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- [00:03]
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- [00:31]
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- [01:00]
Vanessa Diaz
Foreign.
- [01:04]
Jeff O'Neill
This is the Book Riot podcast. I'm Jeff o'. Neill. Today Vanessa Diaz joins me sitting in Rebecca, who's traveling. She didn't tell me where she went. She's just gone on a Thursday traveling somewhere. She's back tomorrow. I don't ask questions. Vanessa, she comes and she goes.
- [01:16]
Vanessa Diaz
It could be New Zealand. It could be like the Camino. It could be anything with Rebecca. We'll find out later.
- [01:22]
Jeff O'Neill
Some. Some mud lake in the middle of Missouri. Like really could be anything at this point. We were just talking before we started recording that it's a. It's not a poo poo platter. It's a full on smorgasbord. Is there. Is there a Mexican smorgasbord like a buffet? Is there a word for this kind of a situation? I've never heard one but I no mean no Mal.
- [01:45]
Vanessa Diaz
I don't know that there is the word that I'm thinking for it is more just a curse word meaning a crap ton of stuff. So. Yeah, I don't know that.
- [01:53]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I don't know that we like you don't. Okay. Well anyway, at least there's not some cliched trope of another language and culture I'll butcher to use but not today. It is whatever that word is you're referring to. That's very much what we have for year end awards books of the year. We got quick check on my my power rankings of individual book awards for Anglophone. I should say English Commonwealth Beyond Booker 1 Pulitzer 2 NBA 3. Am I kind of right? Does that feel about right to you?
- [02:26]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, more or less. Yeah, I think so.
- [02:28]
Jeff O'Neill
Okay. And so we had the booker this week, Vanessa, which we're going to get into a little bit there programming notes before we get into the news of the week over on Patreon, Rebecca and I talked about the Amazon's 25 books for the last 25 years. We power ranked those we will be doing as a companion piece to the episode that went up on Wednesday. The books that we missed in 2020 and some of those I think I teased are don't let the Lord hit you, don't let the door hit you, or the good Lord split you. Titles where I'm just, I'm done. I've had enough. I'm out on the idea, the author, the mood, the vibe. I'm gonna do all that stuff while we're out on and then there's gonna be a lot of year end stuff coming up. Vanessa and I know on the site we have. When's our list come out? It's soon, right? Next.
- [03:19]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, the 19th. Yeah, it's coming soon.
- [03:22]
Jeff O'Neill
Would you like to tell people how we construct that list? I don't know. You'll be back on but you as managing editor have managing the edited.
- [03:29]
Vanessa Diaz
Managing. Yes.
- [03:30]
Jeff O'Neill
Of that process. Tell the people how our particular list works.
- [03:34]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, it is kind of a combination of two things. So we start with staff nominations just to kind of make sure that we're getting the stuff that our people are wanting to nominate. And then we also open it up to our entire core of contributors. And so as you can imagine, there is a fair amount of overlap. There's also a lot of distinction. So that list can get pretty big. And then we go through the thing. And by we I mainly mean me with input from the rest of the editors on like how do we whittle this down? So it is a pretty chunky list these days, which is how many this year? I think it's like almost 60 titles.
- [04:05]
Jeff O'Neill
Okay.
- [04:06]
Vanessa Diaz
And it hasn't always been in the past because we this too many logistics. But the long and short of it is we used to sort of treat the two lists as very separate. The one that we did mid year and the one that we did at the end. And then of course several of us were like, no, my I have picks through the end that I, that I, you know, read halfway and I still think it's my best book. So we just opened it up and became a very robust list.
- [04:27]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I think methodology, a link to methodology for all these year end lists would be very helpful. We're going to. I think no. Rebecca and I talked about the Amazon has not announced their book of the year. They've done their finalists. And one thing Amazon has tried to do over the last couple years is really humanize that list. Like their editors picture front and center. You know, they have bios for the editors, which they didn't have now, they didn't always have. And when we linked to it, they said, oh, this is just what the algorithm says. Like, no, those are actual humans there. And it matters to people and I think it matters to the larger economy. For how does Barnes and Noble come up with their list? Well, we'll talk about this in a minute. I think they come up with a list editorially. There's some curation there, but the voting is by bookstore. Like the bookstores really vote and they say this winner in the press release, Flesh by Rebecca found that we should be pronouncing it David Soleil. So apologies to all of Hungary for that mispronunciation. There was like a cadre of bookstores that like their votes came in hard for this. Like it was enough where like, I don't know, like the. The central blue Pennsylvania Philadelphia districts, remember, we're all doing election night, we're waiting for those to come in. Like there was some cadre of ballots that went overwhelming for Flesh by David Soleil. And I don't know if that's good or bad. I think it's interesting to let people know that there's variation. There's no marionette situation here. This is, you know, trust your process. Ours is different because we have a lot of contractors, freelancers that people that cover books and they read weird stuff. Like I think we have one of the weirder lists of, you know, we're not through the Times. I don't want to say that, but you know, of a site people have heard of, we tend to have an idiosyncratic list of anything.
- [06:06]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, it is. Yeah. Again, especially since we did kind of stratify, you know, do the two layers of it where we first started with staff and then with contributors, we ended up with a list that really does run the like the lofty, literal, you know, litvic to, as Danica has lovingly not called it, the queerdo fiction or the obsquier I think is the other word she's using, which we appreciate. And to be honest, when I was putting the thing together, 60 felt large and unwieldy and almost like how is this really the best representation? Like, is this too many? But I had almost double. So getting it down to that list alone, it's possible that I would whittle it down further in the future. But yeah, our people read so widely and made such compelling cases for why this particular book was impactful to them this year, that it, it ended up as big as it did. But I.
- [06:51]
Jeff O'Neill
Methodology, I think I don't know that anyone does it exactly how I do it, including us, because that's not the way we're put together. I think what I want is the list and the New York Times is the closest, especially because it is close to my own reading. But they have a hundred notables and notable doesn't mean they love them all necessarily, but they think there's something about them that it's almost a historical document. Rebecca and I've talked about how that's an interesting document, an important one to us. And then they pick 10, right? Like, okay, we are going to, we're going to put our money where our critical mouth is and say here are the standouts. What they don't do is then pick one. And I like the picking of one. And this is not something we have done. We've talked about it back and forth and the thing, there's various ways we could go about it and I think we always get. Get stymied on this, which is do we open it up to our larger contributor core of which there are many voices and that's great and. But then we cede some of the editorial control of the full time staffer and the people here every day or do we just hear the chickens in the roost do it? Which also feels like leaving out a big. The people who are a big chunk of what we do. It feels hard to navigate those things.
