American are Reading for Pleasure Less. A Lot Less.

Summary

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Book Riot – The Podcast

Episode Title: Americans are Reading for Pleasure Less. A Lot Less.
Date: August 25, 2025
Hosts: Jeff O’Neal & Rebecca Schinsky

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Jeff and Rebecca dive into new releases, publishing trends, and industry news. The core discussion centers on a recent New York Times report highlighting a drastic decline—about 40%—in Americans reading for pleasure over the past 20 years. The hosts also examine the recent controversy surrounding the Polari Prize, upcoming book adaptations, the aesthetics of book design, and the ethics of ghostwritten memoirs for retirees. Throughout, the conversation explores what’s at stake for literary culture as social and technological shifts reshape reading habits.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. Publishing Industry News: Imprints and Cataloging Woes

• [04:04] Jeff expresses frustration over the proliferation of publishing imprints, making it difficult to find and track new releases—especially for industry insiders.
  • "There are not only too many books in the fall, they're just too many imprints."
• [04:26] Rebecca notes how quickly imprint family trees become outdated, making it hard for even well-versed readers or critics to keep up.
  • "As soon as you have made a flowchart or like a family tree of all the imprints somewhere, that thing becomes out of date."
• [06:24] Both agree that imprints matter mostly to those within publishing, not to general readers.
  • "What an imprint is is only meaningful to a first approximation to the people who work at that imprint."

2. Polari Prize Controversy & Calls for Inclusion

• [12:21] Discussion arises about the Polari Prize pausing for a year after controversy over the nomination of John Boyne, known for transphobic stances.
• [12:25] Rebecca stresses the importance of diversity among judges:
  • “This is one of the things that we’re talking about when we talk about why diversity makes things better. When you have other voices in the room, you are less likely to make this kind of mistake.”
• [14:05] Jeff advocates for clear values and boundaries in such organizations:
  • "Trans women are women. That's what we believe here. Authors and books that don't support that, affirm that, recognize that are not gonna be nominated."
• [16:29] Both see this as a hard but necessary correction for Polari and similar organizations.

3. Katabasis: The Next Big Thing

• [17:42] News breaks that Amazon is working on a series adaptation of R.F. Kuang’s anticipated novel Katabasis, launching a broader discussion of adaptation points in their fantasy league.
  • “The headline here is that Amazon is working on a series based on Katabasis.” – Jeff [18:00]
• [20:59] Rebecca gives a (spoiler-free) mini-review of Katabasis:
  • "I really liked it. It was a lot of fun... It was great. It was a lot of fun... there’s a whole lot of Dante and Virgil and Aeneid quotes and references to old philosophers."
  • “I think it's like, well, what I said in Today in Books this morning is it's like if Dante's Inferno and The Secret History had a baby and that baby's favorite TV show was The Good Place.”
• [22:20] They discuss the book’s hybrid genre status – “commercial fantasy... upmarket... a satire,” with high literary allusions but wide accessibility.

4. The Spreadges (Decorated Book Edges) Debate

• [23:05] Jeff laments the overuse of fancy book edges ("spreadges”):
  • “It's now star bellied sneetches situation where everyone has a star so no one's special.”
  • “That it has spreadges or a foiled cover no longer tells you something useful about what kind of book you’re reading.” – Rebecca [24:56]
• [25:46] There’s consensus that book aesthetics no longer signal genre or quality, and the trend is flattening design meaning.

5. Main Topic: The Steep Decline in Reading for Pleasure

• [26:18] Rebecca introduces the New York Times piece reporting a 40% drop in American adults reading for pleasure between 2003 and 2023 (from 28% to 16%).
• [27:06] Survey methodology: based on the American Time Use Survey; “almost a quarter of a million Americans took it over those 20 years.”
• [30:22] Rebecca expresses deep concern:
  • "Which concerns me like I clutched my pearls a little bit and really got them out."
  • She ties the decline to an “algorithmic, post-literate” era—politics and culture shaped for non-readers.
• [31:44] Jeff views the decline as a function of social and technological shifts:
  • “That tracks... In 2005, we got Facebook. In 2006, we got Twitter. In 2007, we got the iPhone... I think the algorithmic social media feed on your phone is a cigarette. It's an attention cigarette. And I think this is just the phones." [34:51]

Sociocultural Concerns

• [35:53] Rebecca says the screens create a “self-perpetuating cycle”—the news cycle is overwhelming and attention spans are depleted.
• [37:23] There’s cautious hope that younger generations and new policies may help "turn the tide" (e.g., cell phone bans in schools).
  • “I would like to see us talk about better regulations around social media and the internet.”

The Solace and Significance of Books

• [39:17] Jeff points out one silver lining: “the amount of time spent reading by those who read for pleasure increased from 1 hour and 23 minutes a day in 2003 to 1 hour and 37 minutes in 2023.”
• [41:36] Rebecca and Jeff affirm the unique cognitive and emotional value of long-form, focused reading:
  • “To read and for a sustained period of time, to listen to an audiobook for a sustained period of time and engage with what a text is saying and what it's asking us to think about... that feels nourishing in a way that I have never felt scrolling on Instagram.” – Rebecca

Literary Taste & Reading Snobbery

• [43:20] The hosts reflect on debates about “highbrow” vs. “commercial” reading. Jeff proposes:
  • “As part of the detente about ‘read what you want’... we’re going to be cool about people reading Dragon romances, but we’re also going to be cool about someone liking Infinite Jest.” [43:58]
• [44:41] Rebecca agrees: “If a person is out there saying read whatever you want... they don’t get to turn around and tell a person who reads something that’s traditionally thought of as more literary... that you don’t get to denigrate that person or tell them that they’re a snob.”

6. Ghostwritten Family Memoirs: Connection or Exploitation?

• [52:30] Rebecca and Jeff react to a Wall Street Journal article on wealthy retirees commissioning expensive ghostwritten memoirs for their heirs.
• Rebecca: “There’s a lot of like really human need on display here. But this piece made me sad.” [53:47]
• Jeff finds it more strange than sad, questioning whether the intended connection is actually achieved.
• [55:44] Both acknowledge cheaper and more accessible options (like Storyworth) exist.

7. Frontlist Foyer: Recent Reads and Recommendations

Rebecca

• Katabasis by R.F. Kuang – “A very, very good book that fits a special place in the market right now.” [61:00]
• Church Camp by Kara Meredith – Explores and critiques the history of evangelical youth camps.
  • “I really appreciate how thoughtful it was and that she's trying to encourage a more inclusive movement there.” [63:56]

Jeff

• Abundance by Ezra Klein and Thompson – Advocates for a positive, “abundance”-oriented vision for the future; Jeff finds it “utopian” but valuable for starting conversations about tradeoffs and progress.
• Endling by Maria Riva – A genre-blurring, structurally unusual novel set in Ukraine, blending feminist protest, snails, and metafiction.
  • “There’s so much going on... it got my senses going... I’m really glad I gave it a chance.” [77:23]

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• Polari Prize Discussion & Diversity:
  • “When you have other voices in the room, you are less likely to make this kind of mistake.” – Rebecca [12:25]
  • “Trans women are women. That's what we believe here.” – Jeff [14:05]
• On Spreadge Overkill:
  • “It's now star bellied sneetches situation where everyone has a star, so no one's special.” – Jeff [23:12]
• Reading Decline Data:
  • “In 2004... 28% of Americans said that they read for pleasure... in 2023, we're at 16% of people.” – Rebecca [27:06]
• Technology as the Root Cause:
  • “The algorithmic social media feed on your phone is a cigarette. It's an attention cigarette. And I think this is just the phones.” – Jeff [34:51]
• On Deep Reading:
  • “To read and for a sustained period of time... that feels nourishing in a way that I have never felt scrolling on Instagram.” – Rebecca [41:36]
• Literary Snobbery:
  • “We're going to be cool about people reading dragon romances, but we're also going to be cool about someone liking Infinite Jest.” – Jeff [43:58]
  • “It should cut both ways.” – Rebecca [44:10]

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Episode Highlights by Timestamp

• [04:04 - 07:34] – Publishing industry imprints and insider struggles with cataloging.
• [12:21 - 17:26] – Polari Prize controversy and organizational diversity.
• [17:42 - 22:43] – Katabasis review & adaptation news, including genre discussion.
• [23:05 - 26:16] – Spreadges debate and what book aesthetics mean now.
• [26:18 - 33:41] – Declining rates of pleasure reading in America; broader implications.
• [35:53 - 41:36] – Phones as the “attention cigarette,” pessimism on cultural trajectory, and hope for a generational pivot.
• [43:08 - 47:31] – Literary taste, snobbery discourse, and “reading detente.”
• [52:30 - 59:43] – Retirees, ghostwritten memoirs, and the search for intergenerational connection.
• [60:03 - 77:23] – Frontlist foyer: recent and upcoming book recommendations.

