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Book Riot - The Podcast
Our Favorite Books of 2025
01:49:46
Jeff and Rebecca list their favorite books of the year, and then are joined by a series of Book Riot editors to share their picks: Kelly Jensen, Danika Ellis, Erica Ezefedi, Sharifah Williams, and Vanessa Diaz.
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This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff o'. Neill.
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And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.
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C
Today, Rebecca, it's time. It is time for our favorite books of 2025. I'd kind of put the favorite books of the year stuff to bed because I'm kind of done with year end list for books. Like there's still some trickling out like Box had one today but I'm just kind of done. But we haven't talked about our own list. I don't think anything we're going to mention between the two of us today will be great surprises to Book Riot Podcast listeners because we've been talking about it through frontless foyer through the whole year. But it's helpful to recap. And as a special treat really for us and for the listener, we have talked to a bunch of our full time editors here at Book Riot about their favorite books of the year. We've got Sharifah Williams, we got Kelly Jensen, we've got Danica Ellis, Erica Ezzafetti. They're all going to join us. We already did the recording so you hear them stitched together at the back half of the show. Speaking of other things to listen to. Go listen to us talk about A Christmas Carol on the zero to well read feed a really fascinating book. If you think you know, you don't know. It changed the world. I did. I did a short form video today of you and I talking, mostly you, speaking eloquently, passionately and informedly about how this book really changed the world. It did in a way that is kind of hard to understand.
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A
I had no idea.
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C
Yeah, everyone knows the story of Scrooge, but no one really knows the story of A Christmas Carol. If you say Merry Christmas, not everyone does. Not every celebrates. And that's fine. If you do, it's probably because of Charles Dickens. If you think of A Christmas as time to give to charity, that's because of Charles Dickens. If you think of it as a time of convivial sort of time and games and food with your family and friends, it's because of Charles Dickens. So we had a really good time.
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A
Getting into it an author tour where they read to promote their work. That is because of Charles Dickens. Dude invented the modern book tour.
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C
Yeah, the first celebrity. Anyway, the whole bunch over there 0 the well read. We had a really good time. Thanks everyone for listening. If you got a chance to rate and review the show, really just rate. I know. Review. You got to think of something nice to say. You can keep that to yourself. Just hit the five stars. That's easy to do over there. We're sort of winding down a little bit the year on the BR pod. We still have some things to do. We're going to start looking ahead though. You know, we're going to have the winter preview draft around the first of the year for the Patreon members. Everything is firing up. I linked Today and Today in Books to Goodreads Most anticipated books of 2026.
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A
It's happened.
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C
I had to. I had to hold me. Jesus, Mom. For some of the books, I'm like, September 2026, there's a new Emily St. John Mandel. And I'm like, oh my God. Excited, but still long way. Can I do a quick rant?
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A
Always.
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C
If you read Today in Books Today, you probably saw this and I'm sorry to repeat myself. I don't know if Rebecca, you saw it yet, but I was looking at that Goodreads list. And the short version of this is we need to bring literary fiction back as a category because they have George Saunders in historical fiction and fiction. That's the number one category. And then Emily St. John Mandel down in fantasy now I understand to sort of a specific letter of the law, time travel. Kelly Jensen across time and Space heist or something which I'm all in her favorite book. But George Sanders is like a ghost story. We've done a couple segments with the other editors. So that's horror. Technical difficulties. I understand literary fiction. But Kelly survived. Collaborated. We had a really fun conversation with Kelly. So here's a few more genre into the books to consider, but literary fiction. Kelly Fiction as a category has its uses. And that category is to put things that don't really neatly fit into other genres. And George Saunders is not writing category historical fiction. And we Saint John Mandel is not writing category sci fi. And there's nothing wrong and there's many wonderful things I would not get rid of category romance or whatever. But literary fiction is for those places that are that thing but not quite that thing. George Saunders and Emily Sinjal should be in the same category. Maybe we come up with a different term, but they should be in the same category. Rebecca. Right.
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A
I totally agree. We have all of these categories to sell books to people and to help people find their way to the books that are going to be a good fit for them. And the category sci fi reader, who wants like straight up swords and spaceships kind of stuff and is recommended a George Saunders book or an Emily St. John Mandel book, like, might have a great time. There were a lot of robots in that last George Saunders short story collection. But that's not what you're.
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C
It's not Murderbot by Martha Wells. It's a different book.