- [08:00]
Vanessa Diaz
That was precisely it. We did talk about just in the interest of full disclosure last year I think we did discuss what if we did have a list that was more curated just by staff or like just the staff list and maybe a contributor list. Or do we do something along the lines of yeah, like the notable versus top. And as widely read as our staff is, is really the editorial staff is essentially, you know, the four editors, Rebecca and Jeff at this point kind of.
- [08:23]
Jeff O'Neill
The six of us in Sharifah.
- [08:25]
Vanessa Diaz
And there were gaps in that. I was like, well if we just went with this, we really don't have a specific like a bunch of genres covered just because we can only read so many books a year as individual. So yeah, there's not like a perfect system here. Ours is I think definitely one of the like bigger unwieldy lists. But it's also delightfully weird in a way that I think people come to expect from us.
- [08:43]
Jeff O'Neill
I like that. I mean I almost wonder if we. There's a Version of what we do or a bizarro list that is like, here are our don't tell anyone this was actually my favorite book. Or, like, I don't know, like, there's some kind of thing.
- [08:58]
Vanessa Diaz
Our people are the kind that don't care that you know that, like, some of the pitches for, like, why a book was their best pick, and a lot of those didn't make the cut. Not because, you know it wasn't a good book, but you got to cut somewhere. And I laughed out loud at some of these pitches. So, yeah.
- [09:11]
Jeff O'Neill
Was it McSweeney's in combination with Holt? One of those. I can't remember. I get the best American whatever lists confused, but one of them does non required reading. And so, like, okay, you're not picking. You can't pick from the New Yorker. Right? Like, it can't be. And I wonder if there's a version of our list where we take off. I don't know. It's hard to take all of prh, but you can see what I'm trying to get at here. It's like, okay, anything that had a print run of over 50,000 is off the list, which still gives us all literary fiction, which is a completely different conversation.
- [09:40]
Vanessa Diaz
This is why it's so hard to figure out how to do this.
- [09:42]
Jeff O'Neill
I know, I know. Yeah. Because I think a combination of putting a stamp on this book for the year and, you know, really getting behind it, but then also wanting to give people a sense of the breadth and discovery at the same time is kind of difficult. Because I said in today in books, I was linking to times. 100 best books of the year. I like their package. I like the design. I think it is actually a pretty good representation of the year. But then that's it. It's just 100. There is no 10. There is no one. I do find myself and I said if I were. Books are. If you do 50 or more, you have to do 10, you know, and I realized I just painted BR ourselves into the corner when you just said it was maybe the czar amends his own executive decree. This is something you just do now, do you know, you can have presidential decrees and just ignore some and do what you want. It is now 61 books or more. You have to do a top 10. So for those of you keeping score there at home, do you. So you read a lot of genre. Are there lists or other sites that we haven't talked about that you look to or I am not as good at, say what Tor.com or smart bitches trashy books are doing on the genre side, do you for your own reading pay attention to some other folks list or is there our own new releases in the genre section? Like where do you get your read?
- [10:53]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, a little bit of both. I, I you just listed two of the ones that I tend to look to which are yeah, the tour are now reactor reactor best list and then smart biggest rushy books. And then the thing that I think I've said on the show before that is spoiler for future things going to change a little bit here. But I am a co host of all the books which is our new releases podcast. And so for the past several years of my life, 90% of my reading has been dictated by books that come out on the second week of the month. And it's that funky week where it's not the first week. So it's not when all this stuff came out and it's not towards the end. So even though I am paying attention to these more genre fied lists, I find myself at the end of the year going why didn't I read any of the things on any of these lists? And a lot of it just had came down to like when it came out. So I do look to them and I'm always pleasantly surprised when I've got something on there that I can contribute because I do read pretty, pretty widely as far as across genre and I, yeah, so, so yes, I do look at them. I still find myself like what did I read this year? Every time?
- [11:51]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, it's an interesting point and I think your experience is a microcosm of a lot of of the full time folks here, which is we don't have editors like Amazon or the New York Times or Kirkus or Publishers Weekly where and Publishers Weekly has a whole retinue of things. But where we spend most of our time not reviewing books or read books to review. We're doing coverage and management stuff and we're making content, but we don't like have a giant map of the year in books. And we're like, we need to know something about these two. And that's something I think over the time we've done more and more of. And I think in a full look we're still growing, we're still changing. I think I would like to be able to do that at some point. We need like twice the number of full time editors or something. But I love this idea of like for the top thousand books that come out, we have someone on staff who could talk about it for 10 minutes.
- [12:48]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, we're crawling towards that. Stay tuned on some other stuff. But. But yeah, I think it would be very interesting. Obviously we are still very savvy on books. I'm not trying to act like we aren't, but. But the planning in the way that when I want to look at these lists, like, okay, these are folks that were dedicated to reading, you know. Yeah, there was probably a spreadsheet, E. Etc. And it's like a lot of it is very kind of happenstance for us. We're like up to individual preference and that's great.
- [13:11]
Jeff O'Neill
But yeah, to host our show or to write our newsletter or do something else on there. So again, it's a work in progress. And this is all in service of saying the thing which is the eternal truth of our business is it's an impossible field to cover. It's just, there's just so, so many books and even the Times or Publishers Weekly or Kirkus, they don't review everything. Forget about. Don't forget about it. But put to the side for a moment, indie and self publishing stuff. There's a lot of stuff they don't get to. I don't know. Like, does Publishers Weekly give a review of 100% of Knopf Doubleday titles? I wouldn't be surprised. I know, but you don't have to go further down the list for graphic novels or genre or kids or picture chapter books where there's not much coverage there. I guess that's all. That's all. Preamble as we are in the white hot center of the end of year, it's worth remembering the structure of these various entities of which we are one, and how they're put together and the limitations of the resources. And then the field that our limited resources are trying to cover. It's pretty difficult to say. And I think in any list, if you see something that seems like a strange any list from us or others, if it seems like a strange omission or a strange inclusion, I think it could very well be a particular edit or something being vociferous. It could just be that they were stretched thin or stretched thick for different books. Right. And just how the, the cookie crumbled there and when they got to it. Let's do it. Let's do a sponsor break and we'll come back.
- [14:51]
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- [16:02]
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- [16:27]
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- [17:02]
Jeff O'Neill
As I said, has won the Booker Prize. One thing and Rebecca I saw that she bought the book and has started it. Her text to me yesterday was the young protagonist has an affair with the older woman next door and the older woman is 42. And this bothered Rebecca to no end. Which continues to be One of my favorite bits is that Rebecca realizes that she is aging. And you know, Sophia Loren was what, 37 in the graduate? And that's a hard pill to swallow. I as someone who started to bald at 17, the Grim Reaper of aging has never darkened my emotional doorway like I had to deal with that early. But so I enjoy watching others sort of come to terms with their own agedness. And you know the thing I think I will read this and I've been seeing the coverage of the Booker is it has this weird structure where it's a coming of age sort of guy goes from the middle of nowhere to the ultra rich elite. But it's told through other points of view. Like almost he's like a mythic figure or, I don't know, there's no interior order for him. Interior for him. Which, it makes it more like a sort of like a Greek poem where you don't know what's going on inside other than what they say. Is that interesting to you at all? I don't know if this is the kind of book you'd be interested in generally, but Booker Prize, an unusual literary fiction thing, scale of 1 to 10, how peaked does your interest get about something like that?