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Tone & Language

Conversational, intellectually lively, and occasionally wry. The hosts are unafraid of “insider baseball” but regularly step back to reflect on why these debates matter for broader book culture. The episode alternates between humor and thoughtful concern, especially in the face of sobering statistics about reading habits.

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For Further Listening/Reading

• NYT: "Americans Are Reading for Pleasure Less. A Lot Less." by Maggie Astor
• Maggie Astor (@MaggieAstor’s) analysis on public reading habits
• VOX: “Lolita: 70 Years Later” by Constance Grady
• Anne Helen Petersen's "Culture Study" interview with Kara Meredith
• Wall Street Journal: “Wealthy Retirees Are Paying Up for Ghostwritten Memoirs”
• Book Riot Frontlist and Today in Books newsletters

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This summary delivers all the crucial talking points, memorable moments, and illustrative quotes for listeners wanting a comprehensive, content-rich overview of the episode—especially those concerned about the future of pleasure reading in America.

Transcript

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff o'. Neill. And I'm Rebecca Schinsky and we're here as two Bronte scholars to set you all straight. Yeah, the Brontes, the famous co authors of Sense and Sense. No, I can't do that to people. We already did this, Rebecca. We were doing the mea culpa.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We Maya Culpa'd on the episode that dropped on Wednesday. This was already in the notes for today, so we can just repeat the mea culpa at the top of the show here. What can I say? I don't invest a lot of energy in keeping the Bronte straight. Thank you for correcting me.

[Jeff O'Neill]

As penance, we shall be reading all the Bronte things in a row, including their Juvenilia Diaries, their Melancholic death letters from the last throes of their lives. It's you. Your penance shall be to get Bronte.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is a very hashtag Bronte. This is a very Dante esque punishment and I appreciate you and I reject it. I think that really what should happen is I should have to spend the rest of, I guess my eternity meeting people who don't know who I am and mix up my work. That would be more appropriate in the Dante construction.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Well, anyway, so we got it wrong. The adaptation is Wuthering Heights. Whatever you can. The Internet's there. We can fact check us. We've been doing this 15 years. We get stuff wrong every now and again. It's okay. No worries there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I didn't lose any sleep over it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What's coming up in our neck of the woods? We are recording for Patreon after this. That will go in the feed next week. At some point it's time for half baked ideas again.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I love a half baked idea season.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Very looking forward to this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Exactly what it sounds like. Next Wednesday in the feed, the day after Katabasis hits shelves, Vanessa and Sharifah will be here with us to talk about it. It's a big. It's a big day. Big public.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You started it. Oh, yeah. Well, I don't want to step on front list.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I finished it last night. We'll talk about it a little in front list foyer. But I'm going to save most of my read for next week's episode about Katabasis. And then we'll be off for Labor Day. And when we return, we will have the IT books of September and we will have the fall books draft. The big one of the year.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's right. I'm getting ready to go to New York for meetings and I'm taking a bunch. And there are two. There are not only too many books in the fall, they're just too many imprints. I was saying this to you online. I was like, just. I.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Every.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do we have the agenda? The story today? You put. Oh, the readings who read for pleasure.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. Every couple of years, someone like, floats a flowchart of all the imprints at one of the publishing houses around the Internet. Like, sometimes it's Harper and sometimes it's prh. People are trying to keep track. And as soon as you have made a flowchart or like a family tree of all the imprints somewhere, that thing becomes out of date. Imprints change so much. New ones pop up, old ones die, they get folded together. It's impossible it's impossible.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And when I'm trolling around Edelweiss, and I've made this claim, this complaint before, but I think everyone besides PRH has in their front list catalogs, adult only, whatever, for that season. And that's what I'm looking for. I'm really not looking at the YA or other stuff going in there. That's not my expertise and just not what I do. Except for PRH, which is luckily only 70% of trade, so luckily. And they break out each one of their imprints by themselves. And some of them have sub imprints. What imprint does? Pantheon. I've looked it up and forgotten at least a dozen times. I have no idea.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is how it happens that when we do our drafts, there's usually, like, one of us has some title that the other one has never come across. That's because you got to do so much filtering in Edelweiss to try to get to the things. Like, just to weed out the kids books because we're not covering that. And to try to narrow down subject matter. And yes, I want them in hardcover.

[Julie Berry (Reader)]

Oh, God.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And it's just. It is so much Edelweiss does. It works well. And it's got a lot to do. Like, that's a hard task. But you're right. There are so many.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't think that that one's on Edelweiss's problem. I come to understand I can ride the Edelweiss dragon, but a PRH distributed client, just. Actually, just give me the whole thing. I can select from the left, drop down Pantheon and Knopf and Catapult or Soft Skull or whoever's distributed. But that thing they're actively doing themselves. I believe this, Rebecca. They're actively doing themselves a disservice by making it hard to find their stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, for people who work in publishing, I agree. I also, again, will say most readers don't care about imprints.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, I'm not talking about readers. We're trying to find this stuff, Rebecca. We're gatekeepers. And, like, which gate am I supposed to unlock for people? How many gates?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is one of the things that, like, for simplicity's sake, I would be so in favor of every publishing house just collapsing down to, like, here are the literary fiction books.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Here.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Here are the.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I thought you were going to say more consolidation. You're going to be zag. No, no, we don't need.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We don't need more consolidation. I'm not coming out that hot today. My inbox can't take those responses. But, like, give me the literary fiction list, give me the sci fi list, give me the memoir list, give me the science list. And where there are crossovers, either put them on both lists or pick the one that you think is the best fit. Like, that would be so much easier as a person trying to find books to read and to cover. And nothing would change about the way that, like 99.99% of readers find the books that they read. What an imprint is is only meaningful to a first approximation to the people who work at that imprint.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And again, they're making books and I want. I want to find them. Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I want to know what's coming.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I can't. And I get frustrated and I just. Where's one? Who, which, which of the six is it the Green Group at PRH that distributes One World? I have no idea. I have to. I have to discover the world anew almost every time I go in. No one cares about that. That's real insider baseball. But anyway, that's what I'm trying to do. There's lots of book coming out. We'll be doing drafts and other things to go alongside of it. Let's take our first sponsor break.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Sponsor Voice]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

I guess this was probably. I thought this was probably inevitable that the Polari prizes would pack up shop. I really didn't think that they were going to give John Boyne the stanky boot from the. From the nominees. And I think that's probably a, like, you, you nominated it, like, whatever. But it seems like a pause, a cessation of activity for a year to get this thing back together. I mean, this, this is tough because I think the, this was the right thing to do from the organization side. I certainly sympathize with the people who pulled their name out. It gets more difficult when, when does, when does a. When does a prize come back from something like this? Are they gonna have bylaws about this? Like, are they gonna vet. How are they gonna do this? Because I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but this is a very Difficult precedent to set and it's probably for the good, but I think it's. I think people think it's easier to adjudicate these things. And maybe Boyne's a brighter line, but, like, this is kind of. This can get tricky.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Pretty hard. It can get tricky. Well, planning to come back next year?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Next year. Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They have said that they're taking the pause so they can increase the representation of trans and gender non conforming judges on the panel and undertake a governance and management review. But it's that first part that I think is really critical. Like, this is one of the things that we're talking about when we talk about why diversity makes things better. When you have other voices in the room, you are less likely to make this kind of mistake. It's not impossible that a panel of judges that had more trans and gender non conforming folks on it would have selected this same slate of nominees or might have even come to the conclusion that John Boyne should be nominated. But it seems that Polari has determined that one of the things that led to this happening was maybe nobody in that room was aware of this, was aware that this was an issue with John Boyne or had brought it up to the level of concern to say, maybe this means that we should reconsider whether we want to align ourselves with him. Because it's not just a question of did this person write a book that should, quote, unquote, should be nominated, that deserves to be. There are lots of books that you could feature. But do we want to align what we are about, which is celebrating LGBTQ authors with someone who is out there spouting transphobic nonsense? And I think this is the response that you want. Like, it's hard to find something that makes everybody satisfied, but this is the right first step. Hey, we don't have enough people in the room who represent these communities and we missed this. We screwed up. And they're going to take some time and create a more diverse panel and hopefully prevent themselves from making the same kind of mistake.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, it's. I think, I think they would need to go one of two directions. One is they're going to rely on the judges to do the winnowing, like to sort of yes and no. And that's within the purview or not. What I think may be the stronger case would be as a statement of values. Right. Trans women are women. That's what we believe here. Authors and books that don't, you know, support that, affirm that, recognize that are not gonna be nominated.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Mm.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. Because otherwise what happens is what do you stand for Right now? You only stand for not getting in trouble.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right. And it's, you know, the, the awards are intended to celebrate LGBTQ books and authors. But what does that mean? They need to further articulate what that looks like. And I think then that this is maybe part of the governance and management review, part of the response, undertake that and then give that to the judges as a guideline. I don't know, because I don't think it's hard.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's the LGBTQ plus and he himself is in there. He says that he is a terf. Yeah. Trans exclusionary radical. Like, if you don't believe in the T, you're not part of. It's like, that's okay to say that. Just say it. Don't. I mean, like, that's why I think clarity is more helpful than maybe there's some other issues that they're. Because they want to say. And I think this is right. And this is very difficult in this day and age to wrangle, which is plurality of opinion within a group. But then what is beyond the pale and what isn't. Like, we will. We will tolerate some dissent around what. Because there's going to be dissent. But this. It's okay. And I think it's okay to say we're not going to talk. This is not up for debate.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That trans women are women is a bright line. And if you don't.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