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A
It's like what it says on the tin needs to match the contents. And we've just strayed too far from like, use the utility of literary fiction. It does serve a useful purpose, especially on a list like this. Like, I understand bookstores don't typically have a literary fiction section, but that's all the literary fiction lives there. You wouldn't put Emily St. John Mandel, I hope, in the sci fi section.
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C
No, you shouldn't.
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A
Like, that tells us something too about like, you're coming for an artistic quality of writing. And that's not to say that there are not category sci fi novels, for example, that all also have beautiful elevated artistic writing. But literary fiction is useful as a descriptor, just as sci fi, romance, thriller is useful, can be helpful for finding our way. Yeah, I think we, we need it back. I've been on this train since the Underground Railroad was classified as historical fiction in the Goodreads best of the year because they just didn't know where else to put it. Like, just give us a literary category. Come on.
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C
Yeah. And it would help everyone. And again, one of the reasons literary fiction doesn't sell as much because it's not easy to categorize. And I understand that, but that to me is good. I want to read the stuff that's not easy to categorize. And I think there's a place for. There's a. The junk drawer in anyone's kitchen is where the most interesting stuff is. We need the junk drawer of literary fiction. You don't. We know it's not a fork. We know it's not a spoon. But what is that special thing you use to open? The special thing or the, you know, like, that's what I want. I want to read the weirdo kitchen gadgets that people are putting out there and tour. Okay, enough of that. I told you I had six selections. I don't think I saw your response about how many you wanted.
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A
I was just like, yeah, I can get on board for six. That's fine.
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C
Okay. We did not talk about these beforehand. I do not have them ranked in any order. I can play this game. I'm wondering if we have any of the same ones.
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A
I think we have two.
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C
I think we have two, but I don't think maybe more than two.
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A
Okay, should let me guess about the two?
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C
Yes.
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A
Audition and dead and Alive. Okay.
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C
I did not have Dead and alive though. I thought about it. We can talk about that. We can talk about that. I have audition. Let's start there. Oh, I have another rant for me.
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A
Audition by Katie Kitamura.
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C
Yes, but it's related to this. You let me say this about Audition by Katie Kitamura. People who comment on our or other people's Instagrams or Facebooks of a roundup of the best books of the year and say, I did not like X book. And a lot of people saying, I don't like audition. I'm happy for you, but no one cares.
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A
Nobody.
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C
This is not the kind of book where you say, also, if you say I really didn't like the audition, I can't take you seriously because the name of the book is audition. Responding to anyone with I didn't like that thing. Literally nobody cares. Now, if you've got two more sentences about what didn't work for you but you liking something, maybe it's zero to well read. Maybe I'm a cranky old man. Maybe it's been a long day for me. All those things are true. But someone just sort of saying thumbs up or thumb down to something. I literally couldn't care about where your thumbs are pointed. So that's my first thing. But beyond that, this book, I am actually kind of thrilled to have a lot of people not like this book because it's doing something weird.
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A
It is doing something.
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C
It is. It is literary. Would you call this a relationship novel? A family drama? No, it's literary fiction.
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A
It's literary fiction and it is. There's something experimental about it. It is. You read it before me and what you told me was a thing happens like halfway through that sort of turns everything on its head. But I didn't. That can mean so many different things and I didn't even want to try to gu one of those things. It was. It starts with a woman who's like middle aged. She is a stage actress. She's had a somewhat renowned career, been with her husband for quite a while, and she's meeting a young fella for lunch at A restaurant and worried. She's worried about being seen with him and what people are going to assume about the nature of their relationship. That's kind of all you can say about it, about it. Because where it goes from there, like, it's called audition. So we know that we're doing something with acting. Like, it becomes this not quite meditation, but consideration of the roles that we play, of identity, of what it is to be seen by other people and to be like, constructing the ways that we are perceived. And this woman as an actress is aware of her appearance and she's aware of how she's perceived. She's aware of how she wants to be perceived and what she wants and what these, like, multiple pathways in her life would have been. But it's all very not obtuse. We don't look at anything head on. Like, no, she doesn't look at anything head on. Kitamura doesn't look at anything head on. So it's not like we get scenes where she's like, sitting around thinking about her career or something. Like, there's.
- [09:38]
C
It's more quotidian than that. It's the kind of thinking you do about your life just sort of in passing. It's not a grand unified theory.
