← Book Riot - The Podcast
Book Riot - The Podcast
2026 Summer Adaptation Preview
00:52:27
Jeff and Rebecca preview summer adaptations to check out this year.
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- [00:00]
Rebecca Schinsky
This episode is brought to you by Merit Beauty. My beauty routine has always been extremely minimal. We're talking like tinted moisturizer if I'm feeling really ambitious, but most days I don't wear makeup at all. That has worked fine for me until we started doing video podcasts and suddenly my face is everywhere. And I know you'll be shocked to hear that I care about that a little bit more than I used to. I wanted to step it up without adding a lot of time because if a routine takes more than five minutes, it is genuinely not going to happen for me and Merit Beauty was the answ. All of their products are designed to be fast, easy and they're really good. I use three things. The minimalist stick, which pulls double duty as foundation, and concealer so I'm not layering a bunch of products on my face the flush balm for a little color that looks like it came from being healthy rather than wearing blush and the signature lip blush, which is just enough. The whole thing takes me minutes and I actually look camera ready, which was the whole point. Everything Merit makes is clean, vegan and cruelty free with skincare ingredients that are actually good for your skin. Right now, Merit Beauty is offering listeners a free free signature makeup bag with your first order at meritbeauty.com that's M E R-I-T beauty.com for a free signature bag with your first order. Meritbeauty.com your summer starts now with Memorial
- [01:18]
Jeff O'Neill
Day deals at the Home Depot. It's time to fire up summer cookouts with the next grill 4 burner gas grill on special. Buy for only $199 and entertain all season with the Hampton bay West Grove seven piece outdoor dining set for only $499 this Memorial Day, low prices guaranteed
- [01:37]
Rebecca Schinsky
at the Home Depot while supplies Last price invalid May 14 through May 27
- [01:41]
Jeff O'Neill
US only exclusion supplies. See homedepot.com Pricematch for details. This is the Book Riot Podcast. I am Jeff o' Neill and I'm Rebecca Schinsky. It's adaptation preview time. Memorial Day is in the rearview mirror by Acclamation, the beginning of the summer season. So I think really Devil Wars, Prada 2 Mandalorian Grogu kind of kicked off the movie season. There was a couple of big TV things. There's so much media all the time that I'm wondering if we're headed towards a period where like the seasons just don't matter as much anymore.
- [02:15]
Audiobook Narrator
So.
- [02:16]
Jeff O'Neill
But this is just a nice chance for us to group some of these things and Talk about some adaptations. Rebecca. So we're gonna go through some stuff today.
- [02:22]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. There are a couple big things out. There's a bunch coming. We're always happy to see it. Big year for book to screen adaptations. And in my research, there were just a ton of things on streaming. Have focused mostly on theatrical releases. There are some big streaming releases here, but this is mostly going to be about going to the theater, seeing the big budget stuff. If we tried to tally up all of the streaming adaptations, we would be here for a week. So take your pick of what's working for you. We hope everybody's having a good time out there.
- [02:55]
Jeff O'Neill
And I think pinned at the center of this is the Odyssey. Of course.
- [03:00]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yes.
- [03:01]
Jeff O'Neill
Which we were recording a show earlier today, getting ready for the Odyssey. And I didn't realize it until just now to get ready for this recording is the Odyssey, the biggest adaptation of our lifetime. Oh, like, what was. What has been. I remember the first X Men movie, but I'm a comic book nerd. In comic books, we're kind of putting to the side for what we're doing here. We didn't include any comic book, but that was a big deal. Right. There's a Batman, 1989, Tim Burton. Those are huge deals. The only thing I think is equivalent is Lord of the Rings for the Odyssey. That's the only thing that's really up there to me.
- [03:37]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think that's right. Like, you got to give shouts to Harry Potter and the Hunger Games. Those adaptations were huge. But it's hard to be bigger than the Odyssey just in terms of, like, the legacy of the literary property. It is thousands and thousands of years old. And there's not a flagship adaptation of it.
- [03:56]
Jeff O'Neill
No. And it was. And it's all. And like, it's a thing people take seriously for the jump. And just say what you will about Hunger Games or Harry Potter. That's not the conversation we're having now. And then the prestige of the director, the prestige of the cast and the score and the production value and this, like.
- [04:13]
Rebecca Schinsky
Like, it's been enough.
- [04:14]
Jeff O'Neill
I don't even know what you could do. What could you do that would top it? I couldn't even think of it.
- [04:18]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's been in the Oscar race since the day it was announced. So.
- [04:21]
Jeff O'Neill
Right.
- [04:22]
Rebecca Schinsky
Assuming it's not just terrible and it's Christopher Nolan. So it's not going to be. This is a really big deal.
- [04:28]
Jeff O'Neill
Matt Damon's doing Saturday Live nine weeks ahead of the time. I mean, you just don't see stuff like this happen. Very often the Internet is just looking
- [04:36]
Rebecca Schinsky
for things to be mad about. Should we. They're all. They all have American accents. What should we do about it? Well, I don't know what to tell you people.
- [04:44]
Jeff O'Neill
There's also whatever you. Maybe you can infer from my demeanor that I don't have any time. I don't find that if it's done interestingly and well, then you can cares play around with it. Let's see, we're gonna do some things that are out now upcoming. You have a note here, and this is true of my own. Looking around to a super white summer for adaptations. There are not a lot of major properties that are starring or written by people of color. And that's something to get out of the way. Not to get out of the way, but to put it on top and put a bullet on it. As much as we talk about the best seller list being super white, the adaptations are having just a similar phenomenon.
- [05:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
This is a phenomenon that I've noticed in past episodes where we've done adaptation previews. And what seems to be true to me is that the casts and crews of these adaptations are diverse. There are people of color and queer folks, you know, represented in almost every one of these. But the source material continues to be predominantly from white writers. And some of that is about just picture me waving my arms at the history of the western canon and Western publishing. And some of it is of course about structural issues that continue today. But we do just want to highlight that.
- [05:57]
Jeff O'Neill
Let's start with some things that are out. Something I didn't know was out. I read the Devil and Silver a While Ago, Victor Lavalle's great horror novel. And it is out on May 7th. It was released. I don't know if it's episodic or a full season drop or what, but they have an anthology horror series called the Terror and they chose his. It's a short novel. I don't know if it's technically novella. To be the subject basically to be that season's version of anthology, which I thought was a super cool idea for like a genre anthology. So to like take books and then adapt them. I don't know if they've done that for other things, but I would think those would be cool for, say, Roman, you know, Black Mirror did this for, you know, phones, but too much. Which was the best summary of Black Mirror of all time. But I'd like to see this for other genres where, you know, you don't want to try to stretch out House of Dragon in three seasons. Oh wait, we're doing that. But a good six or eight episode season would get you. It would be a cool adaptation. And then you stick around for the branding that container for that vessel and you come back with something else the next time. I would love to see this with short stories, with other genre you want to do. Give me some sense of what I'm going to get in the branding of the anthology series, but then swap out the story, the teller, the cast, the whole thing. I think this is fun. I like this idea.
