Books Of The Year Season Peaks

Summary

Book Riot – The Podcast

Episode Title: Books Of The Year Season Peaks
Date: November 24, 2025
Hosts: Jeff O’Neal & Rebecca Schinsky

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Episode Overview

Jeff and Rebecca convene amidst the annual “Books of the Year” season to discuss recent awards, reflect on Book Riot’s favorite reads of 2025, break down the National Book Awards, dissect literary trends (including the rise of “romantasy”), and share their thoughts on book deals, industry headlines, and the current audiobook landscape. The conversation taps into nostalgia, bookish community news, and what it means to engage deeply (and sometimes skeptically) with literature in a world overflowing with lists, lists, and more lists.

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Key Discussion Points

Award Season: A Wide Open Year

• Timing of Major Awards

  • Pulitzer remains an outlier, announced in April/May, while most other lists (including National Book Awards and New York Times Notables) drop in the late fall ([01:07]).
  • NYT Notables are expected imminently, followed by their Top 10.

• Book Riot’s Own Best Books of 2025

  • Recently released; a curated, genre-spanning selection with short editorial notes.
  • Both hosts contributed: Jeff highlighted Audition by Katie Kitamura ([10:03]); Rebecca mentioned A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar and several others ([10:38]).

• Genre Breakdown

  • Book Riot separates Science Fiction and Fantasy, partly due to the “romantasy” explosion—a genre now big enough to merit its own Publishers Lunch listing ([11:10]).
  • Romantasy is firmly established as its “own thing” ([12:15]).

National Book Awards Recap

• Surprise Winner

  • The True Story of Raja the Gullible and his Mother by Rabih Alameddine snatched the Fiction award—unselected in fantasy picks, against consensus guesses ([13:17]).
  • “This was a year without a big book of the year. So it was kind of a wide open field for anybody to win.” – Rebecca ([15:01])
  • Male literary novelists swept major awards this year, prompting some (unwanted) gender discourse ([16:21]).
  • “Men have been reading novels. When more men are interested in engaging with literature, it’ll be right here for them.” – Rebecca ([57:14])

• Other Noteworthy Winners

  • Nonfiction: One Day Everyone Will Have Been Against This by Omar El Akkad ([19:10]).
  • Young People's Literature: Teacher of Nomadland, a WWII Story by Daniel Nayeri ([19:36]).
  • Poetry: The Intentions of Thunder by Patricia Smith ([20:12]).
  • Translation: We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriel Cabezón Cámara, tr. Robin Myers ([20:12]).

• BookTok Phenomenon

  • On the Calculation of Volume—Internet and BookTok cult-favorite, now appearing on prize lists; hosts express interest in “serious” BookTok picks ([21:00]).

Book Riot and Podcast Community Updates

• Zero to Well Read:

  • New show has thrived with triple the audience size, thanks in large part to loyal Book Riot listeners. Currently ranked #2 in Apple's Books category ([03:24]).
  • New season launching in January with more mainstream selections, but still oriented toward deeper critical engagement ([24:45]).

• Book Riot Newsletter

  • Growing resource for mainstream and casual readers—quick industry overviews, critical roundups, and occasional author features ([06:46]).

Industry News & Trends

• Shein and Alibris Partnership
  • Fast fashion giant Shein has teamed up with used book retailer Alibris, offering affordable used books and textbooks—a surprise, and potentially beneficial, approach to getting physical books to a young, cost-conscious, Gen Z audience ([29:30]).
  • “This is not a fast fashion approach to books… used book selling is kind of antithetical to fast fashion and quickly produced and disposable items.” – Rebecca ([31:49])
  • Noted that a third of survey respondents (n=11,000 US adults, skewing Gen Z) claimed to read daily or weekly ([30:49]).

Literary Internet Nostalgia

• Lit Hub’s Literary Twitter Bracket
  • Explores “greatest moments” in bookish Twitter history; hosts reflect on its insularity and transience ([34:09]).
  • “I have no interest in revisiting it. Just none… The good old days of literary Twitter aren’t as good as I thought. Like these tweets. They’re fine.” – Jeff ([37:26])
  • “Most of these were moments only as they were happening. They were funny only to the people who… had the full backstory or context.” – Rebecca ([38:13])
  • Host takeaway: Bookish online community ebbs and flows, but depth and quality engagement remain elusive on most platforms, then or now ([39:34]).

Audiobooks: Rankings & Ruminations

• Libro.fm's Top 10 Bestselling Audiobooks of 2025

  • An engaging, mixed genre list reflecting mainstream tastes ([41:39]):
    • Onyx Storm
    • Sunrise on the Repayment
    • Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
    • Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
    • Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green
    • And others.
  • John Green’s popularity prompts this: “Only John Green could have made a book about tuberculosis popular.” – Rebecca ([46:37])
  • Hosts discuss the challenge (and separate skillset) of listening to long audiobooks ([47:13]).

• Audiobook Consumption Language

  • A spirited conversation about how to refer to book engagement—since “read” is not quite accurate for audiobooks, but alternatives like “consumed” feel off. A call for listener suggestions ([43:26]).
  • “We need a third umbrella term for having experienced the words of a book.” – Jeff ([42:26])

• Desire for Audio-Specific Curation

  • Jeff asks for more granular recognition of narrators and books that are exceptional specifically in audio, not just bestsellers ([48:39]):
    • “Translators are the narrators of audiobooks. They should get more shine.” – Jeff ([49:43])
    • Examples: Heartbreak by Florence Williams, Daisy Jones & The Six.

• Audible “Best of 2025” Skepticism

  • Audible’s list is similar but includes Originals and “Let Them Theory” (a 2024 book); Jeff and Rebecca call for stricter separation ([50:28]).

Reader Engagement & Book Selection

• "A Thousand Books" Question

  • Discussion of how many books are worthy of in-depth analysis: both hosts believe Book Riot (or “Zero to Well Read”) could run for hundreds, if not thousands, of episodes with worthy selections ([24:45]).
  • “There’s at least a thousand, I think so over time.” – Rebecca ([24:02])

• Frontlist Foyer: Recent Reads & Recommendations

  • Rebecca: Flesh by David Szalay, 2025 Booker winner – praised for its risky narration and exploration of modern masculinity and agency ([53:11]):
    • “I found it to be kind of challenging and interesting and expansive in a, ‘Why is this person feeling this way? How and why has his life shaken out the way that it shaped out?’” – Rebecca ([57:54])
  • Jeff: Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie – (“an artifact of human prose”) unexpectedly difficult to find in stores, reminded him why Christie remains the queen of mystery ([58:30]):
    • “In terms of plot and atmosphere and pacing, you can do no better.” – Jeff ([61:17])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On this year's unpredictability:
  “This was a year without a big book of the year. So it was kind of a wide open field for anybody to win.” – Rebecca ([15:01])

• On book awards and gender discourse:
  “Now men are back in the center of the literary fiction conversation… It’s mostly reflective of a wide-open year where it was hard to guess who would win.” – Rebecca ([16:21])

• On Shein’s unexpected used books play:
  “Used book selling is kind of antithetical to fast fashion and quickly produced and disposable items.” – Rebecca ([31:49])

• On BookTok trends bringing difficult/dense translated fiction into pop culture:
  “I’m here for this kind of book being bubbled up to me because I’m more interested in this than a lot that I’ve seen before.” – Jeff ([22:41])