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A
It's hard to talk about. Which I think is also a sign that if we were going to do a, like, is this literary fiction checklist? It's hard to give an elevator pitch for it is not a, like, necessary condition. But it's a frequent one, I think, for literary fiction of, like, how do you try to explain? Because it's about the experience of reading it and being like, inside of Kitamura's language. Because the whole thing is very taut and like, it's short, which you love to see. Like, what under 200 pages, probably one.
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C
The control taught is a great word. The control. That's something I respect more and more as I get older. I've read more and more when you feel like on the level of phrase, sentence, paragraph, chapter half of a book, especially here, there's a real sense of control. And often that's a time that's vision plus craft. You know, the master of it to me is Ishiguro. But I don't think Kitamura is far behind in terms of that level of control, overpacing tone and voice. And then it does something in the second half of the book that I really have never encountered and I still find myself thinking about. And someone asked me about it, I kind of reconsidered it again. I Think it has multiple possibilities that if you can hold them all in your head at one time, you actually have sort of three or four book reading experiences that they can bring out of it too. It's like a reversible jacket. Like this way it's one thing and you turn it inside out, it's something else.
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A
That ambiguity is a hallmark for Kitamura, but also of a lot of, like, the stuff that we love and a lot of literary fiction in general. Like, the author is not about the answers. They're about. About the questions. And so like, if you're listening to this and you're trying to decide, should I check out audition or will I be one of those people on Instagram who's like, I did not like this. If you need to close a book with a clear and have a clear sense when you close it of like, this is what happened in this book and this is what it was about. And here's where the characters ended up. Audition is not for you. Like, everything is left for the reader to sit with. And like, you, like, this is one of the first books that we both read this year. I've continued to think about it all year long. And I don't, like, I don't need an answer. An answer feels beside the point.
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C
No. And some of it is about not having an answer. Anyway. That's a whole different discussion there. Yeah, that's one rubric we've kind of come up with on zero to, well, read about. There hasn't been many, but there are books that answer questions and books that ask them. There are years that ask and years that answer. I guess I'll paraphrase that, Zora. And this is definitely one that not only does it ask a question, it takes an axe to the idea of a question. And then, like, whatever weird squiggly candies fall out is what we get to chew and enjoy. The one I thought you might have is life in three dimensions.
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A
I put it in my honorable mentions.
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C
Okay.
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Today's episode is brought to you by DK Canelo. Delivering compulsively readable stories across romance, history and thrillers, they're the publishers Publishers of the Healing Power of Cats by Karina Noonstead and Ulrike Norberg in the Healing Power of Cats, Karina Noonsted and Ulrike Norberg explore why cats bring joy, calm and meaning into our lives. Combining scientific stories with stories from cat owners, they reveal nine key lessons cats teach us, helping reduce stress, set boundaries, and invite more playfulness and peace. From their soothing presence to their intuitive emotional radar, cats model a mindful yet mischievous way of living. This book is a guide to embracing the rhythm of cats and tapping into their naturally uplifting energy. And we I have to say, we love a cat over here. We might as well be called Cat Riot. I love having reading sessions with my cat nearby, and I'm looking forward to getting into the rhythm of the cat. If you're also trying to get into that rhythm, make sure to pick up the Healing Power of Cats by Karina Newstead and Ulrike Norberg and thanks again to DK Canelo for sponsoring this episode.
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C
Kraft Mac and Cheese is the best thing ever. It's even better than pop music. You look just as natural enjoying us at age 13 as you do 55. Kraft Mac and Cheese Best Thing Ever. Let's take did you have Dead and Alive?
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A
I did have dead and alive this 86.
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C
I'll just say why I didn't, and that's only because I'd read a bunch of that stuff Before.
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Oh, okay.
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C
Like, outside of the collection. So. So it certainly wouldn't if I had to, like, I don't know, actually pick the books. But I guess I was thinking things were new to me in 2025.
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A
That makes sense. I loved the essays in Dead and Alive. Our friend Greg Zimmerman at the New Dork Review reviewed it recently and he was like, this is instructions for living a life. Like, just buy this and use Zadie Smith's writing as your manual. And I think that's a. That's not bad advice. You could do a whole lot worse. I had read a few of the pieces, but to see them all together and just to get to spend like 400 pages with Zadie Smith's mind was such a pleasure. The conversation that we had about it was also a real treat this year. We've talked about a lot of books together this year, more than any other year because of new projects. And that conversation still stands out to me as one that was particularly alive, which I think is right for her. Why don't you talk about life in three dimensions?