If you don't support that, then you can't be part of this. I think that's what we're looking for. Fair for them to say. And it would be good to have it made clear, to have it articulated and to not put the full weight of this onto the judges, but that the weight of the organization is there to back them up. I also don't know how these nominations come about. Like. Like, do publishers have to submit titles for this or is it a more, you know, casting a wide net? People are coming in to suggest things that they've read, but you could see this being part of a vetting process if it is a publisher submitted kind of thing. Like, you're responsible for making sure that the books you put forward here align with the organization's values. And if they don't, we won't consider them.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. So anyway, I mean, it's too bad that the nominees aren't going to get a chance to win the award, and I hope it comes back stronger and better than ever. And it affirms the people in this community and Meets them where there is. But I think this is an opportunity for a lot of organizations like clarity. And we always say clarity is kind. You know, like this sort of banal trope that goes around. I think it's not just kind. I think it's sanity. I think that kind of clarity is actually sanity and useful. Right. I think the logistical, like the. I don't know, the very like real use of a boundary like that. And. And if you don't. If you don't have that, then you get to deal with this. And I think sort of this middle way out of like waiting for people to call you on something or like to be unhappy. That's. I don't think an organization like this wants to do that. I really don't think that's what they want.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, no, I don't think so.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Eventually they learn the hard way.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think they did the right thing here. Take your step back re examine and come back with a more full throated statement.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Other news. So this is a headline in Variety that Sharifa won the draft. They just printed it. I just. They printed it, Rebecca, right there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They did. They should have. Sharifah has won our fantasy league almost inevitably now. But we knew this was gonna happen, right. We knew that whoever got to draft first in the fantasy league was gonna take Katabasis. And whoever got Katabasis was gonna win the thing or was very logistics.

[Jeff O'Neill]

In a moment. The headline here is that Amazon is working on a series based on Catabasis. The. The writer, the executive producer will be Angela Kang. No, no casting has been announced. And there's some. There was some online chatter amongst us fantasy leaguers about whether or not this counts. You'll get points for it. I think it does. I think it almost would have to, because for a book to come out in a year and to give points based on adaptation, it usually doesn't get all the way to casting in just a year. I mean, this is quick, even for something like this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I think the only other new release I've seen this year that has had casting announced either right at publication or maybe even before publication was deep cuts.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Deep cuts. That's the only one we've heard about is the great contraction and adaptation that I called 11 times over the last decade has finally come to pass. Katabasis comes out too soon tomorrow.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

As you're listening to this in your.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Feed on the 26th, I think I haven't looked at the scoring because the other thing. We're not going to discuss it yet today because I have not read it and I'm going to go over with a pencil as the profile that is a New Yorker of RF Kuang by Hua Shu that I'm very much I'm going to eat with a knife and fork I'm actually going to saute it a little on the grill. I'm like lightly salt and pepper a little olive oil on both sides just.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

A little sear a big New Yorker profile by somebody like wasu of someone like RF Kwong like it's it is a great read. I'm happy for you that you're you have that still to look forward to. I read it earlier this week but.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I haven't looked at the scoring to this regard could I because of taste or award season. You know what would addition have to do for me oh like we have to do Obama Booker Pulitzer like you have to make finals not crunched all.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The numbers I don't know so I'm not sure that you can you you might be able to win on the strength of award season and some best of lists it would have to make some faves because it's not but I.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Think it'll be interesting test of our rules is that let's say this is well received and sells well this book. I'm saying nothing about what I do or don't know about any of that but it's not award winner and one of us wins that doesn't have it. Is the is the game broken right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like that'll be an interesting conversation in.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A way if Kitaba says it looks like a duck and walks like a duck like it's going to be and yet doesn't have the award stuff. But we care. I don't know it's going to it's a very interesting test.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean you have to have the awards stuff to be a four quadrant it book but I'm not sure you have to be a 4 quadrant IT book to win the fantasy to win the draft.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It feels like you should though. Aren't they aren't they similar any of.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Those in a year like auditions not a 4 quadrant IT book either.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I know but it would have to be a part of my larger thing like it's not going to take on Katabasis by itself. I wouldn't think unless it really does like double double in the Pulitzer National Book Award or something like that which I don't think it's too weird to do something like that but can okay we're gonna be frontlines. Can you say anything qualitatively about The Tabasis.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I really.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What are you willing to say?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

What I'm willing to say. I really liked it. It was a lot of fun.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So not. It's not great?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I. It was great. I like. I. I really liked it. It was great. It was a lot of fun.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I've known this too long. There's equivocation.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, no, no. It's not equivocation. I just don't want to give away my whole review for another next week. I thought it was a great time. It was very satisfying. On a personal note, that there's a whole lot of Dante and Virgil and Aeneid quotes and references to old philosophers. And I was like, oh, my gosh. It's almost like reading old books and caring about literary history will get you somewhere. I can say that one of the things that I think makes this unique in this year's crop of books, and that sets it apart from the other books it's marketed as being similar to, is that Kuang does not do any of the, like, she's not like other girls kind of thing. This is a, like, the heroine is wonderful and she's a real person and there's none. There's no, like, cutesy stuff going on around it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So what genre is it?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think it's like, well, what I said in today in books this morning is it's like if Dante's Inferno and the Secret History had a baby and that baby's favorite TV show was the Good Place. Like, it's adventure y. Like adventure y fantasy. It's not so commercial fiction.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's commercial.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's not high world building. It's very readable, but also very fantasy.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's not high lit fic. So it's commercial fiction.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's commercial fantasy. Yeah. But with literary. Yeah, upmarket. It rewards familiarity with some of the classics. You don't think you have to have that, but it is rewarding to have it. And it's a satire also. There's a lot like you are going to, as a person who has spent a lot of time in academia to appreciate the jokes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm gonna. I'm gonna see some of my old popes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You are. I think you are.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm so excited.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's a good time. Like, I was sending a friend a video message this morning who has teenage daughters, and I was like, the rare Auntie Rebecca book recommendation for the kids. Like, really pick up Kitabasis next week. It's. It's very good. I really Liked it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'd like to make a sidebar aesthetic comment.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I just talked about my inability to call peak adaptation. So I'm being very careful here. Peak spread. It's too much. Rebecca. I don't care what you think of if you like them or not. It's now star bellied sneetches situation where everyone has a star so no one's special.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's how I feel about it, but I don't know that it matters to TikTok. Like the books continue to be aesthetically.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Pleasing because if anyone could have bucked the tide that to coin a melopropism, don't you think this is the book? If there were no spreadges on this would have sold one fewer copy?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, I don't think so.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