• On nostalgia for literary Twitter:
  “The good old days of literary Twitter aren’t as good as I thought. Like these tweets. They’re fine.” – Jeff ([37:26])

• On audiobook terminology:
  “We need a third umbrella term for having experienced the words of a book.” – Jeff ([42:26])

• On special audiobook experiences:
  “Where the medium itself becomes part of the experience, those deserve special recognition.” – Rebecca ([50:28])

• On classic mystery craftsmanship:
  “It is a seamless artifact of human prose.” – Jeff on Murder on the Orient Express ([61:17])

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Timeline of Important Segments

• [01:07] – Timeline of award announcements & anticipation of NYT Notables
• [09:31] – Book Riot’s Best Books of 2025: List construction & genre breakdown
• [13:17] – National Book Award (Fiction) surprise winner & discussion
• [16:21] – Gender discourse and “wide open” awards season
• [19:10] – Nonfiction & Translation award winners
• [21:00] – BookTok, translated fiction, seven-book series fatigue
• [29:30] – Shein & Alibris: Books on a fast-fashion platform
• [34:09] – Literary Twitter Bracket: Bookish internet nostalgia
• [41:39] – Libro.fm Top Audiobooks of 2025
• [46:37] – John Green’s unlikely audio hit, audiobook listening cultures
• [48:39] – Call for audio-centric curation and narrator recognition
• [53:11] – Frontlist Foyer: Flesh by David Szalay, Murder on the Orient Express
• [61:17] – Praise for Agatha Christie

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Tone & Takeaways

This episode is cerebral, candid, and playful. The hosts blend industry insight, personal bookish quirks, and gentle snark to illuminate both the nature of contemporary reading and the quirks of the literary world. Whether pondering the relentless churn of awards season, relishing the unkillable allure of Agatha Christie, cheering for the rise of an unexpected genre, or pining (with some skepticism) for the good old days of literary Twitter, Jeff and Rebecca remain determined that the real value is in deep, critical, and joyful engagement with books—no algorithm or bracket can fully capture that.

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Further Resources

• Book Riot’s Best Books of 2025
• Zero to Well Read Podcast
• Book Riot Newsletter Sign-up
• [Contact: [e-mail]]
• Libro.fm Top Audiobooks 2025
• National Book Awards 2025 Recap
• Audible’s Best of 2025 List

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Questions, recommendations, and requests welcome—email the hosts or submit holiday requests before the next episode ([62:01]).

Transcript

[A]

This episode is brought to you by.

[B]

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[A]

This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff o'. Neill.

[B]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.

[A]

And here we find ourselves at the end of award season, save one award, which doesn't come until April of February. When does the Pulitzer decide to wake up?

[B]

Pulitzers? They were May last year. I couldn't find a promise of the Pulitzer announcement date for 2026 when I casually looked for one this morning, but it was on May 5th. Last year tends to be late April.

[A]

Early May because the National Book Awards were last night. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about Book Riot's own best books of 2025, though Rebecca is corralling a special episode which we're going to dive deeper into that with our editors. So we're not going to do too much there. I guess we still haven't got the New York Times Notable Books of the Year list. That could be any day, I think.

[B]

Yes, it was the I think Tuesday or Wednesday of Thanksgiving week last year. So I'm expecting it next week as we're recording this this week as listeners are hearing it in the main feed, that's the 100 notables drops and then usually the top 10 drops the following week, the first week of December. So I have my eye on that. Looking forward to it.

[A]

Programming notes in the Patreon we did our fall media diet coming up. We have a bit of a break on the Patreon as we do Thanksgiving and the holidays coming up. There will be no new regular show for the Monday after Thanksgiving, but then we're going to do some before the end of the year over on Zero to Well read. This week we did Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. We've got one more regular episode for season one coming out. But then because you all got on your horses and pushed us through the review line by a factor of three, I might, I might say to this point we will doing A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and then we've got a couple of non book specific things in the hopper there. And then on January 6th we will return with season two and a whole new slate of books. Again, thank you so much for everyone listening. I don't know if we said this in the show, but right now the show is number two in the books category on Apple and then number four in the larger arts category. I think we've got a good shot at taking out number one in the books category, Rebecca, because I've never heard of this person, Terry Gross. Yeah, and I think we can take her.

[B]

She's all right. Little show called Fresh Air, you might have heard of it. I'm happy to be number two. Second fiddle to Terry Gross is not a terrible position to be in. And again, just thank you so much to the listeners of this show that helped Zero to well Read get off the ground. I don't know if we've told them how big Zero to well Read has gotten.

[A]

Well, let's give them the multiples.

[B]

The show currently is three times as big as this podcast that you are listening to. We were hoping it would reach a broader, more mainstream audience. Do Here is wonderful and nerdy, but pretty inside baseball. And we were hoping to have something that would break out and reach all kinds of readers, more casual readers. That seems to have worked. And we know that it's due in no small part to the fact that y' all listened early. You shared it with friends that you thought would like the show and it does seem that, you know, they've liked it and have shared it with friends as well. Doesn't hurt that the Apple team stuck us in that new and noteworthy section either. But the whole with the as we are learning with Apple podcast stuff, like the whole universe of how people engage with the podcast impacts where you end up on those charts. It's not just a pure measure of download numbers, though I am sure that Terry Gross is getting more downloads than we are.

[A]

Oh yeah, there's huge shows that we're ranking ahead of. And again, we're not going to get too nerdy about this, but just a little bit, which is, I think what we're seeing is that people subscribe to the show, try one episode, then listen to a couple more and that's what Apple's like. Oh, put that on the menu, put that in the special box. People trying that out. Thank you so much for listening. I don't think we would had a shot without our core listenership here. I mean frankly, when we did a test episode Yalls response was so positive that kind of confirmed for us like oh yes, people would like a show like this. We thought we would like to make it and frankly listen to it. But your early support and feedback was very helpful as always. Shoot us an email. Podcastookriot.com will get us there. But we also zero to well [e-mail] to let us know about feedback there. We're still fine tuning and tweaking, but our main goal is keep making shows that we enjoy making and seems to have worked so far. You can also find us writing about books at the Book Riot Newsletter, which Rebecca is captaining. And I kind of come in and fill in a couple of blanks when need be on a weekly basis or it's going twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Kind of a read with your coffee, 10 minutes or so about what's going on. Interesting stuff about the world of books and reading. I, for example, wrote yesterday, tried to find something interesting to say about Wicked that hasn't been said already because For Good is out today. And I read some interviews and I found a parallel between Greg McGuire when he was thinking about he wanted to write a book for adults and he's like, you know, I know. I remember in the wizard of Oz when at the very beginning of the movie, Glinda and the Wicked Witch talk to each other like they know each other. And he's like, I wonder what that would be like. I wonder what Elphaba's story was. And I don't think she even had a name. It's just the Wicked Witch. I think he came up with a name later and he's like, oh my God, that's a good idea. And then when Stephen Schwartz was on vacation, he had someone tell him about the book they were reading called Wicked and the premise. He's like, oh my God, that's a good idea. So I just wrote about those two sort of parallel stories. That's the kind of an individual moment. Recommendations. I also round up some future book requests. Rebecca covered the Book Riot newsletter. We had some. Not the newsletter, the National Book Awards. You did a round up there?

