil.

But it's set in the Netherlands in nineteen sixty one, so post war, and explores the life of Isabelle, who is a recluse who after her mother's death, is living in and taking care of the family home.

But her brothers return to the family home and her brother brings one of her brothers brings his girlfriend.

And I really loved the sort of individual dynamics of their brothers.

But I really loved in terms of this brother that brings his girlfriend home, the exploration of gender in this time, and how although she lives in this home and he does not, he still has the biggest claim to the house.

Yeah, it's in his control, yes, And he uses this to his advantage when he dumps his girlfriend at the house while he gallimants off elsewhere.

And Isabelle obviously hates this because she doesn't like people and is like, everybody leaving me the fuck alone.

But in this sort of effort to not make effort with this girl that is left with her, she then starts to learn so much about herself and a really surprising relationship blossoms out of it.

And I really really loved the exploration of desire and again of yearning, and how as a recluse she has would you say, suppressed or repressed so many parts of herself.

Yes, yeah, she's full of fear.

Full of fear and refuses to kind of entertain any of those feelings until she's kind of forced to big thing that gives too much away.

But I found this book like really all consuming, Like I was like, I don't want to put it down, and I want to find out what happens.

I want to know what happens with this family.

I want to know what happens in this dynamic between these two women that feels like it could be like a very like poisonous dynamic.

You're like, oh, this is quite like, what the hell is this going to go when these two because it's it's very claustrophobic, isn't it.

There's like this big house, but they're both trapped inside of it, and you know, there's sort of a refusal to like, well, I'm not going to be the one to speak to you, and I'm not going to be the one to confront you.

So there's like this sort of like miniature war between the two women, and it was just so interesting watching that dynamic play out.

I honestly think some of the writing in this or on sex is some of the best that I've read.

Yeah, that's interesting.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's also if people love Sarah Waters, particularly the paying guests, they will.

Love the same interesting because I haven't read Sarah Waters, so that's good to know.

Yeah.

Would you say that's had some influence on this.

I don't know, because her I see parallels in some of the setups, but like they're pretty commonly used setups, but there's there's in the paying guests.

It's like a woman who lives with her mother and is alone and has to have paying guests, which is like learning letting out rooms in the house.

Interesting a couple who come in and there's a woman, the wife of the couple, and they begin an affair and like it's that same kind of like yeah, change of dynamic and a domestic dwelling that's very queer and cool, and there are there are echoes.

And there's also is it the Pair?

Oh no not, it's not a book.

I mean in this book there was eating of a pair.

Oh yeah, that's great, I mean excellent.

It's not the I mean it's funny because I read it and I was like, I get this.

I totally get this.

This is like a golf queer biby thing.

But a part of me was just like, it's not a peach though.

Yeah, yeah, no, it was defouent not to that.

But I just thought this book was a real surprise and there's lots of twists and turns and if you haven't read it, I would highly recommend it.

It is masterful, very much.

So okay, that's what's one.

Girl Beast?

Oh my god, I've seen so many people.

Speaking about the by Cicily Lynd, translated by Hazel Evans, highly acclaimed in Denmark, Girl Beast is a fearless, unsettling and poetic reimagining of the Lita narrative, where power shifts unpredictably and design coercion become indistinguishable.

Its first person is contemporary.

It's written in tiny, short, little sentences and the massive long paragraph.

You know, I'd love that.

Yeah.

What you wouldn't love, though, is that there aren't chapters.

It's just continuous and then there is three parts, Like the first part is like three pages long, the last part is like twenty pages long, and then the middle part is huge.

But it's all about desire, being desired, being objective.

It's about being objectified.

I think it's the best way to describe it.

And the process of being objectified as a beautiful pupa Vesson and girl going through puberty and what that creates inside, the potential for damage that that creates inside a young girl who is aware that she is desired and is desired by the entire world, and how that changes her, transforms her.

And I think that's something that a lot of people have been exploring.

I understand what they're saying about how it's a retelling of the Lalita narrative.

I see hints of that, But I also think that like it's not in a sense because Lalita is very particularly about this one man in this one relationship.

This like the girl beast in this book, Sarah, she has multiple relationships with older men and is it's her life is transformed and transgressed in so many different ways.

But it's incredibly cool.