- [07:14]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think at some point I signed up for AMC when I was trying to get access to like one specific series and I probably still have it.
- [07:22]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. Yeah, that's right.
- [07:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
Have to go check out the terror for the Devil in Silver. Also out now. These are both theatrical releases. The first one, the Sheep Detectives. This is written by Craig Mason, directed by Kyle Balda. It's based on the novel Three Bags Full by Leoni Swan. When I first saw a trailer for this, I was like, what a joke. But it's doing really well. It's about a shepherd who every night reads aloud a murder mystery, pretending that his sheep can understand. And then one day he is found dead. And the sheep realize realize it was a murder and they think they know everything about how to go about solving it. It's like the sheep are in the Agatha Christie story. We have Hugh Jackman, Emma Thompson, Nicholas Braun, Hong Chao, and a ton of folks voicing sheep. Brett Goldstein, Regina King, Patrick Stewart, Julia Louis Dreyfus among them. It's been out for about a month now. It has a 94% tomato rating. The worldwide box office is over $86 million. Just a good family summer movie.
- [08:22]
Jeff O'Neill
And I don't know what to say about this. I thought the same thing you did when I saw the first trail. Like, am I having a stroke? Like, what has happened here? Is it April 1st? I can only imagine the junior development officer whoever who was pitching this and they just kept being maybe it was a dare. Making this movie made this. The original novel is published in the US By Soho Press. I was talking to someone over there earlier this spring. They were so excited by it. They said the book is really fun and you have the quip. Really? A blurb from Melissa Wilkinson, a New York Times film critic. Really glowing review. I've interviewed Alyssa Wilkinson. She is a serious person, not given to hyperbole or like doing stunt reviews. I think my family will watch this when it hits streaming. And if you had told me that when I first saw the trailer, I would like did a meteor hit? Are we out of media? Did I lose a dare? Like what has happened? I'm gonna watch this.
- [09:15]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Her quote is not only is the Sheep Detectives delightful, but it's funny and emotionally complex and dare I say, unusually deferential toward the noble sheep. Frequently cast as brain dead losers in cinemas barnyards. It's also the rare kind of movie after which you can exit the theater saying they don't make movies like that anymore and be absolutely right. I look forward to being like two drinks in watching this on a plane.
- [09:39]
Jeff O'Neill
I guess it's Babe Corps, right? This is the. This is the. This is the ancestor of Babe. Something like this, which is mystery.
- [09:46]
Rebecca Schinsky
Sure.
- [09:48]
Jeff O'Neill
That works. Baby like that comp. You get me going. We will. The less said the better about Andy Serkis's talking animal. Animal, I guess bizarro version of this, which is Animal form, which right now has a 29 Metacritic score, which is sort of as bad as you can get and not have it be Nazi propaganda. Like this is bad. This is bad stuff here, Rebecca. Like that's a bad movie to do.
- [10:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
A big essay about why adaptations of Animal Farm are always so bad. And like, could it be done? Well, maybe. Maybe the Sheep Detectives people should be in charge. But it has. I've never seen a good one.
- [10:25]
Jeff O'Neill
No. So maybe let's not try to make Animal Farm happen. One more here that you found for out now, Rebecca. Do you want to take.
- [10:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. And I actually just saw this yesterday. It's Is God is written and directed by Alicia Harris. Adapted from her award winning play of the same title. It's about two sisters who go on this epic quest for revenge. They are confronting family history and being pushed to extraordinary lengths. Their mother is played by Vivica A. Fox. The two sisters are played by Kara Young and Mallory Johnson. And basically their father was bad dude who did bad things to them. They have grown up most of their lives thinking that their mother was dead from one of those things. It turns out she's alive and she wants them to go kill him. It's intense. Only like an hour and a half, maybe an hour and 40 minutes. Moves really fast. It's beautifully shot. I found it to just be really compelling. Also just appearances by a ton of great people. Erica Alexander, Sterling K. Brown, Janelle Monae all have supporting roles and it's doing great with audiences. 98% tomato rating. An 84 Metacritic score, which is pretty hard to achieve. It's only showing in the US right now and it's struggling to make up its budget in box office. It's at a $4 million box office against their budget of 14 million to produce it. But there's still time. And Alicia Harris really drew on the traditions of Greek tragedies in writing the play and then in constructing how the movie is put together. And it carries that weight. It feels like you're watching something epic, but it also does just have like great jump scares. Like, I thought I was gonna end up in the lap of the guy sitting next to me. A couple times I jumped so high. But this was a really great surprise to me. It's been out for a few weeks and the reviews have been so good that I was like, yeah, let's go see what that's all about.
- [12:16]
Jeff O'Neill
Cool. All right. Now to upcoming stuff. We're going to go. We'll spend more or less time on these as we feel inclined to. Some of these are just worth mentioning. If you didn't know they were coming out, he didn't know they existed at all. Big one in my house. Good Girl A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, Season 2. Netflix out as this is coming out. It'll be out today in the US the second installment based on Holly Jackson's mega selling book series. The shorthand for this is think Veronica Mars, but set in English Village. So the main character is the young woman who played Enid from Wednesday. I can never remember her name at the same time. You can Google it out there. She's pretty great in Wednesday. And this book did extraordinarily well. I think it's a tick tock sort of sensation. But it's a series of books starring this singular character who's a reluctant sort of teenager solving crimes, which I think is something we need to remember works put a teenager in unusual settings and make them solves crime. Make them solve crimes that the police don't care about for whatever reason. Just rinse, repeat, reshuffle. Rinse, repeat, reshuffle.
- [13:16]
Rebecca Schinsky
Citizen Detective. That's always fun to see.
- [13:18]
Jeff O'Neill
It always. It always works. It always works. All right, next one I think is a you find. But I saw this trailer. I was like, this is based on a book. When I saw this trailer, immediately when I saw it.
- [13:26]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, it's actually so Girls like Girls. This is coming to theaters June 19th. It's written by Haley Kiyoko, Stephanie Scott and Chloe Okunu, directed by Haley Kiyoko. And it's based on the young adult novel by Hayley Kiyoko that was based on her hit single called Girls Like Girls. So it's a song that became a book that became a movie. It's about two teenage girls who are reckoning with feelings of attraction to each other and just to other girls in general, and learning to embrace their emotions and their identities as queer women. The adaptation stars Maya DaCosta and Myra Molloy. Zach Braff is there, Levon Hawke, Ethan Hawke, and Uma Thurman's son is also there. Kiyoko is a really well known queer activist. She's nicknamed Lesbian Jesus by many of her fans. So like high praise.