[B]

Yeah, we do new releases every Tuesday. We're talking about some of the zero to well read stuff and then there's a potpourri of things. We often have authors pop into the flagship newsletter newsletter who give us recommendations related to their new books or a little bit of insight into the inspiration as they wrote their book. Ann Packer recently appeared to talk about the inspiration behind Some Bright Nowhere which came out. But almost every send of the newsletter we have something from an author. We get a little critical thinking where we just share links to interesting stuff that we don't have time to go into full commentary on. And then my favorite part of it so far has been that sometimes I do something like hey Jeff, this day is high five, a librarian day. And I just say make something for this day and I don't know what the thing is going to be. And this week it was an ode to the Pack Mule librarians, which I had never heard of. So you're going to learn something. You'll get a hit of new releases. It's also, I think a really great resource for more mainstream readers who aren't subscribing to like 15 different bookish newsletters. It's intended to kind of be the one stop shop.

[A]

Yeah, it was a fun story. The Pack Mule Library. So anyway, go check it out. There'll be a link in the Show Notes where you can go subscribe there. Bookriot.com Listen with all that self promo out of the way, let's take a quick break and get into the news of the week. As a raider scavenging a derelict world, you settle into an underground settlement. But now you must return to the surface where arc machines roam. If you're brave enough, who knows what you might find. Arc Raiders a multiplayer extraction adventure video game. Buy now for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, Xbox X&S and PC rated T for Teen With Black Friday savings at the Home Depot, you can get up to $1,400 off plus get free delivery on select appliances like LG, America's most reliable line of appliances. Check out the newest LG refrigerator with new mini craft ice straight from the dispenser Shop Black Friday savings on select LG appliances plus get free delivery now at the Home Depot. Free delivery on appliance purchases of $396 or more offer valid 11.5through12.3 US only. See store online for details.

[B]

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[A]

Book Riot's Best Books of 2025 is live. It's there should we talk about our own? I don't remember if the the structure you have for us later is going to have a chance for us or how we're going to be involved.

[B]

We're going to talk about our own at the top of that episode mid December and then all of the editors will be visiting with us as well. So listeners will get to hear our favorites and then each of the editors favorites. I think we can do like a couple title hits. We just don't have to go super in depth. I mean you have one on this list and it won't surprise any of the listeners of this podcast.

[A]

I mean it was hard to write about this. No, I'm kidding. It's not Secret of Secrets. It's Auditioned by Katie Kitamura. Vanessa and I talked a little bit about the construction of this, but a quick reminder that this is a combination of our own the full time editorial picks and then our wonderful cohort of contractors and freelancers doing picks. I think if you listen to the show a lot of these titles probably you are best equipped to know a lot of these titles than anyone else because we've talked about some of them. But also they're in the Book Riot sort of taste envelope. What'd you write about? You want to tell people what you wrote about?

[B]

I wrote several and then I kept adding to them and really annoyingly sending Vanessa DMs about. Like can I add this to the list please? I'm so sorry but thank you. I wrote about A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar. A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhurst. You as you said you wrote about audition I'm scrolling now to remember what the other ones are that I wrote about. This is a list of 65 books. I am still scrolling. This is not great radio that we're making.

[A]

Well, I think one thing that's interesting is you can also browse by category right at the very top you can see we break it down that way. Children's comics, fantasy, fiction, horror, mystery, thriller, nonfiction, poetry, romance, science fiction and young adult. We did break out science fiction and fantasy, which is interesting. Not everyone does that, but we do that as that as the fantasy, especially the the Romantasy has exploded into the atmosphere and beyond. It's kind of like with the Voyager. It's like, it's, it's beyond our solar system of understanding at this point. So it needed a little bit more even. Now, where was it? Oh, Publishers Lunch. Now this is where a lot of the industry book deal announcements happen. Publishers Weekly does some and you get some other places. But this is like for the real heads out there, they now have a Romantasy section like dedicated. And that is very, very interesting to me. And I, I, it's been there for a little while, but I couldn't tell you how long it is. Anyway, that's beyond the scope.

[B]

Yeah, I think that's an interesting indication that romantasy as a category is with us to stay. Even if.

[A]

And its own thing.

[B]

Yes. Even if people have been writing Romantasy before we called it that and if we might be sort of having already come off the highest point of the romantasy bubble. I also wrote about Mother Mary Come to Me by Arundhati Roy, Searches by Vahini Vara and a couple of others that we'll talk about when the editors come and drop in here with us in mid December.

[A]

Yep. So check that out. Thanks to Thriftbooks for sponsoring the best books of 2025 list over there. All right. The NBA's last night we did a great job of monthly tracking titles to watch. We had a multi round fantasy draft with other people who are interested in picking books that make win. The booker. The booker. The booker winner itself in our fantasy league gets an extraordinarily high number of points. If you asked any one of us, Sharifa, Laura, you or I would guess if we could pick one thing to win, we would love, we would want to have the booker winner. And went unselected.

[B]

Oh, this is the National Book Award.

[A]

What did I say?

[B]

The booker.

[A]

I'm sorry, the National Book Award.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Went unselected.

[B]

It did. It was the True Story of Raja the Gullible and his Mother by Robbie Alameddine.

[A]

So what do we make of this, if anything?

[B]

I don't know. I mean, there was a piece in New York magazine's book gossip column yesterday, or maybe it's an email newsletter that I get from them where they had interviewed a bunch of the National Book Awards, basically what should win and what will win. And the consensus, as much as there was one among those folks, was that a guardian and a thief should win. But the True Story of Raja the.

[A]

Gullible, is that right? I didn't See that? That's fascinating.

[B]

I felt a little extra validated by this because I had a guardian and a thief in our fantasy draft.

[A]

I should have gotten the credit for this.

[B]

I guess it could still win. It could go up for the Pulitzer, like this book might still do me. And it did get an Oprah nod. So, like, I' some points in the draft for it. I heard about the True Story of Raja the Gullible, but there wasn't like a big moment around it.

[A]

It's a Grove title, which is a wonderful press, but it's not Knopf, Doubleday and the marketing machine that comes with that.

[B]

Yes. Now, when you read the description of this book, the main character of it is in some ways a writer. And a portion of the plot, like the story is about a family, like family dynamics, a family saga in Lebanon after the Civil War. But one of the characters gets invited to go to a writer's workshop in America. And writers love a book about writers. So I think that is a thing to put on the table when these. When book awards are judged by writers.

[A]

It's like the Oscars, right? A book about a movie, about making movies often out kicks.

[B]

Its coverage when it comes to Rabiye's last novel also did very well. It was beloved by readers, I believe it was nominated for some book awards. So this is not like a total surprise for him to be recognized in this way. And I watched a little bit of the ceremony last night and saw that, that Rumaan Alam, who was the chair of the fiction Committee, talked about just the impossibility of doing this task of narrowing it down to five and feeling like you need at least five to represent what a book means in any given year, and then to pick one. I heard in that probably a thing that's true in almost every year, that the judges really feel that all five of the books deserve something. But of course, Alam did not get into the details about why they picked this one over any others. This is, I think, also reflective of what we've been saying for several months now that this was a year without a big book of the year. So it was kind of a wide open field for anybody to win.

[A]

Extraordinarily so.

[B]

Yeah. And like, so far, there have been no doubles. The Slip won the Kirkus Prize, Flesh won the Booker. True Story of Raja the Gullible won the National Book Award. There's a little discourse happening that I'm trying very desperately to avoid about, like, oh, good. Now men are back in the center of the literary fiction convers.

