Is there anything better than reading a great book over a holiday break? Here are some suggestions for your Christmas downtime or other opportunity to read something longer than a text message or LinkedIn post.
What I Ate In One Year (and related thoughts)
Stanley Tucci, Simon & Schuster, 2024
A Thousand Feasts: Small moments of joy … a memoir of sorts
Nigel Slater, 4th Estate GB, 2024
These two books are a match made in heaven, and since I find it difficult to mention one without the other, I won’t bother: read them as a double feature and thank me later.
On the surface, both books are about food, but just below the surface, they’re about much more than ‘just’ food – things like life and death and everything in between. Both are also travel books – Tucci’s daily journal takes us from a hotel in Rome to his family home in London, with weekends in France and the English countryside, while Slater pinpoints single moments from journeys through Japan, Iran, India, Iceland and beyond. But they also both centre around home as a curated retreat from all that – both men love the tranquillity of their backyard gardens, a carefully homemade meal, and the exquisite detail of finely made and chosen objects.
An actor through and through, Tucci’s style is naturally entertaining and often humorous (there are a few swear words, though artfully placed). His year-long diary-of-sorts is comfortingly linear without plodding along and feels a bit like being a fly on the wall in his undeniably glamorous life (celebrity friends over for dinner and all), which he tries to downplay but there’s definitely some playful tongue in cheek at times. I particularly enjoy Tucci’s habit of naming a restaurant or chef he adores, while giving the more disappointing (or downright abysmal) experiences a more diplomatic ‘he who shall not be named’ treatment.
Though both books are infinitely soothing, Slater’s pace is gentler and more whimsical, drifting from thought to thought and place to place like a butterfly gathering nectar. And yet the vignettes – often less than a page long – flow easily together, so it feels perfectly natural to dip in just for a few cosy pages here and there without losing the mood. He finds calm beauty in everything – from “Grinding cardamom seeds on a winter’s afternoon” and “Queueing for sheeps’ heads” (titles verbatim) to the perfect tea towel and a bowl of plain chips (crisps). I found this a particularly comforting, relaxing read – a perfect escape, if only for a few minutes at a time, from whatever high-energy holiday events might surround you.
Note: What I Ate In One Year (Simon & Schuster, 2024) is especially wonderful as an audiobook (narrated by Tucci himself, of course) and would be excellent as narration for a road trip or beach day. I’ve heard that A Thousand Feasts (Harper Collins, 2024) is similarly wonderful in audiobook form (also read by its author), but if you’re like me, you might prefer to savour every word slowly and silently, on paper.
By Olivia McDowell
The Siege
Ben Macintyre, Penguin, 2024
My first thought when I heard about this book was to wonder whether a single event from 44 years ago could be compelling enough to fill 350 pages. My final thought, having now finished those pages and being disappointed there aren’t any more, is that it absolutely could.
The Siege (Penguin, 2024) tells the story of the hostage drama that unfolded in 1980 at the Iranian Embassy on Princess Gate, overlooking Hyde Park in London. Ben Macintyre is the author of numerous bestsellers including the Cold War thriller The Spy and the Traitor and Operation Mincemeat about World War II, which was adapted into the film featuring Colin Firth.
The book is marketed as “the remarkable story of the greatest SAS hostage drama”, making it a safe Christmas present pick for any friends, fathers or grandfathers who like a bit of military action. There certainly is plenty about the SAS and how the Iranian Embassy crisis forced the unit into the public domain. But there is a lot more to the book that makes it compelling.
The Siege is also a police and negotiation drama. It’s an international political story, with plenty of reminders of how virulent the conflict in Northern Ireland was in 1980, what Margaret Thatcher was like as a prime minister and how much terrorism was underway around the world. Indeed, this siege occurred at the same time as American hostages were being held in Tehran, Iran.
But perhaps most importantly, it’s a drama about the individuals inside the embassy, featuring the multinational cast of hostages and the ‘terrorists’ themselves. Macintyre has completed exhaustive research, such that he describes each in detail and includes an extraordinary number of direct quotes that place the reader inside the building’s four walls over a tense six days.
Finally, if you, like me, don’t already know how the siege ended, my advice is to avoid reading anything about it. Just read the book and let it unfold as a thrilling mystery.
By Grant Butler
Fourteen Days
Various unnamed authors, Penguin, 2024
Set in Manhattan during the first weeks of the COVID-19 lockdown, Fourteen Days (Penguin, 2024) is a collaborative novel featuring a remarkable lineup of American writers who each contribute their voice to the richly layered narrative.
