The Books of the Year So Far
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This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff O'Neill. And I'm Rebecca Shinsky. And I'm coming to you from Boston, Massachusetts. No, I'm on vacation right now. We're coming to you from the past, baby. The past.

We'd maybe wait a couple of weeks to do this, but we're dodging vacations, everything. We're doing the books of the year so far. This is not the best books of the year. It's not our favorite books. Not our favorite books of the year. Sort of the books of the year. Not really, because we're not... I took this as a vibes only... Yes.

I licked my finger, put it out in the wind, kind of felt which way the wind blowing. I did initial list of like 11 or 12, paired it down to 10. And then I did a look at a couple of just to make sure I wasn't missing anything. But part of my process, Rebecca, tell me about yours was if I didn't kind of have to think if I had to think too hard about it, doesn't pass. Yeah, I don't think there's anything on my list that.

that wasn't already there before I went to do the checks. Because I did kind of the same process. What's coming off the dome? And really, the stuff that's coming off the dome as the things that have been big in the book space this year are the ones that we're looking for here. That's what this vibe check is about.

But I came up with a couple things that I have my eye on from the list that I checked at the end. I also have not ranked them. There's a couple themes that came up, so I might clump mine, but we'll just check in the vibes. Yeah, there's one that I had to go check the title of. I was like, the book about whatever, but that was the only one where I couldn't remember the name of the title. But I also thought that was maybe a...

rather than a demerit, I think maybe it was a credit for it that even though I couldn't remember the title, like the essence of it. You knew the book about the thing. I knew the book about the thing. It's kind of interesting. Yeah, that makes sense. Let's see. Things that are coming, attractions. We're going to be live July 9th. Yes. Powell's Bookstore, Portland, Oregon.

7 p.m., $10 tickets. That also gets you 10% off your purchases that day or up to $100. I can't remember. The thing will be in their link in the show notes. That will be some of our best books of the year. We're going to be joined by Vanessa Diaz and Keith Mossman, the book buyer extraordinaire. They say, I would like to be the extraordinaire of something. I don't have a good like –

Noun for that extraordinaire to modify at this point, but I'm gonna work on it I think we could come up with something related to puns. You're a extraordinary. Yeah, okay

So go check that out. Really looking forward there. And by the time you're listening to this, our previous live episode at Powell's, which had just been available to Patreon members, but that will have aired last week as you're hearing this in this main feed. So you can get a taste of what you're... But you're listening to this podcast. You know what it's like to come hang out with us. It's going to be a good time. Over on First Edition, you can hear me talk to Kate McKean, the literary agent.

about her new book, Write Through It, The Insider's Guide to Publishing the Creative Life. She's a literary agent. She writes a very popular agents of books newsletter, which is about publishing. And it's about

what the publishing process looked like from an agent's point of view, who has also tried to be an author. She shelved a couple of books that she tried to write. Hawaii novel, I think, was one of them. Interesting. Part motivational, part practical. But if you've got a grad who wants to be a writer, that paired with Jane Friedman's business of being a writer would be a very good pairing. I just recommended both of those as a one-two punch to a friend whose brother has finished a novel and is looking for a home for it. Those are great examples.

resources. Also, folks, we're opening up the mailbag for the summer. Ask us anything. So if you've got stuff about books, work, life, just don't make it weird. You can email us at podcast at bookriot.com. Put mailbag in the subject line so we know to pull that out. And if you want to check out, you can go to the Book Riot Instagram. You can see our faces there. I've done a couple. You can see what is enraging Michelle about how I'm doing these. There's two things that's enraging her about it. And if you can guess what they are,

Shoot me an email podcast. One of them was enough that I came out of vacation to text you. That's true. Yeah, that's right. It's still here too. I'm not sure how long this is going to be around, but we're, you know, we evolve. You're on a journey. That's okay. So let's do a sponsor break when we get into the books of the year so far.

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This episode is brought to you by Flatiron Books, publishers of Total Dreamboat by Caitlin Doyle. Hope Lanover needs a vacation. Her relationship has imploded, her job is stressful, and she's stuck in a creative slump. So when her best friend invites her on a luxury cruise, which I wish my friends would

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Okay, Rebecca, where do you want to start? Do you want to kick off, lead us in some direction? Well, I need to have the Court of Rightness adjudicate something. Oh, the court is here. The court's very excited to be called into session. Let's meet. One of the biggest books of the year came out on December 24th. Oh, I looked at this too. Doesn't count. But it's a 2025 book story, Mel Robbins' Let Them Theory. It sold 4 million copies, and most of those did not happen in 2024. Wow.