- [18:23]
Vanessa Diaz
I think if you'd ask me this question, like last year or even the beginning of this year, I would have been like, nah. Because I was definitely in a place of like, the world is on fire. I'm going to read weird things, as you well know from my presence on this podcast before. But I think Danica and I were talking about this recently that I did have the opportunity because I took a few days off just to like sit and think about, like, what would my reading look like if I really, you.
- [18:43]
Jeff O'Neill
Know, got back to your own literal devices. Yeah, yeah.
- [18:45]
Vanessa Diaz
And I read some litvic and was like, oh, it turns out it is nice to read pretty words and deep thoughts. Not that genre isn't those things, but I was really leaning into it.
- [18:53]
Jeff O'Neill
It's a different thing. It does a different thing.
- [18:55]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, yeah. So. So this book in general is one that I don't know that I would have picked up. But just looking through the Booker Prize in its totality, I said, oh, it's. This is one of the first times in a while that I can say to myself, oh, I'm really interested in reading at least three or four of these. And now this one's newly kind of back on my radar.
- [19:10]
Jeff O'Neill
And it's not super long, which is always an attraction. I mean, I think it's sort of in that 3 to 400 page, you know, default length for a novel and a lot. And I know people who have read it have loved it. Like that's one thing that I've seen. I don't know that a lot of people have loved it or, excuse me, Reddit, but it seems like the hit rate of people who do really have. The publisher has gone back to print an additional 150,000 copies. Interestingly, this is, you know, he's not, he's not a yipper snapper. That's not a word. A whippersnapper snapper. He's A. You know, he's not elderly, but he's comfortably in his 50s or 60s, I think he's had a long career and I can only imagine the sweetness of the prize being even the sweeter. When you've been working and working you've got something that really takes off, which is cool. Let's go to Barnes and Noble's Book of the Year. I think Rebecca called this on this show or on our. It's no longer slack. We're using some other platform. But it's always slack in my heart. It's just sort of like Xerox or whatever.
- [20:12]
Vanessa Diaz
I do the same thing. Yeah.
- [20:13]
Jeff O'Neill
Mona's Eyes by Thomas Lesser. Which is a novel translated from the French. It is the story of a young girl and I don't. I think she might be 10 or 11, but I realize I'm not actually sure how old she is. Who has been diagnosed with some kind of condition where she is going to lose her sight and conveniently for the book, inconveniently for her, it's 52 weeks from now. So that her grandfather decides to take her on a weekly Wednesday tour. I'm going to start crying, Vanessa, because this is like pulls at the heartstrings. Every Wednesday take her to a museum in Paris and look at art. And I can see why. That's quite lovely. Dad. If you're. I think I already warned my father. If he's listening, he will be getting this for Christmas because my dad and I. I probably will read this. I need to read like 20 pages to make sure I can't have it be Sue. I can't have it be Tuesdays with Maury. Vanessa.
- [21:12]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
- [21:13]
Jeff O'Neill
Which is what I. It's kind of a mashup of. I wrote this in Today in Books. Girl with the Pearl Earring. It uses the same cover. Tuesday with Mori Elegance with a hedgehog. All the Beauty in the world. Which I really like. Like all the things in there. But I need to make sure it's just side of saccharine.
- [21:30]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah.
- [21:30]
Jeff O'Neill
For me. But it sounds like that also had a wellspring of voting that came in for that book. I was talking about that before. I saw a shelf talker for it at Pals the other day. Someone over there really loves it. Again, there's a little bit of availability bias to. You start seeing it once you hear about it.
- [21:47]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, of course.
- [21:47]
Jeff O'Neill
But this feels like a real underground hit. Like it really came from the bottom up. I. I didn't see anything about this in like pre pub or looking at seasonal previews here. I don't know anything. Thoughts, questions? Comments?
- [22:00]
Vanessa Diaz
I mean, Europa is a thing. I tend that that is where I get pulled back into liffic. I'm a big fan of a lot of Europa's work and I've been on a kick lately. I mean, I've always enjoyed books that have an art element, but I've been on like a bit of a kick lately, which. The last one I read is the Macabre by Kosoko Jackson, which is very different in Vibes.
- [22:18]
Jeff O'Neill
Oh God, yes.
- [22:19]
Vanessa Diaz
Excellent book, by the way. But yeah, so I was already sort of interested and then I realized the setup and I had the same reaction, which is this sounds like it could be extremely me and I'm saving it for the end of the year when I do that thing where I just blast through a bunch of stuff to catch up on. As long as it is, like you said, on this side of saccharine. Although, I don't know, in the Hellscape, I may just be like, give me the sweets. I'm not sure. It might be down.
- [22:42]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean the other, the other comp that comes to mind is like A Man Called oh, which had this dark sweet. I think. I think that is probably a pretty good flavor. There are plenty of straight up romance commercial fiction that are pretty feel good, but there are things like Eleanor Elephant is completely fine that have a little. There's a rain cloud there like. Or Marie Khalid Bertino with Beauty Land or some of those things. Like, those things can go quite well. So I'm not quite sure what I'm worried. You know, what I'm worried about is something like I read like the Little Paris Bookshop or something like that. Like kind of trauma.
- [23:25]
Cider Mill Press Advertiser
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- [23:26]
Jeff O'Neill
Wearistic. But like, oh, it's so beautiful and sad. I. I don't. I don't know what I want, but I am interested because it's.
- [23:33]
Vanessa Diaz
It's interesting as well.
- [23:34]
Jeff O'Neill
Did you ever read the Elegance of the Hedgehog? You're probably too young.
- [23:37]
Vanessa Diaz
No, no, I absolutely did read that. Yeah. And it was one of those where like when someone gifted it to me, it was a gentleman who had been told by a friend like she likes books and apparently just went and like picked stuff and it was hilarious if you like knew who said gentleman was. For them to have gifted me like the old elegance of a hedgehog. It's like you don't know what the hell it's about. And I was, I think, too young when I first tried it. And then I just gave it maybe Five years and tried it again and then just like, blasted through it. So, yes, I did very much enjoy, like, this, the pace of it. And it didn't feel super.