I think like Lucy, my friend Lucy do endorsed it, calling it called it a fever dream of a novel, And I think a fever dream is a good way of describing it because it just feels like you're in her head and kind of being washed over by everything that she says.

But they also it's a lot about body and desire and eating and which I think you would really appreciate it.

But it is like if you do have if you're currently struggling with an eating disorder, it's not the book for you.

So this is a bit that she writes about eating, and she's she's stopped eating basically okay, and is developing Arek's here, and this is a little section about that.

Rosa could ask if she wanted to the Roses her friend, why do you think power is shutting your mouth, ignoring yourself, hurting yourself, doing harm what about your little heart?

Does it beat on three p's and a carrot pepsi max?

Does it work?

Do you want to die Sarah, because it's easy.

It's easy to let go, just to let hunger slip.

It slows, stupid knife into your poor heart.

Anyone could do that, Sarah, put a stop to it.

That's no skill.

You think you're special, strong, determined, But to be honest, becoming thinner than thinnest, that's easy.

That door is open to everyone.

It's not hard.

You just have to feel like shits and keep your mouth shut.

It's no greater chief.

You're convinced it is, but it's really not hard.

You see me as a loser, my dear friend, But I've risen.

I'm going places forward up.

You think control is perfection, and you think perfection is anything nearly dead.

A ghost like figure light steps in the snow, as if what it means to be a girl is to be a warm and quivering corpse.

Be an image.

You want to be an image.

You want to be seen appreciated, like an altar, like art, like you're better than the rest, Like it's easier to pick you up from the ground the closer you are to the stars.

It's time to put down roots, Sarah, be a tree arose.

Just stay in the soil and drink the rain is falling.

That is beautiful.

Yeah, I really want to read that.

It just really taps into this idea of like the connection between like we know societally that like when you objectify a person's body, they are likely to be pushed towards constricting that body and controlling that body through the intake of food, like there is a connection between them.

And girl really like clings the connection together that she has been sexualized since she was a child.

So there is a part of her that understands her sexuality as childish, and she understands that her sexuality and her desire, that the way that men desires her is connected inherently to being childlike and to therefore being thin and being young.

So she's connecting innocence and thinness and being as light as a feather and being desirable and being childish all together in this horrible, like warped thing.

And the book doesn't just cover like one period of her life.

It starts when she's like thirteen and it finishes when she's like thirty one.

Wow.

So the real transformation.

The middle of the book is like thirteen three to like kind of eighteen, and that transformation in those years of being like her most potent in how she feels desires.

But it's just such a beautiful insight into the decline that she feels inside of herself and how her body changes and how she changes and all of those things.

And it's a tiny book.

It is literally one hundred and fifty five pages.

It's teeny tiny.

It is teeny tiny.

It does so much.

It is masterful.

I think it's a little bit reductive to say that it's a retelling of Lolita, because I think Lilita is a very specific book and this is more of Actually, it's just so broad.

You can't just put it into just like, oh, it's a read telling of Liita.

It's like, no, it's interesting to anyone who has ever been a young person in female flash basically, So yeah, highly recommend you need to read that.

I actually have spare copies, so you, oh my god, yes please.

My final pick is Slags by Emma Jorth.

So this came out in May.

I interviewed Emma at Waterstones on Deane's Gate, which was very fun and she was as incredible as her book is.

I've now read three books by Emma.

I've read Animals, which is a very Manchester, chaotic girls in their twenties making terrible decisions kind of book, Adults is a very like social media kind of book, and then Slags is two sisters go on a birthday road trip for one of their forty fifth birthday in a camp of van across the Scottish Highlands, and they get drunk because chaos.

They fight, They talk about the past, they talk about, you know, when they were teenagers obsessed with a band that may or may not be taking that yeah, And we move between their lives as teenagers and what occurred when they were teenagers and when they're in boldness sort of fang culture, and you know, we go between that period of time and this chaotic road trip that they're on.

It made me really want to go on a Scottish road trip.

It sounded so fun.

But it's also one of my favorite books I've ever read about sisters.

I just think it captures that experience so perfectly.

And this is the book that made me laugh the most this year.

Fun, really really fun.

It's got Emma's signature northern wit, very sweary, very daft, very like brush.

Would you say brush is the right word?

What does brush mean?

Yeah?

Brush is like jovial in your face, yeah brush Yeah.