Well, let the reader decide. If the listener decide, if you want to think about them. So I guess this is, this is the way to put it. It's not going to show up on any good reads, bestselling books of the year, best books of the year. It's ineligible. They did that to themselves and they get to swim in their pot of gold for it. They did, but they did do it themselves. So, but you know what also sells a bunch of, but there's all kinds of books that selling more than the books we're going to talk about that weren't released this year. But it's like, she's, she's on a media tour that seems never ending. Yeah.

I think it's got the potential to do kind of what Atomic Habits did in terms of how long it sits on the bestseller list. Mel Robbins has a really big platform and prominent profile. So that was going to be like number one with an asterisk for me. I would also demerit it for this reason.

Oh, good. Multiple demerits. Which is, it's just the life-changing magic of not giving an F just dressed up. It's the same idea. There's also been a little conversation about maybe it was someone else's idea first. Who knows? Oh, I missed that. I got into this a little bit. So it's selling a bunch of copies online.

But like this is we have one of these every couple of years, which is also basically just yeah, here's your permission to not do stuff you don't want to do. Right. That's why everyone was enraged by condos like actually you should tidy up. The life changing magic of giving an F maybe we're going to go all the way around the pendulum. Like literally just do what people say you should do.

And what people say you should do is just have boundaries. Wasn't that the part of crowdsourcing? It's like, you can't guess how many jelly beans are in that. So let the crowd. Maybe the crowd knows what you should be doing better than you do. Who are you to say that you know what you should be doing? We just need to do some money ball analysis of like how many years go between each of these bestsellers. And then we can enter the market with our own life-changing magic of just saying no to stuff. Yeah.

Yeah. Just saying no to stuff where the year of yes, I guess that's the opposite. Don't do it. The fortnight of no. Anyway, two weeks of saying no is not saying no. So there we go. Yeah, I think.

It is a current story. It's selling a bunch of copies. I think it's just, we have to have rules here. We do. And I mean, like we're even cheating according to our, or I would even be cheating according to our own demands that all awards be given based on the calendar year of publication. Yeah. Right. So the court of rightness says, heal thyself, adjudicate thyself. You know, it's just, it's been a couple of weeks since we were here together. I just wanted to tee you up to like, be right from the very start. That was an easy one.

Okay, then I'll... Well, I think the easiest... Well, I thought about ranking these and I thought it was going to be easy because clearly Onyx Storm is on my list. Yeah, yes, me too. But if I was going to rank them, I thought initially it would be a clear number one, but I think it might not be. I agree. I think I might have something else. And the something else I want to talk about, I just... Well, there's an interview that will be showing up on this feed. I don't want to spoil it because I think it's pretty cool.

I think Sunrise at the Reaping might be the book of the year. Because the teens are talking about it again. It's rocketing up that whole series up the chart. And here's the other thing. It's good. And I'm not looking at it from sort of a Harold Bloom point, but I've had an occasion to go look at Goodreads. It has the highest average star rating of any of the Hunger Games books. It's like four and a half plus. And it got the AIMS stamp of approval in your house, which does not come easily. And like...

It's apparently it's genuine. I have read this, so I don't want to say it, but apparently people it's, it's actually good. It's like, and it's an important, it might be the most successful prequel book of all time that I can think of right now. And that's always in those parentheses when you see those that I can think of right now is always, but like,

That is good. It's such a relief and a joy for people that are fans of this series, but also for the nature of IP storytelling writ large. Anyway. This is enduring. The Hunger Games fandom is enduring. We're now on, I think, the third generation of readers that are feeling a connection to

And, you know, 1.5 million copies worldwide in its first week, 1.2 million were in the U.S. Like, I think this is a quiet big story of the year. Well, that's what I'm kind of surprised to even say. I think it might be the book of the year so far. Because it's not new, so it's not splashy. We see these from Suzanne Collins. Like, it's not even the first Hunger Games prequel, which would have been and was before.