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C
I mean, I got. Of the books I read this year, I got one sort of life idea, and that was the idea of psychological richness. Now, again, was it completely new or was it articulating something I already felt? Which one of those is more valuable? Who can say? But the idea of psychological richness is this third thing between meaning and happiness and certainly above contentment, where you look for interesting experiences and what that looks like. This may go back, frankly, a little bit to the discussion slash, rant tirade we just had about the idea of literary fiction, what we want from our reading, or what you and I at the highest version, the rarest, maybe, maybe the highest, make it about scarcity rather than hierarchy. Is that thing that feels like it did something super new for us.
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A
Yeah.
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C
One of the hallmarks of genre fiction, genre, genre is that it gives you something a little bit new. But it's also pretty familiar. Right. It's not going to be as challenging. You will probably not hate it. I think any book that falls into the realm of something potentially yielding psychological richness has a higher than usual probability of having a negative experience. And as Professor Oishi says, and I talked to him, and we both have talked about this book, negative experiences are interesting for those of us who think and feel and maybe gauge along the term of psychological richness. A negative experience isn't not necessary. You don't want to do like, you don't seek them out. But it's also not A disaster. Right. You know, you don't want someone to die or something like that. But you know, you, you get a delay and you have to, you have to fly through lovely the, the Midwest Malibu of the Midwest. Sheboygan. You have to fly through Sheboygan. Not a disaster. You get to learn about things, you get to have an experience, you get to talk about it later. And I just find that so useful as a way of under my understanding myself and understanding other people and then, you know, as a life organizing principle. It's clarifying for me. So I had to put it here.
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A
Yeah, I did also really love it. I didn't put it into my top six precisely because for me it did feel like it was articulating something that was already in my operating system. But I did really value that. He lays out like there are these three legs on the stool of how you build a life. There's happiness, there's meaning. And there's a lot of research around happiness and meaning. But then adding the complicating factor of psychological richness and it like more than understanding myself because I felt like I knew I'm here for the weird, interesting stuff. I don't mind getting lost in a city as long as it's an interesting story like, like big Sagittarius energy for our listeners there. It was helpful in framing other people that I haven't understood as much like, like my father in law who would rather eat the same things for dinner that his mom cooked him when he was a kid than try something new and, and not like it. Like that feels terribly risky to him. And I've had judgmental responses to that about like, well come just like eat the new thing. What's the problem? But the way that Oishi explores it of like some people are just wired in a way where they like the happiness of predictability and not having their boats rocked and not having something uncomfortable is just the thing that they're solving for more. And you over here are solving for this other thing and you're gonna eat the weird stuff. And like that evenness of we all need some of these ingredients, but everybody has a different calibration on each one, a different balance. Was that was really helpful. It was. It would have been my 7 7th pick if we had gone to 7.
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C
Yeah. Okay. So then here I think we're a little bit off script. Let's just take turns. That was mine. So let's go back to yours.
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A
All right. Mine, I guess this is my third. Is Stonyard Devotional by Charlotte Wood, my second favorite novel of the year. And I've also just continued to think about this one. Set in kind of the outback of Australia, this early middle age woman has left what we understand to be a successful life. First she's gone on retreat at this monastery populated by a bunch of basically, nuns. And then later we know that she packs up her whole life and she moves there. She doesn't become a nun, she doesn't take the vows, but she is living her life there. And the book basically reads as her journals. And it is meditative. There is this rhythm to her days. There's a rhythm to life in a place like that. You know, like you get up and you go to the morning prayer service and then you participate in doing the chores that you're assigned and maybe then you write in your journal and then you do some more chores and then you cook a meal. And all through it, they're like dealing with a mouse problem that become like one of those quotidian things that's just everywhere and also like someone is coming that is coming to visit them at this place, that it's disruptive that this person is coming and what are this person's connections? What does it mean to our main character? But also, like, to go back to the ambiguity thing. We never know why she has given up her life and moved there. We don't know how long she'll stay there or what happens after. I was just like, this was literary writing of the highest order. She was, I think, shortlisted for the Booker last year. Like it came out in the UK before it came out in the us. She has a new book coming out next year. I cannot wait. I'm like fully on the Charlotte Wood train now. I really loved Stonyard Devotional.
