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This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff O'Neill. I'm Rebecca Shinsky. And Rebecca, you called your shot yesterday. Ooh, yeah, I did. You even went so far as to pre-record an Instagram reel for it, which when I told that to Michelle, she was like, wow. I don't know if she thought it was carving out Mount Rushmore or what, but still, you called it. You were really that confident.
I felt pretty sure. And of course, what we're talking about is that Percival Everett would win the Pulitzer for fiction for James. I was just going to be really surprised, which the Pulitzers can be surprising, but I wanted to have it ready to go if he was going to win. And I thought it was worth, you know, just speculating.
Spend the time, make the video. If he had not gotten it, I would have hopped to and made a new video about whoever had won it, probably trying to put my face together about that it wasn't Percival Leverett. I'm not going to write obituaries of people in advance. We don't have to be that coordinated at Book Riot the way they do at the New York Times. But I really felt good about it, so I went for it. And then I had a brief, oh my God, did I jinx it? And then I had a, wait, no, they've already made the decision.
It's fine. It's fine. So thrilled that James won. Delighted. There is a wrinkle here. Did you see that Lit Hub piece? No. Did you notice that there are three finalists for Fishy? I did.
Yes. So I noted yesterday during the announcement, like four finalists is unusual. Did they give three and then the committee requested the fourth? Well, that is, I don't have the link in front of me right now, but I'll put it in the show notes. That is what a writer at Lit Hub is wondering what happened here. Because in the bylaws for the thing is that there's a smaller pool of judges that recommend to the full Pulitzer board, pick one of these. Yes.
Why would there be three finalists? A winner and three finalists, so four books. Yeah. This is not in any of the other ones. The other weird thing is this year there's two winners for, we'll see, what is the co-winners for? History. We'll get to some of the others. But I am pretty compelled by this because I'll tell you why.
One is that James is very well regarded, respected, and known. And the other three finalists are pretty obscure. And I can absolutely see a situation in which the board was like, what are you doing? Where's James? We don't know.
No. What? Headshot by Rita Bullwinkle, which we... Go ahead. Yeah, I was like, when I saw that there were four finalists, my first thought was, oh, maybe they're going to give a double award again this year. Because that happened a few years ago. There were... The year that Demon Copperhead won, it shared the award. And that was possible. But it's just been a busy day today. So I had not gotten into the analysis. But I think this theory holds water. I think it does, too.
Yeah, the finalists, as you were saying, are Headshot by Rita Bullwinkle, which is a great novel. We both really liked it. We both really liked it, yeah. Creative, interesting. Not like a game changer in the way that you kind of want the Pulitzer Prize winning novel to be. You're not significant. I don't think that a Headshot is going to turn out to have been significant in the long arc of history. The Unicorn Woman by Gail Jones, which is from Beacon Press. I don't know anything about that one. Or Mice 1961 by Stacey Levine.
from verse chorus press. Hadn't heard of that one either. So if the thinking here is those three were the three that the committee put forward and the Pulitzer board might've said, all right, let's, let's take another pass. We don't want to do 2012. So give us a fourth one. And they came back with James and,
It's interesting. I mean, I like Gail Jones. I read her last two books. I had not read The Unicorn Woman. I don't know anything about, well, I now know what I looked up about mice 1961s, which is about twin sisters and their orphan twin sisters and their housekeeper. I don't know. Seems kind of like an interesting book.
And the Pulitzers, again, here's a hypothesis we don't know. Will someone comment? I bet eventually this is going to come out. Having not read the other two books, I can't say James deserved to win, so on and so forth. But I am pleased to see James won. I could certainly understand the Pulitzer board. Here's the truth. In a lot of years, I'm guessing a lot of the Pulitzer board people...
haven't read any of the finalists once they're sort of handed the slate of books. Oh, I think that's probably fair. But with James, it sold enough copies. And with Everett and American fiction and everything going on, that's the kind of room that people were going to give it a shot and try James, try Priscilla Everett, maybe even heard of it. Yeah. Or if they had...
If they had read it in their spare time, just because the profile of the book was so big, you're kind of holding that in the back of your mind as a comp. Yes. That the other, that the three finalists you're handed are competing against. Does it knock all of these books? Yeah. And so if, if this is what happened and some of the Pulitzer board, uh,
had already read James and were coming through Headshot and Mice 1961 and The Unicorn Woman with that comparison to James going on in the background I can totally see how that might happen I don't know this is the most surprising lineup of finalists of all of the book awards it's they consistently will have something that like not just that we haven't heard of but that like most readers have
Have not heard of it'll be small presses. It'll be things that happen by surprise. I think this is by virtue of they're reading hundreds and hundreds of books and it is a three person committee. Yeah. So if you get one person who's like super stoked about one of the titles and can convince the other two to read it and they get on board, then.
You know, it's this is a huge task. How many of the books do they even feel compelled to finish? I don't know, because you're trying to knock you're trying to knock things out pretty quickly to determine, oh, yeah, this is not I don't need to finish this because it's not going to be a contender. I bet you I think you're right. Somebody will talk at some point. People certainly talked in 2012 when there was no award given members of the committee.
afterwards and it'll be interesting to see what comes out here. I can't see who the fiction, I can't find who the fiction judges were. The full board is well known. I mean, it's a who's who. It's like the editor of the Boston Globe and yeah, David Remnick of the New Yorker and Jelani Cobb and Carlos Lozada. Like there's all bunch of people
people that are serious people, I would guess all of them have heard of James and Percival Everett. And that's unusual for the kinds of books that's going to be here. And maybe someone came for them. I don't know. I don't know what the politics, I don't know what the, if you're the jury, are you torqued off? Does the whole board read all three finalists in all these books?
in all these categories, that would seem like an impossible... I just don't know how much follow-through they require and everything goes. Again, I don't want to throw water on the James story because it is exciting, but this is...
Conclave. Conclave for books is what we've got right here. There is some sort of palace intrigue happening, or it certainly seems like it's possible that there was something very interesting. Very interesting to see happen there. Going on there. Nice, really nice moment for Headshot. Yes. And
The other one that I just wanted to call out was that one of the finalists for memoir and autobiography was I Heard Her Call My Name by Lucy Sant, which I think you got to first and said, oh my gosh, the audio is incredible. It's a wonderful reading experience. Man, that audio book is phenomenal. Let's see. In the other book-related categories in history,
I never know these. A lot of university presses, Oxford University Press, one shared in history, but also a finalist, University of Chicago Press, in biography, Every Living Thing, The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life, a double biography of Carl Linnaeus and Georges-Louis de Buffon, 18th century biographies,
plant biologists. And if I didn't know this book existed, I would have read this book already. Yeah, this looks right up both of our alleys. Also a very cool book, The World She Edited, Catherine S. White at the New Yorker by Amy Reading was a finalist of biography. That book was extremely good as well. The winner in memoir and biography, interestingly, was a graphic novel, graphic memoir, pardon me, by Tessa Hulls from MCD, which we've shouted out there.
Before, general nonfiction to the success of our hopeless cause, the many lives of the Soviet dissent movement. That's also University of Princeton. A finalist who was from Harvard University there, Until I Find You. Yeah, I mean, pretty, beside James, a pretty highbrow all things considered list across the board. I'm not sure, we didn't,
No all fours? Like, what else are we thinking? Yeah, no all fours. No martyr, kind of the hits from last year that we talked about. Yeah, martyr is more in the Pulitzer zone than all fours is. I would have been so surprised to see all fours. That really, I think, would have been a product of idiosyncratic.
jury members for the Pulitzer's overall vibe. Kind of in the way that in the drama category, I was surprised but delighted to see O'Mary by Cole Escola show up, which is just a really bold, kind of brazen out there performance. It's the kind of thing the Pulitzers would acknowledge, but not the kind of thing that you typically see win a Pulitzer. And again, maybe I had read the Lit Hub piece before
looking at the citations, and so I was reading these commendation for James with a, I don't know, a jaundiced eye, and James is described as an accomplished reconsideration of Huckleberry Finn. Does that seem a little...
Softish on the whammy bar there. When words like magisterial are available to you. Masterful. Accomplished. Reconsideration. That, that is, were that written at, was that written at the pinpoint?