- [14:16]
Jeff O'Neill
Nice nickname if you can get it. Yeah.
- [14:18]
Rebecca Schinsky
And now she's a triple threat as a musician, a writer and a director. And the Internet is just full of Gen Z queer women who credit the music video for Girls Like Girls, which came out, I want to say about 10 years ago, with being the first time that they saw their identities represented on screen. So kind of a full circle story for Girls Like Girls.
- [14:38]
Jeff O'Neill
The trailer had when I saw it and knowing nothing about it, it's teenagers hanging out in various states of being soaked from swimming in various watering holes around Oregon and then having awkward, perhaps tantalizing knees touching and glances and But I can't. And I want to. But it's terrific stuff. It looks really beautiful at the same time, so I'm looking forward to catching that when it comes out. Just bearing notation as before. House of The Dragons Season 3 June 21 on HBO Max.
- [15:15]
Rebecca Schinsky
This episode is sponsored by Penguin Random House Audio, the premier publisher of audiobooks including the Midnight Train by Matt Haig. Stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook edition read by James Norton. When your life flashes before your eyes, where would you stop? Return to the world of Matt Haig's internationally best selling novel the Midnight Library with the Midnight Train. It's now available as an audiobook read by actor James Norton. The Midnight Train is a time traveling love story that will take you wherever you need to go and it's one of the most anticipated new books of 2026. No one can change the past, but the Midnight Train can take you there. The chance to relive the moments that meant the most and to see what kind of person you really were. For Wilbur, his best days are with Maggie, the love of his life, on his honeymoon in Venice before he gave it all away. He wishes he could go back and live differently, but to do so risks everything. Again, stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook edition of the Midnight Train by Matt Haig, read by James Norton, provided by our sponsors at Penguin Random House Audio
- [16:25]
Jeff O'Neill
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- [16:29]
Rebecca Schinsky
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Jeff O'Neill
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- [16:35]
Rebecca Schinsky
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- [16:56]
Jeff O'Neill
Good sleep is everything. That's why Ollie's Science Back support is made with a blend of melatonin and L theanine for both kiddos and grown ups. So when your mind won't switch off, you've got something that can help your racing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance. Find Ollie Sleep Solutions for the whole family@ollie.com that's o L-L-Y.com I've been watching this. I read the book that it's based on, which is a prequel to the main event of the Song of Ice and Fire series, which we most people know as a Game of Thrones book and TV series. It's mostly about how the Targaryens, those dragon riding morons, lose their dragons and they just fight about having dragons and you have more and I have more and your hair is white and so is mine and let's marry or kill each other. The action really picks up here where Rhaenyra Targaryen is going to sort of go try to take the throne. The interesting thing about this is how much they've invested in the dragons. Like if you watch this on mute and just watch it for the setting and staring and dragons, you probably you may have a better time than listening to these people and trying to keep track of what's actually going on. I will. I don't know if I'd call this a guilty pleasure. I'm watching this out of habit or I just don't know. I'm not sure what I'm doing.
- [18:14]
Rebecca Schinsky
Obligation.
- [18:16]
Jeff O'Neill
That's not a gene in my body when it comes to TV necessarily. Momentum, I I don't know. But that's going to be one of the bigger TV shows on streaming of the summer. I also think I like Night of the Seven Kingdoms so much better than this. I'm like okay, I guess I'll keep watching this. But anyway, House of The Dragon Season 3 is coming out. Rebecca, you have starred and produced in the next one. I think you probably got behind did you back this how many points do you have on Mary Oliver? Saved by the beauty of the world.
- [18:43]
Rebecca Schinsky
Listen, if I had known it was coming, I would have backed it for a lot. So this is a documentary by Sasha Waters about Pulitzer Prize winning legendary poet of my heart, Mary Oliver. Sasha Waters, lucky for me, is from Richmond. So I got to to see this when it premiered at the James River Film Festival a month or so ago. And it's wonderful. Oliver was a quiet, queer icon and wrote really beautiful nature poetry, wrote about dogs, about the nature of life itself. And her poetry was very accessible, which was a point of some debate later in her career. Ada Limone says in the documentary, sometimes when you win the people, you lose the poets. And I think that that happened with Mary Oliver, that once she became popular and a lot of people started read her, other poets thought like, well, if it's that accessible, it can't be that good. But one could argue that the poetry
- [19:35]
Jeff O'Neill
that people I like Nirvana before, nevermind.
- [19:38]
Rebecca Schinsky
The poetry that people will read and engage with might in some ways be the best poetry. And it's a really wonderful exploration of this kind of vast distance between Mary Oliver's real life and the public perception of her. Like she's kind of perceived as this like earth mother wandering the fields character, but she was like quite spiky and complicated. She had a really difficult childhood. And then in her young adult life met a woman named Molly Malone Cook who was older than she was. And they had a decades long relationship that was not without its own difficulties, but was also really devoted and very beautiful. And after Oliver wins the Pulitzer, she stops being so reclusive and she just is like unstoppable on the speaking circuit. And you get that there's archival footage and interviews from when Mary Oliver was alive, including a really important one with Maria Shriver. And then also scholars and poets, including Ada Limone, but also just famous people who love Mary Oliver's work. It opens with Stephen Colbert reciting the summer day or trying to recite the summer day and then starting to cry, which I like. Then I was crying. It's like, oh, good, we made it 25 seconds into this documentary and now we're all crying. John Waters shows up. He was long term friends with Oliver and her partner. They all lived in Provincetown near each other. Steve Buscemi's here, Oprah's here, Lucy Dachis is here. It's just wonderful. There's a limited theatrical release on July 3rd, and then it's coming out on PBS on August 25th as part of their American Masters series. So all my Mary Oliver stans out there. You can have a good summer with her.
- [21:14]
Jeff O'Neill
It's end of the school year time. Well around the country but here in my house too. Which means the yearbooks came home.
- [21:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh yes.
- [21:20]
Jeff O'Neill
And I was flipping through the senior quotes.
- [21:22]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh no.
- [21:22]
Jeff O'Neill
And I just reporting that Mary Oliver is alive and well.
- [21:26]
Rebecca Schinsky
Are we doing a lot of things with our one wild and precious life?
- [21:29]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean but what are we going to do? No one answers the question. The, the feeling I had as a 47, well 48 now reading a 17 year old's quote asking me what I'm going to do with. I was like, you know what? Grow up a little bit. Let we can have this conversation. You don't know anything.
- [21:48]
Rebecca Schinsky
You know what it's not. It's not maximize shareholder value.