[A]

I hadn't even thought about that because.

[B]

All of these award winners so far are male literary novelists. But I think it's mostly reflective of that. This was a wide open year where it was pretty difficult to guess from outside what the finalists would be or who would win one of these.

[A]

I have read one of his books before. I, like a lot of people, first encountered his name with An Unnecessary Woman, which is now 11 years old. Did you know that book?

[B]

Did you read that book? I do. That's the one I was thinking of with his previous novel. When I said his previous novel did really well. But I. Time is a flat circle. I did.

[A]

I know. Well, that's probably the last. The last couple of books I don't remember encountering now. Doesn't mean anything about the books clearly, as his win here shows. But unless An Unnecessary Woman was all over the place 10 years ago. And it also has a bookish idea, which is the main character, if I remember this correctly. She's an older woman. I don't remember. She's elderly. Elderly or empty nest or what. But she kind of sits around her apartment and reads books and thinks about things. And I really like that book.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So I'm sure I would like this as well. A brisk 336 pages, which the. The book czar loves to see. Very happy with that. And I'm excited for this book. I'm glad it went. I'm not disappointed or anything. I'm just a little bit of surprised. And I don't like to be caught without much to say about that individual title. But. But this is the business we've chosen and good luck.

[B]

Yeah. I did order a copy last night as the ceremony was ending. Like, maybe I'll get to this when we get to front list foyer. I can tell you that I've read Flesh now, so I'm kind of on a maybe reading the award winners this year thing.

[A]

Very, very good effort from you.

[B]

Thank you. When I was linking to titles in the newsletter this morning, Bookshop still did have stock of this book by Robin.

[A]

That's not gonna last long.

[B]

So by the time you're listening, it might not last. These might be harder to come by. The other thing I learned from last night's ceremony, because I assume he had on how Washington wanted it pronounced, was Ramada Lam pronounced the Brian Washington novel as palaver. And we've all been saying palaver.

[A]

So that might be my Midwestern about.

[B]

Maybe both are acceptable. I don't know.

[A]

Yeah. I don't know. Well, let's let's use what he wants for that particular book and not necessarily mean it has to be for everyone all the time. But I will take that and I will not remember that and mispronounce it repeatedly. But I will do my best to do that. On the nonfiction front, this one a lot of us had circled in the draft and it speaks to an issue that is clearly more important than the relative position of a made up game that no one besides maybe four of us care about. But it's Omar Alkald's One day everyone will have been against this. I think this was if there was a favorite in any categories I would have picked this one makes a ton of sense to me. El Akad's chronicle Moral Reckoning with the ongoing war in Gaza and it's one that can it hadn't been appearing on some lists and there'd been some notes about that and we see it here. I'm not at all surprised there in the Young People's Literature Award. I don't know any of these books so I'm completely out. I know Ibi's a boy. My kids read one of her previously books. It might be there. I apologize if I'm getting that wrong. I'm doing up the Dome. But the winner is the Teacher of Nomadland, a World War II story by Daniel Nayeri, which I know from my own kids reading historical fiction told from different points of view that we're used to is interesting. And it sounds like this one is one of those. So that sounds cool. There's also a translated and poetry prize. I would not deign to try to offer any commentary on either of those, but should we get their winners names into the podcast?

[B]

Patricia Smith won the poetry prize for the Intentions of Thunder, which is a great title for collection of poetry and a very striking cover. And Gabriel Cabazon Camara won the translated literature prize for We Are Green and Trembling and the book was translated by Robin Myers. Also a really interesting cover.

[A]

Very cool cover. It's a leaf where the cutouts like you know the caterpillars would eat or something looks make it look like a mask so I don't know what's going on there. Yeah the we haven't talked about on the calculation of volume but that was one of the finalists. I don't know if you've seen this but this is like an Internet phenomenon at this point. It is it was sort of become the second I who have never known men or we have can never remember.

[B]

What the it was on the PW top 10 list. And I said something I think that week about like this is. This title is brand new to me. And I got some notes that this title is not brand new. If you're in certain corners of the Internet or on Booktok folks are really into it. So interesting to see that one as well.

[A]

So basically there's an endless autumnal day and there's a woman who is chronicling it. It's like my sense of it is. And please email me for real do email me podcastbookright.com if you can adjudicate this analogy in any way. If you add a little spec fic to my struggle you might get on the calculation of volume. I mean it's a third of a septology so oneills razor is just. It's not even out of the drawer. I'm not Even sure where O' Neill's razor is for this.

[B]

3 of 7 is such a commitment. I just don't know if I have that size of series in me ever again.

[A]

Look, I'm a man of a certain age, Rebecca.

[B]

Right. That's what I'm saying.

[A]

Am I going to be here?

[B]

Time's a wasted.

[A]

Yeah, might as well bury that in Margaret Atwood's Swedish Forest or whatever. With all those other books for the life around to see the end of this.

[B]

I feel like TV series should be no longer than four seasons.

[A]

That's a great take. I love that.

[B]

Thank you. And book series are ideally trilogies. If you are Marilyn Robinson, you can do four. But it's a lot. It's asking a lot.

[A]

The author of that book is Slavez Bale is my understanding of how to pronounce that. But I am doing the best I can. And then translated by Sophia Smith and Jennifer Russell so that one I've been I've seen popped up all the time. And I've got to say though I will say this if this is truly like a book talk bookstagram phenomenon thing I am here for this kind of book being bubbled up to me because I'm more interested in this than a lot that I've seen before.

[B]

Apparently also the rocks are having a big moment on Booktok. Like there's.

[A]

Is that right?

[B]

We've. We've gotten a couple messages and an Apple review you from a zero to well read listener begging us to do like old Russians like Terzinev and Sharifa clued me in our wonderful I understand.

[A]

That'S TGen so we've got some work to do. But I. We could both be wrong. You could be right. I'm just throwing my own vector of wrongness.

[B]

I have zero percent confidence in that. That's just how I've always. I think actually that might be an author's name. I have only ever said inside my brain.

[A]

I mean that makes a ton of sense. Have you ever read Fathers and Sons? No. Oh, maybe the commenter.

[B]

Is it go on the list?

[A]

Well, what is our list for zero to what did you. Is there a. Is there an item count of our. We could do this. We would like to do a show 100 books long. I did wonder about this. Like we've been doing those show this show for 12 years and now how long we've been doing two episodes a week since COVID A couple years.

[B]

I can't remember either. A few years.

[A]

Anyway, we've done thousand plus episodes. Are. There's a thousand books that are at least an interesting 90 minutes for zero to well read. Right?

[B]

There's at least a thousand, I think so over time. Like we've. The 1 of 300 list that we have is like the stuff that came off the top of the dome. And then I did a big collation of like award winners, best of like the biggest books from a whole bunch of years. Things that are on school syllabi, notable pop culture hits. But if we. Especially if we spun out to like once we get into the second and third and fourth books, that's it. By big name authors, by classic authors, stuff from lit 401 instead of 101. And even as some of our colleagues have offered for future thinking spinning out into genre and other categories.

[A]

Well, we're doing a little of that, but we're really only doing the very stuff that's become mainstream outside of the genre.

[B]

Yeah, we're gonna do a short story in the winter season. We might do an episod about a big poem. So we're experimenting with stuff. I think we could do a thousand episodes. Like there is a book.