Or somebody's Googling synonyms for it's not the worst. A redoubtable choice, as they say in the West Wing. Yeah, it's not the... That's felt very stayed, I guess, is one way of putting that particular... Yeah. Yeah. It's not the most superlative of superlatives. One of the shortest in terms of word count of any of the commendations in the book prize. Anyway, I don't want to read into it and
James is well-deserved, but wow, is that an interesting little wrinkle to get. Yeah, really going to want the tea on that one. On that. Anything else you want to say about the Pulitzer Prizes before we move on and talk about the wrap-up? This is the official end of book award season. The Pulitzers are the end of the awards for the previous year. And next week on the show, in the main feed, we will be...
our Fantasy Books League. Right. Where we'll be joined by Sharifa and Laura McGrath of Bookstats fame. Y'all really loved hearing her on here and we've had a great time talking with her. So she's going to... The four of us are each going to...
compose a team of 12 titles that earn points based on things like getting nominated for major awards, making it onto best books of the year list, that kind of thing. And we're going to be now getting into 2025 titles and our scoring for that will end with the Pulitzers in 2026. Here we go, new season. It seems an impossible task right now. When James came out in March of last year, you're like, ah, you could see it right now. I'm looking at some and I'm like, what?
Wow, it's a long time to go. I'm real glad that we're going to have two opportunities later in the year to change up our teams as more books come out and the year develops because it is feeling quite challenging here with less than half of the year under my belt to guess about, you know, what's going to go big, especially we haven't had like very many big hits.
this year so far. No, no, no, we haven't. So it's getting a little tough to guess about what the, you know, best books of the year list are going to look like. and speaking of forward-looking things in the podcast, actually, it'll be coming out the day after this goes in the main feed. Bonus preview of the summer new release draft.
in which Rebecca and I take, we bite off the first chunk of the summer and really start processing. There's some things there that I have my, you know, I'm taking their weights and measures. I see what their 40 time is, interviewing their family and friends, doing that urine samples all across the board. Okay. After the break, we're going to finish up with our moms, dads, and grads recommendations right after this word.
This episode is sponsored by Truth Demands by Abby Reyes. Stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook provided by our sponsors at North Atlantic Books. In 1999, Abby Reyes lost her partner as he and two others were murdered after departing Kaka'ika, the heart of the world of indigenous Uwa territory in Colombia.
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Today's episode is brought to you by Eighth Note Press, publishers of The Lost Saint by Rachel Craw.
So Anna was meant to kick it before college starts. It's summer. She thought she was going to be visiting German castles and drinking in myths of saints and miracles like one does before college starts, right? But then she goes to a party in the sacred caves of Aden Forest. An earthquake strikes and the party goers stumble out into a snowy landscape to find what? A battle raging. WTF, right?
okay follow me in the chaos anna is separated from the group and realizes she's been transported to the 14th century with no evident way to return on on top of all of that she also finds herself caught in a power struggle between the church the men of the north and a magnetic young lord who is determined to use her as a bargaining chip not the most romantic thing but hey
This is giving Outlander. It's giving Joan of Arc. It's like a YA to new adult-ish romanticy with a unique setting. Looking forward to it. Make sure to check out The Lost Saint by Rachel Krah. And thanks again to 8th Note Press for sponsoring this episode.
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Thanks again to 11 Reader for sponsoring this episode. Okay, Rebecca, where were we? Do you remember? Yeah. A little bit left to do here. Yeah, we've got...
A good number. I think we can mop them up here. This one is from Brianna, who is looking for recommendations for good airplane books for upcoming summer travel. She's looking for the kind of book you can get into and knock out in five or six hours. Obviously, mysteries and thrillers are often recommended for this, but just love mysteries or thrillers. I don't mind a mystery element and I can get into a good literary mystery like Happiness Falls, God of the Woods or All the Colors of the Dark.
But the true mystery genre books are not Brianna's preferred. So we're looking for recommendations that are non-mystery, really like binge read kinds of quality stuff here. Yeah. So I have a couple of ideas. One is, I don't know why I thought of this. Who knows how these things burble up through the transom of your mind. This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub, which is a novel, of course. And it is like narrow, small scale time travel.
there's this one little shed that the main character finds that she can use to time travel. And she goes back and forth in time about her father, family, neighborhood, relationships. So it's kind of like
It does. It's writing a literary fiction upmarket fiction with this very slight speculative fiction that allows it to encounter these things in a different way. And I remember just really enjoying my time with the book. And I don't know if I read it on a plane, but I think I read it in one or two sittings of the course because I just found it so pleasant and interesting.
in a good really way to spend time. But it also doesn't feel disposable, right? Like it's got a little crunch to it. Emma Straub is a real, like you could just kind of go to the Emma Straub shelf in your local bookstore and pick any of her titles. But for that same, like there's enough substance to feel like I did something here with this reading experience. It's not just, you know, cotton candy, but they do suck you right in, very absorbing, fun reading moments. And if you want to be a little more cringed out about,
Such a Fun Age by Kylie Reid, which since it came out December of one year, I can never remember what year it came out. I think it's three years ago now. I tore through like it was a bag, a canister of Pringles. I just kind of shotgunned Such a Fun Age, which is a story of race and class in Philadelphia centering on a young woman who goes to work for a wealthy Philadelphia family. And some things are said and seen.
And it has one of the great middle of the book kind of cliffhanger moments you're ever going to encounter. And as it accelerates to it and down from it, it'll be very difficult for you to put the book down, I would imagine. So Such a Fun Age by Kylie Reid and This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub are my selections there. All right. I'm going to go with Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby. He's been getting some shouts on this podcast recently and for good reason. This was one of my most recommendable books of the century so far. Yeah.
Just a page turner, but it's so gripping. It's super fun. It's about a former getaway driver who was the best in the business. And now he's living the straight life or so he thinks. But times are tough and his old pals come a-calling and they want to get the gang back together. And they're going to pull off a jewelry heist, but they need him to drive getaway. And it is not really about the heist. It's like a little bit about the heist, but it is mostly this guy's life and
How is he going to navigate this? What's going on with friends and family in the background? And then some just edge of your seat stuff while he like, I have never cared about descriptions of a man driving a car before. It's so, it is so good. I've enjoyed all of the essay Cosby's, but blacktop wasteland remains my favorite, such a really solid debut. And that'll, you will not notice that time is passing. It's just keep turning those pages. Like shotgun is a good term.
for that one as well. More recently, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix. This was my Grady Hendrix conversion moment earlier this year about a bunch of teenage girls who are at a home for unwed mothers in Florida in the 60s. It's a bad scene. It's like as bad of a scene as you would expect a place like that to be. But a kindly librarian driving a bookmobile gives them a spell book.
And they learn some things about witchcraft to maybe get some revenge on the people who are supposed to be taking care of them. But making deals with people to get special powers doesn't usually work out cleanly for the people involved. And so there
There are some surprise repercussions maybe for the girls. It's just a great time. It also really moved. It's a little on the long side, but you said you got a six hour flight. If you could knock this out, if not in one flight, then definitely across the course of your flights and your vacation, but really a good time. All right. Up next, this is from Heather.
I'm getting married next year. I'd love to hear some recommendations for nonfiction that you think will help me mentally prepare or contain wisdom and guidance. I've already read and loved Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel, Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert, and The Course of Love by Alain de Botton. The Five Love Languages wasn't for me. I'll happily take any advice from two long-married podcasters. Thanks so much. All right, Rebecca, what do you have?
All right. I mean, I think we could do this all day, this question. So I narrowed it down to Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give by Ada Calhoun, which is about what you would say if you were giving a really honest toast at a wedding. And so some of those things are sharp truths about
what it takes to make a long-term relationship successful, including that sometimes the trick to staying married is just not getting divorced. Like the trick to staying together is just deciding. Just don't go broke. Just don't go broke. Yeah. We're going to, we're going to make it through this thing. We're going to work through it. And of course, like she's not talking about situations where people are being abused or something, but like you hit a rough patch and every rough patch is a decision point.
And you decide we're going to stay together. But it's really warm and really funny and just encouraging. And it came out well after I was in a long-term situation. But it's the kind of thing that I think will help you get your head around like, okay, what is it going to be like? Because at the moment that you're planning a wedding or you're agreeing to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you're in like...
the rainbows and unicorns, everything is exciting phase. And I think, you know, you're aware that it's not always going to feel that way. But Calhoun had been married for quite a long time when she for like decades by the time that she wrote this book. And so some wisdom from someone who has walked that path ahead of you is is very welcome.
I also just wanted to go to like general how to talk about life stuff. So I looped in Tell Me More by Kelly Corrigan, which is about 12 things that we all need to say more in our relationships. And each chapter is about one of those things. So there's Tell Me More. There's I Don't Know. There's I'm Sorry. There are, you know...
nine other phrases and she expounds on what came up that made her realize this was a thing she needed to practice saying or asking more of the people in her life and what that has resulted in. I say, tell me more all the time. You do. And some of it,
Yeah, you can attest to that. Like, some of that is, you know, having had a lot of therapy. That's a good therapist phrase. But some of that is definitely Kelly Corrigan that like, and it's so effective. Like someone is talking to you about something in their life. And you just tell me more about that or say more people do they want to tell you they do. It's terribly effective. So you could do a lot worse than read that book and stick 12 post it notes around your house with the things that you want to practice saying more often. Yeah.
