← Book Riot - The Podcast
Book Riot - The Podcast
National Book Award Announces Host, B&N Discover Prize, and more book news.
00:53:47
Loading summary
Transcript179 lines
- [00:01]
A
The detective said missing kids usually come home. What happens when they don't?
- [00:06]
B
Based on a true story Police looking for John Gacy. We discovered bodies. By the looks of it, they're younger men. The things he did to those kids.
- [00:17]
A
He's sick.
- [00:19]
C
The system failed these families.
- [00:21]
B
Devil in disguise. John Wayne Gacy. Streaming now only on Peacock.
- [00:26]
A
Do you know how many there are?
- [00:27]
B
Up to you to find out. The holidays have arrived at the Home Depot and we're here to help bring the excitement with decor for every part of your home.
- [00:39]
A
Check out our wide assortment of easy.
- [00:41]
B
To assemble pre lit trees so you.
- [00:43]
A
Can spend less time setting up and more time celebrating.
- [00:46]
B
And bring your holiday spirit outdoors with.
- [00:49]
A
Unique decor like one of our Santa inflatables.
- [00:53]
B
Whatever your style, find the right pieces at the right prices. This holiday season season at the Home Depot. This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff o'. Neill.
- [01:08]
A
And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.
- [01:12]
B
Kind of a regular Newsweek Rebecca. Not huge awards, not kind of quiet. But we are in the fall season where we're getting end of year announcements. The book banning and censorship landscape continues to be tumultuous, I guess would be the euphemistic way continues to be a.
- [01:32]
A
Thing we have to talk about.
- [01:33]
B
Yeah. And we're in the middle of the fall and we're getting some clarity on what the books of the season are and I think you're going to talk about one of them in front of foyer here in the middle. Before we get into the show, let's do a little promo for our new project, Zero to well read, which judging by the numbers probably many of you are listening to at this point. And thank you so much for doing so.
- [01:56]
C
Yes, thank you.
- [01:56]
A
And for telling your friends. The show is really taking off and we couldn't be happier about it. But if you have not listened yet, please do.
- [02:05]
B
Most recently in the feed was Never Let me Go by one Kazu Ishiguro, which we've talked about before. Did we do an Adaptation Nation? We talked about Never Let me Go before but I cannot remember the format.
- [02:17]
A
I believe it's been in the Patreon feed. We've done an Adaptation Nation about it and we've read the. I think we've read the book together twice before this episode for Zero to well read because we also did like some anniversary of it maybe five or ten years ago. One of our mutual favorites. We also talked about Twilight and Vanessa. Our colleagues Vanessa Diaz and Kelly Jensen joined us for that episode. It was a great time. We've Done Vineland by Thomas Pynchon, which is the book that One Battle After Another is based on. And if you're seeing a lot of commentary about one battle after another, or I think if you went to see the movie and you loved it but were like, what is the tone of this? I don't understand. Which is a piece of commentary I've seen.
- [02:58]
B
Welcome to the Pynchon Club. I guess, like, it's a tone unlike any other.
- [03:02]
A
I've seen that in a lot of reviews where people were like, I enjoyed this movie as a Hank, but like, what are the politics of this movie? What is the message of this movie? And I would be like, oh, welcome to Pynchon and Paul Thomas Anderson. But Paul Thomas Anderson doing Pynchon is really like, the movie is not making an argument so much as. As it is dropping you into a vibe. And Vineland really captures that or shows you the background of it. We've done the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. We kicked off with the Great Gatsby. That's the debut episode. So at the top of that, when we talk a little bit more in depth about what the whole zero to well read project is about. But I think what's in the feed so far is a really nice illustration of what we're trying to do with important books that are culturally important, that are important to the canon as we think about it, but also that have been sensations in pop culture.
- [03:53]
B
If you have listened to the show and you do like it, and you have three minutes, two minutes, maybe even less than a minute to rate and review the show on Spotify or especially Apple podcasts, it's right there on your phone. Just go do it. So we've had a lot of people that I think are new to us find the show. And since we saw a little bit of a bump, more than a little bit of bump around Twilight, and that one, there was some. You certainly don't need to read Twilight to be well read. And that is sort of right and not in the spirit of what we do. So we could use a little, you know, counter narrative to some of those things. Again, everything's fine. It does help people find the show, but we'd really like to do that. I was thinking, Rebecca, you just proposed something we didn't. I'm going to try to talk around it because I don't want to give it away. Not that it's a huge reveal or anything like that, but maybe we should do some sort of, like, review challenge where we're going to take a Couple weeks off over the holidays. But we had thought about maybe dropping something else in. What about a challenge to the listener? If we get X number of views or something else like that, we can take this offline and thinking about it because like this, we could drop something a little extra in for. For appropriate holiday reading. So let's come back to that next week.
- [05:03]
A
Yeah, you know, I mean, we can. I'm ready to drop a little of a challenge just right now.
- [05:09]
B
Okay. All right. I didn't want to. This was your idea, so I didn't want to make you force you anything.
- [05:13]
A
Yes, we can do some gating here. So we are at over 80 reviews for zero to well read right now. And I would love to see us get over 100. How about.
- [05:24]
B
That's only 12? What about 200?
- [05:26]
C
What do you think?
- [05:26]
B
150.
- [05:27]
A
Let's get to 150. And it's ratings or reviews. We're at 150 ratings or we want to get to 150 ratings. Yeah, let's shoot for 150 to unlock.
- [05:39]
B
Let's just say the thing.
- [05:40]
A
We're going to unlock a special episode over the holidays.
- [05:44]
B
Well, maybe as we see, we'll save the actual title as a inducement to get over the line if we're getting.
- [05:52]
A
And we'll have to also, of course, invite the folks in the Zero to well Read feed to do this. But one of the things. One of the quirks of that feed is since it's evergreen content, it's not those, you know, books aren't tabled to a certain calendar or we're not relying on the news like this one. We've been recording them. We've been recording those episodes since June. So the next several that come out have already been recorded. But we can drop this challenge over there as well. I would love to see us. Yeah, let's just about dou get to 150 on ratings on Apple.