One of the things I'm going to be interested in that I think we can talk about more with Vanessa and Sharifah is.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Who is this book marketed towards and how is it going to land? Like, if you are, if you are A Rebecca Yarrow's 4th Wing reader and you like the romantasy and you pick this up, I think this is a great next thing for some of those readers to get into. Like, in my opinion, it would take you kind of up the escalator of literary quality into a different kind of writing. But it doesn't have the same. All of the same things that the kids like about the romance to see.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right, right, right, right. Okay. It's doing something.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, it's doing some different things.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, I think that's maybe what I'm going with. The spread thing. Is there a certain flattening of I'm equivocating there. There's a very serious flattening of like packaging where you don't even know what you're getting. I was, I did a, you know, we did a sponsored video for Joe Hill's 20th century. Ghost was a horror collection that has like purple spreads on it like that. I don't think you. I don't think you're getting any information from those anymore.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's. That. That is what's right. That it has spreads or a foiled cover no longer tells you something useful about what kind of book you're reading.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's a bell hooks thing with painted edges. There's a deluxe anniversary edition of Slow Horses with spreads coming out this fall.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Bell hooks with painted edges makes me want to just crawl under my desk.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Please don't hear me. Please don't hear my dislike for spreads, which I will cop to As a moral judgment of them all. I just think sort of tactically, practically, tragedy of the edges here about what these actually are representing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Initially they signaled like fantasy romantasy, something in the Rebecca Yarrow, Sarah J. Maas kind of universe. And now it's completely like if Louise Erdrich and bell hooks have spreadges and so does Joe Hill and so does forsaking.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's just. I mean, it's just that's what we want. We want books that are pretty.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This doesn't mean anything anymore about what you're going to find between those covers.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Also not for nothing, at some point with people with a big enough book collection, you cannot see the spreads because you need to find what book you're looking for. And you. They're just behind there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I did appreciate on Katabasis that the spread is along the long end of the book that's opposite the spine. What the open edges. One of the paintings says hell is other people.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, Sartre. For those of you who don't know.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There now you know, because they probably don't know. Rebecca. Because 40. A 40% decline in reading among Americans pleasure reading from 2003 to 2023, a downward trend going back to the 1940s. This piece by Maggie Aster in the New York Times notes, which I'm okay with. You know, we'd expect to drop when we invent sort of entirely new mediums that the book may take a hit from 2003 to 2023. We're dropping methodology corner. We don't get a lot of methodology here.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. The data.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Did you anything change?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I looked at it a little bit. The data are pulled from the American Time Use survey, which doesn't ask about causation. It's just what.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We've talked about that survey before. Have we not yet.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, it's just. What are you doing? And almost a quarter of a million Americans took it over those 20 years. So the 40% decline here to get into maybe methodology or like data packag corner. The raw percentages are, I think a more important story. Like a 40% decline sounds like a lot. And it is a lot. The raw number is that in 2020. Sorry, in 2004, the peak was 28% of Americans said that they read for pleasure. And. And the survey is broadly worded to include books, magazines and newspapers in any format, including audio. So 28% is the peak in 2023. 20 years later, we're at 16% of people. So it's like 12 percentage points of difference. But a relative difference of 40%. If that were to happen again, if a relative drop of 40% were to happen again, we would be below 10% of Americans reading for fun in 2044.

