2024 Book Review

My 5th book review, see related posts at the bottom to see earlier years.

I thought I was steaming through books this year but have only ended up listening to 35.

Last year started off with some relatively weak books before ending with some great ones. This year was different. It started strong and has been strong all year. That makes it tough to pick a top 3, but I think they are:

Debt

Debt was the clear winner. Such an amazing book which makes you realise how debt, slavery and bondage were a key part of all societies and very normal until very recently, with slavery disappearing for most people on one level, but debt remaining very much in place creating social obligations that we cannot escape.

Normal Women

Normal Women by Philippa Gregory was an epic book at over 24 hours long (usual running time is between 7 to 11 hours). However, it was a brilliant book. Although women are difficult to see in recorded history, Gregory looks at every glimpse she finds and then pulls in as much evidence she can find which really opens your eyes to women's real place in history, that of leaders, fighters and shapers of history. Its a much more interesting view of history than the one written by males with power and privilege.

Ravenous

Ravenous by Henry Dimbleby of the Dimbleby family was great and was a manifesto that I felt totally aligned to common sense and what you think needs to happen in respect of farming and food. Dimbleby was commissioned by the previous Tory government to produce a food strategy for them which he did. It contained something like 30 recommendations and they implemented less than 5 despite all the recommendations being pretty much exactly the type of policy we need to see implemented in order to help farmers, deal with obesity, and help move food producers from being like drug cartels to positively serving society.

The Full List and the Runners Up

The full list:

Economics and Politics

In other years Fully Automated Luxury Communism could have easily been in the top 3 but against a David Graber book thats very difficult.

Debt has also meant that I have pushed a Grace Blakely book out of my top 3 and that breaks my heart, as Vulture Capitalism was brilliant and she remains me hero.

The Invisible Doctrine by George Monbiot was a great book and one I gave a donation towards to get it published. I hope his film is released next year and isn’t too AI heavy.

I went to see Torsen Bell talk in person and he was good. I will stick my neck out and say a potential future leader of the Labour party. Certainly he already has more charisma than Starmer. His book was great.

I read Truss at 10 (How Not to be a Prime Minister) mainly out of irony, but it was actually a very good book. Given the length of her leadership you get an almost hour by hour blow of things and it ranges between being unbelievable, hilarious and also terrifying. This is a woman who in all seriousness said that to save the money she needed after her budget that the NHS should stop providing cancer care to the British people. I don’t think that gets enough attention. Ordinary British people would have been left to die if they could not afford their cancer treatment. Almost all of her colleagues mention autism and I think that’s something we also get to see in her public performances but it’s not an excuse.

Tomorrows People by Paul Morland could have made the top 3 in other years as could Capital without Borders by Christine Delaine.

Finally, the Wisdom of the Native Americans was brilliant. Their way of seeing the world, and their way of dealing with things seemed so much more sophisticated than Europeans, yet we seemed to have taken credit for anything we liked and then committed genocide on a grand scale to remove them from the planet. Its a tragedy and shows that being the cleverest in a situation doesn't guarantee that you won’t be taken out by an inferior rival.

Women

Laura Bates, Fix the System, not the Women would have made the top 3 in any other year but cannot beat Normal Women. The Handsmaid’s Tail I found disappointing but clearly other people see something in it that I don't.

Difficult Women would have also made the top 3 in any other year and contained some brilliant stories about some over looked awkward misfit women. The lack of stories about the women of Greenham Common is a real shame and Helen Lewis does pick up on a few women who were there.

Land, Food and Farming

Rooted by Sarah Langford would have made the top 3 easily but possibly my most challenging omission from the top 3 is English Pastoral by James Rebanks. James is a farmer in the Lake District and shows that farmers are not the enemy and they need support, but that can and should be separated from large wealthy landowners using the land as tax avoidance tools and increasing its costs for the average farmer.

I love Guy Shrubsole and went to see him talk in person during the year but The Lie of The Land did not make the top 3. It is still straight forward and great. A small victory that got reported by MSM on Boxing Day (a quiet news day normally) that unrecorded rights of way are no longer going to expire in 2030 was great news. Of course land owners are unhappy so what with IHT changes, expect some more squeaking and a big media push for Reform or the Tories before the next election.

Wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Wallis I also loved much more than I expected to. The complexity of rubbish is amazing and we could do so much more in how we deal with it.