Yeah, I don't have relationship advice books or really even relationship advice in general. I think it's like other relationships, just more so. It's just more intense. It's harder to find space. But I do have two things that are good for any kinds of relationships, and one of which we've actually read in a work environment, but I'll talk about Listen by Katherine Mannix first.
I don't know this one. Not dissimilar than Tell Me More, but it's about listening and the art of listening and the psychology behind it and how people feel and how to listen better. I think what we have found as work compatriots in our own relationships too is that if things go askew, it's generally because someone isn't listening to the other or finding a hard way to do so. Sometimes it's because they are actually hearing exactly what is being said. And that is its own kind of challenge. But you get over the first hurdle first.
which is to give a fair crack at understanding what someone is trying to say. And it goes beyond the sort of cliched, I was trying to think of what I was going to say while the other person was talking. It's certainly that, but it's also really about strategies and the benefits that come from
from being a listening forward person. And so someone who is a verbose by nature, it's an especially welcome counter personality zag that's useful to do. But I thought it was very, very, very good. And then Drop the Ball by Tiffany Dufu, we read in a work setting several years ago. And that's about, what do you say, Rebecca? I mean, it's like some things just aren't going to happen. Letting some stuff go and choosing, it's not...
dissimilar at its core from the 4,000 weeks idea like you're not going to do it all you only have so much energy attention and time that do you really care about the shoes being tidy in the shoe tree in the foyer maybe you do or do you more care about what if someone comes over and thinks about what you think about the shoe tree that is also valid but also let's talk about that also do you expect the bed to be made every day and notice the passive voice there
If you expect it to be made every day, who is going to make it? Does your partner have to care as much about the things you care about as you do? It sounds wild, but most people don't realize that no, they don't have to care as much about the things that you do. Nor do you have to care as much about the things they care about. But what can then be dropped? What do you... Maybe you have a preference. Okay, can you drop that so we can find out the other thing? Do the dishes really need to be done every night?
Because that's important for, say, roach infestation? Or do you feel like you just need to for some external thing saying you need to do that because that's how things are done? Can you separate? Can you drop some of these balls you're trying to juggle? This is kind of the metaphor that comes down. And if you find that you're juggling more balls, you're less manic, less sweaty, and can maybe take a breath or a breather and have a word, have a conversation or an outing. Life gets complicated and a lot goes on.
And things take on a momentum of their own. Reminds me of addition where we're now we're just getting pastries every day because both of us think that this is important to us, but either or both in that case would have been, if not happy, at least more than fine to drop that ball so that it could be redirected to other things. So drop the ball by Tiffany Dufu and listen by Catherine Mannix are my points. I'm just going to echo drop the ball for a second because I think like, I don't know Heather, if you're in a, an opposite sex, like a straight partner,
Oh, yeah, this is an important point.
In straight partnerships, the woman is just likely to pick up more. And Tiffany Dufault is writing from that space as well, being like, here is how I arrived in a place where I could look at my husband and say, I'm just not going to do that anymore because it's not important. Or if that thing is that important to you, I will continue to do it. You do it. I will continue to do it. But something I have to drop one of these other things. It's kind of fundamentally about how to think about and negotiate like all
all of the work of managing a life together with another person. Or as you said, we read it in a work context and people use those same tools of like, I can continue to do this thing, but if I'm going to do this, I can't do this other thing. And we will say like, well, maybe that ball can just drop. It is just incredibly useful for why is it that we do the dishes immediately after dinner every night? Is that just what you did growing up?
Is it actually important to you? Are we going to end up having a fight in five years about how the dishwasher is loaded that's not actually about how the dishwasher is loaded? And could we do things differently now instead? Yeah. And the inverse is like pick up the ball, depending on where you are in your relationship to the housework or the things that need doing.
you might notice what balls that your partner is juggling and the relative fairness of that or in divisions of labor. And, you know, I don't know that everyone's going to have the same relationship to the idea that there's only so many balls we both can juggle together. So like, you know, if there's 12 balls, we got to pick what they are, but,
But then even if both of us need to get together, juggle 12, if one of us is juggling eight and one of us juggling four, that's unsustainable generally. Or if there's someone doing the work of sustaining, let's put it that way. Yeah. Like you need to know which balls are in the air. And I think there are moments in life where somebody is juggling eight and someone else is juggling four and maybe it switches at a different point in your lives or your careers or child rearing or whatever. But yeah.
having those conversations, like most of the books that are going to be useful in this zone are generally going to be the things that are like, here's how to think about this or here's how to talk about this in a new way rather than like the five love languages, which is based on nothing. I mean, my hot take is most decent business books are relationship books and vice versa. But that's honestly radical candor. Getting to yes.
No, Michelle was looking, is there radical candor for kids and families? I'm like, that's a great idea. Yeah. I don't know if I've told you my pitch for a book into this zone is like, oh, captain, my captain, because the single best strategy that I have found is who's the captain of this thing?
and if you care about it more, you become the captain of it. And if you don't care enough to be the captain of it, it's not important enough for us to keep doing it. Or, and if you're not, if you don't care to be the captain, your level of critique gets to come down three or four notches. Right, right. If I'm in charge of picking the dinner place, you don't get to complain about what we're having. If I'm making dinner...
You don't get to complain. Oh, you gave me feedback, give me ideas. But once it's done, it's done. Anyway. All right. Good luck to you. Where are we? I think you're reading next year. Next, we are coming from Jessica, who is a middle school teacher and in a reading slump this semester that has been real. Jessica says, in the past, cozy mysteries have been my go-to for starting back a reading habit. I also like nonfiction and memoirs, nerdy dad book vibes especially. So you're in the right place. Did somebody call?
Recent favorites include Immune by Philip Detmer, One in a Millennial, Project Hail Mary, and The Martian. So ring that bell for Andy Weir. No kidding, man. The Country of the Blind and The Wager. There's a lot of Jeff Rebecca core in this list. There really is. It's funny because I get some recommendation blindness because I start thinking, I need to listen. I need to keep reading. And so I'd already typed in Country of the Blind, and then I was like, oh, Country of the Blind. There it is right there. Did you just read it?
You read that, right? Yeah. Okay. So I'm up. I'm up first. Yeah, last year. Yeah, yeah. Engrained. And I didn't put the author and I just forgot the name of this guy. I'm going to look it up real quick. His name is Simon something. Oh, nope. Callum Robinson, which you may have heard you talk about on the pod earlier this year. You pitched the hell out of this book. The subtitle is The Making of a Craftsman. And it's about a woodworker.
in Scotland and a pivotal moment in his small company's life where they make a big change from doing custom high-end woodworking to opening up their own boutique furniture store in this little Scottish town.
His father was also a craftsperson and it's their, his wife is sort of doing the books and she's trying to keep the house and stuff afloat with cash flow. They're all juggling sharpened tools, I guess. There's no balls to be dropped, but ball peen hammers maybe. I'm not sure about woodworking tools. No, I know more than I did.
But it's a business book. It's a relationship book. It's an ARF book. I put on the BRPod Instagram, like this is paragraph where he's just describing the different kinds of wood, which was insanely good. Terrific on audio. I would read this book by every single profession that exists. Hobby, you know, a cool afternoon you once had. If you can write like this with this kind of attention to detail, openheartedness, I
and honesty and a winning narration performance. It's really terrific. So I don't, is there anything about audio in this request? I can't remember now. Yeah, they do most of their reading on audio. Well, then there we go. So that is not even close to the best one I can give you of things I've read at late.
I had Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten. I tapped onto the cozy vibe here, not a cozy mystery, but this is my favorite audio memoir of last year. She, of course, is the Barefoot Contessa. And this was way better than, it was just way better than I expected it to be. One of the best books ever.
of the year on a lot of lists last year, but her story of growing up in a situation without much privilege, how she became this well-known, super successful figure in the world of cooking. And then of course, in food, TV, and all of these cookbooks and owned little shops in the Hamptons and just an incredible, very feminism forward story. It was more
just direct and like gutsy than I was ready for Ina Garten to be from what her TD persona is like. And I was so delighted to discover that. I had a feeling of like, I want Ina Garten to live in my neighborhood so that when I'm trying to figure out what to do with myself, I can sit down and be like, Ina, here's the deal. Like just sort of that, that wise older. The Oracle in the matrix kind of, or the trash heap in the fraggles. Yeah.