[A]

A thousand books to read before you die. And I'm curious if I just opened that up. Like how many. What percent of like.

[B]

Yeah, you know, I feel like there's a wander to Powell's in your future because there's always a wander to Powell in your future. Just picking up.

[A]

I do think it's a bit of a map of Scotland problem too is when I actually start thinking about it and writing stuff down. I was like, oh, there's a lot more coastline here than I would have thought. Because like there's probably four Dickens novels you could do in in good faith for sure.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So once you're doing that, you're only looking at like 300 authors and then it's everything. And anyway, I. I'm just curious. Well, I look forward to doing all seven volumes on the calculation of volume in a marathon episode in 2070. Never.

[B]

I mean, someday we will have to do My Struggle, but that's gonna have to be like a big project for. That's not disturbing.

[A]

Well, that happened before, after Lonesome Dub. What's the over under? We can use non. We can use non numerical over unders before and after.

[B]

Given the wider appeal dictum for zero to. Well, read. I think we go with Lonesome Dove before we go with My Struggle.

[A]

We are approaching each one of these books as an open heart with an open heart. And our goal here is to engage with them in a positive, generative way. And even if we don't like them, the episode is not about us hating on something. We may say, as we did about Twilight, that I did not particularly enjoy this reading experience, but it was super interesting and we had a good time talking about it. So I don't know. Now this has turned into a director's commentary on the philosophy of that show which again, I don't know, we're excited about it. And this is a good reason to talk about because this is the kind of book that you can look at National Book Award winners. Check out this segue that's coming right here, Rebecca, and look at a 30 year old list of winners. Be like, what the hell are these things? This is no guarantee that people are going to know this book at all. All. But it is awfully, it's awfully helpful.

[B]

That is. Yeah, that's one of the ways I constructed the list was looking at old award winners. And I know I say it all the time, but we forget most of the award winning books within a few years and especially know what we've forgotten. Yeah, no, once you're back in like early 2000s, the 90s, the 80s, like it is more often that I don't know those titles than that I do, which just a humbling reminder to all of us. Yeah, we are food for worms, boys.

[A]

And so are our artistic creations.

[B]

Meet the computer you can talk to with Copilot on Windows working, creating and collaborating is as easy as talking. Got writer's block. Share your screen with Copilot Vision to help spark inspiration and use Copilot voice to have a conversation and brainstorm ideas. Or maybe you need some tech help with Copilot Vision. Copilot sees what you see. Let Copilot talk you through step by step guidance so you can master new apps, games and skills faster. Try [e-mail] copilot this episode is brought to you by Indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs to find the right people with the right skills fast. It's a simple way to make sure your listing is the first candidate set. According to Indeed data, Sponsored Jobs have four times more applicants than non sponsored jobs. So go build your dream team today with Indeed. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com podcast terms and conditions apply.

[A]

Extra value meals are back. That means 10 tender juicy McNuggets and medium fries and a drink are just $8 only at McDonald's for a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California. And for delivery this next headline When I saw this I wondered a if you would see this. I did and B I was like oh no. But when I saw the actual store I was like oh yay. Because shine, which is a sheen. Sorry Sheen. I didn't know that one. I learned which is a fast fashion retailer is having it struck a book selling agreement with a retailer and I'm going to give the listener a pause there. Give yourself a chance to guess what the nature of this book selling relationship is going to be. Do you have a second keep no, it's not that one. Keep going. Nope, nope, nope. Not that one either. Maybe you're close. I don't know.

[B]

Imagine you saw the headline she and expands into book selling.

[A]

Yeah. What's the worst case? What do you think? I was afraid of this being Amazon. I guess I assumed I wasn't afraid of that. I thought it was going to be some sort of print on demand. Like you're going to get a crappy copy of something like or maybe a digital would be okay. Like you get it right there. But what is this instead is with Alibris, which is a used books retailer so offering titles that are that are used and then also affordable textbooks leaning in not to the quickly produced but cheap and used books can be cheap, especially the kind of book that most people have heard of because there's a lot of them in circulation so they get thrown on used piles. One of my favorite stories we've ever talked about on the show is the stories of Goodwill shops across the English speaking world turning away copies of fifty Shades of Copy because there's so many downstream effects is you can now find all of the fourth wing Titles for pennies in a Goodwill shop. But the audience survey here was most interesting. Sheen says that a third of their respondents says they read books daily or weekly.

[B]

And this is a big survey. It was at 11,000 US adults. So a third of them, and these are adults largely coming out of Gen Z. She has of course customers in all age groups. But this is the white hot center of the Gen Z online shopping core.

[A]

Yeah. The genres that they've responded to. Reading will not surprise you, given the I'd imagine Sheen's customer base is more online than others, even as they are even younger still. So they're reading romantasy mystery and of course romance. And there's used books to be had and that seems like a really smart way of doing this. I would not have thought about this. I had not thought about a direct partnership. You know, TikTok and some of those places allow you to link to titles and there's some integrated e commerce things. But in terms of plugging into a used marketplace for cost conscious consumers, I was pleasantly surprised and I think this is a really cool idea. I'd be interested to see how this goes.

[B]

I was also really surprised because I'm, you know, skeptical and pretty depressed about Shein's general business model of Here's a t shirt for 299 that was definitely made in a Swiss sweatshop somewhere and which will quickly return to a landfill. But this is not a fast fashion approach to books like used bookselling is kind of antithetical to fast fashion and quickly produced and disposable items. Gen Z especially and the booktok crowd are returning to an affinity for physical media. You need the book in your hands to make the video. But I do think that this is also kind of part of that, that internal resistance to algorithms and being quite so online is that it feels good also to hold the good old fashioned book in your hands. We're hearing this from a lot of people right now. It's smart of them to offer this in the same place where customers are already shopping. Especially when people are highly online and are maybe less likely to go out to a used bookstore or to know that you can look for a used book on Amazon. Like Amazon does not make it easy to find the used book options because they want to sell you the thing thing with the highest margin they really.

[A]

Want you get into an audible subscription is what they want. In my browsing experience, yes.

[B]

So I also was pleasantly surprised that this was a recognition that as George Chang, who's the general manager of the she and Marketplace said that it's a trend or it isn't a trend, it's a lifestyle. Wanting to be a reader.

[A]

That right, George? I wish.

[B]

That's what George.

[A]

I mean, come on. Welcome to the club. You know what? There's no. There's. It's never too late to convert. The prodigal CEO is welcomed with open arms.

[B]

Let's make sure he reads that book about. Oh, what was it? American something. The T shirt company where everybody.

[A]

Oh, yes. Yeah. What was that called? Speaking of Internet literary moments in history, Lithub has a bracket about the most. The greatest, most influential moment in literary Twitter. I mean, and I've got some thoughts about this on a meta point of view. Rebecca, would you like to engage with this first? What did you think when you saw this?

[B]

I mean, I have some appreciation for this because, like, there was a time when book Twitter was great. I certainly have nostalgia for it. Clearly the folks at Lit Hub do. And it bubbled up to my awareness last week that Joyce Carol Oates, the book Dirnet's like, kookiest aunt, was almost linked to this. Just roasting the crap out of Elon Musk.

[A]

She dog walked. She intellectually dog walked Musk in a way that is beautiful and rare to see.

