Andrew Leigh

Long runs and audiobooks go together like mystery and midnight. Over the course of 2024, I’ve enjoyed a variety of books – and even a few in print. Some are published in 2024, but many are just ones that I’ve consumed this year. Favourites below, in case they pique your reading interest.

Fiction

• Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead – The brutal-yet-beautiful story of an orphan growing up in the Appalachian region of Virginia, navigating abusive foster parents, loss of friends and the opioid epidemic to find love, creativity and identity.
• Hugh Watson, The Silo – Political corruption and murder in a grain silo. The second novel by a talented Canberra writer.
• Dennis Glover, Thaw – Historically grounded fiction that reimagines Robert Scott’s tragic journey to the south pole in the light of what we now know about a changing climate.
• Jo Hamya, The Hypocrite - Enjoyed Jo Hamya's short novel ‘The Hypocrite’ is a sharp analysis of generational differences over sexual norms, set in London and Sicily (with a beautifully clever ending).
• Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch – I'm late in getting to Donna Tartt's ‘The Goldfinch’, which won the 2014 Pulitzer is a huge story of a complex life, centred on love, loss, beauty and violence. At 771 pages, it's well worth your time.
• Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius – I’m late to this one, but it’s a rollicking read. I especially enjoyed Eggers’ way of breaking the fourth wall.
• Jacqueline Woodson, Another Brooklyn – A quirky tale of growing up in New York’s twin city in the 1970s.
• James Mcbride, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store – A tale of Black and Jewish people living on the margins of the white-dominated town of Chicken Hill. Come for the plot (a body is found in a well), stay for the characters (Moshe and Chona, Dodo and Monkeypants).
• Sierra Greer, Annie Bot – A compelling and chilling read. Hard to say too much without spoiling it, but it's both relevant to our technological era and modern-day debates over violence and control.
• Jennifer Weiner, The Breakaway – One of the joys of fiction is expanding your worldview. The Breakaway is a romcom novel with a plus-sized protagonist and exquisitely entertaining plot.
• Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds and Paul Harding, This Other Eden – Two novels about American settlers making their way in tough environments. They capture the beauty and brutality of nature, and make you truly appreciate having food, shelter and a hot shower.
• Kiley Reid, Such a Fun Age – Blends parenting, dating and the subtleties of US racial politics. It took a while to get into the book, but by the middle it had hooked me.
• A Cosby, All the Sinners Bleed – A captivating crime novel, starring a Black police chief in a small Virginia town. Racial politics, small town intrigue, and more. Well worth reading.
• Richard Flanagan, Question 7 – A partly autobiographical story about chance and consequence. Richard’s other books have hooked me from the start. This one grew more slowly on me.
• Sean Michaels, Do You Remember Being Born? – A 75-year-old poet collaborates with an AI to write a long poem. A beautiful tale, unfurled slowly, with as many insights about poetry as computers.
• Patricia Engels, The Faraway World: Stories – Ten tales from the Americas cover people on the margins of society, finding beauty in unlikely places.
• Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus – The strangely compelling fictionalised story of the academic past of Benzion Netanyahu, father of the current Israeli Prime Minister. A reminder of how narratives of the past shape the future.
• Paul Murray, The Bee Sting – Just in case you thought that Irish fiction had become more upbeat since ‘Angela's Ashes’, The Bee Sting will set you straight. An insightful, contemporary, gut-punch of a novel.
• Bora Chung and Anton Hur, Cursed Bunny – If you think that the problem with Aesop's Fables is that they're not dark enough, you'll relish Bora Chung's ‘Cursed Bunny’. Splendidly written, but a bit too much horror for me.
• Jonathan Coe, Middle England – An exploration of xenophobia in 2010s Britain, through the interwoven lives of a group of driving instructors, journalists, art historians and publishers.
• Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry – A novel about science, feminism, cooking and love. Since finishing it, I've bought three copies for friends. Highly recommended.

If you’re curious about crime fiction, check out my Good Life podcast conversation with Tanya Plibersek, covering her favourite writers, including Louise Penny, Donna Leon, Alan Furst and Mick Herron.