Yeah. Or I think about like my council of elders, like Ina Garten can go on your council of elders. How to say Babylon by Sophia Sinclair. Just an incredible memoir. That would be phenomenal on audio. I read it in print. I know Jeff, you listened to it and that has to be,
I mean, the accent work by a memoirist reading their own stuff, this goes back to the Callum Robinson too. Just elite. It's like a cheat code for memoirs. Yeah. And it's in that zone. It's been a couple of years since it came out. So just to recap it, this is about her experience growing up. Her parents were in the Rastafarian family.
religion or cult, however you want to think about that. She was denied a lot of access to autonomy, education. It was very oppressive how she came to realize that, what she did to get herself out of it and become this poet. Really beautiful language. Just A+. And then for nerdy dad vibes, if you are not into the oeuvre of Michael Lewis, let's just get you into the oeuvre of Michael Lewis. The Undoing Project? Where do you want to go for that? I think
the Undoing Project is a great start, but like Moneyball is my reliable starting point for Michael Lewis, I think, but takes a fascinating, a story that would be fascinating on its own and then really gets into who the people are, the characters, the storytelling about things that actually happened in real life is just super fun and engaging. He's a great time. So I maybe just peruse the synopses of Michael Lewis books and pick the one that sounds most up your alley and start there. Yeah.
All right, up next, this is from Michelle. I need a new Swiss Army recommendation. Thank you for picking up our parlance, Michelle. That means a lot to us. Imitation via flattery or flattery via imitation will get you everywhere. I have started to repeat. Rebecca, this could be its own show. This could be its own episode is recasting, reforging a Swiss Army knife recommendation list.
I wished that I could have written back to Michelle and been like, what was your previous Swiss Army recommendation? That's a great question. This means different things to different people, right? So I wanted to know what Michelle had been repeating. But I'm going to go in here, I think for Northwoods by Daniel Mason. There's a question mark in your voice and on the page. Tell me more about that question mark.
Well, the question mark is firstly, it's been a while since I stumbled on something that I thought was a real new Swiss Army recommendation. But I think most kinds of readers will like Northwoods. There's something to latch onto for everybody. It is...
For me, it was fiction that reminded me of like the fun and surprising things that fiction can do without being experimental and weird. It's accessible. You do slip right into it. The pitch is it's the story of this cabin in the Northwoods over centuries of the cabin's existence. But really we get like
connected vignettes about the different people that have been, that have experienced parts of their lives around this cabin and the like subtle ways that they're connected. But also the writing is gorgeous and not in a heavy artistic notice my literary writing way. It's just beautifully constructed. Like everything that I want in a pleasurable book experience was there in Northwoods. The question mark is like,
If you've got somebody who really just needs like a page turner, this is not going to be a Swiss Army recommendation for them. But I get and this makes me want like a call in episode about what are the Swiss Army recommendations that other people that listeners are using? Because I do feel like it's been a while since I read something that I thought was a real utility in that way. I love this pick for you. I fear this, though.
I fear that my tolerance for boring things makes you feel like you're a more exciting reader than you actually are, because this is more of a difficult pitch for most readers than I think you're giving it credit for. I love this book. People pick the, if we're talking Swiss Army. People liked this book. It was on so many lists. Yeah. Indie bookstore tow bag list. That's not what we're talking. We're talking with Swiss Army Knives. They got to open wine bottles. They got to remove splinters. They need to fight off bears. Like you got to, the Northwards is a terrific book.
but there's going to be a high percentage of people like, what in the hell is going on? And the answer you have to give them is pretty much nothing. It's about a patch of ground.
Trust me, you'll like it. Yeah, listen, I can see your recommendation here and you have won this category. Well, I mean, this is, I'm now using a little inductive reasoning here, which I'm just looking at the full board. And by looking at the number of requests we get for Project Hail Mary read-alikes, how many people I know like it. Whenever we do mention it, people are like, I love that book.
I think this is it, man. Because you look at like whatever. It's a really solid one. It just has something for everyone. And it reads like a house on fire. It's got science. It's got the dad stuff. It's got character. There's a main relationship. It's about something. It's very approachable in its own way. So again, probably the right answer, the right answer is some like page turning mystery kind of situation. Where it's like if you're just going to get. It's probably God of the Woods. Yeah.
No, I think even that I think doesn't have the fun. I think I'm looking for fun. If I'm looking for, I think you can do worse than solve for fun. And Project Hail Mary is fun and does a lot of interesting things. And people will not have read something like it before, which I think is a feather in the Swiss Army cap. It's a solid pick. Is that the Swiss Guard? Yeah, the Swiss Guard. There are no feathers in those caps. Yeah.
I don't think. All right. Well, this next one is going to be also because Jillian is looking for nonfiction about the publishing industry. So I think the canonical book has been, it came out a while ago. It's called The Merchants of Culture by John Thompson, which it's probably 20 years old now. I should have looked at the publication date.
And I'm sure there'd be interesting things to say about that, but it gives you a history of what's going on. I read it early in the BR days to try to get my, my hands around it. More recently, people have talked to me about big fiction. I've talked about big fiction by Dan Sinekin, which is about the conglomeration of major American publishing, which is really the meta story of the last 20 or 25 years in fiction. Like every, every industry is subject to the phone, right?
But not every industry has been subject to this. Like phones plus conglomeration equals publishing history of the last two decades. You could do a worse simple formula there. You get a lot of insider stories. Sinekin is a professor of English at Emory. There's a couple others, but merchants of cultures don't know what to start with. And if you want to get a little more academic knowledge,
check out big fiction. I know Sinekin's working in the Random House archives at the moment, and I have no idea what that's going to turn into, but I can only imagine it's going to be pretty interesting. Okay. Yeah. I'll second the emotion from Merchants of Culture, especially if you want to know how did paperbacks first come to be, like that kind of history of how the industry developed and the different points of disruption, what those looked like. It's a nice big overview. Yeah. The Merchants of Culture sort of ends, as I recall, with
This Amazon thing seems like it might be a deal, huh? Guess we'll find out. They're due for like a 20th anniversary edition with a couple new chapters or something. Up next, I have a friend who comes to me for recommendations that fit your vibe, and I like to get a few in the bag ahead of her next holiday as I'm a little behind on my own. She likes female-centric books and works that are contemporary, literary, sense of intrigue, and person-focused.
So no Northwoods. It cannot be patch of ground focus. Sorry, Rebecca. Books you love in the past, I've recommended Celeste Ng, God of the Woods, Bury What We Cannot Take, Intrigued But Is Not Read, There, There, and Behold the Dreamers. Would prefer no books that focus on babies, marriage, or struggles with infertility. Thanks in advance, as these are sneaky double wrecks for me. Love this for you.
I'm going to go with Margot's Got Money Trouble by Rufy Thorpe about a young woman who like there's a baby, but the book is not about the baby. She gets pregnant by her English teacher. Her professor drops out of school and she's got to figure out how she's going to get by. And she finds out about this thing called OnlyFans and she starts an OnlyFans podcast.
And her dad kind of comes back on the scene. Her father has been a professional wrestler and they've had an interesting relationship. And dad is maybe going to help with the baby and also maybe going to help with the business. And it's like for a book about a young woman becoming a sex worker out of her, like through the internet, out of her bedroom while just trying to like pay for her baby from an experience that should have never happened to her. It's like surprisingly wholesome and sweet and,
The stuff that happens in her relationship with her dad, especially this was one of the most fun and surprising reading experiences I had last year. Headshot by Rita Bullwinkle. And I had this on the list before the Pulitzers happened. I'm going to go back into track changes and make sure that's true. Super creative. It's set at a girls boxing tournament, like over the course of one weekend. Each chapter is one of the matches and you're just in the girls heads.
through these things and it is phenomenal. It's kind of, I hadn't read anything quite like it, just a very memorable reading experience. And then from this year, The Dream Hotel by Leila Lalami. I don't know exactly how sensitive some of these things are for your friend, but like she is,
picked up and taken to a detention center in this slight future where all of your everythings are monitored by an algorithm that determines how likely you are to commit a crime. And if you cross over a certain threshold, they detain you to prevent you from committing some crime in the future. So she is detained and she's away from her family. But there is not like a real focus on the marriage or the baby or anything like that. And it's really about this woman coming to realize like,
should I be trying to cooperate with the system because they keep telling me that if I do the right things, I'm going to get out? Or is that a lie? Because the system is, of course, always most invested in perpetuating itself. And so what do you do in a moment like this? This dropped like,
right as a bunch of the Elon Musk stuff was picking up with Doge. And it was very timely in my reading experience to be like, oh, yeah, these are the kinds of futures that you're looking at when the government can get access to all of our personal data. Because they're like, some of it is really speculative. You had a dream about this thing and were worried about it. But some of it is based on your texts, based on your web browsing, based on the last time you had a period as a
per the app that you had on your phone, all kinds of things. Really creepy, but very compelling. I don't like my pick all of a sudden. I'm now reading... Really? Well, so I guess something you said, I'm not sure how much... No books that focus on babies, marriage, or struggles in fertility, because my first thought was Katie Kidmer, especially the edition, because I read that. It was my favorite book of the year so far. Is this book about marriage, sort of?