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

Which concerns me like I clutched my pearls a little bit and really got them out. I got them out.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You put them on and clutched them.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Clutched them a little bit when I wrote about this in Today in books. And I will admit, like this is coming at the same time that we're having dark nights of the soul about algorithms and the ways that they are shaping our interests, making people less interested in and less capable of engaging with longer form types of media. And then yesterday, when I was reading Politico, which is its own decision that we can assess in a different format. I read the phrase they're talking about the Trump newsome meme wars. And the sentence was something like this might be a glimpse at what the first post literate presidential campaign looks like. And the idea that we are building politics and building the way that messaging about how this country is put together around the assumptions of that literacy does not matter or literacy is not available to everyone. So let's find other ways to communicate. Very broad, very blunt, like blunt object, lacking nuance. Ideas. Just. I had a little moment today.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I wish I could here to coax you down off the metaphorical ledge with your pearls. Jumping into a.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Do you need a pair too? We can get you a string of pearls.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, I guess my, my take insofar as their one is like, that tracks.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And like a lot of significant things happen between 2003 and 2023. In 2005, we get Facebook. In 2006, we got Twitter. In 2007 we got the iPhone. And then everybody can list all of the things that came after that. And so I'm not predicting that we will see another decline of this same magnitude in the next 20 years. I don't know that the technology is going to be. That we're going to see some other new kind of technology. I think we're now in differences of degree. But how much more dominant will short form video become and. And how much more limited will people's attention spans and interest, desire to engage with books or any reading material, magazines, newspapers, anything at all that is actually informative, like literacy does matter. And being able to develop critical thinking and see through the kinds of political messaging that are coming from all corners right now really does matter.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It feels like it's less than this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'll say that it feels like it's less than 16 of people read for pleasure. 16 feels so low to me.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, but that's still 60 million people. It feels my sense of the national state of whatever is so bad that I'm like, thank God they're 16.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And I mean, I don't think they broke it. They weren't specific to books in this piece at least. So this 16% includes people who read, like say newspapers and magazines, but don't listen or don't read or listen to books at all. So this doesn't tell us anything specific about like the health of reading culture, book reading culture.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So in that peak in 2003, there's sort of a slow descent until 2010 and then takes a bit of a, you know, where you can see and this is just eyeballing this here. There's a little bit of a gap and then there's a drop and then a flattening. I wouldn't be surprised because if it's hard to remember now, there was huge economic uncertainty around that time. People don't have as much money, they're stressed out, whatever. We're flat. We actually rise up through 2020 12, 2013 during the PAX Obama things sort of level off and then go up and then 2016, it's, it's now on a trajectory down. There was a flat for a couple years during the Biden administration. And this really ends with ends of the second Biden administration. And I don't know, I don't know what to tell you and I do think about this because like I probably said something like this before but throughout history you can go back and look at particular dynamics, events, products, habits, whatever, and be like that was just not it. And I've said this before, that I think the algorithmic social media feed on your phone is a cigarette. It's an attention cigarette. And I think this is just the phones. I think it's as simple as that. And I think the, the phones have a higher order effect of like the political discourse. I think one doesn't happen without the other.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I agree.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But the meme lording like fight fire with fire, I guess, but I'd rather not there not be any fire. I guess that's my take on what's going on right now. Like I'm not, this is not interesting to me personally. You do what you got to do. But I wish it wasn't this. But I really think, and there's a controversy yesterday about like people, some of the worst takes ever. But like I'll tell you from my own personal experience of those of many I know with kids that are teenagers or younger, it's the phones, it's, it's not just how they are. It's not just what but how like Marshall McLuhan would have a field day with the algorithm. AI Marshall McLuhan talking about algorithms is a thing that probably William Gibson should write about or something like this, this. But it's just phones. It is screens and phones. That's it. Rebecca. It's as simple and as sad as that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I totally agree. It's the self perpetuating cycle of them too that the screens and phones enable this like 24 hour, very rapidly moving news cycle. The news cycle is then exhausting to engage with. And no wonder that fewer people are reading newspapers and magazines. Also all of the attentional things that deplete our ability to pay attention to books are factored into that that as well. But it's not an accident that it dips again after 2016 like anecdotally and in large like political studies. There are huge chunks of people saying that they are not engaging with news anymore because it is so overwhelming. And if it weren't for the phones, it would not be overwhelming like it used to be that you got your newspaper once a day and you found out what happened yesterday and the world functions.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And so I don't know. I'm hoping for. I feel like this idea is out there especially amongst the kinds of people that have historically read for pleasure. More that. And this is. Goes with education. Right. That's the strongest correlation they have there. That makes sense. I think on the whole if doesn't mean it's laudable that or not to be ameliorated that people with lower levels of education shouldn't have things to read or spend time reading or be encouraged to read read. But I want. Could there be. Let me ask you this. Could a tide turn.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think the tide is Virginia has a. I mean with the kids. Virginia has a statewide law now about no cell phones in schools. Other states are pursuing that too. I was reading a piece this morning by a professor who's been teaching for 20 years and got his best course evaluations ever last semester for a course he's been teaching the same thing forever and ever. And the only thing he change last semester was that he banned cell phones. He banned cell phones from his classroom and he required notes to be taken by hand or if you were using a device to use a stylus. He of course made accommodations for folks with disabilities. But he said that he was like this is the only thing I can attribute it to is that people felt more present in my class because they did not have the tools of distraction and because you do encode what you are learning more effectively if you have to process it mentally and take notes by hand. Because you can type almost most people or some students can type almost as. As a professor talks. You don't have to process if you're just transcribing, but if you're taking notes by hand, you've got to be paying attention and trying to boil it down. And there's a layer of processing and encoding that happens. I do think the tide is turning in structural ways. I would like to see it turn in a big structural way. I would like to see us talk about better regulations around social media and the Internet. But I also think that a lot of the Gen Alpha Gen Z, like younger Gen Z kids seem less interested in this type of engagement. It's not novel to them. You know, like this is.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think that's a great point. It's no longer a source of like this is how I'm different than my parents.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right? Yeah, it's not novel. They've seen the downsides of it. You know, a lot of them when you survey them, say that they wish the Internet had never been invented, that they wish social media had never been invented. Like the kids do not love what their brains feel like when they use these kinds of tools. And I do think at some point that becomes a point of consumer pushback.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There was one addition. There's a lot of interesting things. There's link in the show notes as always bookwright.com listen1 I don't know silver lining or glint of a ring in the treasure hoard of badness in Smog's lair that this represents the amount of time spent reading by those who read for pleasure increased from 1 hour and 23 minutes a day in 2003 to 1 hour and 37 minutes minutes in 2023. And this is something I didn't quite I felt this, even if I hadn't articulated this, that for those of us for whom reading is we believe to be important, I think that's a sign we may be the early adopters of the turn tide. Right? Like there's so much that makes you dumber, less empathetic, less healthy out there and books are a solace. And you and I have been careful over time to say books aren't special in some regards, but in some regards they are special. And I think in one regard they are the special thing, which is that focused attention over time to wrestle with difficulty, complexity and things that are not you and familiar to you already. Books do that better than any. There's really nothing, I mean outside of like a college course or something thing. The only the best thing you can do by yourself like this is engage with something like maybe have a conversation with the expert. But that's not scalable for most of us. But that's where books are different. I think for those of you I do spend I spend more time reading and when I think differently about my reading now, I think of it not just something I like to do, but I think of it something like as a kind of resistance as a kind of self care as. And it's. And it's. I want to be careful there because I don't myself subscribe to anything. Reading anything is. Is the same. I don't believe that to be the case. I think on its face most people don't either. That's not to say that kinds of readings are bad, but like I value differently a kind of reading and I'll talk about it with Endling there that is not altogether merely pleasurable, merely comprehendable, merely affirming of what I think or expect something to be or act or sound like. And I do think we see that in like the people that listen to this show. I think I, I would say that a lot of the people that listen agree with me. Some of them don't of course, but I think a lot of people feel that way.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I agree. I feel the same way about my reading that I want it to be. Like, I want to sink in. Reading is difficult and annoying when you're constantly distracted by things. And like our brains are now wired by these devices we carry around to constantly think of like one other thing that you could do if you just picked up your phone. It's not an accident that we have the lowest reading rates we've had in 20 years. And the number one app this week is the thing that Hank Green has launched called Focus Friend that is intended to help you stay off your phone. Like there is a proliferation of productivity apps that just amount to Let us help you lock yourself out of your phone for a while and let's gamify it and let's do whatever else, like put it in a room, put it in a box, turn on, do not disturb. But that kind of sustained focus and attention, it just feels good. It feels like going out to. It feels, it feels to me similar to like going out to take a walk and not listening to something while I'm doing it or driving home from yoga in the car in silence and just like letting my brain do what my brain wants to do and think about ideas. But to read and for a sustained period of time, to listen to an audiobook for a sustained period of time and engage with what a text is saying and what it's asking us to think about. Like, that feels. It feels good. It feels nourishing in a way that I have never felt scrolling on Instagram.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Book Talk is boosting sales at romance bookstores. I'm not saying there's. So they're related, right? And I don't want to bemoan this is not the attention of.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There are like compromises and silver linings and all kinds of things around this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. So, you know, when we were talking about the well read stuff, there were a lot of, you know, know people are snobs and read anything you want. And I do believe that. And I want to affirm people's reading. I wonder, can I try out a take on you, please? Just a trial take. Everyone else, stop listening. This is just for Rebecca. Could I. Could we. As part of the detente about. It's just read what you want. That if someone says their favorite book is catch it in their eye. You also get to be cool about the. That do you hear? You sure. I'm going with this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You also get to be cool about that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, but like, but like, but. No, but like, we're gonna be cool about people reading oh, Dragon romances. But we're also going to be cool about someone liking Infinite Jest.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I. Yes. That it has to cut both ways.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I agree.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Thank you for your time. That was easier than I thought it was.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't know that the rest of the. The Internet is going to be as easily swayed as I'm on board. Board with that. I do. I think it. It should cut both ways. That if a person is out there saying read whatever you want. They're all valuable. They don't get to turn around and tell a person who reads something that's traditionally thought of as more literary or snobby or whatever you want to call it that you don't get to denigrate that person or tell them that they're a snob or whatever.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. You get to like Didion. You get what. Whatever the punching bags of pretension are. People also get to like those.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right. And this is Jason diamond wrote a great piece this week kind of poking at this terrible. I think you probably read it as well. This terrible attempt at making a thing out of the performative male that like you men who want to signal that they're feminist and safe for women, signal away.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's what I'm saying. Signal.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. You want? Yeah. Please buy Sally Rooney and carry those books around.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That keeps you a 4chan. I don't care if you're signaling like one of those frilled lizards that blows up like this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I like. I. I mean, Jason didn't get too far into it in his piece, but like, I think this is a step in the right direction. Like encouraging men to pay straight. Men who want to engage with women, encouraging them to pay attention and care about things that women pay attention to and care about. Like, this is part of how dating works. This is how relationships form. You have to be interested in things that the other person is interested in. You have to have some curiosity. It can't just be that we're supposed to not nod and smile at every dude who tells us that Infinite Jest is the most amazing book they've ever read. Like, come on. Like, the pro. I think the, the memes around the performative male thing are just completely ridiculous. And I'm on board for you that if you, if somebody wants to be out there now, I would say Catcher in the Rye specifically has some, like, content things that I'd be like, really? Do we want to talk about that?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, it's, it's not that book specifically, but like the whole, whole, the, the pantheon of pretentious poser periodicals. Right? Like, the whole thing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Say that one five times.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You can just, just, you know, I, I, I'm never did. But I'm not making fun of when I say the Joan Didion tote bag crew. That's just, that's just a heuristic.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's a signifier.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's a signifier. I, in a lot of ways, I have a June Didion tote bag in my heart. I just don't carry one.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You're absolutely you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But, like, it's, it's okay to have different kinds of taste in some of them if they feel to you to be pretentious. It's also possible that people are looking for that in their reading, that what those kinds of books provide. And because here's a hot take, most of them are pretty damn good, and they've got something to offer that's beyond the caricature that you think you may know about that book. So there we go. Anyway, it's the 16% of us were. We just got to stick together here. Here. We know. We just, we just need to, we need a bigger tent.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We do. We do. And, and I, I mean, our perpetual. Thing is, if you really want to have a take about a book, you need to have read the book. It's why we find ourselves doing things like reading 4th Wing to find out, you know, what's going on. Reading where the Crawdads Sing. Not that I have never, like, rolled my eyes and refused to pick up something. We don't like them.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We don't have to like them.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We don't have to like everything. But, like, I'm, I'm coming across memes of people being like, you know, a red flag book for me would be if someone had LOL on their shelves, I would run out of the house. And I'm thinking about this right now because Constance Grady wrote a great piece for VOX this week that I can drop a link to in the show notes about sort of the. The way this is the 70th anniversary of Lolita being published this year and the way that the conversation about that book has evolved and like, you know, expanded and contracted and then re. Expanded and recontracted over 70 years of. Is it a love story? Is it a horror story? What is the message? How do we recreate? Read it in a me too world. And the thing that I keep thinking about that is you don't get to decide if a book is a red flag. If you don't know what actually happens in that book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, yeah, it sounds like Lolita is my favorite book because of the age gap, then you've got a red flag.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Sure. But tell me why. Tell me what's going on there like it is. We have to know if we want. If the 16 of us want to stay together and we ever want to add to our red ranks, we're gonna have to do something other than ourselves judging books on what the like one line synopsis.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, because most of them aren't that. Most of them are not that thing. And you don't have to like the book and you can certainly. You can certainly have a take on people's takes. But I, But I agree with you. Dismissing out of hand. It's like there are too few of us to do that. We don't have. We don't have a spares.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And like, we don't. This is one of the things that I really that like gets my hackles up when people come for us. So if we're talking about. About more classic books or serious fiction is I want people to read books. I want them to have access to the things that they want to read. I like, really don't care if the thing you're into is romantasy. And I don't think you're a bad person or a less intelligent person or like a less. It means nothing about your moral value and that I can't talk about what I think is substantively wrong with a book or do an assessment or an analysis of its artistic value without the people who like that thing thinking that my assessment of the book is an assessment of them. Like, right. Conversations that take art critically are important for the maintenance of art. And otherwise all we get is the one thing that everybody's willing to pick up. Like we would just have a world of James Patterson's if art was only determined by what would sell the most cost copies. And that's not the world that I.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Want to not be bad necessarily, but it's not the world I want to read in. Right. And sort of some of the advocacy we do and the buying that we do is to sort of further cultivate and stimulate and you know, otherwise encourage there to be more of the stuff that we want and some of that saying this is not what I want. And we get outvoted by culture most of the time. And that's, you know, the marketplace of ideas, I guess. But we also do get to advocate for things that we like with, you know, hopefully the same equanimity that we hope to offer things that are not our cup of tea. Hey guys, it's CD Lamb, wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys. I'm partnering with Abercrombie this season to tell you all about their viral denim. All you need to know is denim should fit like this. My jeans need to check a lot of boxes fit first, trend second. Second, they need to go with whatever I'm feeling and Abercrombie Denim has it down whether I'm throwing on a tee or putting the whole fit together. Shop Abercrombie Denim in the app, online and in store. Are you ready to dairy free your mind this summer? Melt away your dairy free expectations with so delicious dairy free frozen desserts. Enjoy mind blowing flavors like salted caramel.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Cluster chocolate cookies and cream cookie dough and mold.