- [06:23]
B
Yeah, that's. We're. We're making some slight tweaks and playing around with like our, you know, talking points or categories or just sort of regular features. So I don't know that we got to. Would this. Let's do this right now as a preview. Would this work as a Muppet adaptation with one human? I think I wrote that maybe Never Let Me Go is the darkest of all versions of this because you're basically harvesting other Muppets to serve people. I don't know how you would do this. Muppets harvesting each other weirdly darker.
- [06:53]
A
This is a question you introduced on like the fourth or fifth recording. And I was just so glad that you introduced it after we had done the Bluest Eye because I don't know, I just don't know how how you try to navigate that one.
- [07:05]
B
None of them have been amazing. The only one that is the the most sort of fun as an actual idea is Twilight. Everything else is a dance macabre with how dark some of these things could be. Also talking about other things that we're doing other attractions coming attractions we are recording after this. They'll go in the Patreon for subscribers only feed. Next week is we are revisiting the Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion on the occasion of its 20th anniversary. And then in two weeks we're going to be in the Patreon feed doing Dead and Alive by Zadie Smith. So I know people like to read along or revisit the your magical thinking I knocked out in like two and a half hours. Like you can really sit down and do it. Bring your tissues and your sharp sensibility with it. I'm looking forward to talking about it. Even as it's painful subject. It's hard to remember what a phenomenon that was and how it really cemented elevated Joan Didion's public profile. I mean I think she really went from a literary darling to the kind of book your mom and grandma were reading at that point, which is no shade against anyone. But once your mom and grandma are reading a book that elevates it to just a different stratosphere. Even something like Play As It Lays or her other books were doing.
- [08:23]
A
And we'll have to talk some about the format for the Patreon episode about the Zadie Smith essays because there are a lot of essays in that book.
- [08:30]
B
Yes.
- [08:31]
A
And I think we're going to want to like maybe pick our favorites from each section. They're divided up into like literary criticism and other kinds of things. So we'll have to take a look at what makes the most sense there. Or we could each just power rank our favorite 10 and see where we overlap or something fun like that.
- [08:45]
B
Does the format we used for George Saunders or Marie Helene Bertino work about ranking them how Zadie Smith they are?
- [08:53]
A
We'd still have to narrow it down. There's like 30 essays.
- [08:56]
B
Oh yeah, they're kind of. Some of them are pretty short.
- [08:59]
A
A lot of it is previously published stuff like the Toni Morrison1 is four pages. So we'll have to do some narrowing and some defining. But we're always happy for an excuse to Talk about Zadie.
- [09:09]
B
We could do like an A tier, B tier, C tier or something. I haven't, I'm about halfway through.
- [09:14]
A
Oh, I haven't started them yet.
- [09:15]
B
Maybe we can come up with some. I'm doing an audio, I should say, which is actually going to make it difficult.
- [09:22]
A
That's going to be tough. You got anything?
- [09:24]
B
Because they really bleed into one another. All right, so there's. Everything's going on there. Thanks so much.
- [09:29]
A
Housekeeping.
- [09:30]
B
Yep. Let's do a first sponsor break and get into the news of the week.
- [09:36]
A
Colleen Hoover fans, get ready. Her best selling novel Regretting you is coming to the big screen. From director Josh Boone who brought us the Fault in our stars. This powerful story follows Morgan, played by Allison Williams and her daughter Clara, played by McKenna Grace, as they navigate love, loss and the secrets that can tear a family apart. With an all star cast including Dave Franco, Mason tames Scott Eastwood and Willa Fitzgerald, Regretting youg brings to life everything readers loved about the first love, second chances, heartbreak and the complicated, beautiful bond between mothers and daughters. It's the kind of film you want to see with your mom, your best friend, your book club, anyone who loves to laugh, cry and gasp together in a theater. Don't miss Regretting you only theaters October 24th.
- [10:23]
C
Today's episode is brought to you by Harlequin, a leading publisher of romantic fiction delivering feel good high stakes and heart pounding stories across every kind of love. No matter what kind of romance you love to read, Harlequin has it for you. And in one of their latest books, Accidentally Wedded to a Werewolf by Isabel Taylor, we've got some snowed in goodness. We've got some small towns and some unusual residents. So when a snowstorm hits during her travels, Luna's stack finds herself stranded in Clawhaven, Alaska, a cozy small town with more than a few unusual residents. Well, things go from bad to complicated when Luna accidentally drinks a potion that tethers her to Oliver Musgrove, the local grumpy innkeeper who also happens to be a werewolf. Now these two opposites are stuck spending the winter together while they wait for the antidote. And although they might not want anything to do with each other, the bond says otherwise. Make sure to pick up Accidentally Wedded to a Werewolf by Isabel Taylor. And thanks again to Harlequin for sponsoring this episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Athan and Valt, the best in science fiction, fantasy and horror graphic novels in prose. In one of their latest books, Ironbound by Andrew Givler, we have the will of the many, plus Red rising vibes. It's an action packed, adrenaline fueled, epic new fantasy adventure adventure where the will to survive and the urge for revenge both cut cold and deep. So wanting to fuse with a core heart or an otherworldly metal since he was a boy, Castor's dreams are shattered by a vicious attack. Now bound to a symbol he never wanted, Castor must survive the Iron City, the enemies in the frozen north, and hidden traitors inside the rusting Empire before he can get revenge on the ones who took everything from him. So Author Andrew Givler is the best selling author of the digital fantasy phenom series Debt Collection, which includes Soul Fraud, Dandelion Audit, among other books. Make sure to check out Ironbound by Andrew Givler and thanks again to Athan and Vault for sponsoring this episode.
- [12:37]
B
We did not put the Barnes and Noble Discover Award as a scoring possible category in the Fantasy League draft and I think that's right. Like there's debuts are especially difficult, but this is a pretty big deal for a debut author. Barnes and Noble does feature this in their physical stores and online. I don't know what it means for sales. It can't hurt. But you really enjoyed Maggie by Katie Yee. I remember it was on my list already. I need to talk about my list. Let's do this first because I need to talk about the idea of my list. Rebecca, would you like to say anything else at this point? You've talked about it in the front of this way before. Thrilled. What do you think people who come to like pick this up off the shelf at Barnes and Noble, what do you think their experience is going to be like? Maybe that's a way of putting it to you.