a bigger story at the time. But yeah, as I was making my list, Onyx Storm was the first thing off the dome. Like that was the first big book of the year. It came out in January, like huge sales, 2.7 million copies in the first week. It was the fastest adult selling novel in 20 years, but like it came out of the gate. And then the conversation about it seems to have

quieted down pretty quickly. And, you know, I think there were very mixed reviews even from fans of the series. It's the third book in a five book series right smack in the middle. Yeah, that's a tough place to be. It's a tough place to get excited.

about. It was a long, that's a long book to read. Right. Also, and I think it raises, I believe that more of the people that are buying Sunrise on the Reaping are actually reading the whole thing. Like Onyx Storm, I have wondered some of the TikTok phenomena, how many people are really doing the whole reading experience versus like buying it and getting into the content and then maybe not totally finishing. So I don't know what reader's connection is going to be

But sitting here, like almost six months after Onyx Storm came out, I don't think that it's a story of the year. No. I mean, well, it depends on how many we have. But in terms of being number one, obviously with a bullet, I don't. I also think the prevalence of other...

TikTok famous romanticist stories kind of take some of the shine off it too. Well, really there's nothing in Sunrise and the Reaping's corner. There's really nothing to even talk about because it is singular in that particular way. If in 25 years, Rebecca Yaros publishes a prequel to whatever and people buy it for 2 million. And they're into it. Then she can have the book of the year or the book of the year so far. Man, I will be so surprised if Rebecca Yaros' fandom is that enduring. I'm

You know, would you have been, that's a great thought. How surprised if we got into DeLorean and fired up Mr. Fusion and put some Coors Light in a banana peel and we went back to, let's say, four years after Mockingjay, right? When we were in a lull and said, you know what? In 15 years, there's going to be another, it's going to be a Hunger Games prequel. I'm not going to tell you what it's about, but it's going to sell 2 million copies in the first year.

14 days or whatever and it's going to be higher rated than any of these we would be shocked we would be shocked we would be shocked but i don't think i'd be surprised that the connection those readers have to the books endured because even by the time mockingjay came out i had seen high school teachers putting the hunger games on school syllabi right and and it had entered like mainstream um

Pop culture, there were memes that like you didn't have to know the Hunger Games to have gotten it. People saw the movies who had never read the books before. There was just like a much more not quite a monoculture connection, but like much more awareness where the romantic stuff does still seem relatively siloed.

to tick tock and like, not for nothing. It's spicy. You can't hand it to your young kids and like build a bedtime ritual around it or like listen to it on a family road trip in that multi-generational. I mean, you could, but child service, you could, you should get a phone call. Those are some choices. Yeah. Maybe not child services, but you know, a friend, the court of rightness would definitely send you a summons. Yeah. The court of rightness would send you a summons. Uh,

Okay, so you said you had just in groups. So were those grouped together? Those were grouped together, like sort of big, you know, genre-y bestsellers. And then I had newsworthy and like careless people. Oh, sorry. No, it's okay. Yeah. Huge publicity blitz. I think maybe the publicity for it has now like outpaced book sales for her. But this is maybe the biggest Streisand effect that I've seen in publishing in our careers. Yeah.

They're going to teach it like publicity classes. Right. Like, don't do this. We really should name it the Zuckerberg effect. Yeah, we should. Because Barbra Streisand's like, I'm just over here writing nine hundred. I've told you everything. I can no longer be the Streisand effect. There's nothing else to know. Everyone knows the Streisand effect.

It's true. But Mark Zuckerberg sues you for writing a book about working for him so that you can't promote it yourself, but everyone else is real happy to promote it for you. Yeah. Also, Zuckerberg's kind of done this twice because renaming Facebook meta and then spending billions and billions of dollars on the metaverse and it going over like a lead balloon is...

is uh it's a special again he's doing fine and i would take the yeah his graveyard of bad ideas is bigger than two but but if you're running a multi-billion dollar company you have bad ideas i get it it's just there's a lot of wood behind these arrows and yeah sometimes when they miss it really hurts careless people on yours yeah it was it was it was a quick it was a quick one too uh let's see i'll go next

I guess the next easiest one for me was Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. It's got on some best books of the year so far. It's selling quite well. She got on the cover of Time. I don't know if you saw that. I saw that, yep. So if you're on the cover of Time and Time is not what it once was, I mean, don't tell me about it. I'm 47 years old. But even the institution of Time, still, it was a big – that was serious business and

The book people seem to like, if not love. It's not getting a lot of hate. It doesn't seem like a failure. But I think in looking at 10, it's sort of snuck on there. Yeah, it was 11 on my list. But since the Court of Rightness has knocked off the let them theory, now it's in my 10. I read it on the way to my PTO last week. Yeah, I had a long layover. I read it in one sitting. I liked it but didn't love it, which is kind of the zone. I think we talked about this earlier.

