ONYX STORM Rolls In, It's a Very Bookish Oscars, and Making Your Own Book Fair

Summary

Book Riot - The Podcast: Episode Summary
"ONYX STORM Rolls In, It's a Very Bookish Oscars, and Making Your Own Book Fair"
Release Date: January 27, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of Book Riot - The Podcast, hosts Jeff O'Neal and Rebecca Schinsky delve into the latest happenings in the literary world. From the tumultuous release of the highly anticipated Onyx Storm at Target to the buzz surrounding the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Awards and the Oscars’ focus on book adaptations, the duo covers a spectrum of topics relevant to avid readers and industry enthusiasts alike.

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Onyx Storm Release and Target Editions

The episode kicks off with a discussion about the recent release of Onyx Storm, a book that has become a focal point due to its limited edition releases at Target. Jeff shares his firsthand experience attending multiple Onyx Storm events at Target's Pals section, noting the retailer's unique approach this time around.

Key Points:

• Onyx Storm was available in both standard and deluxe limited editions, priced at $27 and $32 respectively.
• Unlike previous releases, Target introduced exclusive artwork, sparking backlash from the BookTube community.
• The high demand caused technical issues, mirroring the challenges Target faced during the Taylor Swift book launch.

Notable Quotes:

• Jeff O'Neill (04:06): “A $32 like 600 page hardcover is kind of standard now for some of the big [titles].”
• Rebecca Schinsky (05:11): “There are folks who are mad about the exclusive art in the Target-only edition.”

The hosts analyze the logistical shortcomings Target faced, contrasting it with their handling of the Taylor Swift release. They speculate whether Target underestimated the demand for Onyx Storm, leading to website crashes and consumer frustration.

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National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Awards

Transitioning to awards season, Jeff and Rebecca discuss the NBCC Awards, highlighting the finalists and their potential impact on the literary community.

Key Points:

• James and the Beauty Land and Another Land are among the prominent nominees.
• Hanif Abdurraqib’s The Devil in America is a favorite in the criticism category.
• The NBCC’s Prize for First Book, a genre-agnostic category, celebrates debut authors across various formats.

Notable Quotes:

• Rebecca Schinsky (13:53): “I think this is the only just first book. And let's throw them all into the Jambalaya and see that.”
• Jeff O'Neill (11:32): “I read his Another Land a million years ago... probably the first book I read because I read a book blogger write about it.”

The conversation underscores the NBCC’s role in recognizing diverse voices and innovative works, praising its inclusivity and the unique prestige it holds within the literary awards landscape.

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Oscar Nominations for Adapted Screenplays

The discussion shifts to the Oscars, focusing on the Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture categories. The hosts evaluate nominated films adapted from books, offering insights into their potential success at the awards.

Key Points:

• Nickel Boys emerges as a standout adaptation, commended for its faithful and impactful screenplay.
• Other nominees include Conclave, Emilia Perez, and Sing Sing, each presenting unique challenges and strengths.
• They express skepticism towards Emilia Perez’s wide acclaim, questioning its depth and representation accuracy.

Notable Quotes:

• Rebecca Schinsky (16:24): “Nickel Boys is phenomenal.”
• Jeff O'Neill (19:30): “I think Conclave would be a fun one to read. That's... a pulpy [story].”

The hosts anticipate a competitive race, particularly praising Nickel Boys for its storytelling and adaptation quality, while expressing curiosity about lesser-known nominees' performances.

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Book Recommendations: Front List Foyer

In their regular segment, Front List Foyer, Jeff and Rebecca share their current reading lists, recommending books that range from whimsical to intellectually stimulating.

Jeff's Picks:

• "The Language of Mathematics" by Raul Rojas: A collection of mini-histories about mathematical symbols, which Jeff found engaging despite the challenging content.
  • Quote (30:05): “It's basically a bunch of mini histories about the symbols in math.”

Rebecca's Picks:

• "I Heard Her Call My Name" by Lucy Son: An audiobook that Rebecca praises for its compelling narrative and exploration of late-life transitioning.
  • Quote (25:41): “Her voice is so just like mesmerizing. As soon as she started speaking, I was like, oh, here we go. I'm just. I'm in.”
• "A Love Story" by Maggie Sue: A novel Rebecca describes as entertaining and imaginative, highlighting its wild premise involving a sentient blob.
  • Quote (28:36): “The rest of it is completely bonkers.”

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Guest Interview: Jamie Attenberg on A Thousand Words of Summer and Book Fair Project

In the latter half of the episode, Rebecca interviews author Jamie Attenberg, who shares her inspiring initiatives to promote literacy and community engagement through writing projects and book fairs.

Key Topics:

• A Thousand Words of Summer: A community writing project encouraging participants to write a thousand words daily over the summer, now expanded to a Substack platform with around 40,000 participants.
• Book Fair Sponsorship: Utilizing proceeds from her writing project, Jamie sponsors book fairs in New Orleans schools, ensuring every student receives a book.
• Collaboration with Scholastic: Jamie collaborates with Scholastic to facilitate book fairs, emphasizing equity and accessibility for all students.

Notable Quotes:

• Jamie Attenberg (37:35): “It's something that exists for everyone to encourage them to write. So I'm always just trying to make this... free and available and accessible to people because I love writing and reading and books.”
• Rebecca Schinsky (50:55): “It doesn't have to have some, like, secondary agenda to it.”

Jamie elaborates on the seamless partnership with Scholastic, the logistics of organizing equitable book fairs, and the profound joy of witnessing students engage with literature. Her passion underscores the impact of grassroots efforts in fostering a love for reading among youth.

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Conclusion

Book Riot - The Podcast wraps up with a heartfelt endorsement of Jamie Attenberg’s work, encouraging listeners to participate in her writing project and support her book fairs. Jeff and Rebecca highlight the importance of community-driven initiatives in promoting literacy, leaving listeners with actionable ways to get involved and make a difference.

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Additional Resources:

• Jamie Attenberg’s Substack: Craft Talk for insights on writing and community projects.
• A Thousand Words of Summer: Upcoming event starting May 31st for participants to engage in daily writing.
• Jamie’s Book: A Reason to See You Again, endorsed by Book Riot.

For more detailed information and links, listeners are encouraged to visit the Book Riot website and refer to the show notes for direct access to resources mentioned in the episode.

Transcript

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Geoff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Geoff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

Box right now at Jack, every bite's a big deal.