Yeah, it's very brash.

Yeah.

And I just love the Manchester representation that these are women bought that were born and bred in Manchester, and I don't think we see that representation North.

In my opinion, the opening is excellent.

I remember this because you read it at the Earth.

Yes, I love it.

So the first line is all the old party girls were falling, and immediately you're like, okay, I'm in it.

There is Oh my god.

I really want to read the ending, but I also really want to read this.

But the beginning is really cool.

With the beginning is great.

All the old party girls were falling.

Sarah could feel it on the city streets, in the slow limp of Saturday nights, where no one went out anymore to pound the pavements with their passion or fury.

Sofas with the new barstools, people didn't salute the sun from jagged rooftops, glass in hand.

People jogged it instead.

At five am across the land, beds were made and slept in geese flew overhead unheard.

The clubs and pubs were dying.

Younger generations preferred coffee and conversation.

Everyone was thinking about their gut health, or their crochet, or the state of the economy.

Sarah, herself, once a committed party girl, was regularly flirting with sobriety.

This time she had managed a month so far.

She had given up drinking in February, nothing so cliched as January, for God's sake, because she was starting to feel unwelcome in her own life, as though her personality was a badly fitting suit.

She'd inherited from a dead ant.

Night after night she had sat sober in front of her candle, forgiving herself, waiting for clarity to hit.

A month then she was ready to cave.

Was just so boring.

Sarah possessed grit and tenacity like any woman with red hair, but the one thing she couldn't hack was the boredom, which was why she was sneaking glances at someone else's phone reading the text of the woman sitting beside her.

To be fair, the were excellent texts, some of the best Sarah had read.

In fact, they were a real treat they were a sort of part say.

They had everything, intrigue, launch, playfulness, and a plot twist.

I keep thinking of you with Keeley, I keep thinking of you coming over after and punishing me, tasting her on me.

Have you got a lot on at work?

Yeah, we're moving to a bigger office and a higher floor on Monday.

These all sent in succession Belly are thirty second pause between the shifting tone, leaving its recipients seemingly unaffected.

Unaffected, sex and mundanity all wrapped up.

Sarah was reeling.

I just I love it so much, but then the like it's so funny and fun and silly, and then like there's just so many like moments in it where it will go from being that to having these like really like sharp observations about like sisters and like family and about like you know what life is like as a woman, how like you know the different very different pressures put on women by society, and like there'll be like an observation that will just like really like get you and move you, and it's just really not expected, and like the ending is just so moving, and it's just the two sisters wade into water together and deciding to dock their heads under the water.

Cold swimen gotta be done.

Yeah, and it's Yeah.

I just thought it was a really beautiful book and I loved it so much.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Top five, top five?

Shall we race through our honorable mentions?

Yeah?

I don't have many because I feel like I would just talk about everybody.

No, that's so fair, my So I would say.

A book I read this year that was not published this year but I really loved was Days of Light by megun Hunter, which she got me from a birthday.

I did get you to a book which I've talked about in the podcast before, but I loved it.

Also mentioned on the podcast before, I think The Lamb by Lucy Rose.

Yes, the manga which was great year that wasn't published this year, came out in January?

Did it?

It came out?

It came out in February.

Am I so convinced that you did the event at the end of last year?

I don't know.

Yeah, No, I did in February.

So that's another one that came out this year.

And then a book that came out a very very long time ago which I read this year was North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, which I really enjoyed for no reason.

Then it had, honestly one of the funniest exchanges I've ever read in my life on it, She's asked after another woman in the village.

I don't know, said the woman rather shortly.

We're not friends, Why not, asked Margaret, who had formerly been the peacemaker of the village.

She stole my cat?

Did she know it was yours?

I don't know, I reckon not.

Well, could you not get it back again when you told her it was yours?

No, well, she'd burnt it, burnt it, exclaimed both Margaret and mister Bell roasted it, explained the woman.

Did you read that after the play?

Oh?

Interesting lot the words?

Oh no, I did read it in time after the play.

Yeah, okay, yeah, sorry, I got computer.

Sorry, I was like, I haven't seen Northern South of the play.

No, sorry, I meant when I was in Lowers of the Witch.

Oh yeah, yeah, because that was about best Yes, yeah, yeah, but yeah, that was just a funest exchange.