One week into lockdown, the tenants of a shabby tenement building gather on its rooftop to cheer those working on COVID’s frontline, bang pots and tell stories. Over the following nights, more people gather, bringing chairs and milk crates to sit on, along with six-packs of beer, bottles of wine and their need for company.
The stories shared by the diverse group not only reveal insights into their pasts, but also their fears and hopes as they navigate the isolation and uncertainty of the pandemic’s early days. Each story also contributes to the shared narrative of connection and resilience, with moments of humour and compassion breaking through the tension.
The twist? Each character’s story is written by a different unnamed author, with the different literary styles mirroring the diversity of New York itself. Authors include Margaret Atwood and Douglas Preston (its editors), Emma Donoghue, Celeste Ng and John Grisham. However, the only way to find out who wrote which story is to look it up in the contributors list at the end.
Even now, four years after the events depicted in Fourteen Days, reading it is a little like digging up a time capsule full of interesting historical artefacts. But it is also a celebration of the community spirit, human resilience and unlikely friendships that blossomed during the pandemic. It is well worth reading.
By Ylla Watkins
My Animals, and Other Animals: A memoir of sorts
Bill Bailey, Hachette, 2024
I would like to be reincarnated as an animal in the happenstance wildlife sanctuary that Bill Bailey calls home.
His affability transcends normal barriers of communication between a man and his dog (and cat, cockatoo, chameleon, armadillo, frog and chicken, for that matter). Indeed, the charm and wit for which he’s been known throughout his comedic career sing from the pages of his latest memoir. Or perhaps it’s more of a diary or a slightly disorganised collection of recollections? Something of the kind.
Each chapter is an animal episode, often only five or so pages long. We meet Rocky, the Patterdale terrier who lived aboard Bill’s houseboat, Cormorant, politely pestering pedestrians in the park nearby for another tennis ball toss. We learn to fear Kid Creole, otherwise known as The Chicken That Broke Bad, known to launch at Bill with both feet forward to defend his brood. There are so many fuzzy, fluffy, scaly and slimy characters to enjoy.
Underneath lie discussions on adventure, mystery, family, luck and an extraordinary life thus far, but My Animals, and Other Animals (Hachette, 2024) never lectures readers. It’s a cosy, undemanding read, especially if your youth was filled with as many BBC shows as mine, being the child of an English expat. It’s instantly familiar and deserves an accompanying cup of tea and a biscuit.
By Will Walton
Gus: The Life & Opinions of the Last Raffles’ Banded Langur
John Gresham, Epigram, 2024
In a dystopian near future, primates are attempting to take over Singapore. A scientific experiment at the government biomedical research and development centre Biopolis – funded by various sovereign wealth funds and a Shenzhen billionaire – has gone horribly wrong and resulted in monkeys acquiring human speech.
Soon, under attack from a power-crazed Monkey King and his band of thuggish simian followers, the city-state’s high-tech infrastructure starts to crumble. It falls to Gus – a peace-loving Raffles’ Banded Langur, who is also the novel’s narrator – and a couple of human sidekicks to halt the monkeys’ chaos, mediate between the warring sides and help everyone reach an outcome where human domination over the non-human can be overcome, or at least made less oppressive.
On the one hand, this action-packed eco-fiction adventure can be read as a parable about climate change and how humans are complicit in the making of a less habitable world. But Gus: The Life and Opinions of the Last Raffles’ Banded Langur (Epigram, 2024) is also a smart, funny commentary on everyday Singaporean life and mores, set amid well-known locales such as the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, Clementi Forest and the heritage shophouses of Blair Plain.
Australian-born Gresham has a beady eye for the absurd and a dark sense of humour. I really enjoyed his imaginative take on how human and animal life are intertwined and highly interdependent, even in one of the world’s most managed and engineered urban environments.
By Melissa de Villiers
Klim
Michael Klim, Hachette, 2024
Michael Klim has long been a household name in Australia, thanks to his remarkable career as one of our greatest swimmers. But in his autobiography, KLIM (Hachette, 2024), he reveals there’s so much more to his story than gold medals and world records.
What makes KLIM stand out is its honesty. Klim lays it all out – his triumphs and heartbreaks in the pool, his highs and lows as an entrepreneur and father, and the tough realities of living with a recently diagnosed autoimmune condition. His openness is refreshing, especially when he reflects on missteps and personal struggles. He doesn’t shy away from showing the scars along with the medals, making his story deeply relatable.