- [13:21]
A
It's. That's a really good question. I think that the COVID of this looks like it's kind of angled at the book clubby crowd. It's not quite.
- [13:29]
B
It's a real problem, Rebecca. I mean, just not this book. It's a real problem.
- [13:33]
A
It is not quite an illustrated cover of a thing, but it looks, you know, this is bright colors. It's called Maggie or A man and a woman walk into a bar. There's hearts on gives you a. There's hearts on.
- [13:50]
B
Gives.
- [13:50]
A
There's a flavor to like who this book looks like it's for. And I think that if the typical like Reese's Book Club reader picks it up, I think they will enjoy this, but they will be surprised by what it does. That there's a lot of Jenny Offill DNA in this book, which of course I love. I think you would love it. It also hit the Wakey Wang vibes for me. Like, the character is really thinking about her life. She also has this dark sense of humor. The setup, like the name Maggie here in the title, is doing two things because her husband tells her that he's leaving her. And for a much younger woman, it's one of Those, like, she's 25 and she really understands me kind of moments. And then she finds out she has breast cancer, and she names the tumor Maggie, which is the name of the younger woman that her husband is leaving her for. And she's kind of making sense of the shifts in her relationship, how to understand this very scary health experience that she's having. She's also adapting, kind of in real time, adapting Chinese folklore stories that her mom told her into bedtime stories for her kids and, like, wrestling with some identity stuff and hoping that that identity will give all of them an anchor through this tumultuous period in their lives. It's a little more, I guess, like, poetic. It feels a little more like a book by a short story writer might feel than the typical, like, book clubby novel that it looks like. And that's not knocking book club novels. Like, there is a place for those two. I just think that some people are. I think some people will be surprised, but mostly in a good way, by this. Who pick it up, seeing it on a Barnes and Noble table, and that's kind of the best possible outcome. The COVID helps it cast a wider net, and I don't think it's too different from, like, it's not. What's inside is not so different from what's on the tin that it will turn people off. I think this is a good win for KD2.
- [15:47]
B
Follow up things, at least two. There may be more as I. As I go. Hello and welcome to Podcasting with Blob by Maggie Sue. In this, we need a third book of Boyfriend Husband, who's sort of an inanimate blob of organic material, like the year of Boyfriend blobs.
- [16:04]
A
I mean, her husband is real. Her tumor is named Maggie.
- [16:08]
B
Right. Okay, well, how about we can extend it to using blob of flesh to metaphorize a relationship.
- [16:15]
A
Great.
- [16:16]
B
Do we have a third one? Anyone out there have, like, you know, let us know. A roast chicken? Well, it's kind of like, as I lay dying, you think your mom's a catfish? I don't know. There's something going on here where we're transmutating our loved ones estranged, complicated relationships into other people. My second point was, I think we talked about the finalist for this prize when it was released, but I was looking at it again. So Tilt by Emma Petit, which we both read and liked. And I interviewed Emma Kaplan's Plot, which I liked. And interviewed Jason Katie Yee, you liked. The other book is Like a Great Black Coat by Rob Franklin.
- [16:51]
A
We both liked that one.
- [16:52]
B
The Artist and the Feast, which is about artists falling in love in Provence, which if I don't read this before I die, that will be a shock. The oddsmakers will take a beating. And then Lonely Crowds by Stephanie Wambugu, which I am going to read. And I've also talked about the COVID So is this the most Jeff and Rebecca core list we've seen this year? If you look at the totality of.
- [17:12]
A
It, I think it is. So far it is the finalist list for a prize that we have read the most of. Because there have been.
- [17:21]
B
Which is so weird for debut.
- [17:23]
A
It is, yeah. Like then of the National Book Award finalists, I think I've read two.
- [17:28]
B
That's so strange of us.
- [17:30]
A
I know. And this. But this happens. There have been years where the National Book Award finalists have come out and. Or the long lists have come out and of the 10, maybe we've read one or two. And those are the years that we're like, what are we doing here?
- [17:40]
B
What are we doing? Well, I mean, in some of it is small sample size because Tilt is Portland. I got hooked up. I heard about that early. I wanted to talk to her. Jason diamond is someone that you and I have both admired online and, you know, friend of the pod and then Great Black Hope, you know, we got some early traction. It's the kind of book we're both interested in. So maybe it's just.
- [18:00]
A
I think that I've had more air for debut novels this year because there hasn't been as much big literary fiction from established names. I was looking back through my reading spreadsheet and one of the things that I do to help myself at the end of the year is as I go, I highlight something I think is gonna be like a fave of the year in one color and then I highlight great debuts in another color so that I can keep them. And there are like four or five great debuts on my list and more than that, if I really had to get into it, but that's more space than I typically have for them. And that's been a nice, maybe a nice knock on effect for debut authors this year. That, like, you're not competing with, you know, a James getting all of the headlines.
- [18:41]
B
Another thought about this award, which I've always been interested in but never really sort of stared at in the finalist announcement, neither in the finalist announcement nor in the award announcement. Is there any sense of how this award is chosen? I have no idea.
- [19:00]
A
It's a great mystery. It's not the one that the booksellers vote on because that's a separate thing that they'll announce later in the year.
- [19:06]
B
Because it's a little deceiving, I feel like, because the top line of the post says Barnes and Nobles. Barnes and Noble booksellers across the country have read hundreds of new authors and debut novels published this year and today we are delighted to announce the six like, okay, those could be related facts. That coordinating conjunction is just sort of putting them next to like, does the one have anything to do with the other?
- [19:26]
A
I think a closer reading of it leads me to believe that it is a selection of Barnes and Noble booksellers who are doing the who form the committee for this.
- [19:36]
B
But they do have editors too. I mean, because they've got their picks of the month. Like, where do those come from?