- [21:52]
Jeff O'Neill
No, it's not though. You know who among us also sidebar. I like Stephen Colbert. I would recommend to Stephen Colbert to just go take some time. We've done plenty of Stephen Colbert right now.
- [22:06]
Rebecca Schinsky
I agree in general in this specific case I was really happy to see him because he talked.
- [22:11]
Jeff O'Neill
No, sure, I understand.
- [22:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
He talked about how the poem is really important to his family. And every year on the first day of summer when school is out, he and his wife would read it with their kids and now that they're grown, they text it to them and they all have this kind of family moment about Marianne Oliver. I mean he's a great reader, so I, I think he's got a relationship with the poetry. You're making a face right now that I don't appreciate.
- [22:34]
Jeff O'Neill
Look, I like Mary Oliver, but texting it to my kids every year, at some level they've got to look it up for themselves. Like just save it on your phone. Okay. Five star weekend. This is a, this is. I'm calling this Eat Stay Love because it's Jennifer Garner starring in an Ellen Hildenbrand novel of the same name. The main character played by Garner, her husband dies and then the main character, I don't know the character's name, it's just main character, I'm saying, invites her friends from different parts of her life to a weekend out on Nantucket. Get the gang back together actually on Nantucket. Not a volume, not a sound stage in Santa Monica. So I think it's going to look great. So if you're looking for some mid summer rich people and fancy places vibes, this is where you can go. There's no murder. I don't think, I don't think anything that's maybe an Agatha Christie book. If someone does this and starts picking off her friends one by one. Actually, the Agatha crispy one is she dies. You have to figure out which part of her life she did something bad. It's not that I'm actually pitching something I personally be more interested in watching, but six episodes, Jennifer Garner, big smile, big brown eyes, some crying and some mozzarella Di Bufala. And we're all gonna have a great time. So that's coming out the same.
- [23:50]
Rebecca Schinsky
I saw a trailer for that on T like a commercial for it on TV recently and I was so, so surprised at the end when the peacock logo came up because it is gorgeous and it looks like something you would go see in a theater.
- [24:01]
Jeff O'Neill
That is, I guess we would guess that is a Netflix property. This kind of feel good, you know, not too stressing. Beautiful people in a beautiful location. I feel like that's what they would normally do there. Maybe the biggest adaptation of the summer that I will not probably watch is because was I was weirdly never a Little House on the Prairie Kid. Okay, July 9th on Netflix. A huge, big bug, big, big budget adaptation of Wilder's semi autobiographical novels. The major emendation being here seems to. I did some reading about this is that they're going to do a significant inclusion of some indigenous characters in a family alongside. If you've read anything about discourse around this didn't do great. I should say Wilder with the originals. But this is a property you can get for free. It can be family friendly and they're gonna try it. So when you start looking at the Netflix adaptations between this and east of Eden Prairie core, maybe they look at the Taylor Sheridan universe. Where can we get on this action? We got wagons, we got wheat, and we've got Little House on the Prairie too. I My sense of this in terms of the people who grow up to be book lovers is that people like this, but not as much as Little Women, though I haven't filed ahead in my head at the same point. I was never a Little House on the Prairie kid, so I could be very, very. No, I think you're biased in that regard.
- [25:24]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think you're onto something there. The Little House books were formative reading experiences for me just because they were some of the first chapter books that I read on my own and that I remember being excited to move through. But in terms of the content of them, like I personally didn't connect deeply enough that I'm still thinking about them in my, you know, middle age. The way that people who did have the joy of reading Little women at the right point in their childhoods are still talking and thinking and feeling about those. I think that's right. I think this is a really smart move by Netflix, like something that had been adapted, but that is really due for an update because you don't want to show your kids the old ones. You really don't. So be excited to see how it does.
- [26:08]
Jeff O'Neill
I'm not even sure what to say about the Odyssey at this point. We're not going to go through the cast.
- [26:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
You know what the Odyssey, everyone is in this movie.
- [26:14]
Jeff O'Neill
I saw. I was reading one of the, I think 10,000 interviews or clips Matt Damon is doing to promote this about how he got the call from Christopher Nolan, and his pitch was two words, and it was the Odyssey. He didn't even. He's like, I want you to be the lead. And he's like, okay. And he's like. And then Damon apparently agreed to it. And Nolan's like, no, I want to give you the pitch. And Dame was like, okay, sure, fine. I don't need it. It's only two words. The Odyssey. He's like, oh, okay, Rebecca. I guess let's prognosticate here, Jeff and Rebecca. Like we were gonna. We're gonna watch this and talk about it. Do you think we're gonna be delighted by it? Do you think we're gonna come out of this being like, that's what we want from this?
- [26:52]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think we are. Nolan is a really good filmmaker. I've seen some interviews about, like, all of the practical effects that they use to do things like the Trojan horse and Cyclops and some of the big set pieces of the Odyssey. It will look good. He doesn't like. There's not going to be AI slop all over this thing. There's not going to be much cgi. I think the task will be, can we get ourselves outside of expecting, like, Homeric language?
- [27:21]
Jeff O'Neill
That's a great point.
- [27:22]
Rebecca Schinsky
But if you can. I saw the Return a couple of years ago with Juliet Binoche and Ralph Fiennes, which is just about the section of the Odyssey when Odysseus does make it home to Ithaca. And they both spoke in British accents, which, more customarily, these classics are presented in. But they spoke in regular cape in English. It's not, you know, in hexameter or pentameter or anything. And it worked just fine. Like, they're in conversation with each other because the Odyssey itself is narrated as if you're just watching the action. But we don't get a ton of dialogue, so somebody's got to go write the dialogue. Christopher Nolan wrote it his way. Much is being made of Tom Holland being like, my dad's coming home, but you like. Frankly, I think it's going to look like a million bucks. I think it's going to be a big adventure. I hope to be delighted. I am sure that because of the size of the hype, there will also be be backlashes all over the place. But I think my confidence index is high.
- [28:20]
Jeff O'Neill
There's a whole bunch of discourse now. I'll give my 30 seconds.
- [28:24]
Rebecca Schinsky
Okay.
- [28:25]
Jeff O'Neill
For the Lupita Nuongo as Helen slash Clyde Mnestra. I would just encourage people to do this. Get yourself a globe and see how far Africa is from the Mediterranean and compare it to Boston, Massachusetts, where Matt Damon is from. That's all I'm saying. That's all I've got for you. I was struck, too. I assumed they were gonna use British accents because that's what we do when we are doing English language historical properties. But I was thinking about it in these terms. If you're gonna cast Damon and Anne Hathaway in the two principal roles, that's it. Are you gonna ask them to do English accents also? Christopher Nolan is British, so an American accent may sound more foreign to him than a British accent. So I was just, I'm trying to parse this because accent. I was struck, bud. Yeah. I also would be okay if everyone just using their regular accent British. You know, we, Robert Patterson does. Bernthal can be the Punisher. You know, he can be Frank Castle. We can do. I would be okay with that. At the same time, there's all these city states. We've got gods in Cyclops. Like, we're okay. We, we can, we can handle it. I, I, I'm fine with that.