- [24:05]
Jeff O'Neill
It's kind of weird. Like, it's not weird, but it has a. It has a strangeness to it that.
- [24:10]
Vanessa Diaz
I mean, it's a little girl who's like, I'm gonna blow everything up and.
- [24:14]
Jeff O'Neill
Right. Yeah, that's right. I guess it's more than a little strange. But we just finished. My family just finished this season of Bake Off. No spoilers. But you do. You do want the sharpness to cut through the sweet.
- [24:24]
Vanessa Diaz
Right.
- [24:25]
Jeff O'Neill
And that's a very important element, I think, in the kind of reading I like to do. I can imagine this one if it really. Reading is. I'm understanding to read to be something that people read for a long, long time. Like this becomes a staple of paperback favorites. Riddle me this, Vanessa. I had an intrusive thought that I included today in books today. I don't know if you saw the draft.
- [24:45]
Vanessa Diaz
Not yet.
- [24:46]
Jeff O'Neill
But do you think there's anything to. We are having an art heist, art museum moment. Like, does it matter that the Louvre just got all this attention because of the jewel thieves? Like, because it's not a jewel, it's not a heist book, and that's its own thing. And I'll read a thousand of those. But I wonder the combination of that. And I do feel like. And maybe it's because we're doing zero to well read. There is a. In the dark night of many folk souls, a can I turn towards the immortal works? Like, can I get to some high culture, frankly?
- [25:21]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah.
- [25:22]
Jeff O'Neill
And that combined with, like, a real news story about how people love heists, museum heist, and they also like museums. I wonder if that was like, 9% of the potion here.
- [25:32]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, I wonder because, like, again, I did read what, one, two, maybe three books this year that had, like, an art element. And obviously those were in the pipeline way before this, like, Lou thing ever happened. So obviously. But it does seem to be. Yeah, I think people turn to art, which is, you know, the biggest, loftiest statement in the world. But in times TM and I so, like, it makes sense to me that it's a thing that's researching. I think it's also just a fun cyclical thing that, like, if you give it enough time, it starts.
- [25:58]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah.
- [25:59]
Vanessa Diaz
Again, there was that bit when, like, the Gilded Wolves came out by Roshani Chakshi that I feel like I saw. It was what that there was the oh my gosh. I can see the COVID of it right out. Like, is it the counterfeit? There were several books in like a cluster. And then I felt like we got a break from it and then here it comes again. And I'm here for it because now the versions of the heisty books that we're getting are ones that really get to the colonialism. Why. And that is interesting to me in the way that we're doing. Yeah, it feels very, you know, Black Panther. It's like early premise. So. Yeah.
- [26:27]
Jeff O'Neill
Killmonger. Nodding. Yeah. You don't even know that I'm about to boost all.
- [26:31]
Vanessa Diaz
I'm gonna take it off your hands. Yeah, like, exactly. So, yes, I think there's something to it. I don't know exactly what that is, but I'm here for it because it's one of my favorite.
- [26:40]
Jeff O'Neill
I love it too. Did you ever do all the beauty in the World?
- [26:44]
Vanessa Diaz
Did you ever listen to that?
- [26:45]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I highly recommend that for people that don't know. It's a memoir about a guy and I can't remember the fellow's name right now, but he. His brother dies, which is germane in this regard, which is causes him to rethink his life and what he wants to do. And he decides he wants to be a security guard in the art museum to be around the art and part of it is what it means to be around art. But also there's a really cool like this is how the sausage is made. But for one of the world's great museums, like literally how these things are put together, you know, and like, you know, the shifts and the management and the crowd control. But also then you get to hang out next to the. The Kahlos and actually I don't think there but the Picassos and the Jacob Lawrences and the, you know, the other all time immortal art of the world. And that one's done quite well at the same time. Going from curated selections to voting by the unwashed Internet masses. The Goodreads Choice Awards are open the opening round. You got another 10 days. If you're interested, link in the shownotes@bookriot.com Rebecca and I always have trouble covering this except to say that it's available and sometimes we'll look at a couple of genres. Vanessa, I invite you to pick one of these for us to look at. I know you read more genre. Are you want to look at horror? Do you want to look at. Where do you want to go? Just for a minute we can talk about what we See therein.
- [28:10]
Vanessa Diaz
Well, I could give you a brief that I don't know that how much you'll have to opine here, but I can I have an opinion on a.
- [28:15]
Jeff O'Neill
Thing more than interested in that.
- [28:17]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, that is the romance list. And the reason the romance list is because like a tale as old as time, we've been talking about how romance and I mean so much of publishing. Right. But like it's just nowhere near as diverse as it should be. And it's not that there aren't diverse picks on this list, but there's a bit of a hoopla that I think I agree with that like Ali Hazelwood, who by all accounts is a lovely person who herself is a champion and an ally for diversity, but is on here twice and folks were like, listen. And like I, you know, I haven't read either of those books. Maybe both of them are fantastic. But in particular when Goodreads has kind of constantly gotten this like, hey, so are we paying attention? And you know, I think they did better this year than they sometimes have on the diverse front. It's like, did one author need to have two books on this list? I'm not entirely sure that they need it to. So that's my little tiny opinion on that. But the list itself otherwise has some interesting stuff that I very much. I knew Emily Henry would be on here. I knew Al Hazel would be on here. It's nice to see Kennedy Ryan, who's having, I think a really big moment right now. Folks are digging deep into her backlist, which is great to see on a Huang. So overall the list does seem cool. But I do wonder whether or not Ali needed to have two titles on here when you couldn't.
- [29:25]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I mean the other thing the Goodreads editors are dealing with and I don't know how they think about themselves is they curate this list. But at this point, yeah, the voting becomes even less inclusive, as we've seen over time.
- [29:38]
Vanessa Diaz
Exactly. Which is why you want to in theory put like some nice selections out there for people to, I don't know.
- [29:43]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I wouldn't mind. I wouldn't mind the Goodreads folks having their own non vote upon list. Like, okay, we have an editorial voice and vision here. What do we really care about? And maybe that goes into the selection of the shortlist, I believe, but I don't. It's always a little unclear to me how they want to go in looking at the fiction list. This is something we've been talking about on this show and around BR WR at large. Is that there hasn't been like a run. The Book of the year conversation is really strange. Yeah.
- [30:20]
Vanessa Diaz
I mean, last year we were all what, James. Right. Or at least it was.
- [30:23]
Jeff O'Neill
It was simple. But there were a couple of contenders, of course. I think maybe the most interesting thing that happened is that Katabasis wasn't quite what people thought.
- [30:36]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah.
- [30:37]
Jeff O'Neill
In terms of popularity. And that left some space. And I think also Bury Our Bones in the midnight Soil. I know you all talked about that. I think. Good. But it didn't sort of cross. It didn't get Escape Velocity, which is a very difficult thing to do to go beyond the genre reader or the already interested people in that. And I think that's sort of true of all the genres this year.