[Jamie Attenberg]

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[Geoff O'Neill]

I'm Geoff O'Neill. I'm Rebecca Schinsky and today we're talking about the Onyx Storm. Storm crashing. Yeah. Thundering lightning wrecking havoc. I guess meteorological analogy goes here. National Book Critics Circle Award finalists, Oscar nominees. Rebecca saw the nickel boys. We've got reading to do. We have a segment B that's going to be on the back half of the show. Rebecca, tell the people who you're going to be talking to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'll be talking with Jamie Attenberg. Many of y'all know her as a novelist. She's written a few memoirs, but she also runs a, I guess writing community project every summer now called A Thousand Words of Summer that started on Twitter several years ago and has grown into being based on Substack now with more than 40,000 participants. And for the last two years, Jamie has used the financial proceeds from the Thousand Words of Summer portion of her work to sponsor a book fair at a school in her town. She lives in New Orleans that makes it possible for every student to walk away from the book fair with books. A really cool thing. I subscribed to her substack and I got to read the story about it this past November and I thought, you know, like, especially in this moment where a lot of us are looking for ways to be more deeply connected to local community grassroots effort, things that make direct impact on the kids in your neighborhood and you don't have to run for school board to do it. There are so many other ways to make an impact and support literacy efforts. So I just wanted to talk to Jamie and you know, when I invited her, she said, I'm not An expert. I just do this. And I was like that's the point. Point is that you're not an expert. You don't have to be an expert or a professional to be able to put together something that will support literacy and education efforts in your local community and make a big difference in kids lives. So I'll be talking with her about that in the second half of the show.

[Geoff O'Neill]

I think that's it. So it's going to be a little shorter on the first half of the show but there's actually quite a bit of news before we do that. Let's take our first sponsor break. So Theonic Storm honestly didn't go super well I guess on the whole. I was at Pals several times this week. I guess I just in and out, you know.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Because you're living right.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Because I live. I'm living right. Always going in. I bought the new Hong Kong for book discussion that's going on Patreon the 30th is when that goes up. I gotta read that book this weekend.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Luckily it's short end of next week.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Anyway so they have plenty of copies there as of Wednesday, the January 22nd of the Deluxe limited edition. So couple things struck me. There was a bunch of them. They put them on a special cart. Pals almost never does this. They did it for Intermezzo. Like these are the kinds of things to do.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Intermezzo, the one adult novel to generate midnight release parties in recent memory.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Yeah, yeah. So they had a bunch of them. There's a standard edition and a deluxe limited edition. They had them both. The price delta was as much as I thought it was going to be. It's like 27 I think for the standard in 32 for the deluxe. So it's only five bucks which okay, in five bucks it means something to a lot of people I guess. But I was like if you're already going to buy a hardcover anyway and.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

A $32 like 600 page hardcover is kind of standard now for some of the big.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Seriously so low that I wonder if I misread that. My old maybe was 37 99. Maybe I'll do some googling here in a minute and I'll correct this. But they had a bunch of them. So it sounds like the eye of the storm. No, the eye is where it's calm. Anyway, the stormwall was target Epicenter. Epicenter. They had their own different limited edition.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes, they had an exclusive. So I learned on YouTube today.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Oh, you were on YouTube?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Not by choice.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Yeah, right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The things we do for work that it's an exclusive edition at Target, but it's not limited. And what the YouTube kids at least have parsed that to mean is that while Target ran out of copies, presently they believe there will be more of them because it's an exclusive addition to Target where you can only get it at Target. But it's not necessarily limited to like the one run that they've already sold out of. I don't know if that is correct, but this is what multiple BookTube like angry BookTube moments taught me this morning.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Well, I think maybe the angry booktube thing is the story and forget about the specific details because you have a link here about not impress the fan art. This is the. This is the final boss of book level phenomenon when it. When the exclusive art in the Target only edition or whatever people are mad about. This is the tulip craze stage of this. And that's not bad. It's great. I'm glad everyone is having a fun time. But the Target editions, which Target can go back to their factory in China and get 200,000 more of them selling for $500 on eBay today.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Bananas.

[Geoff O'Neill]

That is not sustainable. That's like real peak whatever is going on.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes.

[Geoff O'Neill]

With this kind of stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, that's. That is really the point. And you know, I was. I've seen a lot of comparisons. I think maybe you even made the comparison between how this went for Onyx Storm at Target versus how the Taylor Swift.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Rollout went. And I wonder if it's because they kind of did things in the opposite direction that Taylor Swift's was exclusively in store first. Like you had to walk your meat suit into a Target on the day after Thanksgiving to get the Taylor Swift book if you wanted it to any shot at a copy. And then it was like if there are extras they will be made available online the day after. And Onyx Storm went the other direction. It was I think available on the Target website and people were logging on at 2am and there was so much demand it crashed the Target website. So a lot of folks who were doing this was. This was basically what happened to Ticketmaster with Taylor Swift that too many people wanted in at the same time and the website couldn't handle it. And a lot of folks were really upset that they did not get their exclusive Target edition because Target's technology couldn't handle the capacity. Plus there are folks who are not impressed with what the exclusive art turns out to be. And I think this is the double edge of the sword that like you build so much hype for something that people start to have really high expectations of it. And there is a point where like what a publisher can reasonably produce inside, you know, publishing budgets and then reasonably sell for what, 32 or 35 bucks in hardcover make the margins that they need to make is like it can only get so fancy.

[Geoff O'Neill]

I'm a little. I mean the point about how they did the Taylor Swift launch in that book compared to this is interesting because it suggests to me a couple possibilities from Target's point of view. One is that they really didn't know what kind of demand this kind of thing was going to have. Kind of like the Powell's used book event where there's a mile long people. Like we thought there'd be some people, but wow.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Geoff O'Neill]

And it sort of overwhelmed the system because I think you're right. The getting your, your human body to a store is a winnowing process. Right. And I don't remember hearing a bunch of stories about huge super long lines outside of Targets and other things they or things being out of stock. So I'm going to assume that it went fairly well. So Target can do it. They. That they didn't handle it well for this is either I'm going to put incompetence out the role because they did. They can do it, Rebecca. They just did it with the Taylor Swift book is they didn't understand what they were getting themselves into. Perhaps.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. Yeah. And maybe the fact that Taylor Swift went smoothly even though that was in store first, you know, maybe they thought they had their bases covered. Like, well, if we can handle Taylor Swift demand, surely we can handle this. And there are so many competing versions of Onyx Storm. The Target one isn't the only special edition. As you were saying that I can imagine that does make it pretty difficult to get a sense of what your demand is going to be. Plus there were like a million pre orders for some other edition of it.