- [29:31]
Rebecca Schinsky
I can believe in Cyclops, but not in Telemachus saying, my dad's coming home home. Let's. Come on, guys.
- [29:38]
Jeff O'Neill
Which of the trials of Odysseus do you think would have gotten you? Because this. I also need everyone to check yourself. Only Odysseus makes it home. So if you think you're gonna make it back, you don't. All the other dudes, they get turned into pigs. They fall into giant swirling holes. They get eaten by Cyclopses. What gets you, Rebecca? Is it the lotus eaters? Is it Paul? You know what? What?
- [29:58]
Rebecca Schinsky
It might be the Lotus. I have not started my reread of this for the summer, so I don't feel totally queued. Up to answer it, but I don't. It's actually. I don't know. The Cyclops probably would have freaked me all the way out.
- [30:10]
Jeff O'Neill
My answer is this is. I'm prone to motion sickness.
- [30:13]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh, yeah.
- [30:13]
Jeff O'Neill
And they didn't have a lot of Dramamine on the wine. Dark sea. And I think I just would have let myself get swept away in one of those storms. I think, you know, no one's looking.
- [30:22]
Rebecca Schinsky
You're done. Like, shortly after they pull out a port.
- [30:25]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I. I don't. I mean, frankly, I wouldn't have made it out of Troy because they're sand, I'm tall, they just pick me off. It would be a bad situation there. At the same time. Is this gonna win a whole bunch of awards?
- [30:39]
Rebecca Schinsky
Probably.
- [30:39]
Jeff O'Neill
I assume it's gonna win most, if not all of the, like, craft kinds of things. You keep up a little bit better than movies than I do. Do we have a Best Picture kind of thing? Like, is this gonna steamroll to Best Picture? Assuming that it meets a minimum?
- [30:55]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think it might.
- [30:56]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah.
- [30:57]
Rebecca Schinsky
Best Adapted Screenplay is going to be a duel probably between the Odyssey and Dune Part three would be my guess. And then whether. The jury will just have to decide. All the voters will have to decide if it's Denis Villeneuve's moment to win Best Picture for the Dunes this time around, or is Christopher Nolan going to get it for the Odyssey. But my guess right now, and there's so many movies that haven't come out yet, like, most of them for the year, so it's hard to know what else will be in the race. But. But I think those are the two really big ones to have an eye on. And I wouldn't be surprised to see this. Just sweet. Like, we'll. We'll get nominations for all the big acting categories out of this as well.
- [31:37]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. I've got my own on Pattinson and Best Supporting Actor, if I had to guess one often, that's a role that. That gets the bad guy. Kind of mousy rat weasel. Yeah.
- [31:48]
Rebecca Schinsky
And it's also, like, interesting that so many of the folks in this are also in Dune. So, like, they could theoretically double dip or just pick the one that's their better performance.
- [31:58]
Jeff O'Neill
Like, which is the wormy palace intrigue, Robert Pattinson performance you prefer or like Zendaya's in both.
- [32:05]
Rebecca Schinsky
So, yeah, take your pick.
- [32:08]
Jeff O'Neill
There's a lot of. We're getting. I appreciate both Anne Hathaway and Zendaya this year, and I'm getting a lot of both. A to Z. It's a big year for me out here in my, in my favorite.
- [32:17]
Rebecca Schinsky
Have you seen The Devil Wears Prada 2 yet for your Anne Hathaway moment?
- [32:20]
Jeff O'Neill
I, you know, that's not my flavor. Maybe later I'll catch that.
- [32:25]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's fun. I also on the Hathaway tips, saw the full trailer for Verity when I was at the theater yesterday with her and Dakota Johnson based on the Colleen Hoover book and that looks bananas.
- [32:36]
Jeff O'Neill
I'm not watching that either. No.
- [32:39]
Rebecca Schinsky
But that is an adaptation that is coming out this year as well.
- [32:42]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. Speaking of bananas adaptations, sometime in August we're going to get part two of the giant 100 Years of Solitude project, a Spanish language one that Netflix has underwritten. I think this is only the second of a two season adaptation of the book. I was trying to read plot summaries to determine where we were and we just read this recently and they do not help orient you in space and time of where they are because I think they've mixed things around. It doesn't really follow linearly. It's apparently very good. They spent all the money. It looks like a million bucks. Again, Spanish language. I think 100 Years of Solitude is a text based adventure for me, but I wanted to mention that there for people interested. I agree in that particular as well. You express some consternation at the trailer for the following, so I'll let you
- [33:29]
Rebecca Schinsky
take the I have maybe come around on it. So we're talking about Tony. This is in theaters August 7th. It's written by Todd Bartles, directed by Matt Johnson, and it's based on select chapters of Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. About 19 year old young Tony moving to province and stumbling into the world, the chaotic world of a restaurant kitchen. And that's a summer that shapes the course of the rest of his life. He meets the chef there, played by Antonio Banderas, in this film, who sort of sets him off on the path to like he thinks that he's going to be a writer and of course he also ends up being a writer, but he just sets him off on the path of actually becoming a cook. Starring Dominic Sessa as Bourdain with Leo Woodall and Emilia Jones. It's not a biopic. It is just a moment in the life of Anthony Bourdain. And I also saw the full trailer for this on a big screen yesterday and I think I'm coming around to it because like Sessa is not doing a Bourdain impersonation, which is a really smart move, like trying to Inhabit Bourdain's, you know, carriage and manner of speaking and just all that swagger is really hard. He was so iconic and he hasn't been gone that long that I just think it would be impossible. And the, the bad version of it is like Jeremy Allen White doing Bruce Springsteen and I don't want to see that done to Bourdain. So, like, I think that this picking just one moment and making it a coming of age story, which a character says this like early in the trailer. It's a coming of age story, is kind of positioning it where this can be for like, if you're a Bourdain fan, as we both are, you can probably enjoy this. If you're not, you can still just like get a great summer movie out of it. I think I just needed to stop expecting to see somebody who looked and sounded like Anthony Bourdain.
- [35:23]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah.
- [35:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
But it's a story that I have affection for.
- [35:26]
Jeff O'Neill
Maybe we could do an Avengers crossover event here because isn't this Mary Oliver's living in Provincetown at about the same time? We could have like a Mary Oliver John Waters, like coming have lunch or something.
- [35:37]
Rebecca Schinsky
What if Mary Oliver did once go for lunch at the place where Bourdain was a cook? Would he have known? Probably. He was on a lot of drugs, so probably not.