- [19:42]
A
That's a great. I don't know. I don't know where their picks of the month come from. When I worked at Barnes and Noble, it wasn't making its way, which was almost 20 years ago now. So I have no idea what they're doing. But it was not making like picks of the month were not making their way down to like rank and file bookseller voting kinds of things. I assume they have web editors like that are. That are doing that. But in terms of the Discover Prize, I would guess it's some selection of booksellers who form the committee. But how those booksellers are selected is a mystery to me. If you're listening and you work for Barnes and Noble or you know, we would Love to know podcastookriot.com we can keep you anonymous if you want to be, but we appreciate a little birdie.
- [20:23]
B
This is not sort of a Woodward and Bernstein like investigation. I'm more saying, like you are picking books that are writing right in my face and like I are shooting into my cortex. Who are you? Are you my best friend? Who knows? I need to know this. I need to talk. I got a question somewhere recently about my how do I keep a list? And I've talked about this before. When I say I'm adding it to.
- [20:46]
A
My list, it's like concepts of a plan.
- [20:50]
B
It's it's not. Not a thing. But it's also kind of like up there. It's like it's kept in my cloud, my personal cloud that's non technological. I don't actually have a list. I guess that's a way of putting it. It's. Things come on and come off. There's no formal induction or expurgation ceremony of any kind. But like. And I. And I mean it seriously. That's not a brush off. When I'm saying add the list. It's basically saying it is past some threshold of interest where it is now an actual candidate for me to read.
- [21:25]
A
Versus just something Adding to the list is your way of saying like it's in your consciousness and you have some intention to pick it up.
- [21:32]
B
But there's also no. There's no real list either. Like there's no like you go from this list to like a paper list or whatever. Like there is. There are different. There's like a mezzanine and orchestra cd.
- [21:44]
A
I wish this were a video podcast right now. So people.
- [21:48]
B
There, it's up there. And sometimes it comes down in. And a lot of times it's like sometimes I just forget about it completely. I wrote about in the flagship newsletter about Ballad of a Small Player, which is a new Colin Farrell movie that's based on a Lawrence Osborne novel, came out in 2014 that has this really the. The review in the New York Times has a really wonderful opening which I quoted about basically. Damn. Oh. I have another reader, another writer I have to pay attention to because this book is so good, which I really liked and that was on the list. And then it kind of, I guess it sort of evaporates, right? It just sort of like goes and I was reminded there and it got seeded into the clouds.
- [22:27]
A
I have the cloud version of the list. I think like the History of Sound is a good example for me where when. When the movies trailers started coming out, I was like, this looks interesting. You know Paul Mescal and Josh o'. Connor. It's based on a short story. Some of our listeners told me they loved the short story. I bought the collection. I intended to read it then. The movie's reviews were like pretty middling. I'll probably watch it at some point. But I did make it out to the theater to go see it. So now I own this book that someday I will be reminded of where new releases I do have to keep. I keep a list of contenders. I think that's the best way for me to say it is organized by release. Date because we have massive spreadsheets and we're working on a database with all of our editors of everything that's coming out in a given week that is interesting to us for potential coverage. And that is too much for me to look at week to week when I'm deciding what to read. So at the beginning of a season, I typically pull from that and narrow down like a couple contenders for each week that are appealing. Stuff does get added to that list as like big things bubble up or someone makes a recommendation that's sticky to me and that means I might read those things before I actually pick something up that's been on the list. But there's no, there is no structured pre planned tbr. I don't really know what I'm reading next until I open it and then it's like, oh, this is the thing I picked.
- [23:46]
B
Okay, yes, I both you and I, which is somewhat of a contradiction that we are now assigning ourselves reading in the form of zero to well read. Because you and I are very much when I finish a book, I want to have the moment of choice that's as much fun as. Almost as much fun as the reading experience myself of like, it's almost like getting to open up a gift on Christmas morning. Like you don't know. I get to look around and pick up and maybe something will condense out of the rain cloud.
- [24:14]
A
Serendipity.
- [24:15]
B
Yeah, just let it role at the same time. Anyway, got a question about that. I thought it was worth saying that when I say I'm. It's going to my list. I'm not. It's not a you, I'm not. It's not a brush off. It's also not a physical manifestation. It's real. But it's also incorporeal at the same time.
- [24:31]
A
Just to talk about the fact that we are assigning ourselves reading for zero to well, read for a second. I am having a different experience with that than I expected to have. Just in terms of what it's doing to my reading life. If we do like a season wrap up for that feed. I'll talk about it more. But I kind of figure like I have a general amount of reading time in my life. You know, it's. My days are structured a certain way. I like to go to the movies and watch TV too. It's not like all books all the time. And I keep track of what I read. So I figured like that I would read about the same number of books this year that I read in most years. And just the zero to the 12 books we've done for zero to well read would take up 12 of those slots, which means I would read 12 fewer new releases. What is actually happening is that I'm on pace to read more this year than in any of the last five years. And I. It doesn't feel to me like I'm spending more time reading. Like I don't feel like I'm not missing something from other components of my life or other media I consume. I think what has happened is the quality of the reading time from the books for Zero to well read is so high and so enriching that it makes me want to pick up books more and it's setting my bar higher for the books that I start. So I'm having a higher, like a higher DNF rate because I'm starting stuff and being like, nope, that's not gonna do it. The stuff I'm finishing is really, really good. And the more of those like this makes sense to me. I was just surprised when I actually saw the numbers that I am actually going to read more this year because we have. I think it's because we have assigned ourselves such high quality, really satisfying books to read.
- [26:06]
B
Yeah. In a way it's almost adding another pocket of read because it doesn't seem to cannibalize the other reading I'm.
- [26:11]
A
Yeah, exactly.
- [26:12]
B
Experience, you know, a place apart in our reading lives there. One of the books that I've enjoyed the most is Jeff Hiller's Actress of a Certain Age. So good on audio coming off his wonderful surprise, delightful life affirming win Emmy for best supporting Actor for somebody somewhere which we have talked about in Patreon elsewhere seemingly made for people like us who artistically leaning people who grew up in and around the Midwest and in Protestant churches built in the 70s of the same kind of ilk. Very specific. Like I say, his memoir Actors of a certain Age is great. But the news peg here is. He was announced today, I think just yes, this morning as the host of the National Book Awards.
- [27:04]
A
Great choice.