Books About Writing

• Salman Rushdie, Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder – Despite being stabbed 12 times and losing an eye, Rushdie is remarkable free of hate. My favourite part was his fictionalised ‘interview’ with the assailant, in which the author makes up both sides of the conversation.
• Anna Funder, Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life – A reminder that the extraordinary writer also had a pretty extraordinary partner, and that he could be quite a cad.
• Angus Fletcher, Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature – Fletcher explores the idea of literary ‘inventions’, such as stream-of-consciousness. I loved the literary analysis and the sheer diversity of sources, but wasn’t as convinced by the part of the book that seeks to apply the lessons to living a better life.
• Michiko Kakutani, Ex Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Reread – More a love letter to books than a list of favourites, it left me with oodles of ideas for future reading.
• Shaun Micallef, Tripping Over Myself: A Memoir of a Life in Comedy – The story of one of our greatest comics, who has written, acted and directed for stage and screen. Despite his manic energy, Shaun has a gentle way of considering how comedy has changed, such as his discussion of why a white comic in the 2020s might do a British accent, but not an Indian one.
• Shaun Micallef, Silvers, Shards and Skerricks – A panoply of short writings, ranging from hardbitten detective fiction to sci-fi to poetry. If you prefer to listen than read, check out the podcast of our ANU/Canberra Times ‘Meet the Author’ event at the launch of this book.

Science and Technology

• Ethan Mollick, Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI – The most engrossing book I've read on artificial intelligence. It'll help you better understand this fascinating technology and suggest new ways of playing with it.
• Katie Spalding, Edison’s Ghosts – Some of history’s most brilliant people were serious weirdos. Spalding has a flair for engaging stories, and her book reminds us that the line between genius and lunatic is sometimes a fine one.
• Jeff Goodell, The Heat Will Kill You First – Suitably scary summer reading about the many impacts of a hotter planet.
• Nina Jankowicz, How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict – A deep-dive into how Russian misinformation is flooding across democracies, and what we can do to combat it. If you prefer to listen than read, check out the podcast of our ANU/Canberra Times ‘Meet the Author’ event with Nina Jankowicz and Van Badham.

Wellbeing

• Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness – Meticulously researched and powerfully argued, this book makes the case that the worsening of teen mental health that began around 2007-2010 is causally related to the rise of smartphones and social media in that period. Here’s my review in the SMH/Age.
• Adam Grant, Hidden Potential – Grant has a knack for popularising important scientific research. His new book is an engaging blend of stories and studies, emphasising growth over achievement.
• Catherine Price, The Power of Fun – Working hard and raising children doesn’t always leave much time for having fun. Price makes the case that fun isn’t just frivolous, it’s important. After reading it, I started asking friends and colleagues ‘what do you do to have fun?’. The answers were fascinating.
• Will Guidara, Unreasonable Hospitality – I’m not sure that I could ever justify spending US$365 for a meal at Eleven Madison Park, but I still enjoyed Guidara’s stories about building a restaurant based on ‘unreasonable hospitality’, and how each of us could learn to be more hospitable.
• Chris Anderson, Infectious Generosity – The head of TED has some lovely tales about how positivity has made the world a better place.
• Ryan Holiday, Right Thing, Right Now – 37-year-old Holiday has written at least a dozen books about stoicism, and isn’t running out of ideas. Right Thing is a lovely succession of stories about people whose bravery helped shape a fairer and kinder world.
• Arnold Schwarzenegger, Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life – I enjoyed this book more than I'd expected. It's not perfect (‘Stare hard in the mirror!’... ‘Get rid of mirrors!’). But the book is especially good at demolishing the myth of the ‘self made man’ and acknowledging the value of mentors and community supports.
• Martinus Evans, Slow AF Run Club – I’d love it if more people could share the joy of running. If you feel like you’ve got the ‘wrong’ body for running, Martinus Evans’s book is a nice mix of motivational advice and practical tips for plus-sized runners.
• Matt Fitzgerald, 80/20 Running and Matt Fitzgerald and David Warden, 80/20 Triathlon – Fitzgerald’s insight is that amateurs spend too much time training in the middle intensity zone. Instead, he argues that we should follow what the pros do, and spend 80% of our time doing easy workouts, and 20% doing hard workouts. Since reading these books, I’ve tried to push myself harder in my sprints, and make the easy workouts as relaxing as possible.
• BJ Fogg, Tiny Habits – Want to start flossing your teeth each night? Start by flossing one tooth, advises Fogg. Start small, and you’re more likely to have success in building a lasting habit.
• Paul Bloom, Psych: The Story of the Human Mind – An energetic romp through modern psychology, exploring what we know and what we’re still learning. Along the way, you’ll read why many undergraduate psychology courses don’t mention Freud, and how the discipline is responding to the replication crisis.

