The Best of the Rest of 2024 [Teaser]
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You're listening to a teaser for Book Riot Podcast premium content. If you want to hear the rest, join us at patreon.com slash bookriotpodcast. For just $10 a month, get access to our full library of premium content, in addition to receiving early ad-free access to the regular episodes you hear in the show. Here we go. This is really the end of the year for me, Rebecca. Our best of the rest when it comes to what we make. We still got some more stuff than we can, but this is the spiritual part.

end of the year. Anything that happened, anything good that happens between now and December 31st may as well never happen because it's therefore not a candidate.

For next year's Best of the Rest. For Best of the Rest. So it's all the mid-place. That's all it's going to be. I'm only going to keep it to the mid-place for the rest of the year. The first thing on my list, actually, is something that I received as a birthday gift last December. Ineligible! No, I'm kidding. After we did Best of the Rest for last year, but I've continued to use it in 2024, so I'm talking about it. But yeah, this is our final bonus episode of...

of the year. So first off, thank you to everybody who has joined us here on Patreon this year and over the last couple of years. When we started it at the beginning of 2023, we were not sure how many of you would jump in, how sustainable it would be.

knew that we would have no shortage of ideas but we have had so much fun having this sandbox to play in and that you all have come along with us so thank you for that yeah this is this it does feel like the spiritual end of the podcasting year even though just before we started recording we were saying like we've got a couple more to get in the can this week we have one more that we have to record on monday the 23rd that will be an early january episode we're trying to just like get everything set so that we can take some time over the holidays

But if I'm going to talk to somebody for a million hours in December, I'm going to pick you. And we'll indulge my list of things. This is a real look in the mirror here, Rebecca. And it's not any one thing. It's just this is what my life is. I'm a little suspicious that you're really underselling here so that...

You know, it'll be more exciting. Let me tell unto you, oh Bethlehem, I'm not underselling anything. I like their stuff I like, but it's, you know, I'm not going to change anyone's life with a reco today is what I'm saying. You never know. Well, that's true. I've been keeping a list on my phone, so I don't have the docs. They're not organized. So let's just pickleball it back and forth. Okay. Okay.

You first. You serve. I serve. That was to you. I don't know what that was. Great. I've never played pickleball, so you'll just have to forgive me for not picking that one up. Right, that's okay. It's like stupid tennis. Okay, so my first one is caftans as a category of clothing. Okay.

See last week's episode where I talked about perimenopause. One of my dear friends is like a great collector of caftans. And I asked her for my birthday last year to pick one out for me and send me one. I wanted to get into the caftan life. It seems like a thing to do in your 40s.

And she sent me a great one that has, for my purposes, it's perfect for work days as well. Like you can run around the house in it, but it has a collar. It has like sleeves that I can roll up. And so on a day that I've got to be on screen from like the shoulders up, I can wear a caftan and not look like I'm wearing a caftan on a work call. It has pockets.

Um, in my climate in Virginia, it doesn't get that cold here in the winter. So like on a pretty average winter day, I can put on a caftan and like big cozy socks and I'm golden. It's just like spiritually, I wanted to be in a muumuu and now I am physically basically in a muumuu. It's like everything is comfortable there. There's not a waistband to mess with me. Like,

I'm just relaxed. I'm all about the caftan life. Okay. I've got no segue from that. I don't have any clothing items on here this year. Okay. So there we go. The best $7 I spent this year, it's this guy right here. It's called the Canary. Oh. And it's just a little box cutter. It's for all those boxes, but it's not sharp. Like you can run it against your thing. It's like little tiny serrations.

It looks less scary than like an X-Acto knife. Yeah, you can't see this because we're not doing video, but it's kind of the size and shape of a butter knife with a plastic handle and a metal, I guess a metal body. But it's just, it's perfect for cutting open the boxes that come into your house, you know, books and clothes and there's just a lot of coming in for work and otherwise. Yeah.

And I've always just kind of used a knife or a box or whatever around, but always felt a little weird, like especially with little kids with a box cutter, leaving that. And frankly, I myself with a box cutter, like I really have to do some work to hurt myself with this. And it just works. It stays sharp. Seven bucks. The canary. How did you discover this item? No idea. Okay. The canary just made its way to you. Yeah. I saw it somewhere. When the student is ready. Yeah, that's right. Mine like water. So you're up next.

Okay. Asking friends to extend their expertise to you as a gift. So I did this with the caftans. I was like, I would like a caftan and I don't want to comb the internet. And that went so well that then when I decided that I wanted to treat myself to like one nice handbag and I like, I don't know why I decided I wanted to do this. I know nothing about handbags, but I wanted like one fancy something. Okay.

And so my birthday gift from a different friend last year, the product of it was a spreadsheet that she sent me that was like, these are the different designers that I think that you would like. Here are the ones that are like, if you wish to be perceived and here are the bags that if you do not wish to be. Here's your invisibility cloak. Did,

If you do not wish to be perceived. And it was super helpful. It like would have been an hours long internet rabbit hole for me. I wouldn't have really known where to start because I'm just out of my depth with something like I want one nice handbag. And it was really fun.

And it made me think about like how much I like to be asked to help with, you know, something that I'm good at. I think everybody likes this. Sharp tools and interesting problems. Yeah. So I kind of started looking around at the other people in my life of like, you know, next time you ask me what I want for my birthday, I'm probably going to ask you to like give me an idea or something that you are particularly great at. It's been really fun.

So I just wanted to share that idea with folks. That's wonderful. I like that idea. Thanks so much for listening. Join us at patreon.com slash bookriotpodcast to hear the rest of this episode and get access to our full back catalog of premium content. That's patreon.com slash bookriotpodcast.