- [30:59]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah. Right.
- [30:59]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean, in the literary fiction, my spidey sense right now is that Wild Dark Shore might be the book of the year. Rhys just picked it for her book club. It's been on a lot of list. It was on the Amazon Best Books of the Year. I think there's a real chance that's Amazon's book of the Year. I don't think that's impossible. But what it's not going to be is that it's not going to be a National Book Award winner. I mean, I know it's not. It's not going to be a Pulitzer Prize winner. It's a little. It's a climate book. And I actually think it's more literally that people get of credit for, but it's not. It's not Audition by Katie Kudemar, which remains my favorite book of the year. But other than that, on looking at fiction and then historical fiction, because they split it out and historical fiction is such a big chunk of the fiction market. Like, people really like the Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid, but it kind of feels like a Taylor Jenkins Reid book. And it's not special outside of that. Buckeye by Patrick Ryan has got a lot of run. Wait. Yeah. And so it's just like. It's tough. It's really tough to see. I don't know from what you're seeing from our own contributor core, which of any of these stick out from the crowd?
- [32:13]
Vanessa Diaz
I mean, from our staff side, I know Good Dirt was a book that I had seen, but again, I feel like now, after the Best of the year, the midway point, people stopped talking about it. I like the historical list, to be honest. I'd be very surprised. I mean, but we know that Buckeye has done some stuff because I think it's over. Is it the overall pick for.
- [32:30]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I just screwed that up. They have released it is their overall pick for Amazon.
- [32:33]
Vanessa Diaz
Yes.
- [32:34]
Jeff O'Neill
Right.
- [32:34]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah. I was like wait as soon as you.
- [32:35]
Jeff O'Neill
My mistake.
- [32:36]
Vanessa Diaz
We both paused and like thought about that for a second. But like most of the other books on this list are ones that I feel like yeah, I heard about but I don't know that there's anything here. I'm like that. That that's a runaway. Like I'm. I put my money on that in a way that I have. I was more. Much more confident in making some predictions this time last year.
- [32:52]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I don't see. I mean Isola has held around. Well some of these have held around but it's really hard to even say here are the three or five and I feel like that kind of extends to a lot of the rest of the list and I cannot comment on the romantasy stuff because I have no idea. They all look the same to me. All the covers look the same. I mean we have the Onyx Storm which feels like came out six years ago.
- [33:16]
Vanessa Diaz
Oh yeah.
- [33:17]
Jeff O'Neill
At this point but I couldn't tell you beyond this. I know there have been some backlist tick tock hits but those aren't eligible and that made me think and and wonder about to you. Is there a version of the Goodreads Choice Awards that includes backlist? That's interesting.
- [33:36]
Vanessa Diaz
I. I've been for a couple years. Given what the talk has done to reading, I have long wondered if we would eventually start to see some backlist coverage just because there are so many book. Not that those lists aren't their own kind of complicated and problematic etc.
- [33:51]
Jeff O'Neill
Whatever they are but they're at least differently complicated.
- [33:53]
Vanessa Diaz
They're different. Yes, exactly. And they do represent a huge portion of people's reading these days in a way that I'm like somebody's gonna do this one of these days. But I. I wonder what the wrangling that feels like its own special thing.
- [34:05]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean I guess just to play out it. Play it out for a minute because you can't make all back list available because like does Shakespeare win? Yeah, I don't. You know like that's so silly to say. Like you would need some. Maybe you get together with book span. Like here. Here are books that saw a x percent or greater bump in their sales this year and will attribute that to readers discovering it. Yeah, like the. The Indiana Jones get it out of the Warehouse Book Talk award or something. I don't know how you would do it because like there's the calculation of volume. It was the. What was the name of the book where men didn't exist or something?
- [34:43]
Vanessa Diaz
Yes.
- [34:44]
Jeff O'Neill
Oh, my gosh, I just poisoned your brain with the wrong title. But yep, I who have never known men.
- [34:49]
Vanessa Diaz
Yes, There you go. Yes.
- [34:50]
Jeff O'Neill
And I'm sure there's some other things too, but that would be an interesting service to those of us who eschew the scroll to see what's going on there, because they do have their own. They do have their own.
- [35:05]
Vanessa Diaz
I think it would end up being, if you could bust it out, an interesting historical record just because they are just going with the stuff that saw a spike. So not necessarily because of BookTube, but just saw a spike. You're gonna be. And this year in 1984 and on tyranny, right?
- [35:19]
Jeff O'Neill
No, that's a really interesting point.
- [35:21]
Vanessa Diaz
I have never known met. So it would just be. Yeah, like you would need several years of that for that to be significant. But it would be interesting to look back on and go, hey, what was that? That's a history project. Somebody in like 2040 gets assigned, like, go back and look at those lists and tell us about the times. Yeah. So interesting.
- [35:37]
Jeff O'Neill
I would also be in favor of a final round death match in which the winners of all the Goodreads categories are in the book of the year for voters to take on. So last year there were 15 winners in each category. This year. Are there that many? Yeah, the same.
- [35:57]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah.
- [35:58]
Jeff O'Neill
12, 15. I would be very interested in a book of the year final. Final boss version of this, though. Audiobook is interesting because I think a lot of those are in other categories. Well, you could put audiobook to the side if you wanted to.
- [36:13]
Vanessa Diaz
You could.
- [36:13]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, for its own measure. Okay, let's do one more break here quickly.
- [36:21]
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- [37:51]
Jeff O'Neill
Let's see. We're. We're coming up on it. I'm going to get to front of this FOIA here in just a second. This is something I know you're interested in because you are interested in Latina lit and you know, works that aren't always in English, especially that are in Spanish. And one of the barriers is translation. And Amazon has introduced it. Has introduced it. That's not a tense.
- [38:14]
Vanessa Diaz
That felt intentional. So I went with it.
- [38:16]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't know what that was. Kindle Translate, which is an a powered translation service for folks in its Kindle Direct publishing program. Less than 5% of titles on Amazon.com are available in more than one language. Amazon says and this looks like a free service for people in kdp, which I know some, but not enough to comment around where you can use the power of Amazon and Amazon's AI to get quick. I cannot comment on how good these things are though. Translation isn't bad. It's not bad. It's not. But the barrier to translating a lot of books is the a lot of books can't afford it. For smaller books, independent, especially in translation coming from one place to another, the first two services available are in English and Spanish and from German to English. So I don't know why that exactly. But back and forth to Spanish, Vanessa, theoretically could mean a lot more Spanish language titles are available to English speakers and vice versa. The rub there is ain't no translator getting paid for this. Are you conflicted or not or, or how do you feel about this?