I love that.

Okay, your honorable mentions that a bet not be a paragraph vulnerable mentions that's not allowed.

No, it's not.

I literally, this is just me like trying to make sense of my brain and arguing with myself about what I wanted.

So one that was genuinely cross that could have made the top five is Bittersweet by Hattie Williams.

It's a banger of a debut novel, one of the best affair novels, although I don't know if Hattie likes me categorizing it as an affair novel, because it's it's not just an affair novel.

No affair novel is ever.

Just no exactly.

But it's also a beautiful exploration of grief.

Is a mad look at the publishing industry and as many flaws.

It's an affair between a really well known writer that's like he's like this really prolific writer and she is this girl that works is like a new early very early twenties, just started out in publishing, and he is an author that is published at her publisher, and how complex that dynamic becomes and how complicated it all is.

But it's also a really meaningful, intimate look at friendship and how you will meet some people in your life that will go above and beyond for you, but specifically looking at mental health and how there are people in your life that will really pick you up when you are like on the floor in the trenches of bad mental health, which I just I just adore that book so much.

And I also want to give a shout out to Buddaker's Daughter by Eldi Harper, which is historical fiction based on Buddaker, but it's also expanding on the history of her daughters that we know kind.

Of little to nothing about.

Loved looking at mothers and daughters through that historical lens.

It was great, and also exploring the complexity of war and the kind of damage it causes.

It was just a really powerful book that That's another one that nearly made me cry as well.

So many twists and turns in that that literally flawed me.

There's like one death in ite that like, I don't think I'll ever recover.

From The Show Woman by Emma Cowing.

I was really pleasantly surprised by don't know why.

I didn't think it would be Michael per Tea, but I thought it was a really great book.

Loved that also loved Since The World Is Ending by Indiana Schneider, and I think about the scene all the time of this couple lay on the floor and they've they've broken up a while ago, but they're kind of like in this situation where they like, should we return to it was the right thing for us to do, to give up this relationship.

And they spend an entire evening land on the floor listening to like a full Joy Mitchell album, and it's just a really beautiful moment.

I loved that book.

And it's like a love triangle of sorts.

It's set in the upper world and it's sort of exposed to the kind of misogyny that occurs in the opera world.

And that's just a really brilliant book.

Sunburned by Clo Michelle Howorth, great book about yearning.

If I continue, I will just there's just so many good books that I've read the ship and it's so hard to narrow down to five.

But but we did what we did, But we did we did such a great job.

We did such a great job.

So yeah, I think it's been a very good year of reading.

I do want to try and continue to find pockets of time to read other books on my TPR.

But yeah, I think next year I'm maybe going to try and pivot towards like reading certain writers and trying to like read the whole catalogy.

I love that.

Have you got anybody in mind?

Penelope Lively?

Amazing?

Maybe Ann?

And right?

Oh love and I'm right maybe Hay, that's amazing, But like, yeah, just I might, I might pivot slightly towards people who have got a real chunk of a backlog and and trying to read through them.

But what about you?

I I think my golf.

Actually, obviously I'm going to be reading more because I will mention now that we will be starting a I say, wait, you will be kicking off the Books to Screens mini series with that.

So you'll be focusing on that's that's the thing you'll do.

So I'll be focusing on adaptations, which I'm really excited about because as long term listeners the podcast will know I am obsessed with an adaptation.

We love an adaptation.

So Emma will be kicking off that series with me in January with Hamnet.

With Hamnet.

It's really excited about that.

So I think a lot of my reading life will be focused on that next year, which I'm really excited about.

But what fun.

But then there will be like you know, pockets of time that like some of the listenary fiction that's been Sart on my shelf, crying at me.

I know, but if we complete our bookshelves, and what do we have to make us feel bad about ourselves?

Exactly?

So things look forward next year the Books to Screen series that's starting in January.

And also if you want more content, come and hear more from me and Emma over on Patreon.

Yes, do come, come check us out, to come check us out.

We've just read The Party by Tessa Hadley, and in January we are going to be talking through the twenty twenty six releases that we're excited for.

We are so join us there excited, excited, but thank you so much for listening.

Please do a ateview and subscribe.

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That is all we've got time for.

Thank you so much, and Merry Christmas everybody, Happy holiday, happy reading.

Also, bye bye