Through it all, there’s a sense of raw determination and a fierce competitive spirit that helped Klim overcome even the darkest times. His reflections are heartfelt and often surprising in their candour.
KLIM isn’t your typical sports autobiography. It’s a deeply human story about navigating life and coming out the other side with hard-earned wisdom. For anyone looking for a tale of resilience and self-discovery, this book is a must read.
By Huntley Mitchell
Yellowface
R. F. Kuang, HarperCollins, 2023
Asian American author Athena Liu is a literary darling – “a beautiful, Yale-educated, international, ambiguously-queer woman of colour”. At 27, she has published three successful novels and has just scored a TV deal with Netflix. Meanwhile, her friend June Hayward’s debut novel failed ingloriously, and her agent may have forgotten she exists.
So, when Athena dies suddenly while June is visiting her, leaving behind a manuscript about the unrecognised contributions of Chinese labourers during World War I, June claims the work as her own. Editing it slightly, she releases it under the racially ambiguous pen name Juniper Song.
As June gains acclaim for a novel she didn’t write, she struggles to manage the weight of her deception while facing both praise and scrutiny from the literary community. With scandal brewing, June tries to protect her secret and redeem herself with another book.
Tackling racism, cultural appropriation and the sometimes-exploitative nature of literary fame, Yellowface (HarperCollins, 2023) is an engaging read for anyone interested in the intersections of race, identity and art – and what happens behind the scenes in publishing.
By Ylla Watkins
Orbital
Samantha Harvey, Penguin, 2024
Astronaut was never on my list of dream careers. Like many sensible (or unimaginative) people, I prefer something solid beneath my feet. So, Samantha Harvey’s novel about six astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) allowed me and all these other sensible (or unimaginative) people to revel in the beauty of Earth from afar.
The drama in Orbital (Penguin, 2024), this year’s Booker Prize winner, is limited. She hangs her story on a day in the lives of the astronauts, broken up into 16 orbits of Earth. We get some interior life and backstory about each astronaut – all solid, sensible (but probably also imaginative) people who worked for years to be shot up into space and can be relied on not to lose it if something goes wrong.
In addition to the Earth observations, we see and experience life on the ISS through her fascinating descriptions. These range from the differences between the older Russian and more comfortable and modern US quarters to exercise, eating and sleeping arrangements in zero gravity. All are made with the same beautiful artistry.
She thanks NASA and the European Space Agency for the information they made available. Perhaps this is why her descriptions of the ISS make it feel so real. Whether she also spent countless hours looking at the agencies’ videos and photographs of Earth from space or has an extraordinary imagination, I’m not sure. Either way, through her gift for words, she seems to be imploring us to look after our glorious planet.
By Kim Irving
The Hummingbird Effect
Kate Mildenhall, Simon & Schuster, 2023
What human inventions would you uninvent to make the world healthier and a better place to live? Kate Mildenhall pondered this question in writing The Hummingbird Effect (Simon & Schuster, 2023) – or rather she asked an AI-powered chatbot to give her some ideas.
Peggy works at a slaughterhouse in Melbourne’s Footscray in 1933 and is grappling with Depression-era conventions as a single young woman. Hilda is under pandemic lockdown in Sanctuary Gardens Aged Care in 2020 and worries about keeping her memories safe as the nursing home’s staff struggle with the devastating effects of the COVID-19 virus. Jump to 2031, singer La reluctantly takes a job as a warehouse product packer when her voice is injured. She’s torn between wanting her generous employee health benefits – including fertility services that enable her to freeze her eggs – but also wanting to wreak havoc on her oppressive, automated work environment. In 2181, sisters Maz and Onyx are forced to search for remnants of a devastated civilisation they never experienced, while coming to realise life is not all it seems.
The term ‘the hummingbird effect’ has been used to describe how certain events or innovations can cause unexpected outcomes in unrelated domains. In exploring this take on cause and effect, Mildenhall sporadically inserts her HummingbirdProject chatbot character throughout the stories of her living protagonists. She asks you to consider quite sobering questions – such as whether the negative effects of ‘progress’ can be reversed.
The women in her stories strive to create their own positive narratives against challenges involving violence, consumerism and, ultimately, a fight to survive.
All this sounds rather heavy and slightly surreal. But in jumping between historical, current and futuristic narratives, Mildenhall uses enough everyday Australian settings, language and practices to enable a rational exploration of the novel’s darker themes. There’s light in the characters and the writing style to counter the dark.