- [39:32]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, I have two pronged feelings. One is like okay, now a translator is not getting paid for this because that translation is man, like writing a book is hard enough translating one. And I've never Tried it. I'm not going to even pretend like I have, but I have tried to translate, you know, paragraph sections to somebody. It is a whole thing because, and this is the second part of the rub for me, translation. And I, and to be, you know, I'm not familiar with this thing's game as far as, like, how smart it is or it's not right. If it is smart, it's because it's pulling from, like, existing. And that's the whole thing. But translating is not just a matter of this word in English is now this word in Spanish, as we all know.
- [40:05]
Jeff O'Neill
Right.
- [40:06]
Vanessa Diaz
And German is the one that actually got me the most, like, huh. Because there are so many idioms, references, cultures, ways that we phrase things in Spanish. And I have read books in the last couple of years that I won't name them because I'm not trying to shade them on that. But I, I have thought to myself, somebody just a. Translated this.
- [40:24]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah.
- [40:24]
Vanessa Diaz
From this person's native language into English because that phrase does not make any sense in English. But I know exactly the phrase.
- [40:31]
Jeff O'Neill
No human translator would have done that.
- [40:33]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, correct.
- [40:34]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah.
- [40:35]
Vanessa Diaz
And so, you know, I am all for accessibility and it would, it would be so wonderful to get Right. More books available in a language when, like, that's one of the huge. Yeah. It costs money, and that's why we don't see as many people doing it. But there's a reason it costs money, because translation is such a fine art. I, I, I could just easily see where that runs away in a direction. It's like, yeah, you got the literal word for word, but that's not at all like, I'm just thinking of some of the funny phrases we have in Spanish. Like the, if I translate this, this.
- [41:06]
Jeff O'Neill
Super specific word you have for cornucopia, clearly that's one that would do well.
- [41:11]
Vanessa Diaz
Or like, yeah. Just all the idioms that are like, well, the, the shrimp who's lazy gets carried by the water, y'.
- [41:16]
Jeff O'Neill
All.
- [41:16]
Vanessa Diaz
Like, like, cool. That means nothing in English. But it's like a popular.
- [41:20]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean, from context, I get it. But. Yes. I don't. Yeah. But yeah.
- [41:23]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah. You know, and, and that's, yeah. Maybe not a great one, but there's so many. Like, Like Portuguese is one that I, Again, every language, I can't even just pick one, but has those phrases that the example I gave maybe isn't even the best one because you probably could contextually work your way through it where there's others that is like, there is no direct translation. And even If I gave it to you word for word, that's not going to make sense for the feel the vibe of this sentence. So, you know, low level excitement. I suppose. As resistant as I am to AI, I'm trying to be, you know, open to the parts where I think it does have a net impact. But this is a really touchy one for me.
- [41:56]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I feel similarly because I think especially literary fiction and fiction writ large I think is more difficult because this phrasing matters is intentional. And I'm not saying it doesn't in nonfiction, but nonfiction can have another use. Right, where the gist reliant on literary device.
- [42:16]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, exactly.
- [42:17]
Jeff O'Neill
The gist does the job. And so many books are nonfiction. I'll be curious to see. And I don't know, maybe there is some world where the LLMs can eventually handle the idiom. I don't know. It seems very difficult to manage. I'd be curious. Anyone has experience with this podcast@bookright.com I forgot I have. I have one more quick thing before we get a frontlist foyer. Speaking of Kindle and AI, I am pretty sure I accidentally bought an AI generated Kindle book yesterday.
- [42:49]
Vanessa Diaz
Oh no. What was it? If you want to say.
- [42:53]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, sure. Well, I'm not going to say the actual title because I don't have proof and whatever, I'll say what kind of book it was. And once I thought about it, it made sense. So I have a high schooler now and their friends are taking PSATs and SATs and I wanted to get like a prep example book just to show him. Here's what it looks like, right? Here's some, you know, you can see and kind of demystify it because it is scary important. But if you actually see it, like a smart, good reading 14 year old can handle some of the verbal stuff, especially in the math. They haven't got to, but the stuff they've gotten to, they can kind of see like. Oh, it's not. It's not like the knowledge of the London taxi driver where it's its whole kind of arcane business. But then I started looking through it myself and I realized that it was repeating the same structure. For the grammar stuff, there was a comma splice. So you're supposed to choose which of the answers would fix a comma splice.
- [43:50]
Vanessa Diaz
Okay.
- [43:50]
Jeff O'Neill
And the first one was used a colon, a semicolon and then a colon with an and or a comma with an and. So each of them technically fixed the comma splice. All right, D all of them then the next one was all the same. Which of them fixes a comma slice D? All of them. I'm like, huh, that's kind of weird. The sixth one, the sixth grammar question was the same structure, the same problem, and the same answer in the same location. And then I started looking at, like, the vocabulary stuff, and it was all. I was like, this is AI man. How is it? Don't you think? Am I wrong?
- [44:23]
Vanessa Diaz
No, I would think that's it. Yeah. My spidey sense also would have been flagged. Yeah.
- [44:27]
Jeff O'Neill
And then. But here's the thing. There were a lot of reviews and it got 4.8 stars. Did I spend a lot of time wondering if the AI the reviews were AI or planted? I did not. I spent 10 bucks and I sent an email off to Kindle. I've heard nothing, so I assume I'm going to be out 10 bucks. So I, who am a. I would say a high information buyer of books, I think it's fair to say I'm probably in the top decile of book buyers when it comes to knowing what's going on. Totally fell for it. Totally fell for Vanessa.
- [44:56]
Vanessa Diaz
Yep. That's. That's, that's how easy it is though, right? Especially on something like that where it's not. Yeah, there might not have really been a great way to suss that out ahead of time. You're not like, hey, this thing says this, you know, landmark exists that no longer does. It's like, it's just going to be a thing that you're like, yeah, sure. And then only a certain person who's like, really paying attention is like, wait.
- [45:16]
Jeff O'Neill
So I feel like a real sucker. You know, it's not quite giving money to the Nigerian princess, but it wasn't that far off.
- [45:25]
Vanessa Diaz
It was your car warranty.
- [45:27]
Jeff O'Neill
I gotta watch out. I do have to watch. I mean, I guess the. It's a very inexpensive, relatively speaking thing, but I did feel like a sucker there for a second. All right, let's get to front. Full list Fourier brought to you. Brought to us, allowed for us by Thriftbooks.com where you can get 19 million books since they're print harder to get AI bamboozled there, but it's probably possible. I think there's still some buyer beware. But. But the nature of digital books and the Kindle platform, they've got all kinds of problems over there. That's a whole nother investigative piece of what's going on. But you know what Rebecca and I were saying, you buy a book from Thriftbooks say you're buying a backlist title published, you know, before two years ago. Probably not written by somebody's server running somewhere. Free shipping on orders over 15 bucks to folks in the US and every purchase gets you closer to a free book. Redemption through the reading rewards program. Also, it's holiday time. People are giving gifts for various holidays. Books, movies. Physical media is back. I've even heard it's coming for CDs. Vanessa. Like people are like treating CDs not quite like records, but wanting to collect their own physical media. I couldn't play a CD right now if I wanted to.