[B]

She was like, this man never talks about anything he likes. Has he read a book or seen a movie or. Oh, yeah. And then he, like, people. Multiple people texted me about this to be like, are you seeing what's happening with Elon Musk on Twitter? And I was like, no, I endeavor to never know what's happening with Elon Musk on Twitter.

[A]

That's a cursed phrase, right?

[B]

But what was happening was that she got so under his skin that he went finding tweets where people were talking about movies just so he could reply, great movie. Great movie. That's a great movie. I'm a person who likes things. See, I'm not joyless like Joyce Carolones. I mean, she's 87, first of all, like, she's been out there. She has tweeted some things in the last 15 years and that I don't want to co sign all of them. But I had this real, like, deep appreciation for, like, bless an old woman who does not care and is just gonna say the thing of, like, this man is joyless and maybe kind of dumb. And here she comes. And she just, like, she got him so good. It was incredibly satisfying to go to.

[A]

I think my favorite moment in that, because I saw it post facto.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Enjoyed it greatly, was when he was talking about how much he loved the Odyssey and then linked to the Iliad.

[B]

I missed that detail. That's wonderful.

[A]

Can we add JCO to our list of a pod we are going to do someday of authors we'd least like to have oh God. Represent us in fiction?

[B]

Yeah, she's definitely on the list. In terms of the stuff that's on the bracket from Lithub. Like, like book Twitter was large and contained multitudes. So there are like dust ups here that I never knew about when they happened. And it really depended on like which corner of the bookish Internet you were in. But they have provided commentary and like explanations of what was going on. Tell me your meta takes on this.

[A]

Well, first of all, this. Did they have their own embedded X post, which I guess what we're supposed to call this now? The so my soul revolts. Rebecca.

[B]

I refuse.

[A]

It's Twitter forever and 8 million views. So a lot of people saw this, the tweet and so how many people actually clicking through? I don't know. The voting is open through next weekend. A fun idea. I guess my take was I was here for this and I have no interest in revisiting it. Just none. I was like, I. You would think like 90s movies like the Ringer and some other places is the bracket used to be one of the. Used to be a sturdy bit of Internet content, but it feels like a different mode for a different time. And also the good old days of literary Twitter aren't as good as I thought. Like these tweets. They're fine. They're fine.

[B]

That's the primary challenge of it is anytime you have to explain the joke, you're already out of the realm where you want to be about a thing. And most of these were things that were. They were moments only as they were happening. They were funny only to the people who already knew the references that were behind whatever else was happening, who had been following, say, Margaret Atwood or whoever for long enough to have the full backstory or context before the actual moment occurred. And there is a lot of explanation that has to be done here for what was going on in each of these things in the brackets so that somebody coming to the outside could try to participate in it. I could not have remembered nearly as many of these things. I think I've tried to like wipe my memory.

[A]

Yes. That's the other thing I was thinking is like, oh, I didn't want these. These got exported for a reason.

[B]

Yeah, like I could do this with a couple glasses of wine in like four hours and other people to be like, oh God. And then there was this thing. But inside, I mean, inside jokes are always hard to explain to anybody else. And book Twitter was also pretty insular, as most online communities can tend to be.

[A]

Another thought that I had was how little of it is actually about books. Oh yeah, it's like mostly not about books. And maybe it's the, you know, we're reading a classic a week right now and engaging with it. And I do find myself, you know, I'm finding some, the, the, the dormant hermit in me, the dormant intellectual hermit in me that wants to be left alone to do my thing and engage with what I engage in and sort of seek quality rather than quantity. I was like, look at this effluvia. Look at this flotsam and jetsam of the superficiality of, of book media. And I'm like, I just don't care. I just, I don't care about any of this. Is not even funny. I don't care. I don't mourn this. Like, like, I don't know. And I think it actually. And so my third stray thought, which I'm going to import from zero to well read is. Is short form video any worse than this? I don't think so. Was this so much smarter than short form video algorithms?

[B]

I mean, in terms of the content? I don't think so. I just think the algorithms have gotten more insidious and that insidious algorithm produces increasingly vapid content and rewards increasingly vapid content as we have seen with what the algorithm has now done to Twitter. Yeah, but I'm having some, some of the same, like, let me just sit over here and read these books.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I don't, I don't want to be on the Internet.

[A]

I mean, a great idea Lithub executed this well. It's a great idea. It's extremely extensive. Like, you don't have to know these things. I think you might find it fun to cherry pick and sort of browse if you do remember that. Don't remember these things. I just find myself being like, I don't remember. I don't need to see the empty chair photos of people not going to. I remember that. But there was just, I don't know, Rebecca. I don't. I just like, ah, felt kind of tired.

[B]

I think where I landed was more like an appreciation for the fact that we did once upon a time have good book Twitter. But I don't want to go back to those days. I don't want to go back to be Extremely online in that way.

[A]

So logical fallacy though, to say, just because something is bad now doesn't mean it was good before this. And I think that's where I landed on literary Twitter. Guess it used to be better.

[B]

I mean, one of the things that happened like also before the algorithms on Twitter were people just tweeted constantly because you could sort of keep a running conversation and folks were seeing it in a, you know, in a steady stream in their timelines. And that also lends itself to like, I mean, I said all. I said all kinds of vapid things on Twitter in my time. There's a reason that my Twitter account was nuked from space.

[A]

I think we called in a joint airstrike at one day. We're just like, you know what, Roger, Roger, we need air support on our terrible.

[B]

But there is that. That piece of wisdom that there's a main character on the Internet every day and you just don't ever want to be it.

[A]

I realize there's a way to win that game.

[B]

Just don't be there at all.

[A]

War game stuff style. Just don't play. Let's go on to Libro FM's top 10 audiobooks of 2025. This is a really good list. I think I blasted off a take in today in books about the Grammys for audiobook. Speaking of things that she nuked from Orbit. It's just celebrity memoirs.

[B]

It is just.

[A]

And I know some of them are.

[B]

Good, but come on, Celebrity memo, like, oh, shocking. Barack Obama's good at narrating his audiobook.

[A]

Right? I guess the thing that's. This is a good list of books. It's actually a pretty good snapshot of commercial books from the year. I can't comment on the audiobook of any of these. Did you listen to Careless People or did you read it?

[B]

I read it.

[A]

You read it. Oh, I also have a half baked idea. Can I give it to you right now? Because I'll forget about it.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

So there's this. There's this. We count audiobooks as having read the book. And some people don't. Those people. I think we need a third umbrella term for having experience the words of a book.

[B]

Like something other than reading.

[A]

Because reading I think people get stuck on. I used my eyes on Roman script in digital or print form, size 12 font. Clearly that is different than listening. And I want to acknowledge they are different experiences and I have different uses for both of them. So I am very much in the end of. They are different experiences. I think they both fall under the prose Definition of whatever this third term would be of. Did you do that book? Did you do that book experience? Do you get to count that amongst the things that you have put into your personal book life? And I would want that to be reading, but I'm looking for big tense in the year of our Lord 2025. And if we agreed on some other term. Podcastookriot.com if you've got anything.

[B]

Yeah, I'd love to hear the contenders because I do agree that listening to the audiobook counts. It's real. We say it counts as reading because that's the thing that. That's the term that people have been hung up on. I don't want to say consumed, because.

[A]

No, I don't like that either. I tried that out and immediately barfed.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. That's not the mode we want to be in. I engaged with this book. Sounds a little like God. Yeah, I don't want to be in high.

[A]

I think I just sprouted a yog. Matt saying that it just appeared.