I mean, right? It has the, yeah, I don't think it's a book about marriage. Yeah, but does it focus on it? I don't know. Maybe I'm parsing too hard. It's not a book about babies, but it is about having kids or not having kids. I'm not super happy with it. So, I think maybe Kidikmura is a good fit for the kinds of things you described above in prose, but maybe Intimacies...
rather than audition. It might be a little bit different. The other thing I would suggest is Rental House by Wakey Wang, which is the other one I thought would be really good. Again, there's a marriage in it that's central, but it's not really under duress. It's like people that are married, but it's not... I'm guessing here it's not... I'm guessing from context that it's about divorce or something like that. There are people that are married, but it's more about...
these few interactions they have with their families over the course of several vacations and rental homes. And if you haven't done a wakey-wakey, it's pretty cool. Some of that, I guess as a caveat, does center on their experience as a couple that have chosen not to have kids. Yeah. And what that experience is like in the world. So it really depends on... You'll know your friend better than we will. Well, let me zag again then. Okay, let's clear the board. These have some
strings on it. This is not a Pinocchio situation where it's a freestanding boy here. Let's go The Guest by Emma Klein, which came out a few summers ago. It's about a young woman who maybe is a grifter con woman or maybe is just really in distress. Maybe both. Those don't have to be mutually exclusive. And she entangles herself into high society on Long Island and
and is avoiding a situation that we only hear little glimpses of back in the city. But it's weirdly a thriller about hanging out
with people wearing polos, but it's really cool. It is. It's really good. So I'm zagging. I zagged twice there. I'm trying hard, Kim. I hope you enjoy it. We're working through it together. Yeah, we're trying to figure this out. Okay. Next one is from Michael, who is looking for a book for his wife. It says they've had a lot on our minds lately. She usually reads serious nonfiction. She has a master's in history and has recently enjoyed some family drama with a sense of
place like pachinko and the eighth life however with everything going on she's gotten really into whodunits she spotted jane harper on the bookshelf all of those you'll love to hear you love to hear it
she read the silent patient and liked it but isn't the keenest on the unreliable narrator trope she is familiar with gone girl they've got attica lock s.a cosby and ton of french books in there damn it michael come on throw us a bone here really leveling up the challenges here so michael is looking for a fresh mystery thriller recommendation that can help her continue to keep her mind off the world and michael has been listening to us since 2016. so whoa that is a long run
Yeah. So the Cartographers by Ping Shepard is a group of college friends who get involved into maybe a little of a speculative fiction treasure hunt, or there's a map and the map leads somewhere.
And I thought it was a lot of fun. It's a little less thrillery and a little more... It's not the Da Vinci Code, but it's got a couple of strands. It shares a few chromosomes of, this probably is not going to happen this way, but I'm along for the ride there. I'm also going to shout out a deep cut. S.J. Rosen is a family friend, a mystery writer, and she has a long running series. And the first of them is called Winter and Night, came out in 2003 and won the Edgar Award.
award, which is given for the best mystery novel of the year. And I read it 20 years ago and really liked it, and I'm not much of a mystery person, but I get to shout out Shira S.J. Rosen and give me an excuse to talk about Winter and Night, which I think you'll enjoy. And here, if you like it, there are 14 more waiting for you right there. So those are my picks. The Cartographers by Pang Shepard and Winter and Night by S.J. Rosen. I say Winter and Night, I should say that
It is a crime mystery thriller, so people are in distress and sometimes they are children. But you're doing Gone Girl and Cosby and like, I'm guessing you're okay with a disappeared person or else you wouldn't be reading those things. But just thought I would say that again here.
Right. I went with Scorched Grace by Margot de Wahy, which my favorite new mystery series of a couple of years. This is the first. There are a couple more since then. And it is about like, she's not a normal nun. She's a cool nun. Cool nun. Like,
And she is a cool nun. She is a nun who smokes and curses and has a lot of tattoos and is stationed at a convent and a school in New Orleans. And so you get this incredibly rich description of what it's like in New Orleans. But someone keeps setting fires around the school and the local fire department and police seem to be pretty incompetent. So what is she going to do except get involved herself in solving the mystery of who is setting the fires? Yeah.
The voice of this is just so much fun. And the atmosphere that Duahi builds around New Orleans, like if you've ever been to New Orleans, you can like hear the music and feel that like swampy humidity settling in. And she just really channels it. I think I have some questions for you by Rebecca Mackay from a couple of years ago might also be a good one here. There's a couple layers going on about that story, but it's a person who is
producing a true crime podcast, but she's also gone. The true crime podcast is about a death that happened at a boarding school that she had connections to. And so she has gone back to the boarding school to like interview people and teach a workshop about making podcasts.
and there's all this stuff happening in there about like they're trying to solve the crime of how did this person die? But there are also things that are happening in the present day that she's trying to untangle, and there's some meta-level stuff about what does it mean that we have turned crime into forms of entertainment, and how do you think about
untangling that or having a relationship that feels okay to that kind of media. It's a big, it's like on the long side and also a mix of literary, like this is not a straight whodunit, Mackay's a literary writer, but there's a lot of mystery stuff written into the book. Yeah. My read next? I just was remembering a different book for something else. Yeah, so I'm doing that same time. Okay.
finance related for my mother with a focus on the importance of public welfare and how it can benefit the economy long term. She's very astute, 75 and economically literate, with a fun side anecdote that I cannot say on the air, but thank you very much, Alex, for telling about this. Sounds like an impressive person. But she's fallen into the trap of seeing welfare as a lazy person's option and publicly funded endeavors as inherently wasteful.
trying to find something that makes a compelling argument to shake up her fiscally conservative thinking that isn't just preaching to a liberal choir, if you get what I mean. I know she's read Michael Lewis, Big Short, Smart Guys' Room, rigged by Andy Verity. Not really in your wheelhouse, I know, but given the quote-unquote state of things, I thought maybe you'd have come across something that fits the bill. Rebecca, I think you found the best one, though I just thought of something else that might be of interest, so you do that. This is tough, but I went with Poverty by Matthew Desmond.
It seems like mom here is open to some systems kind of thinking. And I, you know, as a dyed in the wool liberal think that the shortest path to understanding that welfare is not a lazy person's option is understanding the economic systems of inequality that put people in positions where that is the best option that's available to them. And Matthew Desmond lays all of that out.
In straightforward, connected, very compelling writing, this one got nominated for a bunch of awards and ended up on end-of-year lists for a reason. And so I think if mom has ears to hear, this is the place to go. Here is how we end up with people living in poverty, specifically in America. What are the systems in our politics and in the way that our society is put together that make that possible and that perpetuate it?
It's the best recommendation that I had. I don't know that there's a great one for this. I'm really curious about what you're going to... Yeah, I was thinking, I know, well, I believe that I understand that something like, say, food stamp programs or Social Security has been an aggregate, a win, right? And forget, and that's not to mention what I don't know about the rest of the world. But I can't think of like...
big reported book about hey, you know what sucked not having Social Security, right? You know those kinds of things and that made me remember and I don't believe I read this whole book But so you might check it out for yourself Michael. It's called not enough human rights in an unequal world by Samuel Moyne they came out somebody's here 2018 from Belknap press and
The thing that made me think of it again is I do remember, maybe I read an interview or something with this guy. It's an academic book, so you'll have to check it out and see if it's something you're interested in. It's like getting someone a puppy to some degree. This is a reading puppy you're going to give someone. Only 296 pages, but they are tough. But for classical...
neoliberalism that cares about human rights but doesn't do as much about poverty and social injustice. That's Moyne's central critique, if I recall. And this difference between sufficiency and equality, and there's a useful distinction there. And it feels like it might be almost exactly what would be interesting for your use case
having not a lot of confidence that I've read and can vouch for it myself. I'm giving more of a divining rod towards a well in the desert rather than saying here, have some water, but that's what I've got for you. That's just, just go that way and straight on until morning and you'll get there. Okay. Let's do a sponsor break real quick.
Today's episode is brought to you by Hachette Audio, publishers of Big Dumb Eyes by Nate Bergetzi. One of the hottest stand-up comedians today, Nate Bergetzi brings his everyman comedy to the page in this hilarious collection of personal stories, opinions, and confessions. The audiobook is read by Nate Bergetzi, who was, by the way, recently
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So make sure to check out the audio book Big Dumb Eyes by Nate Bergetzi. And thanks again to Hachette Audio for sponsoring this episode. Today's episode is brought to you by 8th Node Press, publishers of the Chicago Heartbreaker series by Allie Wiegand. The first book in the series, aptly titled First Base, follows photographer Maggie, whose last love ended in tragedy. So she's content to focus on her job, snapping shots of Chicago's MLB team instead of her love life.
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Beth is looking for a recommendation for a friend who just had a baby and wants books that are engaging but not too mentally taxing or dark. Says, I've been spending a lot of time feeding the baby, which means I'm stuck on the couch with only one hand free. Okay, listen. Thursday Murder Club was made for this.
