And finally tonight, tis the season for year-end lists, and our Jeffrey Bown sat down with two of our regular literary critics to highlight their favorite books of 2024 for our arts and culture coverage, Canvas.

It's been another year of great releases across a number of genres, and to help us recap the highlights. We're joined now by two familiar

faces, Maureen Corrigan, book critic for NPR's Fresh Air and Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York

Times book review. Nice to see both of you at this time of year. Let's start with my own favorite,

because I get to choose. That's fiction. So Gilbert, you want to start us off with a

couple of fiction picks? Absolutely. It's good to see you both. The first book I want to talk about

is a book. Some of you may have heard of. It's called All Fours by Miranda July. Certainly it was a

big book this summer. It is, it's kind of a wacky premise. You have a middle-aged female

artist who decides to take a road trip from L.A. to New York,

20 minutes outside of town, she stops at a motel, decides to completely redo the motel,

becomes obsessed with a younger man, and the story takes off from there.

It's a crazy start, but in the end, it's a very serious book about what it means to be

middle age, particularly middle age woman, what it means to be a parent and a mother, what it means

to be to have desire and be desired as you approach middle age. And while humor is very subjective,

I found it very funny. It was quite

an entertaining read. All right. How about one more? Sure. I love books and translation.

There was one that came out earlier this year called You Dreamed of Empires. This is by Alvaro

Enrigue, translated by Natasha Wimmer. And it takes place in what is now Mexico City.

It was then called Tenochtitlan in 1519. Ernan Cortez has just rolled into town with all of his

soldiers, and he meets the Aztec emperor, Maktizuma. You have these two cultures coming together.

There's this threat of violence that hangs over the whole thing.

But there's also this comedy of manners elements to the entire book.

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