[Geoff O'Neill]

So if you're targeting smoothed out demand some to some degree.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

If you're Target, you're just kind of sitting on your hands like we don't know what demand is going to be. We're just going to see how many people log on at 2am and go for it.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Mm. Yeah. I wonder if they had to do over they would, they would run back the Swift playbook. I'd love to know what their print run for that thing is. There's so much I'm interested to see. Also I saw some stories I don't have a Link here about people who had access to the book early in the form of retailers. Really? Because these millions of units are floating around to be on the show floor at 9am on the 21st. Like people were reading it in social media about it. That's what's going to happen.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, it probably. Bookstores probably received it on Sunday or Monday, I would guess.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

If not sooner. And it's been sitting in their stock rooms with big tape on those boxes that say it's embargoed. But it's just tape, friend.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Yeah. And the soch so incentivizes someone to break. Like in the old days. Like if you had a spoiler like hey, you could make money off it. Now if you have a TikTok following or whatever, you can make money and cloud and get a bunch of followers. If you're one of the people oh my goding about the end of whatever book or this or that. Like the incentives are so much higher to, you know, kind of like people breaking iPhone17 rumors because the stakes are so high. You're incentivized to get into and take a look at the what the camera bump is going to look like this fall because case manufacturers are interested in move stock markets. Frankly, to have that kind of information. Really, really interesting thing. Well, for those of you who are super pumped, I hope you had a good time. I don't know. I don't even know where I would go as a civilian now that I'm not stalking the soc to see if people like the book or not. But if you're a fourth wing fan and you want to let us know what the vibe is out there about OnYxDoor [e-mail], be super interested to know. It was kind of a award bonanza day when I was writing today in books today with the national Book Critics Circle awards. And then the oscars, which included seven of the 10 best picture nominees were for adaptations. And of course the best adapted screenplay category we're interested in by itself. You know, start with NBC or when do Oscars first. Rebecca, where you want to go?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Let's do NBCC first.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Yeah. So the National Book Critics Circle Award. They did their long list in the fall earlier in the winter months ago, late 2024, which now feels about 10 years ago. And this is. We're. We're winnowing down to the short list. I said winnow now. I've said it three times in this pod.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's unusual and well, I have just realized that I put the 2024 nominees in our show notes.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Oh, okay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Y updating that.

[Geoff O'Neill]

I think I know him now. But James survives into the short list. We're going to talk about fiction. We can look at some of those. James and Beautyland are the two that I think we're most interested. Danny sent his color to television did not make it into the final five. So that handholding run to the top of that is over us fools. Joseph Oneills Godwin, which had some late breaking buzz among the critical circle at the end of last year is there. I read his Another Land a million years ago when I was in grad school and just reading book blogs for the first time. I think it might have been the first book I read because I read a book blogger write about it. Mark Sarvis wrote about it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I was just gonna say this sounds like an elegant variation.

[Geoff O'Neill]

It very much, very much was. I really liked the book. It was about cricket which I, you know it's not something I know about but I can. I can get there. So that was really cool to see. And I think the story is James still.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think so too.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The last gonna be the story. The last of the five nominees is My Friends by Hisham Matar which was also on the national Book award list this year. Yeah. I put on our blue sky for the podcast that we were delighted to see beauty land get recognized. But I look forward to celebrating James continuing sweep. The story is going to be James and let's see challenger, you're Adam Higginbotham. That is I think my leading pick among the nonfiction. So.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Well that's history. And then don't they have like criticism too because Adura Keeb is under criticism for. Yes, there's always this year which is a little strange. I guess It's. Is it. I don't know. That's essays. There's nowhere to put essays. They don't have just an essay scattered.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean his little Devil in America was much closer to criticism than there's always this year is. I think I would have put there's always this year in autobiography, memoir. It's very personal. But. And I don't know any of these other. The other four finalists in the criticism category. So I'm just going to keep rooting for Hanif Abdurah, Kevin.

[Geoff O'Neill]

All things and as I said, like the NBCC can be a little more idiosyncratic than the other major awards and I do consider it one of the major awards. This is not. This isn't the chalkiest of all possible but this is as chalky as I think the NBCC gets.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And it has one of my favorite categories, which is the prize for first book.

[Geoff O'Neill]

I love that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And this is a. Yeah, it's a genre agnostic. So by the Fire We Carry by Rebecca Nagle, which is nonfiction. Feeding Ghosts, a graphic memoir by Tessa Hall. Great Expectations, a novel by Vincent Cunningham. Ms. May does not Exist. The Life and Work of Elaine May. That's a biography.

[Geoff O'Neill]

I want to read that. Is she a film editor? I really want to read that book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Ward Toured by Cindy Juyong. Ok. Which I'm not familiar with that one. And when the Clock Broke by John Ganz, which got a lot of buzz last year. But I love this of like, let's talk about debuts and that they throw all the debuts from all the different categories together. But celebrating remarkable debuts I think is a wonderful thing to do. It's one of my favorite things, books.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Yeah. Because PEN has a first novel and the center for Fiction has a first novel. But I think this is the only just first book. And let's throw them all into the Jumbalaya and see that. That's not a bad reading list. If you just want to read five books and you're looking for like that first book, you get a little bit of everything. It's a cool award, I think, endowed by John Leonard. It's always called the John Leonard Award. I don't know who John Leonard was, but good job with that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, good job, John.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Good use of it. Oscar nominees for best adapted screenplay and picture. I don't know what this. I mean. So you saw Nickel Boys. What do you want to lead with that?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Well, let's just run through the list of best adapted screenplay. A complete unknown screenplay by James Mangold, based on. What's it called? Dylan Goes Electric is the book Conclave. The screenplay is by Peter Straughan, based on the novel by Robert Harris, Emilia Perez, screenplay by Jacques Odillard. It's based on a libretto also written by Jacques Odillard. Nickel Boys, screenplay by Ramel Ross and Jocelyn Barnes, based on the book by Colson Whitehead and Sing Sing. The screenplay is by Clint Bentley and Greg Quader. And it is based on a long New Yorker piece called the Sing Sing Follies that you can now find in paperback book form. But originally a long New Yorker piece. So interesting. And I think this is the first year in a couple of years where most of them have been book adaptations. Like last year we had Barbie as an adaptation. We've got stuff based on musicals. There was A chance Wicked was going to be in this category. There was a moment where I thought maybe the wild robot might be in this category. So I've seen all of these except a complete unknown. Currently I've seen Conclave, Emilia Perez, Nickel Boys and Sing Sing. We're going to do an episode all about adapted screenplay right before the Oscars. But Nickel Boys is phenomenal.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Is it? I'm so excited. I still can't get a showtime here. Damn it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's so. It is wonderful. It is shot in, I think the film version of second person. Basically like you see through or Bob said. Yeah, that sounds like first person shooter games. Like you see through the character, the two main characters eyes and you bounce back and forth between their two perspectives. Which I think Ramel Ross did this really beautifully. In scenes where they're talking to each other and it's not necessarily like every time one of them speaks, you bounce back and forth, but you're with a character and then you're with. You get to see them see each other and we get to see them through each other's eyes. I'm curious how your Vertigo is gonna do.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Oh, no.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There are a couple moments.