On Slack. Like this is the zone I'm in and that you're in as well, I think for TJR, but like it went down easy. It was enjoyable. I think I liked it more than Malibu rising, but I didn't like it as much as Daisy Jones and the six, which was just an amazing audio book experience. Where do you want to go next? Let's see more in like,

newsworthy sort of public interest. This might be recency bias, but I think Jake Tapper's original sin is one of the bookstores of the year. I also look at this, but it took me a minute to think of it. Yeah. I also think the media attention to it is outweighing sales, but like,

Everyone has a take on whether the book should have been written, how the book was written, what the book contains, and then how Tapper has been promoting it like on every podcast that you can think of every political talk show. I don't know that it's that effective in selling books for him, but this is a big story.

Yeah, I had one other sort of newsy, outside of the world of books really, but became a book story. And this is the one I was trying to remember the title of. A January 7th publication date. I always thought it was last year. Have you heard of The House of My Mother by Shari Frankie? F-R-A-N-K-E. It's the number one bestseller in religious cults, which is why I thought maybe you would have had this on your radar. But apparently it's the subject, the eight passengers family vlog, which

which is now a Hulu docuseries about this woman writing about the cult she was in. Oh. And it's a huge YouTube channel and it's an internet story. Okay. But it's selling quite well. And the ratings are good. It's made a couple best books of the year so far lists. And we do get, you know, it's not quite as sort of literary memoir as...

educated by Tara Westover, but there is an appetite for the, oh my God, look what I survived. And people are like, oh my God, look what you survived. And it works. I have no personal relationship with it. I don't know if it's good or not. From a Jeff point of view, I probably won't check this out, but it is a huge deal. And it's, I was looking at the best-selling, I don't remember where I saw the list, most popular best-selling books of the year so far before I got into this. And this is one of the ones I was surprised. What is that? Yeah, I haven't heard of this one.

I'm going to have to check it out. Let's see. My final one in the newsworthy corner is Ezra Klein's Abundance.

Like it has just been sitting on the bestseller lists and also lots of conversations. So it's doing both. Like he's doing the media tour. Lots of talk about it. The democratic party has no idea what to do with these concepts. Nobody seems to be able to agree, but there's a ton of, it's just generated a ton of buzz. And that seems to be enduring. Like I am surprised that this, when I looked this morning was like number seven on the PW hard. Yeah. Right. Right.

That's kind of a big deal for a pretty wonky politics book. I think the platform that they both have is hard to deny. And that we know their platform maybe makes us discount it even more. It's like, oh yeah, it's really big. Yeah, I think that's probably right. But...

Was surprised to see that. I think from what I've gathered, like maybe they are a little bit surprised at how well it's doing. Well, I mean, I like books to sell and I think that one's interesting. I guess it's interesting. I didn't put that or the Tapper on my list and I didn't even consider it that hard. And I think this is about me, which is normally how these things go. It's like, I'm so uninterested in

Take of the dayness right now, and those are fodder for that. And it's not necessarily well, I think tapers cultivated. I don't think Klein and Thompson, they certainly are take merchants online, but not of the worst kind. And I'm just not I'm just not interested in the tweet of the moment or the take of the moment or I'm going to selectively pull out or what.

I'm looking for something else and it's not that. So that might be about me, but I'm just not, that's not where the vibes are with me right now. I feel you. I understand. But it doesn't mean the court of rightness agrees. Can't argue with that bestseller list. Where the vibes are with me though is literary slash commercial fiction that is really good and selling very well.

And Charlotte McConaughey is now one of my authors because I've read all three of her books and liked them all. And Wild Dark Shore, we've got to be careful because we have a wild dark horse for book of the year with this because Amazon named it their best book of the year. You and I have both read it and really liked it. It's selling tremendously well for a book of this kind, meaning it's not a genre. It's just...