[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

So this there, there's a lot of you should have talked to your family more. That happens in a life but I think this is probably the single most crystal. This is a Diamond. This is a coal under pressure version of boy, did I have a hard time living my life with my family.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. So what you're talking about is this piece from the Wall Street Journal this week by Rachel Louise Ensign about this trend of wealthy retirees, wealthy older people spending between tens and hundreds of thousands of dol to have their memoirs ghostwritten so that their families can know their stories either, you know, before they are gone or shortly after their death. I had so many feelings about this piece. You know, a lot of them along the lines of what you were saying about people just need to talk to each other more. Maybe some of it is that this is particular to like, boomers and the silent generation, that a lot of them want to make sure their families know how hard they had it. Like, I want you to know how hard I had it it and how hard I worked for you. And I think that's a very real sentiment. And also, I'm not so sure about. You're 92 and that's the thing you're concerned about in your legacy. But also this feels really exploitative to me. There are these companies that like you, you know, you pay them £18,000 and they will come to your house. They send an interviewer multiple times and then they send the transcripts off to a ghostwriter and the ghostwriter turns it into a narrative and then you pay to have the book printed. Like, do people can do what they're. What they want with their money? But this seems to me in some way to like prey on older people at a vulnerable point in life. I don't know. And also things like story worth that you can do this for 99 bucks a year, exist and provide ways. Like, there's a lot, there's a lot of like really human need on display here. But this piece made me sad.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't know, I. I thought it was strange. It didn't make me sad. I guess I don't think of it as being exploitive because it's to all intents. And as far as I can tell, these people are delivering on what they say they're going to deliver for the price they're going to. The real exploitive stuff is real bad, right? So I don't see it as that. Now maybe if they knew about a different product, you know, I guess there's a bio beware also. People blow way more money on their Porsche and I think that's dumber. So I'm like, if you're, if you're gonna, if you have $80,000 better this than a G wagon Dragon is, is my.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I guess I think anybody who's paying a ghost writer like a normal person who's paying a ghostwriter a hundred grand for their memoir is being taken advantage of because you don't know like what most writers get, what, what a typical advance looks like.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Maybe. Am I libertarian to say copy it empty? I, I don't know. Like you could have done more research about what.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, like spend your money on whatever.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You're all on Facebook. You can find out about these services if you want them. I think what I. So it's not so much about the money from me. It is, it feels to me like a last gasp at connection and that it typically will be a sign. And like this. I didn't know you and grandma met at a keg party. It's like you've had 30 years and yet you didn't take the time to tell the story. I also think people overestimate their heirs interest in this kind of stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Which is, you know, this is not a contract that you have to consume this and pass a five part quiz on it to be left in the, in the family will.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But although that's a version of Knives out that I would watch.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't know. Yeah. Really? Did you watch, did you watch grandma's bespoke Wes Anderson video she paid one and a half million dollars for? I don't know, it's. It, I think it's fast. I think it's fascinating. But I do think it is a part and parcel of, of the softening so many people go through as they get older that just be softer. The rest, the rest. This is your warning from us.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Soften up early.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Soften up early because this is, this is a lot of back interest to pay on things you wish you would have done.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And like I do think last gasp is the right phrase there that one of the things that's highlighted here is a wealth management company in Cleveland that clients who have $10 million or more in assets. Assets. So like nice work if you can get it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They get a free ghostwritten memoir alongside the other services that they're getting. You know, the banking products. It's 30 to 40 pages and it's intended to ease clients fears that their heirs won't understand the value of hard work. Like that's a lesson you gotta teach them when they're young.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do you think there's something, do you think, do you think Tiffany who gets her two and a half million dollars.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Or her ten grand a month.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And she watched it in her 30 minute video. She said, you know what? I really understand the. The value of. I get it now. I get it. I'm gonna work in a mine.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I feel so torn about this. Like saying it at the end is better than not saying it at all.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But I also believe that we have to be saying things for ourselves. And not like, if I say this, I will force you to understand and know and believe a thing that I have wished you would understand and know and believe. Because that's. That is just not what people get to do. So I just. This was a part of book culture. And like, people, old people have written their memoirs forever. I can't tell you how many times since I've worked in books, someone that I've met, like, I have stopped telling people. Everybody who works in publishing eventually stops telling people they meet on planes that they work in publishing. Because you get like, my grandpa's been writing his memoir and how does he get it published? And nobody wants any part of that. Like, this is a thing. But that there's now a cottage industry around it, I guess is like. Like, it's not surprising. It just took me. It made me kind of like, oh, man, just talk to people.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's a part of me too. Like, one thing you could do if you were so inclined is to get a mic or even talk into your chatbot and talk for a few hours and have it formatted into a memoir. And he would do a pretty good job of that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I did say that in my Today in Books note about it. Like, this seems factory made for something like chatgpt. You don't need to spend a hundred grand.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But I think the thing people want from these projects is precisely what will be lost if you do that. Because the articulation of it, the, the weighting the description, the specificity of you that you're trying, it just won't get captured. And maybe it will in a different way by an artistic filmmaker or something else. But like, part of the work of expressing your interiority is the work of expressing your intuitive. And that is the. That is the domain of art. The arts.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That is not the domain of someone hired for $80,000. They'll probably get the facts right and it is all you care about. But like, I think, I think people want something other than just the facts. They're trying to communicate something other than just the facts.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I think if you're. I don't know if you're hearing this and you're like, My grandma would love to do something like this. Storyworth is worth a look. Like they've sponsored the podcast years ago. But I guess full disclosure that we've seen that product but I think you pay like a hundred bucks for the year. It gives you this huge list of questions and it will send whoever your person, it will send them questions and they provide the answers to those questions about their life. Life. And Storyworth will package up all of that into all kinds of different like memory keepsakes into books and like little chapter things for much less than 100 grand. You don't need $10 million in assets in Cleveland to make it possible.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, though I, I, I'm very sympathetic to the, I'm, I'm sympathetic to the move. So I'm, I'm less worried about the cash if someone has to spend it. I hope people aren't taking out the, their end, end of life policies to do that for sure. But if you've got it, I say spend this on if what you want. But there's, I'm afraid that you're not going to get what you want.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

On the whole. All right, let's do frontless foyer. So you've said what else do you want to say? Because people could buy today. Katabat. Katabasis. Gosh. I still, I have to translate it every single time. It's like it's in German in my head or no English in my head. I have to turn it to German.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We're all in good company here. Sharifa said it out loud on an Instagram video and one of the first comments comments was, oh my God, that's how you say it. It was like hello and welcome.

[Jeff O'Neill]