[Geoff O'Neill]

I'll take some drowning.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Where like a character is running and it's pretty jostly. It's not a whole lot. It took me a little while to sink into that way that it was shot. But once I was in it, it was so absorbing. He was really faithful to the story. And I always have to remind myself that best adapted screenplay is about how good is the screen. What's the best screenplay that to be adapted from something. It's not how good of an adaptation is it from the source material? But since we are concerned with how good of an adaptation is it, I can say I thought it was really spectacular. Quite an achievement. There's a version of a movie like that that does a Here's a really terrible thing that happened in history and let's all feel good about ourselves for going to see a movie about it. And Rommel Ross doesn't fall into any of that. It's really wonderful.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Yeah. I guess on the adapted screenplay side there's, you know, the. The long. All worthy nominees. I wondered about Wicked. My kids and I were doing this in the car when we came back from seeing Wicked. It's like it's a movie that's based on a musical that's based on a book that's based on really it's. It's really based on the movie that's based on the book, it's confusing. Frank L Bomb's original is basically a reconfigured Alice in Wonderland, but in Kansas. So it's like that is real. That is really rushing nothing all the way down. It's pretty wild. I can't think of anything else like that. I guess with like, yeah, Kiss Me Kate or something like that. You have adaptations all the way down, but, yeah, it's wicked is as. Yeah, you keep spinning. Just keep spinning.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And, you know, I've got my own opinions here. I think Emilia Perez is kind of a mess, but it also nominations. Yeah. It is the most nominated film this year. Something is happening for it in the Academy, so I don't know, but we should decide if we're going to read one of these together, which would be.

[Geoff O'Neill]

The likeliest Larry here. Conclave.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think Conclave has some juice. I have not seen a complete unknown yet, but the buzz I'm picking up around that is like, Chalamet's performance is really great. He's maybe going to win, probably going to win Best Actor, but I don't know that the film itself is actually.

[Geoff O'Neill]

I mean, I think it'll be a good time to watch it. But in terms of adaptation, like, okay, yes, it is technically based on the book, but it's based on the book of life. It's based on Bob Dylan's life. So I'm sure the book is. I've heard wonderful things about the book, actually, and maybe it gives shape and contour or whatever, but I'd love to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

See Nickel Boys take it. But I don't know. Sing, Sing. I may have a shot. Maybe they all have a shot here. We're kind of stepping on our next show about this, but I think Conclave would be a fun one to read. That's. I mean, a pulpy.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Yeah, well, it's a super wide open year at the top of the ticket, all the way down. Maybe some of the acting categories. There's some people circling, but, like, I don't think I'm not getting the sense that Emilia Perez is super widely seen or widely beloved. I don't know why it has 13 nominations. I was very surprised to see it had them in. That puts it like Lord of the Rings territory.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, it's, you know, the international voters. There's more international voters in the Academy now, and there's been quite a campaign around Emilia Perez. I do think it falls prey to many of the things, the kinds of things that Rommel Ross really avoids with Nickel Boys. But the Emilia Perez, if You're Not Familiar is about Zoe Saldana plays a lawyer in Mexico City who gets hired by, like, the head of a cartel, a really bad dude who tells her that he is actually a woman. He identifies as a woman and he wants to transition and he wants her to facilitate this process for him. Like, where is he gonna go? How are they going to keep it secret? How is he going to restart his life afterwards? And it's a weird, messy musical, like, all around this. And I think maybe there are folks who are, like, less familiar with trans issues and seeing a. Seeing this kind of representation of trans life is something that they're like, that's great, right? Most of the trans critics have said not so much. So we'll see. I think it might go that direction where people feel good about themselves for having liked that movie.

[Geoff O'Neill]

I just remember two wizard of Odds factoise. I meant to tell you. Tell me, because I. When I was in LA visiting my brother over break with my family, went to the Academy Museum. Which you haven't been to, right? Have you ever been to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I've not, no.

[Geoff O'Neill]

You would dig it. It's pretty cool. It's not like, huge Smithsonian level, but it's pretty cool to see. But they have the original ruby slippers from the wizard of Oz.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Wizard of Oz.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Fun fact. And this is maybe a wicked spoiler or. Not really. It's just in. In the original book, the slippers are silver.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Like, just silver. But because one of the big deals about the wizard of Oz movies are gonna be Technicolor. Like, they wanted the color to pop, so the production designer just decided to make them red because it looked good on camera.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Legendary.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Isn't that amazing?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's like, what a legendary choice.

[Geoff O'Neill]

That's. And then that got me. That sent me down the wizard of Oz rabbit hole on my phone that night. As you might imagine, this happens to me sometimes, but the thing that. The thing that stuck to me most is that Frank L Bomb. Frank L. Bomb.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, it's L. Frank L. Frank.

[Geoff O'Neill]

I can never keep that. Right. L. Ron Hubbard.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. It's confusing.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Good Lord. He named it Oz because he was sitting around and he looked at his file cabinet and it was like O to Z was his second file cabinet. So he just called.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So random. Like. And you don't. You don't ever think a random choice that you make like, that is gonna last for more than a century and your piece of art is iconic.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Yeah, it's like Roger Serling says in Mad men. It's like 99 cents. Someone had to think of that. Yeah, someone had. Just someone thought of that and it caught on. I can't get enough of that stuff. Anyway, anything else with Oscar nominees you want to do?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, no. Just to mention the best picture nominees that are based on books a complete unknown is there Conclave Dune Part 2. Emilio Perez and Nickel Boys and wicked Dune part.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Having not seen anything really, it will be hard to Beat Dune Part 2 In my mind as adapted screenplay. What they did with that is amazing because Dune.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, it's not nominated for a screenplay.