It's really literary fiction, maybe with a little genre thrown in, don't you think? If you had to pick one, it's literary fiction, I think. It's literary fiction. It has kind of a mystery element. She does that. Yeah, she brings in some mystery, but who doesn't anymore? Yeah, and there's then some suspensy stuff that happens near the end. I just finished it a couple nights ago.

It's yeah, this is selling like hotcakes. And I think actually some of the things that made it that are making it work for such a broad audience are things that like I'm personally not super into right now. Like I would just like my literary fiction to.

Without a bunch of like plot twists and suspense. But I get why this works for people because there's more of a hook. And it is beautifully written. Like she's making some points, but she does not overstate her point. Thank you. Thank you, Australia, for giving us Charlotte McConaughey to do this. Maybe you have your own just putting it on Front Street. And Charlotte Wood because we got Stoneyard devotional this year. The Australians are killing it for subtlety, which is a new sentence that has never been uttered.

Maybe they're always downplaying it, you know? Maybe, but Vanessa and Danica and I were talking on the episode a couple weeks ago about Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil and how one of the things that we all kind of knocked up against in it, while we really liked the book, was that she makes the point over and over.

that she's making. And like you and I bumped on this in The Antidote by Karen Russell. I think we're running into it more where authors are not quite trusting readers to pick up the subtleties and are really making things overt. And I appreciated that Charlotte McConaughey did not go there. This is a good book. It's very compelling. The pages turn.

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I've got a weird anecdata thing for you, and I don't know what to make of it. And I don't want to make too much of it, but I can't also not let it go. Welcome to the Jeff O'Neill story. Welcome to podcasting. I did a short form video on Amazon's best books of the year with Wild Dark Shore as the lead. And on Instagram, 95% of the comments were, oh my God, I love that book. With like, maybe more than 95%. Oh my God, I'm so glad. I love that book. I love that.

On TikTok, didn't have nearly... I mean, it got some traction, but not four or five times as much as Instagram. So like 100-ish comments versus 30-ish comments or something like that. The TikTok comments, too boring, slow, drawn out. And I'm like...

That's not true, but it is. It's interesting. It doesn't not help my story about what people on that platform versus even just this other short form platform are doing. Yeah, it fits the narrative that we're sort of constructing about TikTok and reading. And it's funny that they would say it's too drawn out because it's like a third the length of fourth wing. But.

But on a sentence by sentence level, there are pleasures of the sentence that McConaughey cares more about. And I'm not saying Schwab is a bad writer. It's just that the sentence level is not the unit of import in a way that it is with Schwab. And there are like, right, there's really wonderful sentences in the McConaughey. There are meditative moments. Yes.

there is this mystery element, but the book is not about the mystery elements. You know, the book is about the connections between these characters. And I really think TikTok is just not here for character driven writing. It's plot or bust. I mean, in... Right. It's plot or bust. That seems to be the... It's fine. The ilk. But yeah, I'm really interested for Wild Dark Shore. I think you're right that we might have a dark horse for best book of the year. Like,

There's not that I've seen yet like a huge literary release for the fall. So how fall goes. The Lockwood I'm hearing things about. Yeah. But that's one and it can go a lot of different ways. And she's weird. So like, will it is that can we cross the weird meridian to get Patricia Lockwood into like more mainstream readership?

you're making faces well i i don't know i think i think your point about lockwood being strange is a pro and a con i think the same kind of people that buy wild dark shore and rose though it is literary and it is about things it is not there's not a lot of reading friction right it's not like there's a reason it's going to sell a lot of copies because it you feel like you're getting something nourishing what you are

But it's also not just like raw turnips. And I'm not saying Lockwood is, but it's very easy to read. I think Wild Dark Shore is like it's substantial. There are some difficult pieces of content. Like it's not a Swiss Army recommendation. You can't just give it to anybody. No closer than Lockwood is kind of what you're saying, I think. And you can give it to most readers. But Patricia Lockwood, you can give to fewer readers. But I think the people that like the Lockwood are the kinds of people that are more taste make you writ large. Yeah.

But it'll be interesting. Like, while Dark Shore will probably outsell Patricia Lockwood, where will we land on what is the best book of the year? Like, Lockwood would be my frontrunner there. Yeah. Though I had on my list, and I don't want to sleep on The Dream Hotel. I did have that on my list because I think, again, don't get caught in the prison of the moment sales. We can have a slower burn thing. I see it out. I see people talking about it. It's still out on bookshelf tables. Okay.