- [46:44]
Vanessa Diaz
Neither could I. Nope.
- [46:46]
Jeff O'Neill
I could play a record, though, which probably says a lot about me that I'm not sure I want to take a look in the mirror about that. But thanks to ThriftBooks.com for sponsoring the show. Rebecca has. Has said she has started Flesh and she's reading some other stuff. Passing that along. We'll get her full report there. But Vanessa, you have a couple things here. Tell me about what you've been reading recently.
- [47:06]
Vanessa Diaz
These are such Vanessa picks. That's great.
- [47:08]
Jeff O'Neill
That's why you're here. You're Vanessa.
- [47:09]
Vanessa Diaz
Be Vanessa the first. I will. It's actually a segue to one of the last things we talked about, which is translation. And that's so one of my favorite books books of the year kind of coming at the end. Is someone walking on. Someone is walking on your grave. My cemetery journey.
- [47:21]
Jeff O'Neill
I was telling my kids about this in Pals when we picked it up because I saw the blurb and it seems so interesting.
- [47:25]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah. And it's just like such a. It pops at you. It's bright lime green or like chartreuse green. Anyway, it's by Mariana Enriquez, who I always say, as much as I. I'm like a. She's the per. The biggest person that I'm a fan of while I've never read her work and it's because her horror has always just terrified me.
- [47:41]
Jeff O'Neill
Too scary.
- [47:43]
Vanessa Diaz
It really is. I mean, she's one of those terrible. Those people that's in that big wave of Latin American horror that writes about the everyday horrors that plague Latin America. And that's what makes her stuff so terrifying. So I'm like babying my way towards it. But this one feels like it was written for me because it is. You know, after a friend of hers's parent, I believe passed away, she just spent a lot of time thinking about this concept of resting places and death. Death rituals. Death. Resting places are a thing that I feel like, we talk about much more openly in Latin American culture, but she doesn't just do the Latin American portion. She actually got to things thinking about how other cultures across the world. So it's like part travelogue. She goes to Prague, to Buenos Aires. She goes to the catacombs in Paris. She goes all over the place to kind of investigate. Yes. This concept of resting places. How do we treat them? Who are the custodians? What are the ghosts that haunt them? And so it's a lot about cemeteries and death of the way we think about those things in the hands of a person who spends a lot of time thinking about that stuff in the more, like, macabre way. This is a little bit less. So it was. I, I, hands down, I read parts of this at a cemetery. Highly recommend.
- [48:46]
Jeff O'Neill
Whoa.
- [48:48]
Vanessa Diaz
It was for Day of the Dead, so, you know, it wasn't just like trolling around cemeteries for funsies. Although that's a thing I would do.
- [48:53]
Jeff O'Neill
Sure. Do it if you want.
- [48:54]
Vanessa Diaz
So. Yeah. And then the second one is just. It's called Stolen Crown by Tracy Boorman, which her. It's not her research, but somebody recently found out, which is a really big deal in the Tudor history community, that the biography of Elizabeth I by William Camden, that always made it sound like the succession was very, very, like, decided upon, that James VI was like, absolutely. Her pick was recently discovered to have been pasted over and changed. And if you know anything about that succession crisis, she was famously the Virgin Queen. Right. Like, just very much insisted on never getting married, never having kids. It was not super clear. And the book just this deep dive into, like, why that succession crisis was such a big freaking deal. And what a big deal it was that she in particular was this monarch that made that choice. So it's so nerdy, but it's so good. And Tracy Borman just writes really excessively, and it reads like a soap opera at times. And that's my favorite kind of history. So. So those are my picks.
- [49:45]
Jeff O'Neill
Terrific. I read this a while ago, but I'm talking about now because it's out now. And the interview I did with the author will be on First Edition probably tomorrow. It's Devouring Time, A Writer's Life of a Biography of the Great Writer Jim Harrison by Todd Goddard. Jim Harrison, who's best known. He's such an odd career. He wrote Legends of the Fall, which is a special movie for some people of a certain age. I don't want to speak for anyone here, but he is a. But also a poet. One of Anthony Bourdain's favorite writer because he's a real lust for life. You know, woods, you know, outdoorsman. Woodsman has one of the great author photos of all time which is the COVID of this book. A real weathered face, like smoking a dart and like you know, kind of a not. He's a. He's a. He is a was. I'm sorry I passed away a little while ago. A walking archetype for a certain kind of post Hemingway writer. And the book is really cool and it's. He never won a major award. A lot of people wouldn't recognize his name even though if they know legend fall but then also has real fans who consume a lot of his stuff and really do admire and revere him. As a note, if this is interesting to you at all, you can get it for 99 cents as an audiobook through Audible right now. And 5.99 is a Kindle book. I don't know why it just came out a couple weeks ago. The hardcover is a really nice, beautiful hardcover. It's 30 bucks, like whatever. But if there's something you or someone you know might be interested in. Unusual for front list to have it on sale. So you know, I'm not getting paid to say anything about that. I just was looking at it when I was pulling up how many reviews or anything. I just saw it there. So that's pretty fascinating there as well. The other thing I've been doing a lot of zero to well reading. I'm going to begin. We're just wrapping up our season one recording and I'm going to be trying to blitz some books at the end of the year. You were saying you're putting together. You also do an end of the year blitz. Is that was I hearing?
- [51:51]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's. And for usually it had to do with the like, oh, I don't have any work required reading. And so like here we go. That list is. Is aspirational to the 9th. Like there's no freaking way I'm getting through like even. Yeah 20 of it I don't think. But I do have a list.
- [52:06]
Jeff O'Neill
Do you have a top couple that you really want to get to that you wouldn't mind sharing?
- [52:10]
Vanessa Diaz
I'm actually kind of thinking about doing Mona's Eyes now because I am too. Yeah. Like that's. I just feel. It feels like the good for that time of year in particular. Right. Like it's just like yes, let's. Let's go there. I have been meaning to read the one day we will all have been against this, which is maybe less of a holiday ready. But still something that I've been meaning to get to. It was one of the other Booker Prize winners, I want to say the Loneliness of Sonja and Sunny.
- [52:37]
Jeff O'Neill
Yes.
- [52:38]
Vanessa Diaz
And then Flashlight. Those are just a bunch of books that I've been meaning to get to, but I have not.