[Geoff O'Neill]

I know. Did I say it's what it's going to win? I said should win.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. There seems to be something going on where, like no one's going to give Denis Villeneuve his roses for the Dune series until the third until ONeills Razor has been met.

[Geoff O'Neill]

I'm sorry to tell people. The next Dune storylines is bananas, isn't it? It's gonna be. I don't know. I don't know what they're gonna do.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It gets. I have heard it gets real weird there.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Oh, I could. I could say things that you would think. Jeff, we need to take you to the doctor and take your blood pressure because you're having some sort of neurological event.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

All right, well, good luck to all nominated and we'll figure out what we're gonna read and watch together.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Yeah. Should we do frontless foyer here in a minute? Yeah, let's do it. Sponsored by Thriftbooks. Thriftbooks. Did you know? 19 million titles to browse. New and used books, DVDs, Blu Ray, everything else. I was actually. My daughter and I were scoping around last night. She spent some time in New York and took some pictures of books she wanted to buy. They didn't have space in their bag and so like. Okay, I bet we can find some of these on Thriftbooks. We did. She put them in there. What's cool about Thriftbooks too, is like on some sites that have new end used, it can be a little bit hard to navigate the used pieces. I'm not talking about any site in specific except for the one that you're all thinking of, but what's cool about the landing page for a book on Thriftbooks is they have all of the additions right, like right there. And easy to see what the price is right there. So you can kind of toggle between them and see. One thing I appreciate there, free shipping on book orders of $15 or more in the US delivered right to your door. News and used, plus DVD and Blu Ray. You know, there's. There's a bit more of a crowd out there that doesn't want to stream. They'd rather own the physical media because stuff goes away, you don't have to pay for it for a million years.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

People have the Blu Rays.

[Geoff O'Neill]

I have an Apple movie library of purchased movies that I'm concerned about into the future because I spent some money on those. And blu rays and DVDs aren't really. I'm not like, you know, the performance king when it comes to resolution. Everything else like that, but that I have. It would be nice. But there's. If you're out there with blu rays and DVDs and music too, a little bit. And there's a Thriftbooks reading rewards program. I cashed a free book in last night to get something out.

[Jamie Attenberg]

Yeah, you did.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Almost embarrassed to talk about it's the history of the Alphabet. There you go.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's the one that you're embarrassed to talk about. Did we finally.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Look, everyone knows. Everyone knows that you. It's kind of like the. The lie you. You tell to keep from telling the other truth. The ones I'm embarrassed about. That's the front that covers. That's. That's what I just told you is air cover for the real embarrassing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

For the really embarrassing stuff.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Okay, well, so anyway, there's that frontless foyer. Rebecca, you're up first.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, I listened to I Heard her Call My Name by Lucy Son and.

[Geoff O'Neill]

How right was I?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You were so right. I downloaded it while we were talking. Like, I found it on Spotify during last week's podcast recording. I was like, you're just selling the hell out of this. I'm going to listen to it. And then I had some baking to do the next day, so Lucy Sant and I spent like four hours in my kitchen and then I just ran errands so I could drive around and finish. It is so compelling both just how deeply she articulates the experience of transitioning period, but also transitioning so late in life and coming to understand herself, having other people come to understand her in a new way. A really just a really powerful story. And her voice is so just like mesmerizing. As soon as she started speaking, I was like, oh, here we go. I'm just. I'm in. So that was a great recommendation from you. One of the many benefits of front list foyer is getting to crib each other's reading perks reading picks. And then I read A Love Story by Maggie sue, which is maybe my most random reading pick in Quite a while. I stumbled on it in a catalog while I was prepping for the draft for the season. I paused on it because it had a Kevin Wilson blurb. And the pitch is, the main character, Vi, is in her early 20s. She dropped out of college a couple of months ago. Things were not going well for her, and her boyfriend broke up with her. And she's is. She's just a mess. She works at, like, a sad business traveler. Hotel life is not great. She's drinking too much. It's not a good scene. Goes one night to a club to meet a co worker who's invited her out. And she's waiting outside, like, for some reason, standing by the dumpster. And she sees this blob on the ground, pokes at it. And because we're in Sci Fi Land, she, like, determines that this is not goo and it's not something that's spilled. This blob is a creature. It is sentient. Later that night, when she's drunk, she packs it up, takes it home, and she starts talking. She names him Bob. So that's been really entertaining around my house. And so she's got Bob the Blob. She starts talking to him and she's just, you know, like, this is what I've got to do today. Blah, blah, blah. And she's like, you could at least give me a hand. You know, just sort of casually joking around with her now pet blob. And then a hand grows out of the blob. Yeah, she's. What is happening here? So she sees what else she could get the blob, Bob to grow. And eventually Bob grows into a man or something like a man. And he's hot and he's quiet and he likes her, and he lives in her house. And she is. She's in favor of all of these things. But Bob watches a lot of TV and starts to understand that there is a world outside of Vi's apartment and maybe he wants to experience it. And this is where the story turns into kind of horror of what's going to happen to Bob the Blob? What happens to Vi? It is cuckoo banana pans. Like, it's a really just wild premise. There are some debut novel problems here. I had a really good time, though, being like, okay, I kind of see where this is going, but how is she gonna do it? And just the novelty of I can grow this blob into a human man, and what might that lead to was like, great imagination on Maggie Sue. I'll sign up for whatever she writes. Next.

[Geoff O'Neill]

That is. That's what we call, like we call wild.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It is wild. Yeah. I was describing it to Bob. My Bob, not Bob the Blob. And like, she. She shows the. She shows the Blob pictures of movie stars and understands that he will form whatever he has seen. So he's got like movie star abs and a face that's like a conglomeration of Brad Pitt and Ryan Gosling and George Cliff Clooney and sparkling white teeth and he's just, you know, a total smoke show. And the rest of it is completely bonkers.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Sounds a little. It's got like weird science vibes from the 80s.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's a good situation.

[Geoff O'Neill]

That's interesting.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. It read super fast. I was just like, well, who knows what this is going to be? But let's get in there.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Let's see what are we talking about on my side. Those are your. Those are the two you have.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Those are my two, yeah.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Last night I finished the Language of Mathematics by Raul Rojas.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh.