I think there's a lot of affection within the literary community for her, and I think this book is especially good. I do have a Shinsky question about the marketing, which if you made it seem more commercial rather than literary, just the cover, it looks like Europa Editions. If it had more of a commercial fiction vibe, would it be selling more? I think it might. I think it might too, because it does...

It's very compelling. It really moves. It's so timely for where we are right now. You know, the government is constructing a massive database about citizens. That's just non-fictional. Personal information. Right. It's incredibly prescient. I do think the marketing made it a little niche-ier, but then it got picked for Read with Jenna. Yeah. So like that's broad exposure for her. And she's been nominated for, you know, big literary book awards in the past.

Didn't make my top 10, but that was on my one to watch. Yeah. I did one book club book. Wild, Dark, Short, I don't think I picked for any of the book clubs. I was looking around at what the books I picked for book club, but the one that seems to have broken out is Broken Country by Claire Leslie Hall. That was also on my ones to watch. It's sold a bunch, like a bunch of bunch. Yeah, just kind of low-key, sitting on these bestseller lists. Yeah, I mean, it's only out March 4th, so it's made it quite... I think this has a little bit of the...

Catherine Newman, Ann Napolitano, that kind of long, it's going to get in the book club world and circulate. It has more of the family, more of a familiar family kind of thing going on than even Wild Dark Shore does. I haven't read the whole thing. I read the first few pages to get a sense of it. What's it about? I don't know anything about it. Wow.

I know you're going to be shocked. It's an unforgettable story of love loss and the choices that shape our lives. I've been reading that verbatim. It also has the thriller twists. Great. Everything has thriller twists now. And at some point I'm going to get mad about it. Yeah. A deadly secrets from the family past. Again, that's why I didn't, I was like, I kind of, I kind of feel like I know what this book is.

Someone dead and we have to know who killed him, but maybe someone that we knew. It has been just sitting on bestseller lists. That's why I put it here. That's why I put it here. It will be interesting to see. Has it come up on any of the best ofs so far for the mid-year check-ins? Don't remember. Yeah, I think it might. Maybe it's in the Kristen Hanna zone where people like it. That's a good point. It sells a lot.

I think Kristen Hanna is more interesting than this to me. Yeah. I don't think I had anything book clubby. One for us, Audition, Katie Kitamura. We're going to make this book one of the books of the year. I'm so glad you put it on here. I couldn't do it to everyone. I mean, it's one of mine and I want it to be. I haven't looked at sales data, rating data. I don't care. I literally don't care. I don't either. For my own, I don't need it. In the first half of this year, that's the book I'm writing for it. You're writing for it. Saddle Up Friends, Katie Kitamura.

I don't think TikTok's going to like it. I don't think so either. It's hard to pitch. You just have to be like, it's weird and you won't know what's happening. But trust me, it's great. And it's too ambiguous for TikTok. It should just be called Nuance by Katie Kitamura. Can we reverse psychology TikTok into this? Like, I bet you won't understand this book. Oh, no.

What we need to do is annotate it with a ninja image of life and that'll get them onto it. Just like every, we just underlined every line with a really arcane system of documenting who said what and what happened. I don't get that. Really a piece of my soul died when I discovered that was the thing that they're doing on TikTok. Like just highlighting everything, but in different colors or like everything that the hero says is highlighted in blue and everything the heroine says is highlighted in pink.

And then you're highlighting other things. Like, are you ever going back to these? Do the kids understand what annotations are for? Look, have fun out there. That's fine. But I think it's a little bit like building ships in bottles. You do it because you did it, right? You don't go sail those little bottle ships. Yeah, what are we doing? What are we doing? Well, you're making a thing and you're having experience, Rebecca. Come on.

I don't know. This is not how I would spend my time. I'm here to yuck that yum. Just highlighting a bunch of things in different colors. Yeah, I was going to say that it's really funny that you would do that. What haven't we talked about?

Oh, did you include Barry Arbons? I did. Yeah, okay. I did too. Yeah. It's hard to know because it just came out, like the latest release of all of the ones that we're talking about today. But I mean, a half million copy print run where the author is signing all 500,000. People are stoked. Again, I'm now getting data from a video I made, but people were stoked about Barry Arbons. Yeah, people are stoked. She's popping up everywhere. Schwab has a dedicated...