It just was by Richard Osman. And then once your baby's a little older and you're not getting up at the middle of the night, but they go to bed at six o'clock, you can then watch the, what will sure to be a series of Netflix adaptations of all the Richard Osman books. They are warm, engaging mysteries that are investigated by pensioners over in England. So a group of older pensioners who are,
see something, say something, and do something when the cops seem sort of barely interested in what's going on. Let's not get into the ethics of what they actually do here. Don't think about Batman too long or else you're going to make yourself nuts. But it's a really fun, clever read.
More on the escapist front, Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan. Of course, it's been out for a while, but there is a series, escapist ridiculousness about extremely wealthy people in Asia getting up to hijinks about things that don't matter, but isn't it fun to watch? So Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan too.
I got Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley from earlier this year. I almost started reading this yesterday. I got some other stuff I have to read. I really need to get to this book. Sorry. So much fun. It's just so much fun, so engaging about a young man and a young woman who meet in college. He is a musician. She has opinions about music. They become collaborators where he continues to make music, and she is the sounding board who gives him the honest feedback. Yeah.
that he needs. And then he hits it big and they have an on again, off again, will they, won't they thing for like a couple of decades. And it's just a great time. And Austin Butler is going to play him in the film that's already been announced. Like good stuff. Just a really good reading time. You will be engaged. This is the time also to shout out our friend, Kevin, the lumberjack Wilson. I think awesome.
All things Kevin Wilson are fun, zany, engaging. I would start with Now Is Not The Time To Panic, which is about teenagers that accidentally set off a satanic panic in their small town in the 90s. But he's just a good time reading. And if your friend is up for like something with a little...
twist i don't ever want to miss a chance to recommend we ride upon sticks by kwan berry which is about a girls lacrosse team or field hockey team in the 80s outside salem massachusetts they have had a losing season and they make a deal with the devil to get a winning season and it's packed with 80s pop culture references a really interesting narrative voice it's been several years since i read this and i still think about how much fun it was are you gonna do the next read because i've got one oh yes
Next one is somebody looking for a book like Daughter of the Forest by Juliette Morillier. It's steeped with Irish folklore in a way that doesn't make it seem fantastical. It says, the closest I've gotten to the feeling is Game of Thrones and Cashiel's Dart, but never quite hit the mark. That's from Grace. Grace, I'm going to be honest. I have no idea about the book that you mentioned. I looked it up and I'm like, not getting a lot other than what you said. So what I picked up with is the folklore aspect.
And The River Has Roots by Amal El-Motar, she of... No, I can't even say it out loud. This is how you lose the Time War fame. This is her new novella. I interviewed her over on First Edition, so you can really get a sense of it's for you by listening to that, which may be as long as it takes you to read the book because it is a novella-ish type object. But it's a group, it's two sisters who live at the edge of a wood, and it's at the edge of where the fairy live, the fae, and they are kind of guardians and...
Someone falls in love with somebody, somebody gets in trouble, someone may turn into an inanimate object and back and forth. But I thought it was really cool. And in talking to Elmatar about her deep research into various representations of fairies and the
in the fairy world. Something she says, like, it's used to describe things that are either very far away in place or very far away in time, the land of the fairy. So it's like, you know, there's this old rock, and if you go to it, well, it has to be this old rock because it's old, but, or if it's farther away in time, it could be this new thing that was brought from somewhere, and those are portals to this different world. The sisters' relationship is really cool. I don't know if you do audio, but...
But there's quite a bit of singing in the print version. And Amal says she and her sister actually perform the songs in the audiobook, which I find charming as all get out. So that's what I've got for you. The River Has Roots by Amal El-Motar. And if it's not right, it'll be over quick. Okay, I'm up next. First of all, nice things about us. Thank you. Thank you for that. I'm not a mom yet or a dad, obviously, or a grad, thank God. But I'm in the middle of some major transitions in life and looking for recs for...
them and their partner, getting married, looking to buy an apartment, trying for a baby. It's a lot. For myself, I'm looking for fiction to help make sense of the world. Good luck with that. Books I love are quite literary but readable, emotional, and offer some hope. I love multiple books by Lilly King, Yoko Ogawa, Emily St. John Mandel, novels like Lack After Lack by Keith Atkinson, Olga Dies Dreaming,
blah blah blah i would especially appreciate some recommendations for books and translations i'm trying to read more widely this year rebecca our first bertino it took us a while but we got it we made it we're gonna start with beauty land by marie helene bertino about a girl who is born right as the voyager is taking off in the 70s and that maybe has something
to do with it or maybe not. But as she grows up, she starts to get faxes from what she believes to be aliens who want her to report back about life on Earth and what it is to be a human. She also believes that these are her home people. Whether or not she is an alien, we never know. And it doesn't matter. I mean, we all have days.
Yeah. But it's, of course, as she grows up, her observations about what it feels like down here, what people are doing down here become more sophisticated and thoughtful. And she kind of develops a public reputation built around this story that she's telling. But there's also stuff like, I think our shared favorite observation in the book is like, why do humans pick the loudest possible snack to be the thing we eat during the movies? Yes. My daughter mentioned that when she read it on her own too. Yeah.
Just really lovely observations about human life and what it is to be a person down here. I did not have anything in translation because everything I've read in translation over the last couple of years has been like pretty heavy. So I don't want to give you any of that. And that's just by virtue of I tend to read the dark stuff. So pick up some Marie Helene Bertino, get some life affirming-ness. I just find her to be warm and substantial. And I think that's what you're looking for. I took the brief...
Let's say I read it broadly here in this regard. So, this isn't translation, but it is set in a different place than America. And it is not about making sense of the world. I think it is about
what can be endured and how one can endure it, especially on the micro level of those around you and those that you care about. A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Hosseini best known, of course, for The Kite Runner. Shout out to First Edition. One of the first really great episodes I enjoyed doing over there was the story of The Kite Runner on the occasion of its 25th, 30th? I can't remember what anniversary. It must be 30 now. No, 20.
This Thousand Splendid Suns comes after Kite Runner, of course. I think it is the most accomplished of Hosseini's books. It is really terrific. It's about two friends who are in Kabul and dealing with what is going on in Kabul with growing unrest and what happens in the relationships and how they have to navigate the social world that they're put into and what can be endured, what shouldn't be endured.
Really quite beautiful and moving and as painful as the book is and painful as a lot of the world seems, where do you turn? You turn toward each other. And it's a simple message, but it is what it is. And A Thousand Splendid Suns is as good of this message as you're going to find. So I checked out the Goodreads for this just to see because I'm like, is it undernown? First of all, 1.7 million ratings, which is wild, but also four and a half stars. April is on that.
And it's hard to parse if you don't do this a lot, that four and a half stars is like meaningfully different than four and a quarter stars for that many reviews. Yeah. And really different from what like 3.5 or 3.75, which is the average. Yeah. So anyway, the Kite Runner has been read like twice as often or at least rated twice as often, but has a slightly lower star rating. Again, take it for what it's worth, but...
I really think A Thousand Splendid Suns was pretty terrific. And I hadn't read it. I hadn't read any of the Hosseini, but I reread all of his books for that episode. And that was the one that jumped out to me. I was like, this is really, really damn good. And I know that Kite Runner gets all the shine because it was such a phenomenon, but this is a terrific book too.
Next one's your read. Oh, sorry. For my future husband, I'm looking for books that have good pacing, get him engaging out of his head, but also discuss politics or some larger issues. In the past, he read classic sci-fi like Asimov and memoirs by people he admired. Currently, he mostly reads political news or something familiar. Okay. I went two different directions here for the he likes government and how things work.
Who is Government by Michael Lewis or edited by Michael Lewis, brand new collection. He got a bunch of reporters and great writers, W. Kamau Bell, Sarah Vowell among them and was like, go find interesting people doing fascinating things in the government and write profiles of them. And so you get like the person who runs like the cemeteries where veterans are buried and
And how they have kind of transformed that and done it beautifully. The guy who figured out the right way to come to a formula that would keep mines from collapsing on miners. And then once they distributed that out and got people to pay attention to it, decreased miner deaths by like 98% or something totally bonkers like that.
like that just the people doing like the daily very unglamorous work of making the government happen and making public life possible for all of us really excellent especially right now since he likes sci-fi and thinking about engaging ideas i'm going to toss you searches by vahini varo interesting which is did you get to it no i bought it though but i haven't gotten to it okay
Which is a meditation on what do we do? What does selfhood mean in the age of AI? When we have artificial intelligence that acts and sounds like humans in a lot of cases, what does it mean to be human? And that is heady stuff. But the way she executes it is fascinating. She's writing this book and
putting the book into AI and then publishing the conversations that she has with chat GPT into the book. So you read her draft and then her conversation with chat GPT about the draft. And then it evolves into like her talking to chat GPT about uses of AI. And if I were going to be a venture capital person and pitch a
some sort of AI, how would I pitch it? And here are the AI generated images that I would use. And just like, if he likes thinking about the kinds of things like Asimov was interested in, but that we're kind of living through right now, it's just mind blowing in a really pleasant way. Like it's a literary writing, but just incredible nonfiction. And I found it to be very engaging because every chapter you're like, what is she going to do next?