The time shifting and story shifting initially caught me off guard. But the further in I got, the more intriguing the combination became. Not your usual single-narrative read, The Hummingbird Effect is interesting, thoughtful and compelling (the reason it was shortlisted and longlisted for several 2024 writing prizes). It left me wanting to know more about the characters Mildenhall created.
By Lesley Lopes
The Season
Helen Garner, Text Publishing, 2024
Beloved and award-winning author Helen Garner’s first book in 10 years – The Season (Text Publishing, 2024) – takes a deep dive into the seemingly simple world of her grandson’s under-16 AFL team. Don’t let the ‘sports memoir’ label fool you – it’s far from just a book about football. Garner takes the world of team sports and transforms it into an exploration of family, time, and those quietly profound moments that fill our lives when we least expect them.
The moments of self-deprecating humour are a particular highlight – whether it’s her fumbling attempts to understand all the rules and lingo of the game, or the lingo of the teenage boys who are playing it (spoiler: she doesn’t always get it), or her gentle mockery of the over-the-top, competitive parents who populate the sidelines like overly invested, slightly unhinged extras in a sports movie.
The absurdities of life never seem to be lost on her, and it’s this ability to laugh at the world while still feeling deeply connected to it that makes The Season so charming.
The moments Garner describes in such minute detail – sitting in the cold on the sidelines, watching her grandson run across the field, and those brief glimpses of him being both a child and a young adult – are as much about love and time as they are about the game itself. It’s a book about a grandmother who loves her grandson and wants to spend as much time with him as possible before he enters adulthood and she is no longer here (pass me a tissue, please).
The Season is also, in many ways, a love letter to Melbourne and its culture – specifically its obsession with AFL. For those familiar with the sport (or just the cultural atmosphere it brings), this book is a delightful celebration of that shared passion. But even if you’re someone like me, who grew up abroad and knows precious little about this weird but thrilling game, it doesn’t matter. Garner’s storytelling transcends the sport. Her sharp insights into the human condition are what make this book compelling, not the rules of the game.
For anyone unfamiliar with Garner’s work, The Season is an excellent introduction. She has this uncanny ability to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary, to find profound meaning in the smallest moments. I found myself laughing one moment and feeling unexpectedly emotional the next. After reading this, I’m officially on the Helen Garner bandwagon, and hope to find one of her other books in my stocking this Christmas!
By Elmandi du Toit
Revenge of the Tipping Point
Malcolm Gladwell, Hachette, 2024
In my high school days, ‘the water game’ seemed like an exercise in inanity only carried out by very bored, curious adolescents. It went like this: take an empty receptacle (commonly a beaker stolen from the science lab) and add an amount of water. One by one, each boy must perform this task until inevitably drop by tiny drop leads to an increasingly unstable meniscus and the loser’s pour makes water spill out over the edge of the cup.
Drop. Did Harvard university create a woman’s rugby club to maintain a status quo of unconscious bias? Drop. If most doctors in the US were prudent in prescribing OxyContin, how was a pharma company able to weaponise marketing insights and cause an opioid epidemic?
And it’s not just bad actors for whom tipping points should matter. Gladwell draws from a bewildering array of examples, from glamorous bank heists to dying cheetah populations to experimental housing, exploring each story in depth to show how nudges happen on a macro scale, and how they can therefore be nudged the other way. There is also Gladwell’s elan for snapshotting just the interesting bits from datasets and government hearings, combined with his masterfully smooth pacing, as can be expected from a veteran staff writer from The New Yorker.
It’s a summer read for those who can’t help but pay attention, looking for random factoids about the world and for how everything fits into a large, abstract puzzle. Because what are the consequences of living without the ethics of noticing? We end up at the mercy of the magicians, as in the book’s first chapter – execs at a US Congress trial, using meticulously crafted passive language to say they were just as surprised by what they caused as by what they did. Schoolkids still playing the water game, not understanding that the sun had set on their innocence long ago.
By Damien Choy
The City and Its Uncertain Walls
Haruki Murakami, Penguin, 2024
After six years, Haruki Murakami is back with The City and Its Uncertain Walls (Penguin, 2024), which is based on a 1980 novella that was first published in a magazine.
The novel examines big questions: What shapes who we are? How do the choices we’ve made continue to affect us? Murakami doesn’t just revisit these familiar themes – he presents them in a way that’s fresh and provokes introspection.
What I really like about this novel’s writing is its quiet pull. It draws you into its surreal world. While it’s not a light read, it’s perfect for those who enjoy stories that encourage reflection and let you lose yourself in something strange and unsettling.
By Manuelita Contreras