And she's doing something a little bit new here. It's a fun read. The pages do turn. I wish it was 100 pages shorter. I agree. And that the lanterns didn't also have neon signs pointing to the lanterns that she hangs by. You know, it felt, let me ask you, because you had a conflict when we were recording the book club episodes. You didn't get to make it. Did you also feel that it was like a little too overt? Yes. And maybe like YA, we talked about what genre it should have, or what category it should have been in.

Yeah, I think so. But I tend to think that's true of almost all books. That's a little too overt. I agree. I cut my teeth on Faulkner, baby. I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, and there are some good sentences in the Schwab, and then there are some like... I've heard sighs that I'm like, that's too much. I get it. That's the most Midwestern thing you've ever said. I just settled it. I just settled it. Are we sure we need to... Yeah.

Yeah. Express that. Like, you know, the first time she said that women have to become vampires because the only other available options for freedom are to be. You can't say it. I mean, we just read the Bertino, right? Where we have like this. They're even called vampires. I think even saying it's a vampire is too much. Just let it. Everyone knows what it is. Let it linger. Let it happen. Yeah.

Well, this is why the literary genre is like my favorite genre to read. They're not my, like, I guess that gets my cerebral cortex firing, but it fires up. Like when Colson Whitehead does a zone one. Yeah. It's like, we're going to look at this, tell the truth, but tell it slant. Yeah. It's interesting. Um,

But I think because bury our bones in the midnight soil lives in this zone where like it's marketed as adult fiction. It has some grown up themes, but the sex is mostly closed door. It is not super spicy. You can like feel good about putting this in a younger, like a teenage readers hands. And I think it will be read widely. And since Schwab has written YA hits in the past, like she's got readers like,

all over the spectrum, I think it's going to do well. I'll tell you one, the problem, I edited the episode here a little while ago. I didn't listen to the whole thing. I was just looking for, you know, blips and bloops, but it does. I don't think it confirms because I'm not ready to say that yet, but it does. It's exhibit D in my VE Schwab is the closest inheritor to Stephen King throne. I can think of because she writes these big, thick genre things that go down easy and,

And they're not subtle. They're not subtle kinds of books. I think she is writing more about something, at least overtly, than King is. I think there's some stuff in King that's pretty interesting. Yeah, there are some ideas in the Schwab. Yeah, but I think it's a little too...

subtitled or super titled for me. But for a half a million people, that's going to be a giant book. That seems to be where we are. Yeah. And like, it just, I don't think it puts me off. This was my first Schwab and I don't think it puts me off her in the future. It's just now I know what I'm getting that like, if I need something entertaining to read on a long flight or sitting on the beach, you know, when you're a couple Negronis in,

I still think I like A Darker Shade of Magic series better than Bear Airbones, but the first is always difficult to... I have one left. Do you have anything left? Me too. I have one left. Emperor of Gladness? Ocean Vuong? I haven't read it. Me neither. And...

It's it's relatively recently I thought I looked at it I just think if I had two more weeks maybe I would. I think it's the trajectory that Wong is on that did this for me going from like literary darling poet, and, you know, the first novel did very well, but like now he is being coronated by Oprah.

And big profile in the New York Times and an op-ed in the New York Times, like the Ocean Vuong platform is growing in a really meaningful way. And how much of that just has to do with what a compelling story.

Yeah. Personality he is, how much of it is about this specific book. Who knows? But like ocean flung on the rise. Also buy your stock. Also in the Kevin Wilson, change your name to the lumberjack. I think his name is memorable. I'm not kidding. I think it matters. Again, it's half of 1%.

But it's a name people can remember when when your book only comes out every four years Remembering your damn name is important. I think and the titles are hard harder to remember like I what was the first novel now? But on earth were briefly gorgeous. Yes. There was that was just long So Kristen Stewart the actress she just directed her first movie called the chronology of water and I like that is the most literary fiction title I've ever 100% I'm gonna confuse that with a million different things the last one on my list. I'm

i'm not sure if this is a reach because it's one of the tw it's one of the 50 most popular books of 2025 on goodreads which again it's a longer list but for charmaine wilkerson's follow-up book to be doing as well as it is okay rifa called it one said was one of her favorite books of the year so far i have not read it yet i heard some early buzz which maybe i shouldn't have paid attention to maybe i'd agree with i don't know kind of put me off of it but it's appeared in some lists it's selling quite well

And for the second novel from a commercial slash literary person, and I will say not for nothing, in this year of our Lord 2025, a Black woman writing commercial slash literary, her second novel, I don't think it got picked by any book clubs. If you're doing this well, I wanted to give it a special mention. Love to see it.