- [27:05]
B
On November 19th. I don't remember. It's more of an essay collection of memoirs than a thoroughgoring narrative. Do you remember stuff about books in it? I was trying to remember and I really couldn't. It doesn't matter. But I guess I wasn't sometimes when reading a memoir like that like my. Actually there is an actual list for us. Is this someone I want to talk to for first edition? Is this someone that's like has a book inclination outside of you know that they wrote a book. I don't remember that. Do you, Rebecca?
- [27:32]
A
No, I don't remember anything specific about books. He was an artsy kid. And more of the, like, more of the book is about getting in. Involved in theater and discovering standup. I think I just assumed that Jeff Hiller was also a book person. From the vibe of the memoir, but also the vibe of somebody somewhere. These feel to me like people who, when we aren't seeing them on screen are probably curled up with a book at some point. I just, I love this choice. He'll be great and warm and such an interesting advocate for so many different things that are going on in the world of books and reading right now. I think Jeff Hiller has a lot of ins. It's unusual that we don't get like a. That the, that the host isn't like a book celebrity. Like, you know, there's been Oprah, there's been LeVar Burton.
- [28:20]
B
We need some fresh blood in the Star Wars.
- [28:22]
A
I think this is great universe. If you had asked me to guess who was going to host the National Book Awards this year, Jeff Hiller would not have been in my top 10 or 20. But I am so delighted to see it. And this makes me want to schlep myself to New York to attend the ceremony.
- [28:39]
B
Which is a high bar for us because we generally are not interested in ceremonies. Speaking to ceremonies, the hobnobbing.
- [28:45]
C
Yeah.
- [28:46]
B
I don't recall them having a musical guest before, but this year they're going to have Corinne Bailey Ray Put yout Records on Fame there to perform. I assume that song that's not in the press release because she has a children's book called Put your Records Book, Put yout Records on coming out in the Spring, which. Great. But a musical guest is a good idea. The National Book Awards has been trying for really, as long as we've been doing this show to jump up a rung or two on the ladder of, I don't know, eventness in the wider cultural world. Having a musical guest makes sense. You know, Dua Lipa interviewing Percival Everett about James for her book club. Like, get Dua Lipa out there. And now we're, now we're cracking. Taylor Swift is making affiliate references. She has a. I mean now I'm really off the deep end here. But like there are a lot of something that you could do. Like if you wanted some performance based thing, maybe you get some people performing things like doing readings of scenes.
- [29:47]
A
Like again, I mean, are we gonna get like Margot Robbie or Jacob Elordi hosting this next fall and weathering how she's in the Oscar race.
- [29:56]
B
Why not?
- [29:57]
A
That would be great.
- [29:58]
B
Not. Why not have Jack Loud in there doing his. You know, he's gonna be Mr. Darcy in the Netflix Pride and Prejudice. We. Let's use this as the promo tour for this stuff. Yeah, Just listen.
- [30:10]
A
This is how we make books cool and relevant. Yeah.
- [30:13]
B
We did an episode, Trish and I, about. Was it the National Book Award? I think we did an episode for the Patreon or maybe just for the show about plussing up this. What we really need to do is have more than five categories and 1 25th of the night. Or what? Or 1 5th of the night can't be for translated literature. We need best memoir. We can get Streisand out there.
- [30:35]
A
Best debut.
- [30:36]
B
Yeah, we need to work. Best audio performers are always. And then you can More. The more awards you have, the more presenters who are famous you can have there in New York. You can do this. I'm sure there's reasons they don't, but it feels like this moment right now where people are turning to books as an antidote to kind of almost everything else going on. Like, that's a lot to ask of the printed word, but I think people would do this. There are cultural prestige brownie points to be scored for people to show up for books at a venue like this.
- [31:10]
A
I totally agree. At the very least, I want an audiobook category because you can win an Emmy for the best audiobook, but people who are watching the Emmys are not paying attention for the audiobook category.
- [31:25]
B
Yeah. So that's interesting news there, too. Speaking of interesting news that bridges movies and books, the blacklist. We have spoken to Franklin, Leonard and Randy on this show before they have placed or. I'm not really sure how this goes, but through their fiction program, which seeks to pair unpublished manuscripts with publishers, the first deal has been struck with Crooked Lane Books. The title of the book is Then He Was Gone and the writer is Isabel Booth. I didn't see a whole lot about the actual book itself. It sounds like a thriller. Crooked Lane. And the Crooked Lane is an imprint. And the packaging of this books looks like it's a media. I don't know, it looks like a thriller. Like, it looks like a popular thriller.
- [32:15]
A
I mean, one of the lines in this piece is move over Harlan Coben. So that's.
- [32:20]
B
Sure.
- [32:20]
A
Yeah, That's.
- [32:21]
B
Which is move over redacted. Insert popular thriller writer here.
- [32:25]
A
So the way that I do know how the fiction.
- [32:27]
B
Okay, thank you.
- [32:27]
A
Very much works. And so it's Franklin Leonard founded the Blacklist originally, I think almost 20 years ago by circulating the best unproduced manuscripts in Hollywood for, yeah, unproduced screenplays in Hollywood and was saying, like these, these deserve more attention. Let's get some attention to them. And many of them have then been acquired and produced. It's been very successful. They've won Oscars. So last year they expanded into fiction. Randy Winston is their director of fiction. And the way it works is that writers with unpublished manuscripts can join the site, upload their manuscripts and, and pay to have feedback from professional editors. Like there's real vetting here. There's a. We did an episode earlier in the year with Randy who explained how it works or I think I spoke with them. So they've got real professionals. Like it's not scammy. You get feedback. You can have community voting on your manuscripts and then members of the publishing industry, authors and agents and publishing folks also pay to be able to access that whole universe of unpublished work. And they can search by genre, they can search by trope or theme and then they can reach out to these writers and say, hey, I'd love to see more of your manuscript or let's get going. And so I'm assuming that that's how this worked, that the acquiring editor Marcia Markland from Crooked Lane would have seen Isabel Booth's work on the Blacklist, decided that she wanted to know more about it and then reached out and I believe that we're going to have Randy and maybe even Isabel and Marcia on the show in the spring when the book comes out to talk with us. Randy and I, I just, you know, hadn't downloaded the full history of my emails to you this week yet, Jeff, but Randy and I have been talking.