Policy

• Richard Holden, Money in the Twenty-First Century – One of Australia’s most prominent and prolific economists offers a clear-eyed analysis of cryptocurrencies, central bank digital currencies, the role of cash in crime, MMT and more.
• Melissa Kearney, The Two Parent Privilege – When I wrote Battlers and Billionaires, I found family structure to be the trickiest aspect of inequality. But progressives can’t afford to leave discussions about families to be the exclusive preserve of the right.
• Dan Pallotta, UnCharitable – If you think charities need to pay their staff as little as possible, and minimize marketing costs, then Dan might just change your mind. If you don’t have time for the book, try Dan’s documentary or TED talk.
• Gregg Colburn and Clayton Aldern, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem – A compelling, data-driven argument that the underlying driver of homelessness is a failure to build enough homes
• Jenny Schuetz, Fixer-Upper: How to Repair America’s Broken Housing Systems – A wide-ranging analysis, with plenty of pithy observations, including the notion that NIMBY politics reflects a negative externality of home ownership
• Anupam Jena and Christopher Worsham, Random Acts of Medicine – The risk of getting an operation on the surgeon's birthday, why summer-born kids are more likely to get diagnosed for ADHD and more. A fun read that takes causality seriously.

Politics

• Iola Mathews, Race Mathews: A Life in Politics - The story of a man who served as Whitlam's principal private secretary, federal MP and Victorian MP, and has contributed for decades to debates around equity, community, cooperatives and the arts.
• Gretchen Whitmer, True Gretch – The Michigan Governor’s autobiography is an enjoyable read. It covers her ‘fix the damn roads’ election slogan, having fun on social media, the value of kindness in politics and much more.
• Jeff Nussbaum, Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches That Would Have Rewritten History – Includes snippets from everything from JFK’s announcement of airstrikes on Cuba to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 victory speech, compiled by a former Biden speechwriter
• Patricia Evangelista, Some People Need Killing – A harrowing book about the extrajudicial killings that occurred while Rodrigo Duterte was in power. Journalism at its best.
• Franklin Foer, The Last Politician – The title comes from Foer’s belief that Biden represents the last of the congressional dealmakers – willing to build cross-party coalitions for legislative reform. The book is an inside look into the first two years of Biden’s Presidency, a different approach to governing than what lies ahead.
• Tony Blair, On Leadership – In 1980, Gerard Kaufman wrote an interesting book called How to Be a Minister. For the first few chapters, I thought Blair was looking to update it. But as it went on, the focus moved away from how ministers should be effective in advanced countries and more towards the kinds of people Blair has been consulting with – heads of state in fragile democracies.
• Sean Turnell, An Unlikely Prisoner – The remarkable tale of the Aussie professor who became Aung San Suu Kyi’s economics adviser, and then spent 650 days in Burmese jails. If you prefer to listen than read, check out my Good Life podcast with Shaun.
• Frank Bongiorno, The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia – For political tragics, this is the literary equivalent of putting on Cold Chisel and INXS. A fabulous summary of a formative decade.
• Frank Bongiorno, Dreamers and Schemers: A Political History of Australia – If you want a one-volume account of Australian political history, this one is hard to beat.
• Dennis Glover, Repeat - A rallying cry against populism, from an Orwell scholar who worries ‘the psychological climate of Stalin's Soviet Union and Nazi Germany can be felt afresh’. At just 148 pages, it's vital reading for all who cherish democracy.

What books have you enjoyed this year?