Every year Waterstones booksellers vote on what will be the retailer’s books of the year, which will be heavily promoted in the chain’s shops across the country as Christmas shoppers pour in this month. On Thursday, 2024’s choices were revealed: Butter by Asako Yuzuki, translated from Japanese by Polly Barton, is the book of the year, while Ross Montgomery’s story of a loyal dog, I Am Rebel, is the children’s book of the year.
Word-of-mouth hit Butter is inspired by the real-life case of the “konkatsu killer” who poisoned three of her lovers, “weaving tense mystery with blistering social commentary and skewering the media’s obsession with true crime”, according to Waterstones’ head of books, Bea Carvalho. “Fans of fiction of all kinds will devour Butter,” she thinks.
Meanwhile London bookshop and wine bar Bookbar has picked Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep as its own book of the year. “We’ve been pressing it into the hands of anyone who walks through our door,” Bookbar’s founder Chrissy Ryan says. She describes the Dutch writer’s debut novel, shortlisted for this year’s Booker prize, as “electric”. Set in the Netherlands in the 1960s, the “exquisitely written” novel would suit “anyone who loves a propulsive page-turner that reckons with history”, Ryan says.
Clive Judd and Maria Lomunno Judd, owners of Voce Books in Birmingham, think that British writer and translator Jen Calleja’s book Goblinhood would make a great present “for anyone who enjoys a truly unusual, consistently surprising and damn fun read this festive period”. They describe the essay collection, which explores the author’s theory of “goblin as a mode” as “less a mythological history and more a personal, discursive, contemporary mindmap of the little green goblin” and “one of the most uniquely thrilling and experimental books to hit our shelves in 2024”.
For poetry fans, Barry Sinton, owner of Barton Books in Penzance, Cornwall, recommends Battery Rocks by local writer Katrina Naomi. Named after the writer’s favourite swimming spot in the seaside town, the collection “sings of the joys, the fears, the chaos of life, with a voice infused with the sea in all its forms”, Sinton says.
A “perfect gift” would be Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “stunning little hardback” The Serviceberry, which “fits in a stocking or beside each placemat around the dining table with beautiful illustrations and design,” says Elizabeth Moss, owner and founder of Heron Books in Bristol. The writer and botanist’s latest book uses berry-picking as a way in to “a comprehensive argument about gift economies”, Moss says: it ultimately “suggests a vastly improved way of living for all of us”.
Another book that is “beautiful both to behold and to read” is Understorey, written and illustrated by Anna Chapman Parker, recommended by Emma Hamlett, owner of Collected Books in Durham. Documenting a year spent examining weeds via prose and drawings, the artist and writer has created “a delightful, quiet, and tender day-to-day exploration of what can be gained by paying attention to the smallest of things”, Hamlett says. Those receiving it as a Christmas present could begin reading it in January, the bookseller suggests: “This book brings a lovely mix of joy, curiosity, and reflection to accompany you through the calendar year.”
As for what to get kids, “there are a lot of seasonal picture books published every year,” says Katie Clapham, bookseller at Storytellers, Inc. in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire. But for those looking for a particularly good one, she says Mac Barnett and Sydney Smith’s new children’s book Santa’s First Christmas “feels like an instant classic”.
“Barnett’s pitch-perfect text is paired with Smith’s glowing illustrations and the result is something so cosy and festive,” Clapham says. “I’m planning on reading it every Christmas for the rest of my life.”
Pictured top: an illustration from Santa’s First Christmas by Mac Barnett and Sydney Smith
Japanese author Asako Yuzuki. Photograph: Junya Inagaki.
