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Life and Art from FT Weekend
Forhecz Topher
4.6 • 601 Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2023
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, we talk books. The FT’s books team recently published our annual books of the year special, and they join us to share their personal recommendations. They also answer listener questions: what books will get you out of ‘reader’s block’? What’s a good gift for a family member who loves history, or a friend who’s anxious about the world? What book could you pair with a candle and some socks? Lilah speaks with literary editor Fred Studemann and deputy books editor Laura Battle.
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We love hearing from you. You can email us at [email protected]. Lilah is on Instagram @lilahrap.
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Recommendations and links (all FT links get you past the paywall):
Some great lists from our books of the year special:
– Best fiction: https://on.ft.com/4a4xjds
– Best history: https://on.ft.com/4a9ErFx
– Best audiobooks https://on.ft.com/3t9tVNT
– Critics’ picks: https://on.ft.com/3RyWH3H
– For getting past your reader’s block, Laura and Fred recommend Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell and The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng. Laura also loved The Fraud by Zadie Smith
– Fred’s picks for history lovers are Revolutionary Spring by Christopher Clark and King: a Life by Jonathan Eig; Laura’s is Red Memory by Tanya Branigan
– For a stocking stuffer, Lilah suggests Love and Other Poems by Alex Dimitrov. Laura likes The Cabin by Natasha Preston and other books about the outdoors. Fred is going with Claire Keegan’s So Late in the Day
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Special FT subscription offers for Life and Art podcast listeners, from 50% off a digital subscription to a $1/£1/€1 trial, are here: http://ft.com/lifeandart
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Original music by Metaphor Music. Mixing and sound design by Breen Turner.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Life and Art from FT Weekend. I'm Lila Raptopoulos. This week, we're combining two things that feel |
| 0:09.7 | equally important in December. One is choosing a great book to read over the holidays from all the |
| 0:14.9 | incredible books that came out this year. And the other is frantically buying gifts for the holidays. |
| 0:20.6 | Our books team here at the Financial Times has recently published their beautiful annual |
| 0:24.7 | books of the year special. |
| 0:26.2 | And they are here to give us some recommendations for great books to buy your friends |
| 0:29.7 | and family members this holiday season. |
| 0:32.2 | Joining me from London is literary editor Fred Studeman and Deputy Books editor, Laura Battle. |
| 0:37.2 | They are regulars and friends |
| 0:38.4 | of the podcast. Hi, Fred. Hi, Laura. Welcome. Hi. Hi, Lila. It's so nice to have you. So before we get |
| 0:45.1 | into advice, first, big picture, how are you feeling about this year in books? Well, if I can start, |
| 0:51.4 | I'd say it was, I think it's quite a good year, but I have to give you one big qualification in that my own reading has been quite strange because I ended up judging not one but two prizes, which is a very silly thing to do in one year. So I did a fiction prize at the start of the year, the |
| 1:11.7 | International Booker Prize. So that's for fiction and translation into English. And then in the |
| 1:17.4 | second half of the year, I was chair of judges of the Bailey Gifford Prize for Nonfiction, |
| 1:23.6 | which is one of the big nonfiction prizes, certainly here in the UK. So that basically |
| 1:29.4 | sorted my reading list for the year. Okay. Well, it sounds like you are... You need of a month |
| 1:37.0 | fourth. Yeah, welcome back to the world. I'm now just listening to audio books. Yeah. Give your |
| 1:42.8 | eyes a break. Laura, what about you? |
| 1:45.4 | What did you find in this? |
| 1:47.2 | I mean, I've just been on to comment to a different role in life and arts for the last |
| 1:51.2 | few months, but have spent much of the year on the book's desk, reading as widely as possible |
| 1:56.5 | and obviously paying attention to all the book awards that are throughout the year. |
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