[Geoff O'Neill]

So what is. It's man. This. I'm also confessing to this one. I loved it. It's. It's got way more math into the understand. So my eyes kind of blurred over some of the harder stuff. But it basically is a bunch of mini histories about the symbols in math.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Which was why it's really wild. So I'll just give you one, please. And I'll try to keep it to three. So some guy named John Wallace, who apparently is a very famous mathematician. I'm sorry for all you math nerds out there that you're like, what? That's like saying Michael Jordan was some basketball player. I get it. Yeah. In 1655. Was trying to figure out how to write a formula for the surface area of a cone.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Geoff O'Neill]

A conical shape. I think I'm getting this. Right. And he's like, did this thought. Well, what if you think of it as a stack of coins? Because it's hard. Because it's smooth. Right. So it's hard to do. Well, if you think of a stack of coins, you could get the side of the coin because it's flat. And then. Well, the problem is then there's a disjunction because that's stair step. But what about the space between the stairs? You're not getting. It's like, well, what if you thought about a stack of infinitesimally small. An infinite stack of coins. Right? Because then there would be no gap because they're so small. I was like, okay, I guess I'm here. Do you. I don't really know how my brain hits, but you kind of get the idea. But he needed a symbol for this thing. Like one of these was what, one of these infinitesimally small triangles. How am I going to Earth coins? I'm going to record. So he made up the infinity sign. Oh, like I'm just going to use this sign.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This will just be it.

[Geoff O'Neill]

This is it. One divided by that sideways eight was his unit for that infinitesimally small coin. And then some people, Euler and Brunelli, who other famous mathematician. Brunelli's principle, I think is about airflow. They like that's really useful to have a sign for infinity because I guess before that we were just saying infinity all the time, like animals. So that's another one that's. That goes in the Sterling Awards. Some guy thought, yeah, we should have.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

A symbol for this.

[Geoff O'Neill]

We should have a symbol for this. So there you go. A bunch of stuff like that. Really good.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's fun. Yeah, like a whole book of. Hey, did you knows?

[Geoff O'Neill]

Yeah. And you know, Isaac Newton used a parentheses instead of a decimal point. Like the decimal point was independently created by A6, a 12th century Islamic scholar. But because of what we did to the Islamic scholars in the 12th century, kind of got lost and had to be subsequently reinvented. And if you look at Isaac Newton's notations, like for PI, it's not 3.14, it's three left hand parentheses.141319. It looks. Anyway, I thought it was cool. I'm sure there's like me and a bunch of math nerds, but I thought it was cool. Did we already talk about Life in three dimensions on the show? Did we do this on the show or do it outside the show?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's been outside the show.

[Geoff O'Neill]

I haven't had a chance to talk about it. I was hoping to talk about. I just interviewed Shigeo Ishii, who's the professor and researcher who wrote Life in Three Dimensions can be on first edition in two weeks. So watch out for that. Life in three Dimensions. His research and the book is about psychological richness, basically adding a third dimension to what one might consider as an element of a good life. So not surprisingly, even if you don't know anything about it makes sense to think, are you happy? Do you read A Happy Life? Do you read? Do you live a meaningful life? Okay. You can be happy and not do anything that means anything. Sip around and you know, you're a wall E character at some point Perfectly happy but doesn't mean anything. And he what his work presupposes and I don't know if it presupposes, formulates this idea that there's this third dimension. And he calls it psychological richness. I should have asked him and I didn't. Why not just calling an interesting life because I think it's probably as useful as it. Like what about leaving it interesting? Like how is that go into something that could be considered the good life? And what are the. What are the effects of it? Does some studies about it. What kind of experiences do people have that leads to it? I thought it was awesome. I immediately recommend it to you. It's going to be. I think we're probably gonna do a pop up book club about it that it could be us talking about it. I thought it was really cool. It's been a while since I've read one of these Pop psychology. It's meant for a mass audience. There's not a lot there's studies in it, but it's totally approachable. I thought it provocative and I kind of felt seen by it in some ways. I even said to Professor Oishi is like, you know, even if I see a movie that's bad, I'm not angry that I wasted my time. Like, yeah, I like an interesting mess. And he's like nodding his head vigorously. It sounds like you're this kind of person. But we also talk about how books can and also the limits of it. Like some kinds of books and experience of reading or art or movies are maybe more likely to engender moments of psychological curiosity or lead to psychologically rich lives. So I really recommend that. I thought it was really good on audio and then you'll have a first edition episode for that. I also listened to Alligator Tears by Edgar Gomez which is coming out from Crown in a couple of months. It's his second memoir in essays. The first one was I think a soft skull or $2 radio thing a few years ago. This is coming out from Crown. It's kind of weird. I was interested in it on audio and I was walking in my neighborhood and I swear to God there was a review copy just in the middle of the sidewalk about two blocks from my house for Alligator Tears. So I don't know who around me is also in the book game. It fell out of your bag and strange, it's now mine. And I was like, I took that as a sign to move it up my list. I'm glad I did. It's a story of a young Queer Latinx kid growing up in the 90s. The first. His first book was called High Risk Homosexual and it's treads. It's a similar format and I think there's some similar topics. One thing I was a little confused by is some of the big events in his life. In Alligator Tears, which is the most recent one, I was like, didn't really spend a lot of time on that. And I'm assuming now it got covered in the first book, so. So I'm not really sure, but it was really good. Especially good on audio. Like I said, memoir by a literary writer. Audio is the only way to go for me. Now I have this galley, though, that the universe or someone put on the sidewalk. Not sure.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Brought it into your consciousness for your own psychological richness. Yeah. I have pre ordered my copy of Life in Three Dimensions and I look forward. I love it when science validates my beliefs about life. And as soon as you started texting me about it, I was like, oh, yeah, sign me up.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Yeah, I guess as a way of preview of things to come. We're about to record an episode of Writers to Watch, and Edgar Gomez will be on my list.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

All right.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Yeah, that's one to watch for me. Check out thrift books. Stick around for Jamie if you want to hit the Patreon. What, do we just put a hot list check in? We did a hot list check in and there was. I think I like this. I think this format's gonna stick. It only takes me 18 months to get stuff right. Generally speaking. I like.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, for as long as we've tinkered with some other things, I think 18 months is pretty good.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Minimum viable podcast. Isn't that what MVP stands for?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Absolutely.

[Geoff O'Neill]

All right, you're going to hear a little ad or something or a break, and then you're here, Rebecca and Jamie, so stick around for that. Thanks, everybody.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Thanks, y'all. All right, listeners, as promised, I'm here with author Jami Attenberg, who, as I told you at the top of the show, runs a really fantastic. Jamie, how do you think about Thousand Words Community Writing Project?