- [34:12]
B
I got a calendar invite that I think I just accepted, you know, sort of on faith, but that's delightful to know. Live the back the booking process here. How we do this. Very cool to see. Let's take another sponsor perfect break and get into a couple more things before frontless foyer.
- [34:31]
A
Colleen Hoover fans get ready. Her best selling novel Regretting youg is coming to the big screen from director Josh Boone who brought us the Fault in Our stars. This powerful story follows Morgan, played by Allison Williams and her daughter Clara, played by McKenna Grace, as they navigate love, loss and the secrets that can tear a family apart. With an all star cast including Dave Franco, Mason tames Scott Eastwood and Willa Fitzgerald, Regretting youg brings to life everything readers loved about the book. Book first love, second chances, heartbreak and the complicated, beautiful bond between mothers and daughters. It's the kind of film you want to see with your mom, your best friend, your book club, anyone who loves to laugh, cry and gasp together in a theater. Don't Miss Regretting youg Only in theaters October 24th. This episode is brought to you by Marshalls where you never have to compromise between quality and price. The buyers of Marshalls hustle hard working to bring you great deals on brand name and designer pieces because Marshalls believes everyone deserves access to the good stuff. Visit a Marshalls store near you or shop online@marshalls.com.
- [35:41]
B
This episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios New Film Springsteen Deliver Me From Nowhere starring Golden Globe win winner Jeremy Allen White and Academy Award nominee Jeremy Strong. Scott Cooper, the director of the Academy Award winning movie Crazy Heart brings you the story of the most pivotal chapter in the life of an icon. Springsteen Deliver Me from Nowhere Only in theaters October 24th. Get your tickets now. In news we do not like in throwing the baby out with the Bathwater news, a Texas school district, new Brownsville Independent School District has closed its libraries to middle and high schoolers to comply with Senate Bill 13 because they have not done a review of the 50,000 books in their collection. And you know you've got to burn the village to save it. You just got to close it as they do the review. I don't, you know, this is more of Kelly's reporting. I'll put a link in the show notes there the details of this. I don't know that this point can be made enough because I think is an important point and tell me if I'm wrong, is that the people who are say they want to protect kids from whatever they want to keep libraries age appropriate. They are not mourning this news today that the libraries are closed. They're not like oh no, we need to hurry through and get this review. They I think a lot of them would be perfectly fine if the library and all of the teeming ideas and unrulyness it contains were kept shut. Rebecca I think that is an under considered part of this is like short of getting rid of all the books, they wouldn't mind. This is like kind of like the federal shutdown.
- [37:25]
A
Yeah.
- [37:26]
B
There's a certain element of certain political parties that think it's fine and even good to just close the sucker down.
- [37:32]
C
Yeah.
- [37:33]
A
It's not surprising that this has happened. No one on any side of this argument is surprised that this has happened because like many of these book banning bills SB13 is written with really broad, vague language that is intended to allow them to cast a very wide net to determine what is and isn't appropriate. And that means that they've got to review all 50,000 items in the libraries to try to make those decisions. That will take a long time. And advocates, as Kelly points out in this piece, have been warning for years that this is one of the possible outcomes of these kinds of laws is that schools will not be able to manage the process quickly of vetting all of the books and will have to shut them, have to shut down library access. And I think you're absolutely right that there are many people on the right who are not only not concerned, but probably happy that this is just not something that they're having to think about anymore. It's the same folks who, you know, you know, rail about protecting kids but won't pass gun control laws.
- [38:34]
B
Yeah.
- [38:35]
C
And.
- [38:37]
A
Get out there and vote. Folks like I just.
- [38:41]
B
Especially your local school board elections. You know, if you're spending a lot of time doom scrolling but you haven't gone to your local school board meeting as of late, you might think about a highest and best use of your available activist energy. Let's leave that there for now. Okay. The millions followed book preview is out written curated by the great Sophia Stewart. A little bit later than some other previews. But as I wrote in today's books, I kind of like it.
- [39:10]
A
It's kind of like October 15th is real late.
- [39:13]
B
It's kind of like your grandma getting your birthday present in the mail late. But so you get a kind of a birthday present a couple weeks later. Kind of nice there. I always find something new to me or else as I, as I said in today in books, I get edel vice fatigue sort of my cerebral cortex shuts down and I maybe saw some of these books, but there's always something here to go look at as we get in toward November. I think that's one where I get to be interested in what Sophia has found, especially along kind of like the independent and more art publishers. I don't know. Did you have a chance to look through this? Anything strike you or catch you?
- [39:55]
A
Yeah, I mean the very first title on the list is one that I've been seeing bubble up everywhere this week. The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Cross Kraus. You know, a murder case at the center of it, but it sounds like there's a lot more than that going on. I was also looking at Analog Days by Damien Searles, who is one of the Translators of Jan Fosse who won the Nobel I believe last year. And it's a Gen Xers ruminations on technology and the violence that shape 21st century life. That sounds like something that I might need to put put directly into my veins. I was happy to see Aaron Summers the Ten Year Affair get a shout out here. That is on my list. I'm going to. You've been talking about it all season. I'm really looking forward to picking that up. What else caught my eye? Zadie's on the list. John Irving, Queen Esther. He is revisiting the setting of the Cider House Rules. I don't know what to do with this. I've been out on Irving the last couple of novels because like 900 pages and so much repetition and I was the biggest Irving fan in my 20s.
- [41:01]
B
That was a big part of your identity for a while, reading your identities.
- [41:04]
A
Yeah, I had read a ton of the Irvings and really liked them. Like definitely part of my reading DNA, especially as a younger adult reader. But then there was a point where I was like he's not doing anything new. And I was waiting for something new. I'm going to wait for reviews of this, but returning to the setting of one of your most beloved novels can go a couple of ways. It's either really good.
- [41:31]
B
I think the median expectation is.
