Hey, it's NPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong, and it is that time of year for NPR's

books we love. This is our big year-end package rounding up all of our favorite reads this year.

I spoke with NPR Steve Innskeep about this project, about how we put it together, how to use it,

and highlighting just a few of the picks. And I stress a few

because there are about 350 books on this bad boy. My interview with Steve Inskeep coming up,

but if you wanted to check it out now, just head over to npr.org slash books.

Today, NPR is releasing the 2024 edition of our books we love. It's a reading guide that we produce

every year. And Andrew Limbong, host of NPR's Book of the Day podcast, is here to tell us about it.

Andrew, good morning. Hey, Steve. Okay, so what is this thing? Yeah, so it is a kind of democratic way to

approach year end lists. We ask every year NPR staff and critics for

their favorite reads and compile it all. So at the end of the day, we've got like 350 titles

in total. Okay, small D Democratic, I get that, but recommending 350 books, that's so many,

it's like recommending none. What's going on there? Listen, you don't got to read all of them. That's not the point, right? So there are these little filters you can use on the side to narrow down the books that you prefer for your taste, right? And the whole point of it, right, is not to tell you like from up on high, hear ye, here are the 10 best books of the year. It's like, hey, here's a stack of books. You're

guaranteed to find at least like one or two that you would love. And they include books recommended

by NPR staff. So what's a book you recommended? One of my favorite books this year was this

book called Victim by Andrew Bariga. He's a debut novelist. It's about a guy named Javi

who kind of lies and fudges his background

to get ahead in the like personal essay literary space, right? He makes his life seem a lot harder

than it actually was. And he becomes among like literary elite circles the, the voice of a

marginalized community. I'm sure this never happens in real life.

Yeah, yeah.

No, and it's just like a really, obviously like any great story about liars, the house of cards comes tumbling down, but it's a really funny satirical take on like the literary elite class.

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