None of us knew probably that should have been the videos.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like here's how you, how you pronounce this word and what it means because.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You could buy that on Thriftbooks because they've got 19 million and you can get, you can get them, you can get a haircut on the price because a lot of the, the prices are very equivalent and maybe sometimes better than we get on other online retail place. Plus every book purchase gets you closer to a free book through the reading rewards program program. You're not going to get into this book for fewer than 15 bucks. I can guarantee you that right now. So you're going to get shipped you free in the US go to thriftbooks.com thanks for them to sponsor the show. Anything else you want to say about the IT book of the year so far?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean I think if you're a reader who is like, if your reading profile is similar to mine, you've listened to the show for a while. I think you will like Katabasis. It's a good, it is a good, fun book. I thought it was great for what it is. For what it is. Like, I don't know that we're going to see it on literary on. I don't think we're gonna see it on like a National Book Award situation. It doesn't read that literary. It reads more commercial. I think it's really smart though. Like I spent most of that book being like, Rebecca Kuang is so smart. This book is so well done for what it is trying to be and for what the, what it could be in the market. It's like, it's a very, very good book that fits also I think a special place in the market right now. So I do recommend recommend it and you can hear more about that and everybody else's take next week on the show. I also listened to Church Camp by Kara Meredith after hearing her on an episode of Anne Helen Peterson's culture study podcast. This is about how white evangelical church camp, largely in the 90s and early 2000s was a bad idea and like an exploitative lie in many ways. Meredith worked at church camp, like went to church camp her whole life, worked at a bunch of the big, big like young life and similar kinds of camps into her 30s. And then started realizing that it actually did not align with the way she wanted to be in the world or the way that she thinks Christianity should function. I really, I found it to be very validating of how manipulative some of the activities and messaging were at church camps that I experienced. Apparently 1996 was the peak year for church camp, like attack attendance. And I was right in that pocket. And that a lot of the camps were going more extreme in their messaging than even like the main line. Certainly I don't know. My experience at a Methodist church camp was like much more evangelical than my week to week experience at the oh really?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Mine was pretty dissimilar.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But yeah, but there it's also just catered to. You really need to be white to fit in. You really need to be straight to fit in. Experiences of people of color, experiences of queer kids. There's a lot of really exclusionary, painful stuff that has happened in and around the church camp environment. And Meredith also gets into the capitalism of it all, how much money these bring in, how the camps are often keeping like they're trying to drive the numbers of it's all about conversion. They're trying to drive the number, number of converts up because that's the primary thing they can report on to donors to keep getting funding for the camp. There are even camps that give the counselor who has the cabin with the most converts in it like an Outback steakhouse gift certificate. It's really just all shades of it. And she structures the book around the different talks that she used to give over the course of a week at church camp trying to move kids through that pipeline to conversion. Then critiques her own talks through the lens of, of here's what was wrong with that and here's how I would give that talk today. And that's for me the place that the book stopped being is useful because she's participating in the Christian church in a different capacity now, but is still looking through the lens of these camps could be great and they could provide kids with an encounter with God and an experience with spirituality and religion. That would matter. Here's a less harmful way to give these messages and you know, that's. I'm not on board with the continuation of that but I really appreciate it, how thoughtful it was and that she's trying to encourage a more inclusive movement there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, on my docket I finally got around to listing abundance by Ezra Klein and Thompson. I'm on board with the general idea of an optimistic view of the future, like things can be better. There is an element of dooming on on the left amongst people who I agree with politically that I find counterproductive, depressing and not, you know, not forward looking in a way that I often think of progressive being in terms of progress. There's also a sense to and this has to largely to do with climate policy that I agree with. Global warming is real and all the things on there. But in terms of like the idea of asking people to do with less I just don't think works whether or not I agree with it. I just think historic people want a bigger house, they want to go on vacation, they want to do these things. So rather than say no, yes, small stop. The other idea is to let's make this, these things more abundant, cheaper and friendlier to the world in which we live. So that you can have two cars or whatever, you can drive places, but they run on electricity or there's solar on your roof or there's other things that go on there. So we can say yes, but we need to do these other things to make it. But we need to have a lot more housing. So we need to deregulate okay, sure. The problem with this particular book and that particular mindset, which I find myself inclined to agree with, is it tends to sweep under the rug the reasons that things are slow to build. So I'll just use a couple examples for my own life that I know a little bit. Michelle works in affordable housing and is working all the time around regulations to make an apartment building not just an affordable apartment building at large. And I'm out of my depth in specifics here, but I'll give you a couple examples of the kind of idea space we're talking about. Sometimes it's hard to get a building built with the maximum number of apartments you could use because you need X number of parking spots to go with it. Right? So if you say that every apartment needs a parking spot, there's just less. There's just less apartments, fewer apartments and less housing in general. Look at how I did. I did fewer and less. Correct. I correct myself on the fly. And so you say, okay, well, that's. That's right. Let's get regulation. Okay, it's easy to say, well, what happens if there aren't parking lots spots? Well, people still want to drive. So then the surrounding neighborhood then has more cars parked on the street because some people buy fewer cars. But people want to buy a car. They want a car to get around. And so as a secondary effect, so the neighborhood says, well, we want there to be enough parking so that people aren't taking our parking spots. What's the abundance case for that? Because they're all, they're all compromises. There's reasons we have all these regulations. There's very few regulations. I think there's some there always punching bags. But I think those tend to be the lowest hanging fruit of examples. Okay, get rid of those 7% of regulations that are really onerous. Are there for no reason but say things like air filtration systems or air conditioning or accessible buildings or making sure there isn't runoff into the local water things. Which of those do you want to throw on the trash heap for abundance? I'm serious. Like, they don't answer this question. Right? They don't. Now maybe you focus just on. Let's just put solar everywhere. Like, maybe you just focus on the ones where there's kind of no tradeoffs. Like just put solar on all the houses. Make it just super. There's not many incentives. There's frankly not many disincentives to putting solar on everyone's roof. There just aren't. You could do that. But like a lot of the stuff around housing or infrastructure, big projects. There are reasons. There are. There's red tape. That red tape is there for a reason. Even originally, that red tape was to describe, describe the, the tape they used to bind the veterans benefits for Civil War soldiers. Well, the red tape was there so people didn't screw with it. Right? There was. That red tape had a function. And it's so easy, especially when it's an industry that you're not in, to point and say, look at all the red tape of that industry. But all the stuff in my industry that we, we've got it figured out, right? Or vice. It's. It's very easy to point at something you're not an expert in and say, well, they should just do everything different. Like, that's one of my great pet peeves of all these sort of popular science books or popular policy books. And I'm guilty of it too. It's so much like if you're, if your anthropology is such. You think most people are dumb, then it's very easy to say, just be smarter. Mine is that we're all kind of dumb. And usually there are reasons for things. And it's very easy to say, well, there just shouldn't be reasons for that. It's the simplest thing in the world. So I think it's. I'm more of a. You got to pick your spots. It's not abundant. You just can't do abundance all the time. But what, what are the. What is the lowest. I do think it's. I mean, from where I sit, it's renewable energy just on the. That's the single.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We'll get the biggest bang for our abundance.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, there's. There's. So, okay, so you know what? I'm willing to say, if you've got a cottage on Martha's Vineyard, you're gonna have to look at some windmills out in the ocean. You know, I'll say that's a trade off. You know, or maybe I need to be okay with a windmill on my house or I need to be okay with a tax of $50 a month to subsidize solar panels on Walmart parking lots. Tell me, treat me an adult. Tell me like adult and tell me what the scam is and tell me what the trade off is and I will saddle up for the trade off. But we need to acknowledge their trip. So, like, and I think directionally you want a book like this. One of the goals, a book like this is to have the conversation. But part of the conversation is the conversation not to be tautological about it. Does that make sense?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It does make sense. Like, I think it's being, I think it has started a conversation. I've seen it like being carried into more specific political conversations about like this regulation that blocks us from being able to build and seem silly. Or like we made this regulation to protect this one type of plant and we're protecting this one type of plant, but we can't house a hundred thousand people. And is that really the deal that we are comfortable making now? We made that deal before, but we don't have to make it forever. That kind of reexamination is really useful. Like what is regulation for? Who and what is it supposed to protect? And how valuable are those protections against what they might cost us? Is a conversation especially that we need to have on the left as a way to move towards solving some of these problems. Like a government that solves problems is what people want.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I mean, or, or at least gets out of the way if it doesn't matter or if it's like benefit neutral. But. And again, even my oversimplification is an oversimplification because there are all kinds of situations where there are competing interests. And that's another thing. Like, okay, a trade off is being made, but there's competing interest. Who's going to win it? That's, that's politics, baby. I mean, that's just how that works. I don't know that there's another way around that, but I'm glad, I'm glad I finally listened to it. Like, it's a good listen. There is a utopian ness to it, which is frustrating, but I think actually useful. Like it's, it's a positivist vision. I think that's the core, core of like there are ways out of this that aren't just, no, yes, small shrink, die.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You know, like, that is the conversation that I want to be having. Like, we're not done. We're not cooked. The situation is very bad. And there are a lot of things that I wish were different right now. And the way that we get out of it is by getting out of it, by figuring out better messaging, by figuring out how to make some of these changes that do make people's lives better and easier and less, less expensive and whoever can do.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Because if we are cooked, I should buy a Hummer and drive it around and light like dollars on fire. Because if we're cooked, then it really doesn't matter. Then what should we do?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right? Yeah. I mean, I feel like a lot of people use the we're cooked as a. Like, that's just another mode of disengaging of like, this is overwhelming and I won't pay attention to it. And it's also then a way to get off the hook of participating of like, why should I go to like a text banking event and be active in my local school board? If we're just completely done, there's no point. But we're gonna keep going. Yeah, we're not done.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Pessimism is one of the more boring of all attitudes. It also in skepticism. I'm all here for pessimism, but that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Kind of like doomerism scientifically makes you more susceptible to things like conspiracy theories.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, it makes sense, right? Because if I can't get out this way, I gotta find something else, no matter how hair brained.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, like that's a thing to be vigilant against.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Speaking of harebrained, I'm glad I took a shot at this book and I'm gonna try. I don't know that I can give it away. It's called Endling by Maria Riva. Which also brings us to today's vocabulary corner. Oh, do you know what an Endling is? Rebecca does that word.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, I don't.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I didn't. I didn't either. I had to look it up. It means the last of its species. Something that's the last single member of its Pisces, which is. I told Michelle, she immediately teared up, bless her heart. So this book is very strange. It has a Percival Everett blurb on it, which I think is telling because it's. It's doing stuff. The setup is set in sort of pre war Ukraine, pre contemporary war Ukraine. Okay. And the two main characters are both women participating in something called a romance tour. And it's where, you know, eligible, willing down on their luck or just want the money. Ukrainian women entertain. They're not prostitutes, but like they, they have these parties and their tours where men, mostly from America, come to try to find a.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like a mixer.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A mixer? Yeah, but it's, it's all. It's a tour. Like, it's staged. They're paying this company and the women get paid and they have translation. And some of them apparently are actually there to maybe get married and move to the US and some of their. Because they just get money to show up, like to like fill out the. Fill out the mixer. And the two, the two principal women, one of them, she's a snail researcher, okay. And she's using the funds to help fund her snail research. She's driving around this mobile lab researching snails. And she's got, like, 147 great life, honestly. 147 snails. Snails. And a couple of them are endlings, the last of their species from these Ukrainian forests. And the other woman is a daughter of a radical Ukrainian feminist who's gone missing. Right. Sort of a riot. It's called the commode kind of thing. And she's gone missing after having this sort of public encounter with Vladimir Putin that goes sideways. Like, she's gone.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There's a lot going on in this book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's so much going on, going on. And the daughter of the revolution, or this radical feminist, she is in this romance tour to stage a protest of the industry.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I see.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Partly because she believes in it, but partly maybe to get her mom back. Like, if I do well enough, maybe mom will come flying back. And the plan there is. I'm not giving too much away. This is just the beginning. The plan is to kidnap 12 of these bachelors, and she approaches the snail researcher to use her mobile lab as the. They're going to lure him by saying it's like a romantic escape room. Drive them out into the middle of the woods, freak them out, and then let them go.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Snails.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And then there's nails. Freak them out. Get the footage as a way of, like, exposing this industry.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay. But they're going to let him go.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They're going to let him go. That's the first 37% of the book, because I read it on my Kindle. That's how I know how much it is. And I was like, this is kind of interesting, but it's kind of straight. I mean, as crazy as that stuff sounds, it's kind of straightforward. It's like it's prevented very straightforwardly.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's a lot of exposition, like the actual sentences. I was like, this is kind of an interesting idea, but as a reading experience, I'm not sure it's adding up to much. Then I had forgotten. The reason I got into it is at 37%. We go to part two, and it's an interview with the author, with their agent, I think, about the manuscript and process of the book you were just reading.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, okay. Is this book about art and writing?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, snails, short skirts, vodka. So much going on here. And so then for the rest of the book, we're vacillating between various textual objects. Right. And that writer in this is. Her last name is Reva, which is the author of this book's last name. And the book. And the book I just told you about the snails in the romance industry sort of ends and there's an acknowledgement page and then we back out into the other person's stories. Then we go back into it. It's wild stuff. I enjoyed it. It's very hard to recommend because I'm still kind of dizzy.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Around it. But it got my senses going. Like one of the things that happens in it is that Russia invades Ukraine and that invades both the meta story of the author writing and the actual story of the snail research. Like, it was cool. It was a cool book. I wish the first part was shorter. I wish we got to the meta stuff faster because it's almost half the book you're spending sort of straight ahead. And I haven't read any interviews. Maybe she actually wanted to write that story and. And like was quote unquote interrupted by the war. Other metaphysical things. But it was a cool ride. I'm really glad I gave it a chance.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Sounds like fun.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They're end link by Maria.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We love a surprising book experience.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. So that's our show book riot dot com. Listen, you can shoot us an email podcast bookriot dot com you can find the show notes over there. You can find the Patreon there. I think that's it for now. Rebecca. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Everybody have a good one. Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this audiobook. Excerpt from if Looks Could Kill by Julie Berry. Provided by our sponsors at Simon and.