- [35:45]
Jeff O'Neill
I would have. It would be a fun scene for like a. An adult Mary Oliver to smack some sense into a 19 year old Anthony Bourdain because Bourdain is admittedly kind of insufferable as a college kid and into this area where he thinks he knows everything and blah, blah, blah. And I'm guessing Antonio Banderas is playing the, the kind of rogue Captain Pirate.
- [36:07]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yes.
- [36:08]
Jeff O'Neill
Hero of the kitchen here. It'll be fun to see. I'm looking forward to this. It's a very odd idea when you think about it, to do a piece of Bourdain's life and it's the piece that most people don't have any connection to. You have to be like a Kitchen Confidential reader. And there's a lot of those, but way fewer than have done like an Anthony Bourdain no reservation or Cook's tour or some of the this stuff that comes after. So like an origin story thing is pretty interesting to me, but I'd be curious to see how it does.
- [36:38]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I'm really interested in how it does. But having now like sat with. Okay. It's not like we're not resurrecting Tony because of course you Can't. I think it's really wise for no one to be trying to like do Tony Bourdain on screen.
- [36:51]
Jeff O'Neill
No. August 21st in theaters. Kind of on the family tip. This. This movie already came out in the UK. A long delay all the way to August 21st. It's the magic Faraway Tree. It's based on the children's book series by Enid Blyton. So a family moves out of the cities because of modern life in quotation marks. And the parents like, hey, kids, don't go into that forest. Kids immediately go out into this forest and the oops. Magic kingdom, Magic land out there. I'm not going to get into the fever dream. It sounds like I'm on mushrooms. Description of the land of stories and the tree where a new thing grows and there's new things. Things and they go to. It's. It's nuts. I've never heard of this. It's got a big time cast. Andrew Garfield, Claire Floyd, Rebecca Ferguson, among many others. It's like kind of Narnia plus Willy Wonka plus a little bit of wizard of Oz. Like kind of put those in a blender and you're gonna get something like this. But the series has sold very well. It's more popular in the UK than over here for reasons I don't really know. Maybe it's because her name is Enid Blyton and that sounds like the oldest name you could possibly have. I actually don't know if this movie is good or if it did very well. If my kids were four years younger, I would be seeing this in theater. But alas, we are out of. Let's go see whatever family movie looks like a C plus or better. So it's magic Far Away tree there. Have you read the Dog Stars? I don't remember.
- [38:13]
Rebecca Schinsky
I'm gonna, but I'm going to this summer.
- [38:16]
Jeff O'Neill
Okay, so I guess I'll take this one too because I have read the Dog Stars and I remember thinking at the time, boy, I would watch a movie out of this. This and the trailer that director Ridley Scott has made of this looks a lot like the movie I had in my mind. Which is there a wonderful sign or a terrible sign? Because I. Rebecca Shinsky. I'm not a professional movie maker. The 20202012 novel by Peter Heller. This was my first Peter Heller novel. A little unusual for him that it's a dystopian. So like something bad has happened. We meet two characters who are living independently from each other. Sort of at the foothills of The Colorado Rockies. And we don't really know what's happened but that some of the people, they're not quite like Cormac McCarthy zombie people. I think they may have just been driven to a state of nature or feral whatever because of the exegete of the time. But Jacob Elordi will be playing our main character who teams up with an older person. Not old, but like Josh Brolin's like the older, wiser kind of survivalist. They team up just to try to see what else is out there. And that's really what it's about. There is a dog, but you know, Alison, Janie, Guy, Pierce, Benedict, Juan Marco Collie, Jacob Elordi and Josh Brolin.
- [39:24]
Rebecca Schinsky
Loaded.
- [39:25]
Jeff O'Neill
That's wonderful. For me, I'm very excited. I think it looks really good. It's weirdly too big to be small and too small to be big. It's a very strange size of a film. I will say.
- [39:36]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [39:37]
Jeff O'Neill
Because it's a chamber piece but it's like a high concept dystopia. We just. You just don't see this very much.
- [39:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
Ridley Scott, big deal. The trailer. This was also in the trailers when I was at the theater yesterday and I guess they just knew that the audience for Is God is. Was pretty literary. But the trailer looks fantastic on a big screen and very exciting. And then it's like from the director of the Martian, Ridley Scott. So they know kind of what zone they're trying to put him in. I also heard people next to me being like dog stars. Like what is that? I wonder if it would have benefited from a retitle for the adaptation. But you don't get that very often.
- [40:14]
Jeff O'Neill
No, you don't. I mean it sold pretty well. I don't know that you lose a lot of people.
- [40:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [40:20]
Jeff O'Neill
If you rename it something else. But I don't know what to call it. But I'm looking forward to this. The book is really good. If you like adventure stories and you're willing to do a little bit more genre, it's. It's pretty great. And I. I would imagine I would look at that Elordi quality. Brolin trio especially. I would expect one nomination. Josh Brolin, best supporting Actor. I would not be surprised at all to see he. This is a Josh Brolin shaped role. Like I don't even know where the else they would have gone. If you could get Josh Brolin for this at this just perfect.
- [40:51]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, he looks really great.
- [40:52]
Jeff O'Neill
Has already played a cowboy yet. I mean this isn't a cowboy, but it's like in the West.
- [40:56]
Rebecca Schinsky
No, I think this is the first cowboy. He did Elvis. So we've gotten the southern accent and now we're gonna get his Western American accent.
- [41:04]
Jeff O'Neill
It should be pretty interesting there at the same time.
- [41:06]
Rebecca Schinsky
And I was checking yesterday just like how long is the dog Dog stars just for my own Reading Planning. Oh, 3:36. You love to see it.
- [41:13]
Jeff O'Neill
It reads quick too. Rebecca. You'll, you'll. It won't feel that long. It won't feel that long.
- [41:17]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I have a pile of things to read in moments this summer where like you're traveling or we're not recording a bunch of things and that's just gonna go on the pile. One thing that I read the last time I was traveling is the Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood. And I just want to highlight for folks who love her that the adaptation is in post production now. So it has been filmed. They are doing all of the editing and cutting and all of those things. There's not a release date, but not impossible that we would get the Love Hypothesis by the end of this year, early 2027 at the latest.
- [41:49]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, we're sort of ending with September. September brings a whole host of other new things. We're not going to get Narnia, but I think our two biggest are going to be east of Eden and Dune and it's going to be another big adaptation fall at the same time. You can choose the email podcastookride.com Let us know which of these you're most looking forward to. We're gonna do a frontless foyer section for you today which is brought to you by thriftbooks.com you can, you can buy the books all these things are based on right now. Right? I mean you could kitchen consequential one years your solitude probably if you worked at it, you know, spend yourself 30 minutes. I bet you could get most of the books that are being adapted here if you're willing to go used for 60, 70 bucks and that would get you free shipping on your order if you live in the US and probably get you all the way to a free reading reward as part of the reading rewards program. Thanks to thriftbooks.com for sponsoring front list foyer. Rebecca, what have you been reading?
