For our year-end review of 2024 books, we’re joined once again by fellow Locus reviewer Ian Mond and distinguished critic and novelist James Bradley. As usual, we mention a lot of authors and titles, and probably forget to mention many deserving others. But you’ll no doubt find some suggestions you hadn’t thought of, and some of our usual digressions about familiar questions of genre, literary ambition, and books that at least some of us think have been overlooked.
Ian’s list
We probably all should have kept lists, but we did not. Ian did, though, and so that’s provided to you with our thanks to him.
Two weeks later Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy award-winning writer Jo Walton published a follow-on piece on Reactor, On Selecting the Top Ten Genre Books of the First Quarter of the Century, where she discussed how she went about picking her contribution, while finding a classic reader’s workaround that allowed her to name a lot more than ten books.
While we hope you enjoy the podcast, we have to mention their were some audio difficulties. We’ve done the very best we can to make everything work, but we do apologise for any audio issues you experience while listening to the episode.
This week’s episode is mostly about books—how do you get them, where do you put them, and how to get rid of them when you need to. You’d think that questions such as the best way to shelve books would be pretty uncontroversial, but apparently that’s not always the case. We also touch upon the differences between collectors, acquirers, and accumulators, and how books can radically fluctuate in value depending in part on the author’s reputation. But, being us, we also digress into such topics as the thrill of discovering a classic SF idea for the first time—even if it might seem old hat to veteran readers—and the beginnings of our discussion about year-end recommended reading lists, and what they really mean.
Long time friend of the podcast Joe Monti, who was recently promoted to Vice President, Associate Publisher, and Editorial Director at Saga Press, and is now officially a “Big Cheese’, stops by for a wide-ranging chat about the impact of the pandemic and other events on the affordability of books; trends in recent science fiction, fantasy and horror and why science fiction may be set for something of a comeback; the influence (or lack thereof) of awards on book sales; and touches on authors ranging from Cixin Liu and N.K. Jemisin to William Gibson and Ursula K. Le Guin.
As always, Joe’s broad experience as publisher, agent, and bookseller provides some unique insights as to what’s going on and we think makes for fascinating listening as we move towards the end of the year.
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ursula K. Le Guin’s classic The Dispossessed, we sit down for a chat with award-winning biographer and writer Julie Phillips, author of James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon and The Baby on the Fire Escape: Creativity, Motherhood, and the Mind-Body Problem.
Julie is currently at work on the authorized biography of Le Guin, and her insights from her research and her many discussions with Le Guin—not only regarding The Dispossessed but all aspects of her career, and on the challenges of writing biography—were so compelling that we ran a few minutes over our usual hour. We think it’s well worth it, and wish we could have gone on even longer.