- [52:42]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I mean, flashlight. In Sonia and Sunny. I want. I would like to read Sonia and Sunny, but I have to admit, I'm going to be moneyballing my page count because people like 10 for 10 by the end of the year. And Rebecca and I were saying, like, maybe I've got. I might have 3,000 pages of reading in me. Yeah, right. You know, 10, 30. Excuse me. 10. 300 page books. Sony. And Sony will take two of those slots.
- [53:06]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah, true.
- [53:07]
Jeff O'Neill
I don't know, man. I don't know. I need to work on my list. Maybe Rebecca and I'll talk about it later. All right, if. If you all out there have your 10 for 10 or one book that you really want to try to get to, shoot us an email podcast atbookbookriot.com. so you have a note here about the Secret History. Were you a Secret History fan? Are you just saying you like the episode? What did you want to say here about this?
- [53:29]
Vanessa Diaz
Oh, my gosh. Well, yes, I am a big fan of the Secret History of the book, period. Only read it about four or five years ago.
- [53:35]
Jeff O'Neill
So.
- [53:36]
Vanessa Diaz
Okay, there's that.
- [53:36]
Jeff O'Neill
But because this is what you do if you didn't catch it, you. Eventually a book nerd of our ilk will circle back around to it. If you didn't get it the first time, it's just gonna happen.
- [53:45]
Vanessa Diaz
It was one on, like, a very massive list, running list that I've had for, I don't know, like, a decade of, like, I'm gonna read this someday. So I just finally got to it. But I. I tell Rebecca seconds all the time, unapologetically, I'm a giant nerd for this podcast. I'm not saying it because I'm talking to Jeff. It's just a good time. It's one of those that I, like, put on when I go over my little fall peeping leaf walks. Like, it's great, but the Secret History one was really great. And I have a bone to pick with you at this point, which is.
- [54:09]
Jeff O'Neill
Okay.
- [54:09]
Vanessa Diaz
No, it's a good one. Oh, I want nothing more.
- [54:12]
Jeff O'Neill
A good bone to pick. That's not a thing. You're translating from Spanish incorrectly. You got to change your Idiom. What is that?
- [54:18]
Vanessa Diaz
Because I'm never going to get the thing that I now want with every cell in my body, and that is a Muppet adaptation. Were specifically, as you said, Miss Piggy Kung Fu's karate chops. Bunny. Into the.
- [54:32]
Jeff O'Neill
Into the river.
- [54:32]
Vanessa Diaz
I made an inhuman sound when y' all said that on the walk. Like, people looked at me and a crow literally did like this. Where, like with this little head. And I was like, I'm sorry I cackled. Did I just speak your language? I didn't mean to. So anyway, it's a great episode, but never has the Muppet thing hit harder than that specific little thing that I'm never gonna get. It's never gonna happen. And that's where the bone to pit came in.
- [54:53]
Jeff O'Neill
It is. It is a funn because for. For a couple in the middle, we're like, oh, this is too dark and strange. And now it's like an absurdist performance art thing to actually try to imagine Oedipus Rex with Muppets.
- [55:11]
Vanessa Diaz
Are like this. So, yeah, the idea of like Camilla and Charles being Kermit and I could not stop laughing.
- [55:17]
Jeff O'Neill
Oh, yeah, I did like that. I was proud of myself for Camilla, Charles being like.
- [55:22]
Vanessa Diaz
I couldn't contain myself. And again, I'm never gonna get it. So if anybody is like super bored and just feels like making. Oh my God.
- [55:28]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, well, maybe that's the thing that's going to turn you into an AI video acolyte is that you can dial up from Sora a scene of the Secret History with Muppets.
- [55:40]
Vanessa Diaz
Stay tuned for my side Hustle starring role.
- [55:42]
Jeff O'Neill
So, yeah, it continues to be a good show. The Secret History we're kind of leaning into. Let's dive in. That's our longest episode.
- [55:49]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah.
- [55:50]
Jeff O'Neill
142. Yeah. A1. 42.
- [55:53]
Vanessa Diaz
42 juicy.
- [55:54]
Jeff O'Neill
Which is pretty long. And we get went long on the one we just went. So we're. I don't know, we haven't heard it's too long yet. And again, if you're. I think if you're into it for an hour and 12 minutes, you don't mind an extra 20 minutes. That's how I am with podcasts I like. So thank you for the kind words and the back door plug I was going to do for zero to well read. Anyway, we. The irony is because our listeners came through and more than doubled our. Our ratings review drive, we're up to like 375 or something. We are going to do the Christmas Carol, which of course does have A Muppet version with a humid in it.
- [56:32]
Vanessa Diaz
So my favorite movies of all time.
- [56:34]
Jeff O'Neill
Is it. Do you, do you love that movie?
- [56:37]
Vanessa Diaz
Oh, I can quote it like whenever I'm really cold. I have been known, even in the office just go, this is the island. Like, I can quote that movie backwards, forward, sideways, like it is what? And again, like the juxtaposition of like Kermy and Miss Piggy. It's just so good.
- [56:52]
Jeff O'Neill
I think growing up in a place without seasons did something to you in a fundamental way that has been unlocked in moving to, to Portland and also and then Treasure Island. That's the only other Muppet movie that actually is based on a book, I think.
- [57:07]
Vanessa Diaz
Yeah. The rest are all just capers. Etc.
- [57:09]
Jeff O'Neill
I do love the Great Muppet Keeper. That movie was very important to, to me. One phrase that's made it into my household's lexicon is I don't have any other pants. When they're trying to like get through the gate and they're like, maybe you lift into the pants. Like, I don't have any other pants. And every now and again if we're doing laundry or like we're on a trip and we someone else is one of us, be like, I don't have any pants.
- [57:31]
Vanessa Diaz
It's so good.
- [57:33]
Jeff O'Neill
Really good stuff. Miss Piggy is a lead in that movie too. All right, well, this goes to show that we need to start a pop up Miss Piggy newsletter or podcast or a social video channel. Vanessa, thank you for joining me today. Shownotesbookriot.com Listen, shoot us a holiday recommendation request if you've got one. We've got a few in podcastookriot.com Also, if you're on Patreon, if you're on the Patreon members, there's priority. You get priority queue priority boarding over there. Though I think so far we haven't hit a deluge and I don't want to promise anything I can't deliver on, but I think if you get them in pretty quickly, there's a really good chance we're going to get to yours over there and we'll talk about the be our best books of the year list when it comes out next week. Vanessa, thanks for joining me. Talk to you later.
- [58:23]
Vanessa Diaz
Thanks, bye.
- [58:32]
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- [58:52]
Vanessa Diaz
Meet the New Avengers. That's cool.
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