[B]

Listen. Yoga out here taking strays. Not fair.

[A]

No, it's the kind of people that say, I engage with the piece of.

[B]

I engage with. It was part of my journey.

[A]

Yeah, it's part of your journey. I don't know, because I don't want to get into this here, but I think, and it has been for a long time, they has been a very useful solution to the she, her problem. Not just of gender, but of number. Right. I think we could use a they here. Here. If you people wanted to use he and she of listening versus reading, Great. Go with God. I would also like to have a they option that's. That's inclusive of all experiences.

[B]

I would love to hear contenders for this because I don't have any good ones.

[A]

I don't. I thought about this and I was like, you know what? That's why it's a half baked idea, Rebecca. That's why it's half baked.

[B]

Yeah. Hi. I'm here to pick up my son, Milo. There's no Milo here. Who picked up my son from school.

[A]

Streaming online on Pico. I'm gonna need the name of everyone that could have a connection.

[B]

You don't understand. It was just the five of us. So this was all planned. What are you gonna do? I will do whatever it takes to get my son back.

[A]

I honestly didn't see this coming. These nice people killing each other. All her fault. A new series streaming now only on Peacock.

[B]

Ford Bluecruise. Hands free. Highway driving takes the work out of being behind the wheel wheel allowing you to relax and reconnect while also staying in control. Enjoy the drive in Bluecruise enabled vehicles like the F150 Explorer and Mustang Mach E available feature on equipped vehicles terms apply does not replace safe driving. See Ford.com BlueCruise for more details.

[A]

Kraft Mac and Cheese is the best thing ever. It's even better than pop music music. You look just as natural enjoying us at age 13 as you do 55. Kraft Mac and Cheese Best thing ever. Any you want to shout anything from the top 10 audiobooks of the year.

[B]

Yeah, I mean it's interesting. Libros are based their top 10 is based on the top 10 like of sales. So this is an interesting.

[A]

Sorry, I should have mentioned that at the top.

[B]

Yeah. Of what people got into. So you get Onyx Storm. You get Sunrise on the Repayment. You get Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. But also everything is tuberculosis which like just only John Green could have made a book about tuberculosis popular. And it seems that it really was.

[A]

A big take on John Green.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Gen X is Bill Bryson.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Okay. Thank you.

[B]

I think he's. I think that is where the direction he's trying to age into is a.

[A]

More a more cerebral version. But he can apply his John Green sensibility to a lot of different things and people enjoy that experience.

[B]

I like that Careless people makes the list A Witch's Guide to Magical Something in something in scripty font that my glasses aren't strong enough.

[A]

It sort of doesn't matter honestly. And that's okay in keeping the word of that title. Most people have already decided A Witch's.

[B]

Guide to Magical Innkeeping. Just if you're picturing me moving the restaurant menu closer to and farther away from my face so I can make sense of it, that's exactly what's happening here.

[A]

Do you think A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping is redundant? Don't you assume the witch is going to use magic? What would be more interesting is the Witch's Guide to Non Magical Innkeeping.

[B]

I would love to be in your editorial notes meeting because then you would.

[A]

Have gotten the clearly best selling title the Witch's Guide to Non Magical. Anytime you add a hyphen to your adjective in the sixth word of your title, you're onto something.

[B]

You're really doing it.

[A]

You're really cooking.

[B]

Katabasis by RF Kuang. I think the thing that or a thing that always surprises me about these end of year lists is being reminded how many people are not just willing, but stoked to listen to really long audiobooks like Katabasis is Long. Onyx Storm is long. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is long. And to me, that seems like I look at anything over 10 hours and I'm like, let me just read this with my finding the ear. Time for a long audiobook is just not how my life is put together. But it seems like it would be really pleasant to sink into one of these especially big fantasy books. And I envy that.

[A]

For folks, I've got one more listener request. I'm very interested in great narration. And I don't know if people. I think people are. These are the most popular books because this is the most popular books. I don't know that there's any specifically for audio. I would love to see splits when only publishers can provide this. On books that disproportionately sold in audio that are amongst the hundred notable books of the year, I would like someone to do. And best audiobooks of the year that centers. Oh, there, look, there's my yoga mat. There it is. I just said that the narrator, like, you see the big graphic and it's the picture of the 12 people, whoever that narrated all these things. And then something about the actual narration. Because I would like to hear more about that myself personally. And I know it's a herculean task. Herculean for if you're nasty out there. And I would like that because I still think, like, translators, narrators are the translators of audiobooks. I just said that and I think it's true. And I think they should get more shit shine.

[B]

I totally do.

[A]

It's sheen. It's Sheen.

[B]

Sorry, Shein. A little more. Wow. We are in a special pocket.

[A]

I don't know. I'm trying to get out of town a little bit next week. I'm wrapping stuff up.

[B]

I would also like a list of. I think similar to what you're saying, these are the ones that are special on audio.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Stuff like Heartbreak by Florence Williams, which. That's sort of my gold standard now of. I would have read and liked that book in print. But it is a special experience on audio. Or Daisy Jones and the Six is a special experience on audio. That's the kind of stuff where I really want the tip from folks. And I think that those where. Where the medium itself becomes part of the experience. Those deserve special recognition.

[A]

Okay. And with that, do you want to save audible's best of 2025? It's a similar idea. I think maybe these are not just popular this is editorially curated, but boy, oh, boy, does it look kind of the same. I also, though, have a judge's ruling here. The books are audible. Cannot include Audible originals on this list. You cannot do that.

[B]

Or the exclusives. Yeah.

[A]

Yes. You could have a. You could have a subsection, but you can't just put it on there. You can't do it.

[B]

I support this.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Also, they've got the Let Them theory on this list. And that book came out in 2024.

[A]

You know, it's called the Natural Genius. You know, you've seen this when there's, like, a sidewalk, but people cut the corn corner and there's a path. That's what we're doing with Let Them Theory. I don't care. Publishing dates. You screwed this up. This is. That's a 2025 title. I did not see that Tim B. Locke had another book out. So this was a moment of discovery to me. She wrote the Beautiful and Devastating From Scratch, which is a memoir of loss in Italy. This one is a memoir of family reclaiming possibility in One Sicilian Song. So I think it's everything since.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

It looks happier, this book. I don't know. I missed this. I guess there's too many.

[B]

I look forward to your screening of that. You're my tembylock screener now.

[A]

If other people are listening and they like the idea of the special audiobooks I talked to Amal El Mohtar about. The River Has Roots.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

And there are songs in that book that two sisters sing, and she and her sister sing it in the audiobook. It's wonderful. And the book is quite short. If you're trying to do one of your 10 for rest of the year. What's the hashtag?

[B]

10 before the end.

[A]

You can squeeze that into your ear. Time very readily there. Rebecca. Frontless Foyer is brought to you by Thriftbooks, where you can buy all of the books we've talked about. You can buy cheap used books. One thing you can't buy. We talked about this, I think on the show is that Parable of the Sower because it's. It's taken on heat since its initial printing. Very hard to buy a cheap used book there. But you can set an alert for Thriftbooks or other books here that you're interested in buying. They have 19, but you can buy used books, too, and books and games, all kinds of gifts for this holiday season. You get free shipping on orders over $15, and every book purchase gets you closer to a free book through their reading rewards. Program. Check out thriftbooks.com for your book. Browsing that turns to buying time. I've been so excited all week to hear what you think. Thought of Flesh by David Soloy. Soloi is how we approach. Okay, David Soloy.