- [42:48]
Rebecca Schinsky
Not a ton because we've been cramming for several zero to well read episodes. But we are doing one on the Constitution and I wanted to do some studying. So I picked up Melissa Murray's new book, the U.S. a comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader. And I'm here to tell you it is both comprehensive and annotated. I found it to be super helpful. She takes each article and then each amendment of the Constitution and presents the original language and then breaks down the context in which it was written. Like, what were the framers thinking about? What were they concerned about, about when they wrote it this way? And then how has it. There's a ton of commentary then on, like, how has this impacted the last 250 years of US history? What has the Supreme Court done with these things? How has this pol. How have these things shaped policy? It's written in, like, just very straightforward, accessible language. If you're like talking about politics in your household with your kids, I think a great resource for, like, let's go to what that actually means. I was struck so many times by how many of these things that we talk about as being like, we have a constitutional right to X or the Constitution says that we do. This thing in this way is not actually in the Constitution. It's in the Supreme Court decisions that interpret the Constitution and then in laws that Congress makes that pull from powers that Congress is giving given because of the Constitution. And really being grounded in that is super helpful. Also just some of the details of like, oh, yeah, it takes this 2/3 of Congress to do this thing, 2/3 of Congress to do, or 2/3 of Senate to do this other thing which pushes back. Or like, it just helps to know how things work when you're put trying to like, interpret social media narratives about stuff or when people are like, well, can he do that? Like, well, well, we're gonna find out. But here's why he thinks it's worth a try. And being able to, like, trace things back is just incredibly useful. So I think this is a great resource and I'm happy to recommend it.
- [44:54]
Jeff O'Neill
I was at the Pennsylvania State House last summer. My family did an east coast sort of historical America tour and some other things too, and took a tour of the State House where the room where they actually were writing the Constitution. So I got very excited about this and bought a book in the gift shop and started reading it then, but gave it up over the summer because I just did. But I did pick it up again in anticipation of the show that you and I are talking about that we're doing our homework for. This book is called Plain Honest Men by Richard Freeman. It is a historical account of the writing of the Constitution, basically the delegates and the long days in Pennsylvania and the sweating and the compromising and the slavery and the whole thing. And it is Very, very good. It's actually, I mean stay stick. Stay tuned for Zelda. Well read when we do the Constitution, our old pal Amanda is going to join us for that. Very excited to do that. But my toxic trait is I think I would have crushed at the constitutional convention.
- [45:51]
Rebecca Schinsky
I 100% believe this because you would have been over in your corner. Like that is a distinction without a difference.
- [45:57]
Jeff O'Neill
I just find this idea and this is what happened. It's like okay, we're coming out of the Revolutionary War and we've got to come up with a government. And there's there. They're there ostensibly to revise the Article of Confederation if they early decide, no, we're just going to write a whole new thing. And what a writing challenge, Rebecca, to write into existence a new country. And it's not that long. The California, the California State constitution is like 350 pages. This thing you could read in like 12 minutes. Like it's over quick.
- [46:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
The constitution is like 4400 words long and if you add the amendments, it's a total of like 7, 700 words.
- [46:29]
Jeff O'Neill
But the, but the language use and the bargain striking and the speechifying. I'm a little surprised that we don't have like we have the 1776 musical. We've got the John Adams HBO thing. I was looking around for where's my Ken Burden's mini doc about this, this, this 12 weeks essentially is all it was. And they were just making shit up. They were just like, I mean James Madison is only one that done the homework. Benjamin Franklin's like giving like weird off topic speeches. George Washington just silent like hitting the gavel and trying not get involved. Involved. I was riveted and thrilled the whole time. Most other people would find it horrifically boring. Freeman's own, he, he sort of, he's been imbued. Let's put it this way. The language of the time has suffused his writing. Like it's a little elevated. It's a little, just a little bit which I like, I want a little bit. I wanted to feel out of time such of 2010, 2012 I think was a publication date. And all these things he says about like, well, you know, we found sense that some of these ideas about the present could do and could not do to have been a little tricky. I'm like, oh buddy, you have no idea what we're talking about at the same time. But I thought it was really good if you've got a history lover in your life. I think the writing of the Constitution The Declaration of Independence gets all the shine.
- [47:43]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [47:43]
Jeff O'Neill
But I think the Constitution the actual reading experience is not amazing but what go went into it is amazing. So that's one just on my own recognizance this week. Oh yeah, yeah. Seek Immediate Shelter by Vincent Yu. I read this week. I think I did this in an it book episode or some preview debut novel but they kind of joy clubbed it because more of a series of short stories. But the setup here is it's set in this small town in Massachusetts and largely if not exclusively the point of view characters are these Chinese American, you know members of the Chinese American community, some of which are part of the community. Some of them just happen to live there There I didn't really get into why is there a particular concentration or it's just a world he want represent I don't care. But these gimmick premise set up here is on some random afternoon like after school is out during the school year I think because there's like a soccer practice that was mentioned. Everyone gets an alert on their phone saying seek immediate shelter like inbound missile. This is not a drill. And and for the next 10 minutes people are doing whatever they're going to do and part of that is you're going to see what happens. And then most importantly what this it's really about is that 10 minutes later it's like false alarm, all clear. So for about 12 minutes people are doing things like the world could end. They don't really know. Some people think it's a drill. Like I don't believe it. Why would they shooting be nukes at this little town. And then some of them do but then that sort of brings to the fore like a high tide all the stuff that's been on the bottom right and what they are left to deal with is what they did in those few minutes or what those few minutes meant to them. And so each of the chapters like that sounds great. I think in a lot of ways pretty standard short story fair but I think the, the the hook gives it an urgency, a strangeness. I like that that is quite winning you himself I, I believe he appears as a character character because he is a sales rep for Norton and there is a educational textbook sales rep in the book and so that's pretty specific. I really liked it. There's some first time things going on. Language is not always sparkling and the whole thing is a collection of short stories was fun but I found myself running through it. There were some of them I really liked as you know, kind of the the getting the band back together thing we like is really a reason to get to people having uncomfortable but necessary conversations. And this has this in droves. Everything comes out yes Seek Immediate Shelter by Vincent Yu I look forward to whatever he's going to do next.
- [50:15]
Rebecca Schinsky
I don't think that I want to have to know what I would actually do in the like you've got 10 minutes to seek immediate shelter. The world is ending. And then live through the aftermath of knowing that truth about myself.