I'd love to see that for her. I know we both really liked Black Cake and when you come out of the gate as hot as she did with that one, it's always like a little bit of a nail biter for how is the second book going to do? Can they sustain the attention? I also heard the early, like maybe this is kind of messy. Not so sure. The early reviews were mixed and it just then became less of a priority for me, but I've had my eye on it. So I know we'll see how the end of this has real potential for me to be one that comes in the end of your cleanup. Yeah. Um,

Okay. Anything else on your list? No, that's it. Any other honorable mentions?

No. Did you feel any kind of way about leaving Great Big Beautiful Life, The New Freedom McFadden, Allie Hazelwood, Alice Feeney, Abby Jimenez, Fearless by Lauren Roberts? I'm just going through some of these others. Yeah, because we've put all of them in the It Books episodes. We've put all of them sort of into the Stephen King category. They have new books out. Those new books are an event for their established readers. They're going to sell well.

But at a certain point, it stops being a story. Like Stephen King also has a new book out this year that is at the top of the hardcover fiction bestsellers, and we're not talking about it. So I didn't feel any kind of way about it. When Emily Henry does something that makes her existing fans even be like, oh, this is new and different. When the cover doesn't look like an Emily Henry book. Right. Then I'll be interested again for this as a story of the year. I know people like it, and I'm glad. Yeah. Not the first. There's two that I'm wondering that I might be wrong about.

that i didn't put on the list or at least even these are things i didn't even consider for honorable mention really but i'm not sure i'm right let's hear it um the john green book everything is tuberculosis it has been everywhere i thought about it and then my friends the new frederick bachman book which is doing very well and people really really like but like nobody talks about it which makes it tough but i also kind of glanced at that one yeah yeah it's

I do think there's a place for when your name is bigger than the title of the book.

That's the place, I don't know that every author wants to go, but for a publisher, that's the holy grail. Yeah, then you're in Scrooge McDuck territory. Good for you. But for me, it almost feels like it's another season of Law & Order SVU. Like, I like La Salle, but it's not going to be something I'm going to be like, oh my God, I just need a pic. Yeah, and you know, there's exceptions to this for every reader. Like, we're both going to be stoked on Dan Brown Day in September. Right. I want a new Dan Brown book. I know exactly what I'm getting. Mm-hmm.

But for the most part, I want the title and what the book is about to matter. And for the author, like the author's name carries weight for me, but we never get to the place. Like this doesn't happen in literary fiction. Colson Whitehead has won like multiple national book awards and his name is not bigger than the book title.

Yeah, I don't even know who it'd be. You know, how big was Zadie's name on the fraud? It didn't work because the book didn't sell. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think it was bigger. That big Z. God, that's great. It was. It was great. Just think how big the axe would be on the Kevin the Lumberjack. The L could be the axe. I'm thinking about like all my Toni Morrison's after she won the Nobel and her name's not bigger than the book titles.

on all those people love home mercy yeah um i don't know my first day in slovenia i should have sent you a picture i wandered into a used bookstore and i found a copy of beloved in slovenian cool that came home with me one two four was angry uh did you see that sharifa picks you live for one of the best beach reads i love that erica and erica and danica had some fun with with that pick i mean again oh one two i've got that's right

Well, in Slovenian, in Slovenian you can translate it either way. In Slovenian? Yeah. I mean, the translator really struggled with that. I've got to listen to that Beach Reads episode because I came back and saw y'all chattering about how just like unhinged. We got off the recording and we're like, God, did we laugh too much? And I'm like, I don't know. We had a good time. There's no such thing. I feel like when you have a good time podcasting, people can tell. And we had a good time and we got a couple notes saying the laughter was fun. So if you didn't feel that way and haven't yet emailed us, keep it in the holster. Yeah.

When you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don't hesitate. Just let it roll, baby. All right. Podcast at bookride.com for the emails. Bookride.com slash listen. Powell's event there. Other stuff on first edition. And we'll talk to y'all later. Thanks, Rebecca. Bye. Bye.