- [41:35]
A
Yeah, it's either good or real bad. We'll see where it goes. Light breakers by Aja Gable. A California couple's marriage is put to the test when they take part in a dodgy experiment. Who knows what the dodgy experiment is? But I'm in for that. Lots of great stuff here and I always appreciate that the millions takes. I think special effort makes extra pains to find small press and other novels that have not gotten a ton of attention. So if you're looking for under the radar, this link in the show notes is a. A really good resource for those.
- [42:07]
B
Yeah. Especially a reader of literary fiction. For sure. I guess. Maybe. Can I complete my 3 points? Make a trend with significant others, family members as non human beings.
- [42:18]
A
Yeah, let's see.
- [42:18]
B
The Bridegroom was a Dog by Yoko Tawada, which is appearing here.
- [42:23]
A
Signed, sealed and delivered.
- [42:25]
B
Yeah. New Directions Publishing Corporation. 80 pages.
- [42:29]
A
You love to see that. That's a no value fellow.
- [42:33]
B
I'm very. I'm very Goldilocks.
- [42:35]
A
Don't tell me what the list price is though.
- [42:38]
B
Well, let's not talk about that. So that one was struck me. The other one that struck me just off the dome was Pandora, which is the first English language book by a Brazilian writer named Anna Paulo Pacheco chronicles a literature professor's mental breakdown. I don't think there is a, you know, student teacher relationship which is my least favorite literary professor or teacher trope. I do like the literature or academic hitting the real world and it having some weird stuff happen. The COVID for this book is like a Matisse like drawing of a nude woman walking but holding a photorealistic pangolin. So I'm in for any anything could happen at this point. I'm not sure what to make out of this. So very interesting. That's 156 pages too.
- [43:30]
A
One that I don't think made the millions list but that I want to shout out because I think it'll be interesting for our listeners that I featured in our flagship newsletter this week. Tokyo Express by Seicho Matsumoto. This came out in 1958. Matsumoto was apparently known as the Agatha Christie of Japan. Like considered to be responsible for introducing the mystery genre to Japan and it has just been widely released in English for the first time by Modern Library. Those are available now. Have two more of Matsumoto's books coming out in the spring. The introduction to this is written by Amer Towles.
- [44:06]
B
Whoa.
- [44:06]
A
Yeah, I was on a call with the publicist and I was already sold about like this sounds great. I'm super interested. Say no more. Japan's Agatha Christie. I'm on it. And then he said and the introduction is by Amer Towles and my brain did a full Scooby Doo. Like what other multitudes is Amer Tolles.
- [44:24]
C
Containing.
- [44:28]
A
Colleen Hoover Fans? Get ready. Her best selling novel Regretting you is coming to the big screen from director Josh Boone who brought us the Fault in Our Stars. This powerful story follows Morgan, played by Allison Williams and her daughter Clara, played by McKenna Grace, as they navigate love, loss and the secrets that can tear a family apart. With an all star cast including Dave Franco, Mason Tames Scott Eastwood and Willa Fitzgerald, Regretting youg brings to life everything readers loved about the the book first love, second chances, heartbreak and the complicated, beautiful bond between mothers and daughters. It's the kind of film you want to see with your mom, your best friend, your book club, anyone who loves to laugh, cry and gasp together in a theater. Don't miss Regretting you. Only in theaters. October 24th.
- [45:14]
B
We're starting to get some stories. Some of them are not for public consumption as we do some of these publicity hits and are talking more to publishers about, you know, placing interviews and excerpts and other things. I'm not going to name the author here but my favorite story so far is I was trying to talk to someone interested if they were interested in talking to me about a project they were working on and I was told they're currently working on their next book and will not be answering emails to the last week of October.
- [45:39]
A
It's real boss level stuff.
- [45:41]
B
I'm like you know what if I win the lottery I'm not going to tell anyone but there'll be signs, you know that meme the wiener mobile will.
- [45:50]
A
Be in my driveway and you will.
- [45:51]
B
Never answer any and I'm not answering email. It's going to be like from 12 to 12 30s on alternating Fridays when there's a blood moon. That's going to be my email response schedule.
- [46:03]
A
It's a beautiful dream.
- [46:05]
B
Amazing stuff. All right. Frontless Foy brought to you by Thriftbooks where you can buy these books new because they've got new books also used books starting you know I found I've been doing they're sponsoring zero to well read for the first season season and part of the reads I've been doing for them is looking at what's available on Thriftbooks in the title and the truth is you can find a good copy of the kinds of books we're talking about Zillow Red for four or five bucks. Generally speaking a good quality paperback not in pristine condition. It will be gently loved. So there's used books available there more than 19 million books in addition to DVDs, CDs, games and gifts. I know physical media says having a renaissance across the the art forms whether it be movies or music or I don't know what else. What other art forms are there? That's it Hastings. Books, movies, music. That's all there ever was. Go to thriftbooks.com you can get free shipping on orders of over $15 and every purchase gets you closer to a reading reward that you can cash in for say you know if you really want the movie tie in version of Never Let Me Go. I'm not going to judge you. That's not what I want but I'm happy for you if you want want that thriftbooks.com Rebecca I'm reading just for work. You're meeting to I'm doing zero to well read. I'm doing Patreon. I haven't done anything else so this is going to be you today.
- [47:19]
A
Okay.
- [47:20]
B
Tell me about what you've read. Liberty well you go first and I'll do I have some follow up for you.