[B]

I was really intrigued by this because the reviews that I read of it when he won the booker said things like really risky narration and that it eschews the main character's internal life and shows us mostly how people react to him. Like that's true and not true. It is. I mean we find out how he thinks about things and what he feels about them, but in very brief spare sentences. Like the prose is very spare. The book, it moves us through this character's life from his like mid teenage years. When a much older woman who lives across the hall from them, who happens to be 42. Why are these women seducing young boys always 42 in these books? Like who in the universe is personally trolling me right now? But this woman who lives across the hall from this main character grooms him and begins a sexual relationship with him. And then a bad thing happens after that and it change. It sort of sets the course of his life in some ways. But we move up through other relationships, other like professional experiences. He goes off and serves in the military. We don't see that, but we see him after he has done it. He maybe gets involved with some shady characters. The way that it's constructed really made me think about the extent to which so many people, maybe even most people feel like they have very limited agency over their lives. That's what really comes across is how much this character is a product of circumstances that he finds himself in. How much the relationships that he's in or the job that he's in or the friends that he has that he has are produced by other people taking actions and like moving him into situations where he is passive and he doesn't love that, but he also doesn't get himself out of it. And the write ups that talk about the book as a modern exploration of masculinity, going into the book thinking about, okay, what is this going to say about masculinity? I think it does get to the fact that, that like in 2025, where we still live in patriarchal cultures, we talk about men, especially white men. Like this character is having power and having privilege and being able to do and access more in the world than anybody else can. And that can be true of white men as a group without being true of every member of that group or true to different degrees. And this man certainly does not feel like he has power or control. He seems to feel that he is at the whim of the people around him and sort of ends up in these situations. And it doesn't all turn out badly. Not all of the relationships are bad. He's not a bad guy who does bad things. He makes some mistakes and we understand how he arrives in those situations. So I think it's risky in that it builds sympathy for a character who has sort of all of this societal or many of the societal markers of someone that we would be tempted to think should just be able to move through society however he wants. But it speaks to this moment right now where a lot of young men are saying they don't feel that. And I do think that that is something to take seriously. And what does it like what actually is going on in our societies where even the people who belong to the most privileged groups to a large degree do not feel the impact of that privilege or power, don't feel that they have agency. I did find it to be pretty remarkable. I haven't read a lot of the other other Booker nominees this year, so I'm not gonna get into trying to re adjudicate that. But I read it in one sitting on a plane ride. It was very absorbing. The writing was very spare, and I'm glad that it bubbled up to my awareness in this way. I am uninterested in.

[A]

Yay.

[B]

Men win book awards again. Men can come back to reading novels when they want to. The books will be here for them. Men have been writing novels. Men have been reading novels. When men are. When more men are interested in engaging with literature, it'll be right here for them. And that's fine. And I believe that at some point, video games will get old for folks and they'll want to engage with something that has greater depth. That's not a conversation I'm interested in. And that's not what David Soloy is writing into. But I found it to be kind of challenging and interesting and expansive in a. Why is this person feeling this way? How and why has his life shaken out the way that it shaped out? Yeah.

[A]

So. Yeah. Cool. I don't. I haven't read it, but that your. Your experience makes me 14% more interested, which is about as high as I get.

[B]

That's a compliment or not?

[A]

No, I think you ping out. No, no one can get more than 14% of. I mean, you weren't like gushing about it, so I guess there's that. But like you found it interesting and it was worth your time and you can see why it won and it's doing some interesting things with a current and fraught subject matter and I don't know what else.

[B]

I want a book of the times. I don't know what we'll think about it in 20 years but it feels to me like a reflection of 2025.

[A]

Mine is a little known book called the Mortar on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

And I normally wouldn't talk about it but I think the scene of reading is interesting here where my kids really like mysteries and I was like they're old enough, they'll be. It's not about being appropriate really though that's something I do think about is like will you enjoy this kind of book? And I knew I went on a Christie run. I think during COVID I read like 50 of them in the summer like just. Just mowed through them and murder the ordering sprint. There's a reason that's the one that you've heard of it's best is I don't know we're outside the realm of good and evil when it comes to Christie. But it's like the most clock like it feels the most complete and seamless. I like some of the other stuff a little better because it's their stranger. But I was looking for a used copy at a bookstore when we at two used bookstores and one new bookstore when we were on vacation in San Diego and they all had Christie's but no Murder on the Orient Express. And I thought well for the used one maybe that they sell them as soon as they get them. Right. But there was a used book or new bookstore, two of them that had a bunch of Agatha Christie and no Murder on the Orient Express. Isn't that weird?

[B]

That is weird.

[A]

First of all validate the strangeness of.

[B]

That most popular maybe so people are just holding on to.

[A]

But if it's new. No. But the new bookstore Rebecca, they don't have it on. Yes, the used one. That one makes total sense. Why don't you have it new like you said three of them anyway.

[B]

Maybe she's just not selling that much.

[A]

So I've been as I've gone to various bookstores I've been tracking and it.

[B]

Doesn'T as you are want to do.

[A]

Listen, listen. There are worse ways of using my time.

[B]

I appreciate it. I enjoy the genre of Jeff o' Neill text that's I'm in this bookstore and you won't believe what they don't.

[A]

Have A copy won't believe they don't have. But I finally found a used copy at my local pals. Okay. A hardcover. And it was more expensive than, you know, a mass market paperback. But I bought it because I wanted to have it and I was going to recommend. And I've recommended the kids. You should read this. But I sat down, just opened up like, what? How does this start? And three hours later, you're done. I was like, turns out that's how it ends too.

[B]

They call her the queen for a reason, man.

[A]

Is it good? Oh, is it good? I mean, if you like mysteries or even genre at all, and you've never actually tried it. And one thing we've learned about doing this show and certainly zero to well read is even for the most popular titles, there's a lot of people that are interested. They just haven't given a shot. And I'm not sure this would hold. We have to do a lot of Agatha Christie to make a zero to well read episode out of this. But we certainly could. But boy, oh, boy, it is. It is a seamless artifact. Artifact of human prose.

[B]

It is really something that is high praise from you.

[A]

Yeah. So, I mean, you're not gonna like, get tattooed sentences because of Christie's erudition on it, but in terms of plot and atmosphere and pacing, you. You can no do better. It is like. It's like those race cars they put in wind tunnels to see where the drag is. She shaved off all the fenders and blinkers and it's unbelievable. So anyway, there review of a book most people have heard of that's been out for a billion years that has absolutely no reason to talk about it right now.

[B]

I love this for you.

[A]

You're all welcome. All right. That's it, huh?

[B]

That's it. This is your last chance, actually, to send us in requests for holiday recommendations as you are listening to this. If it is Monday, this is your moment podcast.

[A]

You've got like 24 hours.

[B]

Yeah, right.

[A]

Bookright.com. listen. There'll be show notes there to get the Patreon, to get to the newsletter, to get to zero or well read. You can just Google zero to well read podcast. It'll pop up. Or an Apple podcast wherever you should pop it. Hell, just Google Apple Books podcast number two there, Rebecca. Or number two.

[B]

We love it.

[A]

Fun to see. Thank you all so much for listening. Rebecca. Pleasure as always.

[B]

Thanks. Y' all have a good weekend.

[A]

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