Danielle McLaughlin lets us in on her love for swimming, and ties the hobby right back in with her love for literature. With books like Swell: A Waterbiography by Jenny Landreth, there is much to talk about around the world of water. Danielle takes us on a literary plunge, and it’s nothing less than fascinating.

Karoline Bourdeau introduces us to BetaBooks, a platform where authors open up their writing for crowd-sourced consultation. Plus, we ponder about our own 2025 reading goals, and consider how Spotify is changing the competition for audiobook consumption.

Here’s our Year in Reading, one-hour special episode, featuring your top lit picks of 2024. From page-turning thrillers to memorable memoirs, and even the unforgettable guilty pleasures, you have us covered. AMI’s Dave Brown helps us crank out the list of your best book experiences of the year.

Karoline Bourdeau

• But You Don't Look Arab: And Other Tales of Unbelonging by Hala Gorani

• The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters by Susan Page

• This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune

• The Women by Kristin Hannah

• Dancing in Small Spaces: One Couple’s Journey with Parkinson’s Disease and Lewy Body Dementia by Leslie A. Davidson

Greg David

• Closer by Sea by Perry Chafe

Terry Bray

• The Wandering Inn (Book 1 of The Wandering Inn series) by Pirate Aba

Julie Martin

• The Woman in the White Kimono by Ana Johns

Danielle McLaughlin

• The Anthropologists by Aysegul Savas

Kamini Rodhan

• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Aamer Khan

• Vox by Christina Dalcher

• Will Trent Series by Karin Slaughter

• The Love Match by Priyanka Taslim

Carole Yaple

• Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice by David S. Tatel

• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Kelly MacDonald

• Tuesdays at Mori’s by Mitch Albom

Paul Daniel

1. As Long As the Lemon Trees by Zoufa Katouh

2. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters by Tom Nichols

3. Consent: A Memoir by Jill Ciment

4. Sandwich: A Novel by Catherine Newman

5. Hope for Cynics: The Science Behind Human Goodness by Jamil Shaki

Sehdeen Lowe

• Every book by Anastasia Wilde

• A Thousand Boy Kisses by Tillie Cole

• A Thousand Broken Pieces (Sequel)

An emergency landing during a flight to Toronto has a group of strangers, including an entire bridal party, snowbound at the quirky Snow Falls Inn in a picture-perfect town. As romances unfold and movies are filmed, they soon realize there’s no place they’d rather be for the holidays. We review this fun, cozy Holiday read with Aamer Khan.

Karen Magee steps right into the rabbit hole if she enjoyed the first book an author wrote. She also can’t remember the last time she didn’t finish a book she started, no matter how painful it was to keep reading. She shares her five most recent reads, under the 15-second pressure clock, on Rapid Fire Review.

In a society where people with disabilities remain largely invisible, what does it mean to parent a child born With Down syndrome? Adelle Purdham began unpacking a lifetime of her own ableism and society’s role in it, after the birth of her daughter. We explore her collection of essays, I Don’t Do Disability and Other Lies I’ve Told Myself, describing her honest, resilient journey.

Alexei Navalny’s Patriot is an unpolished memoir, mostly written from prison, chronicling his fight against corruption in Russia through his deeply personal journey. With humorous passages, pro references to Harry Potter, Navalny’s reflections on family and love give Sara Hillis and the gang much to review around this this intense political narrative.

Do book lists even matter? Karen McKay and Theresa Power from the Centre for Equitable Library Access to chat about the year’s hottest book lists. We dive into picks from the Globe and Mail and New York Times, while discussing the place of these lists in today’s book world.