- [47:24]
A
All right. I read Heart the Lover by Lily King in one sitting, which you texted me about. Yes, I read it in one sitting on a flight a couple of weeks ago. I texted you. I think halfway through it, I know we both love Lily King. I married you for happiness is a shared favorite. And don't sleep on this one. People like the COVID is hot pink. This is not a book that feels hot pink. It's about a love triangle, but not really. We meet the characters when they are in college. Woman falls for this young man from her English class. I think he's a year or two older. There are some like secret history vibes to the early parts of it. The kids, the two boys are house sitting for one of their professors. And so she goes on a date with one of them and comes home and like, you know, into the study with the wall to wall bookshelves and they open the drawers and find his smoking pipes and just, you know, like the whole vibe is there. The guy's best friend and roommate is also a significant part of her life. At some point she has a relationship with him. What happens in that triangle is very tangly. And we follow those three people into the next couple decades of their lives. We follow her into marriage and children and like how this very complex relationship between the three of them and their individual, like, you know, one on one connections, all those different permutations, how those play out over years and years right into one of the character's deaths. It's it like it does all the things that I want a novel to do and it does all the Lily King things. I couldn't help but think like she manages to give us a whole life and fully realized, like multiple fully realized, complex, beautiful, funny, touching relationships in like 250 pages. It's not very long. Other other writers do this and they need 500 pages to do it. And I love it when they do it. Like there's a Jonathan Evison version of this book that I would read and that I feel like I have read. But that Lily King can pack such a powerful punch like she does a whole pregnancy and its aftermath in one paragraph. And just like one of the best that we've got going. And for Lily King now can take my Barbara King Solver award for underappreciated excellent writers. I loved it so much.
- [49:52]
B
I'm so happy to hear that Writers and Lovers is our most popular book. Kind of by far. Came out five years ago. Go Euphoria before that. Did quite well. That's where it's sort of that one took her on different trajectory. Just a factual point. Lily Tuck wrote, I married you for happiness. Just so we're straight on that. Don't want to. That's not about correcting you. That's about avoiding emails. Rebecca is what I'm doing there otherwise.
- [50:16]
A
I appreciate that. And also it comes out of the fact that they feel spiritually similar.
- [50:21]
B
They do feel very similar. She also wrote the English Teacher, which is about academics. I was just talking about this when I was doing the book about the pangolin and the Matisse outline. Chalk lady. Like I do like this Milou of, you know, struggling emotionally, sometimes financially, but always sort of with a kind of a more cerebral take on life. I just been into it. I'm into this too.
- [50:50]
A
There's just, I mean, there's great stuff in Heart the Lover. Like these are young people. When they meet, they're like staying up all night, night having sex and quoting poetry at each other. It's great. It's just great. And I also read A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar, which is really earning me some points in our book Fantasy.
- [51:10]
B
Man, oh man.
- [51:13]
A
This is now the one that I'm pulling for for the National Book Award of the ones that I've read. Climate fiction set in Kolkata, India, in the near future. We don't know what year about a family that are getting ready to come to the US US as climate refugees. It all takes place over the course of the one week leading up to their flights. The husband in the family is already in the US and his wife, his child and the wife's father are in India preparing to come back. One of the nights in this final week, a thief breaks into their house to get access to some of their extra food. And everybody's lives get upturned by this and then entwined with each other in. In really surprising and unexpected ways. I was hesitant to pick it up because I'm hesitant about a lot of climate fiction right now for the stop saying the thing so directly reasons. And I was so thrilled by the way that Megha Majumdar handles this. You know that these people are climate refugees. You know that it has gotten really hot and that food is scarce. But the way that it comes out is much subtler. There's this detail where the family are going to a bureaucratic office to take care of some of their paperwork so that they can get on their flights. And the way we find out how hot it is is that an embassy worker has to put A towel over the doorknob before he can open it, just to brace against the heat. But it's just this tiny little detail, and the book is peppered with things like that. It's also a lot shorter than a lot of the works that are trying to tackle this topic. Real economy of language. And I found every detail was perfectly placed. A lot of the stuff that happens in the plot is surprising and willing to ask. Majumdar is just willing to ask a lot of questions. It felt like the best version of an author going, okay, so here's where we start. This guy breaks into their house. Then what could happen? And that Megha Majumdar took some of the most interesting paths out of those. I really loved it. I was surprised to see that it got the Oprah pick. Like, it's a big book club pick and a National Book Award finalist. And this is kind of one of those dreams of a book, I think, that can do both. Like, there's nothing in it that makes it too difficult to be or too unlikely or challenging in any way to be a book club pick. But it is, I think, National Book Award caliber. Certainly, like, if this is a false dichotomy, but like, if it was going to be between one of the two climate fiction books that have made it between the Antidote and this, like, this is much better, I thought, than the Antidote.
- [53:53]
B
Very cool. I'm looking Forward to that one. There you can find shownotes book riot.com Listen, go check out zero to well read if you haven't. And if you have, and I guess I should, maybe it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. And if you want to take part in our review challenge. Five stars. Just five. It just there. Just, you know, all the way to the right. Bang.
- [54:14]
A
Yeah. If you don't like it, we're not asking for a review.
- [54:16]
B
Yeah, I mean, it'd be weird if you're like two stars. Also, I want the bonus. Bonus episode. You know, I guess that's a particular needle to thread there. And we can't stop you, of course, but that may not help the cause. If that's what you're signing up to do there, you can choose email podcast.com. i got a lot of. We've got a lot of feedback about Baker and Taylor. I'm going to try to have a little more structured sort of reader email section for next week. Okay. I responded to a couple people trying to find a little bit more, but thank you so much for your librarians out there. There the Short version is a horrible mess. Not a surprise. I guess I don't know where it was on my radar, but to the point where. And this was really funny. And I have not listened to the voice memo yet that someone sent us. But like I. I'm too mad to write a full email. So I just talked. I hope this works. There's a memo attached which really the medium is the message as Marshall McLuhan would say. And I think I got almost everything I needed to know about the situation without even listening to the voice memo.
- [55:14]
A
I love that so much. Like I personally love a voice memo. But I have not allowed myself to start sending them to you.
- [55:22]
B
I think that's a Rubicon neither of us need to be crossing. Let's. Let's keep that river ahead of us.
- [55:29]
A
Listeners only. I can be fine with that.
- [55:31]
B
Listeners only. That's fine. I'm not even sure I want to engender this because it does. I have to listen. I can read much faster and scan in terms of processing a bunch of emails. Emails. So I don't want this to be an. It's not an invitation, a solicitation, but as a one off and as a representation of an existential state of being. It was both useful and appropriate and welcome. But no mo. Thanks everyone for listening. Rebecca, we'll talk to you soon. And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual.
- [56:20]
A
Fascinating.
- [56:21]
B
It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [56:24]
A
Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [56:27]
B
Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need at Liberty Mutual Mutual. Com. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty Liberty Savings. Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.