[Jamie Attenberg]

It is a group writing accountability project.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay. And would you just tell our folks how it got started? When did it start? And I know it's grown to, what, like 40,000 people now?

[Jamie Attenberg]

I think so. I think it'll be probably about 50,000 people participating this year. I mean, it's hard to know how many people actually do it. Do it, but I think it's great. Sometimes people are doing it, don't even know what it is. And I just see a little hashtag, a thousand words a summer out there on the Internet. It started eight years ago and it was just, I just decided to write a thousand words a day with a friend here in New Orleans who's a teacher and she has summers off as teachers do. So that's why we decided to do it for a two week block then. And I, I tweeted about it because I'm a pretty online person. And then all these other people said, oh, I want to write a thousand words a day too for two weeks. And so I set up a little mailing list and I decided to send little reminders out to everybody who was signed up. And then I asked some of my writer friends to also write little motivational notes. And it was very organic. And the first year I think we had 2,000 people that signed up for it. And then the next year was 5 and the next year was 10. And so every year just keeps growing. And now it's a book that's just out now in paperback as well. So that has a collection of all these great letters from over the course of the last seven years and some words from me as well about creativity and productivity and more.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We'll put a link to the book in the show notes and also to your sub stack Craft Talk, where you're writing about the craft of writing and other folks show up and guest and that's the place that Thousand Words flows through now, correct? The substack.

[Jamie Attenberg]

Yes, that's right. It starts it's the first two weeks of June.

[Geoff O'Neill]

Cool.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So folks have some time to prepare. If you're like thinking about a writing project, you can get yourself geared up to do your thing. Thousand words a day in that, that two weeks in June. That's awesome. So I've followed you online for a while. I have, you know, read your work and I saw last year, I guess in 2023, like, oh, Jamie did a book fair at a local school and I didn't realize at first that it was connected to Thousand Words. But would you just talk about that whole process? What inspired the book fair project? How did you get going on it?

[Jamie Attenberg]

So one of the, one of my favorite things about A Thousand Words a summer is that it's also a fundraiser. So every year people, you know, tip it, you know, tip a little bit, subscribe, you know, subscribe to the newsletter and we take all the money and we each person, author who contributes a letter, I donate to a charity they've chosen and then I have extra left over And I'm always trying to find something in New Orleans, where I live, that I kept that I can help, you know, younger people here if I can. So we've sponsored different writing schools for kids, things like that. But I kind of wanted, like, a bang for the buck bang. And. And I actually read this article on Romper by a woman named Megan Angelo that was all about their Scholastic book fair that she had arranged for in her school. And it was a really lovely piece. And I was like, maybe that's the way to do it. So. So the original inspiration actually came from that. From that piece, which I had. I like, when you asked me to do this, I was like, wait, I need to sort of, you know, take my steps back here a little bit. And. And that was actually what it was. And I thought, oh, that looks like something that's worth exploring. So I reached out to somebody at Scholastic and said, how do I. How do I do this? And they are able to kind of figure out what schools have. Scholastic have had Scholastic book fairs in the past. They're able to access which schools have a need for. For it. And they are. They will also contact somebody at the school for you. So I think. I think a lot of people who are doing this probably are already familiar with a school. It sounds like this. You know, the woman who wrote this article knew. Knew of the school. But for me, as someone who doesn't have children, I was like, I don't even know where to start. So Scholastic was really helpful in that way of helping me figure out a great school.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's so wonderful. I had wondered, like, is this just the school in her neighborhood or how did you get connected to them? So that was Scholastic joint.

[Jamie Attenberg]

It was. It was a Scholastic. And then. And then also I. I knew a school librarian as well who. You heard her. Her name was Maureen Iverson, and she used to work in a bookstore in New Orleans, which no longer exists, but many years ago I met her there. And so I'd see her out in the world at readings and things like that. And so I was familiar with her, too. And so we were able to have some conversations as well. So it was really about contacting Scholastic and who also were able to tell me, how much is this going to cost? How much do I need to put it, you know, a raise for this to be effective? They can give you those actual numbers because there's a per book price.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Is that a ballpark and comfortable sharing here?

[Jamie Attenberg]

Well, this year we did $10,000. I think last year was. I mean, it's not my money. You know what I mean? It's money. Right? I think we've done a little bit last. Last year, and then I thought, let's just. Let's just do 10. And I think it was. It's six. Close to 650 kids. And. And each kid got a. Got a book, and that was about 10,000. And. Yeah. And they're. And anyway, it's great because they'll. They'll set it all up for you. They have a system in place. It is easier to work with a school where they have done a book fair before and they have experience with it, I will say so. Maureen was really great because she, you know, she was a school librarian. She contacted Connecting with another school librarian. It really. It was a school in New Orleans East. It really fit the bill in a lot of ways. And, and so. And she was great to work with, and the librarian last year was great to work with.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So.

[Jamie Attenberg]

Yeah. So I think starting with Scholastic can give you the information for how much money you need and can help you organize your thoughts as to what kind of school you're looking for. You know, are you looking to do 300 kids school? Scholastic can help you figure out how, you know, for how many kids you want to sponsor, what kind of needs our. The school has everything like that they're really good about, like, just working with you step by step. And, and so I really recommend reaching out to them, just, even just to get basic information. And then you may or may not already have a contact within the school. You might be somebody, you know, like, it was me. It was like, I was surprised, and then I was delighted that I got that it was somebody that I already.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Knew that I could work with. So you're in touch with Scholastic, you get hooked up with the school, and you're like, I'm here. I have $10,000 to sponsor this book fair. I want to make sure every kid gets a book. How does that work? Do they get vouchers for it? How do. Like, what. What are the logistics of making sure the kids get books? And I assume that this is a. Like, every kid walks in knowing that they can pick something.

[Jamie Attenberg]

Every kid walks in knowing they can pick something. So they. That's what it is. There's a display that's set up in the school, and they wanted it set up in the library. And Maureen did a really great job because she was a bookstore professional in her past life.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Bless the library. This is the most beautiful.

[Jamie Attenberg]

Yeah, I was like, this is the most beautiful display I've ever seen in my life. And they walked in and they were so excited. They were just bursting with excitement to be there. You know, I talked with them in the past, the librarians in the past about this where they said that equity was really important in the school was something they talked about. And they. And that sometimes around there was some sort of, you know, people could get upset around this glass to book fair if you didn't have money. So it was like something where like every kid was going to walk out of there with something and there were no tears that year. And that was, that was really.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You're avoiding the like, everybody knows which kids get free lunches kind of scenario, correct?