And I don't know the last time that I read something where I was just that surprised one section after the next by like, ah, this is the next place we're going here. Yeah. I mean, again, I'm going to RST and just say, try Project Hail Mary. I do have something else a little bit different. And Asimov, I don't know how Asimov can be more or less strange. So it's hard to know where.
I'm going to go back, way back to 2013 and talk about Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie real quick, which was a hit in her earlier days. It's space. It's like, it's a space thing. But these starships have their own intelligence, right, that connects to the soldiers that are in the service of this empire thing. And it does get into, by way of the thing that sci-fi does, issues of war and justice and being drafted in and how do you know you're on the right side and all the kinds of things that go into it.
It's kind of heady stuff, but also pretty cool. Like for the Star Wars kind of nerd like me, it's like spaceships are just cool. And it's not the worst sort of appetizer towards thinking about other things.
And it did pretty well for a while there. I'm not sure where this series ended up. She has 53 books. That's unbelievable. You know, this might also be a murder bot moment. Yeah, except I don't think that's about a whole lot. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's about life, the universe, and everything, and robots thinking about themselves. I'm not sure. But Anne Leckie, she has a whole bunch of books too. So if he likes her, you can do The Raven Tower. And then there's three books in this episode.
ancillary series, but that's ancillary justice. Let us know how you like it. This next question contains some books that might actually be recommendations. Yeah, I also thought about this too. So Mallory is writing in to get recommendations for her partner who likes sci-fi, the chunkier, the better, like N.K. Jemisin, Octavia Butler, The Bright Sword, which was your recommendation. I love it when they give me credit. Just tell us all my recommendations when you like it.
The Priory of the Orange Tree, Between the Earth and the Sky series by Rebecca Roanhorse, Susanna Clark's books, and Stephen's and Jim's. Oh, you just skipped over A-dub there, even though we're collecting data. Oh, yeah, Andy, we are right here on the list. Didn't Care for Clara and the Sun or Moon of the Crusted Snow. This one's all you. I think I go to The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Naylor here, which is about a encounter with a octopus civilization that was just hanging out.
And it is cool. This book is awesome. I think it's kind of been the hit of the elevated literary sci-fi world over the last couple years. And then it got me thinking about other literary spec fic sci-fi. The Area X series from Jeff Vanderbilt, Annihilation is the first one. There's a movie version of that. He just published the fourth in the increasingly misnamed trilogy of the Area X trilogy. Then I was like, what about Three-Body Problem? Or what about Babel by R.F. Kuang? So I think really Mountain in the Sea, but those others...
I think it's hard here because I look at this list of books that,
this person's read and enjoyed. And I'm not as conversant in sci-fi enough to be like, to just grok and like string together a cork board of like, this means that all of these things are connected somehow. I'm not really seeing a through line other than good books in sci-fi and fantasy. So that's what I just listed, good books in sci-fi and fantasy. But The Mountain and the Sea might be the one that's most relevant. And I haven't checked out Ray Neillers' new books, but I want to see that, this new book as well.
Okay, another request: I have a goal this summer to read four books: Middlemarch by George Eliot, These Truths by Jill Lepore, and Memoriam by Alice Nguyen in Poetry Unbound, the 50 poems collection. How would you approach the order of these books? I'm also trying to read as much as possible my six-year-old son and four-year-old daughter. We just finished the first book in the Junie B. Jones series, and he also likes Piggy and Gerald books. What would you recommend?
Okay, I love this project for you. First of all, this is great. I would do one of the big doorstop books each month and break them into whatever a daily page count for you is that's manageable. So like I did Anna Karenina one summer in one month and it was like 30 pages a day for 30 days and got me to the 900. So I think
figure out what's reasonable and chunk it up that way because Middlemarch is big and These Truths is big and it looks like In Memoriam is pretty big. So I would do that and then with the poems, take a poem a day in the mornings with your coffee or in the evening whenever you have time or maybe spend a couple of days with each poem of those 50 over the course of
of the summer. I don't know what all the 50 poems are that are in the Poetry Unbound collection. I imagine some of them you'll read and you'll be like, great, I did this once, but some of them you might want to linger on and spend some more time with. But I would give yourself like a...
poems are a nice way to just like have a moment. So maybe build yourself like a daily moment to do the poem work and then chunk up the doorstops over time. Disagree. Hard disagree. Oh, knock out the poems first. Get started Memorial Day weekend. Plow through them. Give yourself some momentum. Then Middlemarch because Middlemarch is terrific. And Rebecca, have you read Middlemarch? No. I'm going to have to do it for a shared project at some point, I think. I was going to say because it's like,
I haven't ever heard you talk about it, and I know you have an opinion about it either way. I think you'll probably... You know what? We have not together talked about classic classics. What's the most classic book we've ever read together? I mean, we did the Romeo and Juliet thing, but that doesn't really count. Yeah. Probably a Toni Morrison. Really? Is that it? Like, we haven't been pre-1973? Yeah.
I don't think we've gone back to something like English syllabus. Because you're not, I mean, you're not, again, you're a well-educated person, but you haven't like done the whole Western canon fetishization thing. Yeah. That hasn't been your chance. No, I mean, I minored in English and I, so I read a bunch of them, but I, and I didn't get a master's in English. I went for psychology. So yeah. And then in my adult reading life,
I have not done a special edition. You're not going to break down Middlemarch one June. Yeah, that's never been... I think even if I weren't working in this career where I'm reading contemporary stuff, it's never been really my jam to just want to go read all of the classics of Western Civ. I think I have picked up a lot of them over time, but we've just never really gone back that way. Yeah. I'm a huge momentum reader. So the idea of reading a poem a day and then putting it down, if I'm into it, it feels like I want to...
jump out of my skin. But that is a good way to get some momentum because you can knock it out and have some time with it. And then keep the pages turning. Pick up whichever one feels nice. If you really have a goal to get through these four, whatever, great, fine. I'm sure you have your reasons. But if you get stopped, put the damn thing down.
do something else if you start these shoes and you're like i'm not into this right now put it down after 25 pages and pick up one of the other ones if you're really committed to getting through them all but keep those pages turning don't worry about a plan turn pages on the kid's side four and six what a wonderful time to be reading together because you can make up whatever you want is on the page well maybe not for the six-year-old
I'm going just a little bit older because I found this to be the case, that the kids, especially if you're reading to them, not an audiobook because they'll zone out. If you're reading to them in a few pages or a chapter at night, they can read up a little bit. They can listen up a little bit than they can read on their own.
So one that my kids and my family enjoyed together, The Princess in Black by Shannon Hale. There's a series of them. She is a princess by day and a crime fighter and justice seeker by night. It's adorable and fun and well-illustrated. And you'll have a good time performing the voices of Goat Boy and the various other sidekicks that The Princess in Black engages in. I would like to request a performance of The Voice of Goat Boy. That's the double Patreon. It's the Patreon within the Patreon.
It's like the secret room at the Masonic Lodge. You got to get in the door, but then there's a door behind the door. I'm going to make myself a note for when I see you this summer, like Jeff at two, he drinks in, ask about Goat Boy. That's tough. And then Ways to Make Sunshine by Renee Watson, who's a Portland author, who's a
And this is a young woman, she's grade schoolish, maybe sixth grade is the main character, and her family is moving, and it's the stuff that grade schoolers go through. Renee Watson, I believe, explicitly said she wanted to write Beverly Cleary for black kids in Portland and across the world, but giving kids the credit of their own interiority, which was kind of Beverly Cleary's innovation,
and the quotidian ways that the adult's life affect the kid's life and vice versa. And there's another book, a follow-up, but I can't remember the name of it right now, but that was also really good, Read Aloud.
when the kids were younger. And then these things they can start to read on their own. Because like, oh, I remember when I read this. Well, you read this to us. Well, I want to pick it up myself now and do those kinds of things. So you might try. Ways to Make Sunshine might read a little old, but I maybe don't think so. Certainly not for the six-year-old. But I think both four and six will enjoy The Princess in Black. And maybe if Ways to Make Sunshine is a little ambitious for you now, you can put that on the shelf and pull it out later like a bottle of wine when you're ready for it. Okay. Okay.
