The Best Books of 2024 (So Far)

What are the best books of 2024? The year is not yet coming to an end and we can already say that it will leave behind its share of strong and inspiring works. Sometimes didactic, sometimes moving (and sometimes both at the same time), the latest literary releases have once again made us want to take the time to meet a writer. Whether novels, essays or comics, there was something for everyone. Thus, the writing of French Vogue lists the best books of 2024, or those that particularly caught his attention.

Hyperpop by Julie Ackerman

ReadingHyperpopthe first work of Julie Ackermannwas one of the best of this year. Both deeply intimate, immersed in her early years of celebration and ecstasy, and eminently political, this essay can be read at breakneck speed, such is the frenzy of its author’s writing. In an almost emo (or even completely emolet’s not be afraid), this offers a first real reflection around this musical genre which is not really one, rather used as an umbrella term in order to group the birth of a scene, around artists like the British A. G. Cook et Sophieup to his French heirs like ELOI. A sort of ultra-synthesis of pop music, where all the sliders are pushed to the extreme, hyperpop is the reflection of capitalism adrift, in an age of overconsumption. Thus, voices pitched to the irony of cringe, Julie Ackermann is on a mission to decipher a movement that has defined the boundaries of pop over the last ten years. Intense and awesome.

Didion and Babitz by Lili Anolik

Cold, reserved, hidden behind her huge sunglasses. These are often the first things that come to mind when we think about Joan Didionan immense American writer, to whom we owe major works including The Year of Magical Thinking or Bad players. His pen is also in his image: both distant and incisive, cold and surgical. By her peers, the author was perceived, until her death in December 2021, as an opaque and elusive character.

This year, the author and journalist Lili Anolik proposes to (re)discover Joan Didion through the prism of her friendship with another American writer: Eve Babitz. The two women in fact maintained an intense correspondence, marking a stormy relationship, spread over many years. In Didion and Babitzavailable from November 12, 2024, she deciphers the smallest details.

Run the snail by Lauren Bastide

“Listening to yourself and respecting yourself is the most beautiful resistance”, confided Lauren Bastide when we met her, almost a year ago, on the occasion of the release of her first novel, 2060. A maxim that corresponds in every way to the state of mind with which she wrote Run the snailpublished a few months later during the winter literary season. A sort of small journal of poetic writing, the work is in fact much more than that: it becomes the guide to a sparkling journey into memory, a symbol of resilience and healing from trauma. The feminist journalist, podcaster and author examines, with a well-recognized element of fantasy, the power of slowing down. “We are living in a time that is full of anxieties and threats, and at the same time a demand for productivity to get better right away. The first thing to do is to allow yourself the kindness of slowness. If we want to get better, we will have to take the time to experience our emotions and accept collective or individual distress” say Lauren Bastide. To meditate.

Who’s afraid of gender? de Judith Butler

It’s difficult to ignore the new work of Judith Butler at the heart of this selection of the best books of 2024. Made famous by her founding essay, Gender troublepublished in 1990 in the United States, the researcher has since charted her path, constantly renewing her feminist and revolutionary thinking. In Who’s afraid of gender?it provides a practical manual countering contemporary media discourses, which have managed to establish a climate of terror in contemporary debates around gender. From the United States of Donald Trump in the United Kingdom where the author resides J.K Rowling, Judith Butler sets out to dissect the arguments put forward by gender critics, in order to highlight the rationality – and the crucial importance – of a resolutely feminist thesis on gender fluidity and the protection of trans people.

More than thirty years after the first publication of Gender troubleat a time when the far right and authoritarian regimes enjoy exponential popularity in Europe as in the United States, Judith Butler therefore proposes a solid response to the controversies such as the difference between nature and culture, the interaction between sex and gender, the colonial heritage of sexual difference, the relations between feminisms and the trans movement… A call to “form a broad coalition” in a continuing struggle.

burn everything by Lucile de Pesloüan

Each literary season has its share of first-time novelists, and it is the frank and poetic pen of Lucile of Pesloüan which impressed us, and moved us, during that of September 2024. Already author of a feminist manifesto, Why do girls have stomach aches?the writer now delivers a story about finding herself – and regaining a taste for others.