- [50:27]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean I think the I think he picked some really interesting scenarios. Some of them are they feel like this kind of thing that would happen a short story. But it's okay. I don't mind.
- [50:38]
Rebecca Schinsky
Great.
- [50:38]
Jeff O'Neill
I don't mind. It feels human at the same time.
- [50:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
Do you think anyone has told Amy Tan that we have verbed Joy Luck
- [50:43]
Jeff O'Neill
Club into it can't be the first one, right? Like I'd like to know this like link Short stories like that got called a novel for marketing reasons.
- [50:52]
Rebecca Schinsky
Tell us if you've got pre Joy look club tips.
- [50:55]
Jeff O'Neill
If you've got another one like Winesburg Ohio by Sherwood Anderson I think is maybe the first short story collection that was all like set in the same place but they're not like linked in the way we normally think about them. But it wasn't also called a novel so I don't really know where that but also Don Quixote. I mean the first novel is just a bunch of like random ass things that happen. But Don Quixote. There we go. Always it has been the thing. I don't know.
- [51:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
A good ending note.
- [51:25]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. Thanks everyone for listening. BookRiot.com Listen for the show notes shoot us an email podcastookriot.com youm can join the patreon@patreon.com BookRiot podcast there. Coming up next 10 days you will hear Laura McGrath, Sharifah Williams, Rebecca and I score our 2025 fantasy league and do the draft for 2026.
- [51:49]
Rebecca Schinsky
Man, it was fun.
- [51:50]
Jeff O'Neill
If you enjoy me being being concerned and distraught and a little befuddled by underperformance, have I got the Patreon podcast for you?
- [51:59]
Rebecca Schinsky
It was fun. And in the week, not even a week since we did that draft, I have already like seen a couple titles come up in bookish media that I've been like oh maybe I want that in the swaps already fun to be paying attention to.
- [52:14]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I it was the best of times. It was the worst to find for my draft. I did a spoiler is I think I had the highest scoring individual title title and the lowest scoring individual title. And I'm shocked. In a fun exercise, I think, I mean, for what we do, illuminative Laura McGrath has done the Yeoman's the Yeoperson's work of the scoring, which she seems more willing than any human to be like, I'll just go do more research about how many points you get for a Publisher's Weekly star and who got them.
- [52:41]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's like, wow, she's a data queen. She's wonderful. But I will we've made some changes to how it's going to be scored. So once I updated the scoring, I will drop a generic version of the scorecard into the Patreon for members there as well. So you can pick your own list of 10 new releases that you want to track for the year and, you know, see how you do. It's harder than you think.
- [53:02]
Jeff O'Neill
Yes. For those who may not know what we're talking about, which I realize maybe many of you, we made up this fantasy league to be kind of like fantasy football for books. So books published in the US at least in 2025, were eligible. We each got 10 picks. We did a draft and then we came up with scoring categories. So prize winners, finalists for certain things. New York Times 100 Best Books of the Year, Oprah Book Club. There's a whole retinue of scoring opportunities there. And then you get some bonuses, like if you if you drafted something and kept it the whole year, if it was a debut short story in translation. So we get some escalators and modifiers. I'll say this, the person who won, I think it makes sense that their their draft won.
- [53:45]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think.
- [53:46]
Jeff O'Neill
It's not like I can't believe this is the winning slate. Maybe I can't believe my own performance. But you'll have to stick around and pay the five bucks a month to hear more about that. All right, Rebecca, thank you so much. We'll talk to you later.
- [54:03]
Rebecca Schinsky
We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Now here is an audiobook excerpt from the Midnight Train by Matt Haig, read by James Norton. Thanks again to our sponsors at Penguin
- [54:13]
Audiobook Narrator
Random House Audio as the water taxi sped across the lagoon, the two young honeymooners gazed ahead in awe. Wilbur squeezed Maggie's hand and leaned into her as they sat at the back of the small boat, the sun glittering on the water in front of them. I love you, Mr. Bud, she told him, her words as natural as breath. I love you too, Mrs. Budd. Maggie laughed softly at how funny and official that sounded. They held hands as the boat chugged its way towards the city, their fingers intertwined like tangled roots. 9 August 1974 Wilbur turned away from the view in front of him towards the person he had known since childhood. We'll always be like this, won't we? Maggie asked him. He smiled reassuringly. Of course. Why wouldn't we? They kissed as the lagoon merged into the Grand Canal. I don't know. Time changes things. But look at Venice. It's not changed in hundreds of years. This could be 1574 just as easily as 1974. She looked over towards the city. Aye, let's ignore time. Let's be Venice. He watched as she held up her Pentax camera, a wedding present from her father, and aimed it towards the Doge's palace, its pink and white stone facade and intricate arches rising directly above the lagoon like a Byzantine fever dream. Forever, added Wilbur, laughing. She put a hand through his tousled hair, which was just about the longest it ever got to yes, forever and ever and ever. The boat slowed a little. There, said the boatman, pointing towards a pretty but slightly decrepit terracotta building, Hotel Prosepina. Wilbur and Maggie had never been abroad before and the site looked exotic and full of promise, and neither of them at that moment could see the figure watching from the shore, the one who looked so much like Wilbur himself that it would have been impossible to tell the difference. An hour later they were sitting in easy silence, drinking wine in the shade at a cafe by the Grand Canal, watching the city unfold. Wilbur was wearing the same sandals, flared jeans and short sleeved green shirt with large collared that he had worn on the plane, and Maggie was in her orange jumpsuit. He told her she looked like a film star and she told him to stop being corny. But she smiled all the same. A vaporetto full of tourists chugged by, Maggie began reminiscing about the wedding. I've never seen your mam so happy, she said. She didn't mention. She paused. Just didn't want to taint the moment, Dougie. Aye. No, she didn't. I've not seen Ma' am like that, not since everything that happened. I think the Djinn had helped your dad too. Look at you, maggie said, smiling under the sun's glare. Look at me what? Sitting back in your chair like an emperor. I'm just happy. As you should be. You are on your honeymoon. Wilbur felt her study him a little closer. You're not thinking about the shop? He shook his head. No, actually, he lied. Or half lied. Not right now. I'm just thinking about you, and it's quite an occupying thought. And it was really nothing at the time, this contentment. It flowed through their open fingers like a stream, and they imagined it would always be like this, and that the stream would never dry up, it would just flow and flow, and they would never have to think about where it came from and never make the effort to scoop it up or drink it in, as if life could stay a honeymoon forever. After the wine, they walked towards the Church of St. John the Almsgiver. Maggie playfully sang a snippet of her favourite song, Bridge Over Troubled Water, as they spied the Rialto Bridge in the distance. They passed smart Italian couples, open shirts and glamorous dresses, a busker playing the accordion, an old American man smoking a pipe and talking to a companion about jazz.