[Julie Berry (Reader)]

Schuster's Children's Publishing, Whitechapel, East London. Jack has thoughts upon reading the morning papers. Autumn 1888. I was kinder than I could have been. Kinder to each hellcat than she deserved. It isn't pain that pleasures me, nor am I mad, unless we all are. Their suffering was brief. They felt only a few moments of fear. I gave these loathsome women better than they deserved when I freed them swiftly from their wretched lives. How much better do you treat the beasts you consume? Room eat your breakfast bacon, you shopkeepers and clerks, you mistresses and mothers and gossip about the Whitechapel horrors. Enjoy the entertainment with my compliments. Disease and drink and poverty were killing them before your eyes. And did you lift a hand to help? How easily you looked away as they died by the score. Now, thanks to me, you cannot look away. Not anymore. You who gasp at morning headlines, I laugh at your hypocrisy. You men who avail yourself of these wretched women's disgusting delights and pay less than the Price of a loaf of bread. I know who you are. Far more are you scavengers of flesh than I. Since they are cattle to you, I'll be your butcher. You churchgoers who want the streets cleansed of these wicked, you propose no better solution than to raise the rent. But come, be reasonable. Their bitter lives were fated to expire soon, existing as they did on Jane. Mine is a life of grander stature. Nature fashioned me. Rare, unique. Mine is a deeper cunning, an intellect more refined. If offering fallen women upon an altar can preserve me, humanity is better served. They were poor. I am rich. They were loathsome. I am pure. They were ignorant. I am man of learning. They were hideous. I am beautiful. They were female. I am not. Where is my sin? I am an angel of mercy, gently hastening a few across the valley of death to leave their mortal woes behind. What happens to their corpses after they die? What of it? I'll decompose. Eventually. I mold their clay into truer sculptures. And those you jostle and cue to pay to see at your waxworks and dime museums. Behold the true anatomical Venus. A once living woman opened for scientific study and aesthetic pleasure. My fleshy handiwork. Their carcasses are my canvas to show the filth, the taint, the reeking excrement behind Whoring, seducing womanhood. But even so, I am not cruel. Only when they were quietly gone did I set about my work. So write your screeds, you moralizers, but do not pretend you care for those women. You wanted these demons off the street as much as anyone of sense. Do not think you can know me. I walk among you daily with a serous face. I sleep in peace when dawn approaches and I lay me down at last. The Bowery, Lower east side, Manhattan Tabitha. The Fire of the Spirit Autumn 1888 Funny thing about the fire of the Spirit. It. It burns hot in army meetings when the captain's preaching. The singers are singing, the guitar playing, the tambourines jingling. And the people on either side of you are receiving Jesus, dancing for joy and saying, praise be. Hallelujah. I'm a new woman. I'm alive in Christ. And they're begging to enlist in the Lord's army. It burns bright and hot when they say to you, sister Tabitha, Martha, are you ready to give your life to the Lord and take up your cross and march all the way to Babylon, even though it's actually a train to New York City? I, for one, am not walking. Are you ready to enlist in God's army and carry his banner into war? Are you ready to leave home to go save souls? Are you ready to rescue sinners and snatch them back from the jaws of a dreadful faint? Are you? Are you? All that hot spirit fire. It's the kind of thing that makes you say yes. And possibly also the image of the absolute conniption Aunt Lorraine will have if you say yes. Gives the idea a bit more sparkle. And you do feel something. Just maybe not what everyone else means by feeling the spirit. Spirit. Right in the middle of all that noise there comes a quiet. You feel a warmth, a glow that fills you up from the inside. And all of a sudden your eyes are pricking and you feel as though beams of light are shooting out your fingers and toes. And it speaks to you. Tabitha, beloved daughter, here I am. I am with you and I always have been. Come with me, dear one. I need you to go find my other daughters who are lost and lead them home. You can't really argue with that, can you? Not when all that love is pulsing through you till your bones tingle in the meeting with all the tambourines. You're pretty sure home means the heavenly kingdom, the pearly gates, the celestial city. But when you get to Babylon, or in this case, the Salvation army headquarters in the basement underneath Steve Brody's saloon on the Bowery, and you see some of those lost daughters through smudgy saloon windows, you realize maybe home is a mother and a father back in Poughkeepsie or Scranton or West Springfield weeping over their girl who followed a liar to Gotham and disappeared, never to be heard from again. Because she isn't typing anybody's letters or bringing up the misses's breakfast tray, and she isn't weaving cloth in a wooden mill. If only she were. She is a prisoner on the Devil's Mile, one of the forgotten girls of the Bowery. Behind the bright lights and tinkling ivories, the laughter and the liquor, there she is. Behind a beaded curtain, behind a painted face. Neither her body nor her broken heart belongs to her anymore.