[Jamie Attenberg]

Yeah. And so, so they were allowed to choose one of one kind of book or two of two kinds of books. And they, and they brought in like, you know, one class at a time. And it was over like a two, two or three day period. And then they had nighttime events as well, so parents could come if parents wanted to spend a little bit of money on the kids too, in the book fair. So I was literally only there for like a couple hours, one, one afternoon. But hanging out when it was really was really great, really fun, and seeing how just like they were so excited. And honestly, I don't really talk to that many kids.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Me neither. I also don't have kids. Like, what are you.

[Jamie Attenberg]

So I was like, oh, what's going on? Like, what are you guys into? And you know, we, you know, we just want to encourage kids to keep on reading and also have like a positive experience with, like, with a, with a bookstore kind of environment I think is really great too. And you know, I'm not a teacher, parent or anything like that, obviously, but, you know, I think that there's a certain amount of confidence you get when you walk in somewhere and knowing that you can have something that was really sweet.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That a book fair is a thing that's available to them and that they should have access to. That's really wonderful you mentioned. So they could get one of one type of book or two of the other type of book. Is that also just like a setup that Scholastic already had? Were you involved in like curating any of the titles or anything like that?

[Jamie Attenberg]

No, it was just, it was just like a price. I leave that to that. I leave that to the experts. I think it was. It was based on the, on the price range. And then what was great is because I knew we were paying a little bit more. They had like a wiggle. They had some wiggle room I think to if kids wanted a little something extra or maybe a more expensive book or something like that. I, I'm. I again I'm not sure about all of the, you know, the inner workings there, but that's again why it is really good to have. I mean you. I could never have just walked in there and set up a book fair myself. You really have to have some kind of contact in the school if it's you know, an assistant or you have to have some friends that would come in there with you that really knew what they were doing. So I would not just. I would not recommend just you know, guns. Guns ablazing necessarily. I would definitely do a little bit of research and definitely talk to people. But. But the. At the resources are there and, and Scholastic. I you know, I think really wants people to succeed at this and, and bring their books and into the school. So you know, everyone was a pleasure to work with and it really a great joy and something different than what I normally do in my career because I, you know, obviously I write adult. Adult books, mainly novels and so I'm, I'm not, I'm not usually going into schools. Like I have, you know, I have friends who write YA and kids books and things like that and they do a lot of school visits and you might catch me at a university. But that's about, that's so it's, it's pretty fun.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I love the, the piece from your substack that's just why wait to make someone's day? And this, that this is your favorite day of the year. Getting to see these kids pick up books. Like I know so many of our listeners and members of this community have been especially in this political environment like really looking for how to get plugged in into their local communities, how to support like literacy efforts and be involved in some activism. And like not everybody is going to run for school school board. So hearing that this is a thing that you can do and that there are structures that enable it, you don't have to like not only should you not go in guns blazing when you don't know what you're doing, but you don't need to because like the professionals exist and can guide you through this process I think is exciting and empowering.

[Jamie Attenberg]

Yeah, it was really, it's really sweet. It's really. Or it was really organic. You know, everything with a thousand words summer is organic for me. Like I just follow any little path. I think you know, being a professional writer you feel like you got. Can sometimes get stuck in the way people market you or sell you or, you know, and that you were trying to get reviewed or interviewed or things like that. And so for a thousand words, it's always felt like. Like a part of me and a part of my creative self and professional self, but also just completely free to. Free to be me, you know, free to do whatever.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It doesn't have to have some, like, secondary agenda to it.

[Jamie Attenberg]

No, it's just like a. It's just like a lovely vibe. And also, like, the people who donate to this every year are just, like, kind of trusting me to do something good with their money. So I, like, I really want to honor this. That spirit of the community, you know, this writing community that we've really all created together out of scratch. Out of scratch. So it's. It's my pleasure. It's like a. It's a little bit of. A little bit of research, a little bit of time, but it's like fun research and fun. Fun time spent to. To make it happen. And now I'm sort of addicted to it. And I'm just like, guess what, you guys, Forever. For as long as I can do this, I'll do this. Like, everybody. I had this, like, fantasy of, like, you know, someday meeting somebody who had. Had these books every year, you know, school or something like that, that they. You know what I mean? Like, you know. Yeah, it would be really cool to like, meet. Meet somebody along the way. And it's like a. It's just a fun. You know, again, it's just like I'm enacting the thing that everybody else has put together, kind of put together. So it's like a.

[Geoff O'Neill]

It's.

[Jamie Attenberg]

It's a fun legacy, not just for.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Me, but for everybody who's a collective contribution and legacy. I wish listeners can see, like, how much your face lit up talking about what a great day that is every day to get to go and be there and see the impact of it. Was there anything surprising about the process? Anything that was like a. Harder than you expected it to be or that maybe you wish you had known going in the first time?

[Jamie Attenberg]

No. No, I don't know. No, no, I would. I don't have the answer to that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Sorry. It's fine. Yeah. Actually, if it's easy and there's not a bunch of surprising hard stuff, that's great news.

[Geoff O'Neill]

It's not that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's.

[Jamie Attenberg]

It's not. It's. It's not that it's. It's not that it's easy. It's just the challenges are not worth reflecting.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay. Yeah, thanks.

[Jamie Attenberg]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's good writerly clarification. It's like you do this for a living. Anything I didn't ask you about for this that you want to share about it or that you think folks should know?

[Jamie Attenberg]

Nothing. Just that the thousand words of summer is going to start May 31st and run for two weeks next summer. We have, like, great writers that are going to contribute to it. It's wonderful if people can come and contribute some money, but also, it's something that exists for everyone to encourage them to write. So I'm always just trying to make this. These things, you know, free and available and accessible to people because I love writing and reading and books, and I just want people to feel the joy from it that I do as well.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Wonderful. Anything else? Where can folks find you if they want to follow your work?

[Jamie Attenberg]

Oh, I have a new book that just came out, A reason to see you again, which is a novel. I am gonna. I'm gonna be in Nashville tomorrow. No, that's not really relevant, I think. I don't know. I'm doing. I have some tour dates.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jamie Attenberg]

This spring, but I don't remember what they are.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I loved A reason to see you again. I talked about it on the show. So you have the Book Riot endorsement, folks. Pick it up. Jamie, thank you so much for being here. And, folks, you can find the substack links to all the references that Jamie mentioned will be in the show notes as well.