Two to go. Two to go. This is your read, my read, where are we? Yeah, this is somebody, this is, I don't think we've had a question like this before. After reading several Daniel Silva books where some of the action takes place in Corsica, this person is planning a trip to Corsica with their mom. Can
Can you recommend any other books, fiction or nonfiction, that take place in or have information about Corsica? They have some guidebooks, but would like something more that might give us a flavor of the island. When I first read this, I'm like, God dang it. I got nothing here. I'm going to have to go to Google like an idiot. No, I'm kidding. I'm giving you a hard time. Because I really, I was like about to do the same thing. I was like, wait a minute. I think Peter Mayle wrote
one of his like very fluffy crime books set in Corsica. And I'm sure enough, it's called the Corsican caper. People, longtime listeners may have heard about Peter male before he moved over to Provence, um,
in middle age. Oh, he's the Provence guy. The Provence guy, but he had a second writing career writing sort of light European heist and crime books that are super more about eating grapes than they are about solving mysteries. And you can tell he cares way more about the food in Accoutrements than about like, what happened to that painting? Oh, I don't know. But this one is set in Corsica. I cannot overemphasize how light this book is. It really is meant to be read in the sunshine when you're like,
maybe a little past half drunk and probably really full and tired. And you're like going to keep reading because it's just so easy to get down. It's kind of like the third glass of wine you shouldn't have had, but it just tastes so good. You're going to keep going. So that's The Corsican Keeper by Peter Mayle. Call it a day. You know, and if anyone's listening who needs books about Provence and you haven't been here the whole time, Jeff had a real Provence moment like 10 years ago. Are we sure that wasn't COVID? Yeah.
I think it was before COVID. I feel like a lot of our COVID behavior, we need to treat like after you had a breakup behavior. I think it makes a lot more sense, the world. All that stuff was like, pretend you just broke up with someone. Yeah. Read about, rather than go to France. It was a great moment. And rather than read about France, do like a Gilbert situation. I just went to the library and read about France.
eating unpasteurized cheeses. I did Google and I found Granite Island by Dorothy Carrington. So I would pick up the Corsican caper instead. That sounds like a better time. Again, there's no way you're going to understand how light these are, but give it a shot. If you just want a sense of the place, I think that's probably pretty fun. All right, one for both of us.
Yep. Just heard the interview, first edition, I think, yes, indeed, with Marie-Helene Bertino was intrigued. I've never read Bertino. I want to add one to my TBR for this year. Where should I start? And while you're at it, since Jeff, she read the whole oeuvre, oeuvre, oeuvre. Can English get on this? This is an unacceptable situation to put our mouths in. What should the full reading sequence be? Corpus? Even that's Latin. Come on.
Assuming that the reading experience holds up, I know I'll keep reading until I've read them all. Your recommendations are always pretty. Consider this a dad request, myself included. Well, you say Exit Zero is a good sampler. I think that's correct. I think... Is that where you want to start? I'm not sure. You could do worse. It's really between this and Beautyland, I guess is what I would say. Yeah, I think...
I'll describe Exit Zero here for a second. And then you heard us talk about Beautyland a few minutes ago. And you can decide which one sounds better for you. It just depends on what kind of reader you are. Exit Zero, I think, is a really solid sampler. And we said this when we were doing the Patreon episode about reading our way through those stories, that it's a really good taste of all the things that Bertino is doing.
going to do. You get the like inquisitive looks at humanity and isn't it just weird what we're all doing down here? But also weird stuff happens and what her flavor of weirdness is is on full display in Exit Zero and some of the stories are weirder than others so like you can really
what she's got going on there. If you like Exit Zero, I think you will like everything that she is going to offer you. Some of it will be less weird, like 2AM at the Cat's Pajamas, not as weird. Beautyland has some touches of weirdness, but it's not as weird as the weird stuff. Parakeet is the strangest one of them all. In Exit Zero. If you want to start with a full narrative instead of short stories, I do think Beautyland, I agree, is the place to go. The thing that's hard about starting with Exit Zero is I do think it is sort of
it's a, not a perfected, but it's a level up version of the initial. And I even think it's leveled up from, you know, a first novel is a first novel. And she says in that interview, Greg, as you might remember that she was stuffing all kinds of stuff into him at the cat's pajamas. He was trying to, you know, spin a bunch of plates and juggle and whistle Dixie all at the same time. And I think it works, but as you can see her pair back a little bit in beauty land, it's like, okay, we're going to do a couple of characters that,
one can see and just sort of follow it out. And then the Exit Zero really is an accomplished, like it is a fully mature short story collection version of Bertino. It's a great short story collection. I think the only thing I would do really is like if you wanted to go back, there's one short story in, I mean, if you like all them, go read Safest House. You're not gonna be disappointed, but you're like, oh yeah, this is her first short story collection. That's going to feel right.
The short story in Safest Houses, I think it's called North Of, the one where the woman brings Bob Dylan home to try to impress her brother and it doesn't go amazing. If I could swap that out for the Cheers one, because it's kind of doing the same thing of pop culture dudes and whatever. But yeah, something like that would work. I think going from a novel to a short story...
in a writer's works can be a little jarring. It can feel like a come down, for me at least, especially as accomplished as Beautyland is. Parakeet's pretty strange. It's quite a bit stranger. It's like four or five of the stranger short stories strung together, where Beautyland is one of the less strange short stories taken further.
I'm not just describing the books. I don't think that's helpful. So if you can add one, exit zero. I think over Beautyland for one, that sounds weird coming out of my mouth, Rebecca. I mean, I really think it's like, do you want to get the full warmth of Beautyland and her storytelling powers? But in that case, you might want to start with 2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas because you will see how it evolves when you go to Beautyland. I don't know what it would be like to go backwards from Beautyland to 2 a.m. at the Cat's Pajamas.
Actually, maybe just go read 2AM at the Cat's Pajamas. It's a great time. No, I'm all the way around. I think if you're going to add one, it's Beautyland. But if you think you're going to read a bunch or you're going to start, exit zero? I've gotten nowhere. I'm worse. This is truly how you know that she's great, is that we can't decide what to do here. There are compelling arguments for several of them. I think it's pretty clearly exit zero of Beautyland. So let your...
Let your format be your guide. If you're a short story person, exit zero. If you're more of a novel person, be there. Maybe that's the easiest way of putting it there. Okay. We're done. Good luck to y'all out there. Yeah. Let us know. We always enjoy follow on. We always like to know how our little baby recommendations went in the wild. We'll be back with regular. Let's see. What are we doing next?
I'm out next week. The News. The News, a regular-ass show. What do you know over there? But thank you all so much for listening. Happy days and transitions, and good luck to you all. Stay safe out there and read something really cool and let us know about it when you do. Rebecca, we'll talk to you later. All right.
Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this audiobook excerpt from Truth Demands, A Murder of Murder, Oil Wars, and the Rise of Climate Justice by Abby Reyes. Thanks to our sponsors at North Atlantic Books. When I was 25, my life became beholden to a set of murders near indigenous territory in Colombia, land then coveted by a U.S.-based oil company.
My partner in work and life, Terence Unity Freitas, was slain. Along with Ingrid Washna Watuk and Lahe Ene-Ege, I walked into adulthood through the gates of these murders. In those years, I felt pressed up against the machinery of fossil fuel extraction, tied there by the murder's known and unknown dismal facts. These circumstances sped up my training as a human being.
I found myself unbidden in a wretched lineage of people paying the price of our oil wars and living with ambiguous loss. As with so many others before me, the murders forced me to learn basic practices for moving through grief, an ambiguity that otherwise might have taken a lifetime to learn. Here I share stories of learning these practices for survival.
My hope is that they may be of use as we collectively navigate the climate catastrophe that is already baked in, dedicate ourselves to averting the worst, and co-create the course corrections we need. I held fragments of these stories for years, awaiting resolution that never came. Shaping the fragments into this book changed my understanding of resolution. Questions about the murders may always remain unaddressed. Some stories may never be told.
and the future will remain unknowable to offer this telling i had to acquiesce to these truths acquiescence led to acceptance which stirred my memory of agency finding agency in the telling led to my freedom for it opened a back door to resolution these stories move between my ongoing work for both personal and collective transformation
In my early adulthood, I was not only concerned with securing justice for the murders in a narrow sense, I was also committed to helping tip the scales towards social and environmental equilibrium in a global sense. As a strategy of collective liberation, I diligently cultivated a vision of the future in which murders like this no longer happen.
For decades, I have worked for a vision of the future in which we transition, as a species, from economies of extraction, militarism and exploitation, conditions that lead to murders like this in the first place, to regenerative and resilient living economies of interdependence. Multiple, coexisting, contemporary progressive social movements advance this vision,
This vision is rooted in long-standing work of place-based communities around the world to assert dignity in the face of extractive industry aggression against their lands, waters, bodies, and cultures, including that of the Colombian Pueblo Ua, indigenous to the territory where the murders took place.