A monthly conversation about books and ideas on NTS Radio hosted by friends Carrie Plitt, a literary agent, and Octavia Bright, a writer and academic. Each show features an author interview, book recommendations, lively discussion and a little music too, all built around a related theme - anything from the novella to race to masculinity. Listen live on NTS Radio www.nts.live
So it turns out, we missed talking to each other about books, and we missed you! And thanks to some vital sponsorship from our friends at Faber Books, we are BACK, baby, for this extra long one-off Year in Review episode.
This show is full of recommendations from the last year (or two), as well as a bit of a catch up. Since we last appeared in your feeds, we've both had babies, Carrie moved to New York, Octavia moved south of the river...
And so we bring you this extended episode full of our usual reading recommendations and resolutions, news of some exciting debut fiction coming from Faber Books next year, plus an extra segment where we catch up on our experiences of becoming new parents, and the books that have helped us and kept us company through the wild last couple of years. We hope you enjoy listening!
Produced by Lucy Dearlove https://lucydearlove.com/
Find a list of all recommended books at: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/year-in-review-2025-and-new-parenthood
This episode is sponsored by Faber https://www.faber.co.uk/
19 Dec 2023
Literary Friction - Year (and Decade) in Review 2023
It's time for our usual Year in Review show, but seeing as this is also our last EVER episode (sob!), we're shaking things up a little to bring you a bit of a decade in review as well, so we can look back over our highlights from ten wonderful years of Literary Friction.
This show is stuffed full of recommendations, including our favourite reads from this year and books we're looking forward to reading in 2024, but also the books we're happiest to have found through the show. So, if you need inspiration for what to get your friends and loved ones this holiday season then listen closely! You can find a list of all the books mentioned at the link below.
Thank you to everyone who has helped us make the show over the years, to all the brilliant authors who have chatted with us, and most of all, thank you all so much for listening.
Find a list of all recommended books at: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/december-2023-year-and-decade-in-review
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/litfriction
Email us: litfriction@gmail.com
30 Nov 2023
Literary Friction - A Life of One's Own with Xialou Guo
What does it mean, to pursue a life of your own? And what is art and literature's role in figuring out what that might look like? This month we're delighted to be talking to writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo, whose latest book Radical: A Life of My Own is both a personal lexicon and a memoir, which thinks deeply about what it would mean to truly forge a life of one’s own.
As we announced on our last minisode, we’re wrapping up Literary Friction at the end of this year, so this is our last author interview. Xiaolu is a really fitting last guest, because of how she thinks about things like language, translation, freedom and radicality through literature, which are many of the themes we’ve returned to again and again over the last decade of shows. Don’t worry though - this isn’t our final episode! We’ll be bringing you a bumper edition of our year in review in a couple of weeks’ time.
Recommendations on the theme, A Life of One's Own:
Octavia: The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
Carrie: The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright
General Recommendations:
Octavia: Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon
Xiaolu: Art Monsters by Lauren Elkin, and Humanly Possible by Sarah Bakewell
Carrie: Trust by Hernan Diaz
Find a list of all recommended books at: https://uk.bookshop.org/lists/december-2023-a-life-of-one-s-own-with-xiaolu-guo
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/litfriction
Email us: litfriction@gmail.com
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