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C
Yeah, I liked it too. Didn't make my short list here, but I really enjoyed that book.
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A
It's really Shinski core.
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C
My second favorite reading experience of the year. And again, I get biased like everyone else if I talk to someone. And I had such a good time talking to Marie Helen Bertino about her life in books. And we even said, I think Exit 0, which is her short story collection that came out in April, is a wonderful place to start that it's one of, you know, my second favorite fiction readings. Something for. I don't know, there's something from everyone, but several different ways of understanding Bertino levels of strangeness. Right. Spec fiction. Because usually I think maybe there's no. I think there's an supernatural, divine, speculative element in each one of them, but some of them are like immortal vampires. And some of the just there's like too many balloons. Like that's.
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A
That's kind of the range occupied with the spirits of ghosts or just like.
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C
We did a ranking of how. How strange they are. But each one of them is so interesting. They have such a clean, clear perspective. They can be a little bit like koans where you don't really know if the meaning is intelligible or logical or felt. Are these questions. Are they. I feel like they're. There's some way there. There are answers to questions that we don't even know what the question is. Like 42 and to the galaxy. But I've recommended a whole bunch and I think it's a really good place for people to start with Portino. So really excited to see what she. She does next. So that's Exit Zero.
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A
I love that one. There's. There are images in some of those stories that will just be with me for a long time.
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C
Your dad who leaves you the unicorn. I mean I feel like for people our age, there's a lot there. Yeah, there's a lot.
- [23:20]
A
It's. It's a rich text. My next one won't be a surprise to listeners of the show. Searches by Vahini Vara about the the subtitle is something about like. Like humanity in the Age of Digital Intelligence or something like that. She went viral in 2021 when she wrote a story about using an early version, like a beta version of ChatGPT to collaborate with her on an essay that she was writing about her sister who had died. And then she's. She just got more interested like what. What did. Does this technology mean for us? What does it mean to be a person who is creating things when artificial intelligence can ostensibly create things? What does it mean to be human when we've thought of the ability to create and to make art as uniquely human? But now artificial intelligence can make some kinds of art and it starts pretty simply. She's like feeding her manuscript into Chat GPT and asking it for edits and then showing us what happens as she revises. But then it goes into substance, some strange places. And then we get some side by sides of like her telling chatgpt what the next chapter is going to be. And we see what ChatGPT wrote and what she wrote. And that is the most compelling argument for this. Technology cannot at least yet replace humans. It's so much more compelling to see the side by side of like what a human does with creative language and with the ways that your mind can just like, like be recursive and reach for strange associations that only exist in your memory that ChatGPT or any other kind of AI cannot do because it doesn't have access to consciousness. And she's careful not to make an argument about it. But the work itself makes an argument and also just invites a lot of consideration for what are we talking about when we talk about art and creativity. Raised more questions, I think, than answers. I don't think she was setting out for answers at all, but I appreciated the. The approach of like let me. She's genuinely curious. It's not a performative like let me just put my stuff in and prove that ChatGPT can't write as well as I can. It felt to me like she walked into it with genuine curiosity about what will happen when I try to use this tool to do something creative. And she let it go to weird places. I've recommended the book so widely it felt exactly right for this moment of conversation. AI probably more like in the long run, probably more of a time capsule of 2025 than something that will be. I'd be surprised if the text is really relevant to wherever we are in 10 years with technology, but it felt like a real capture of the moment.
- [26:04]
C
I guess I'll go from there to my most recommended book of the year. And I have moved units. I know Zarna Garg didn't need me to move units. She was on good hang so that's just like I think now she's doing okay the publicity placement. Everyone's looking, looking for Amy Poehler's new podcast but I have done my small part to pull the wagon of this American woman. I think if you can do audio at all, this is the way to do this. I'm sure it's delightful on the page as well, but her narration of her life story which is itself if. If played straight sort of in a John Kerry was just reporting on it would be an amazing story. But she's a stand up comic and didn't come to it till much later. And there's. There's both a. There's a reverence for her own experience but also a silliness and irreverence at the same time. Like she's not an existential nihilist. Like things mean something to her but also at the same time she is very much not afraid to take a piss out of things and she has an unusual experience and perspective from which to do it. My recommendation feedback from People has been sort of five stars across the board no notes. It's a really wonderful pick me up. I think it's a pretty generally recommendable book. Of the books I'm going to talk about today, probably it's the closest to a Swiss army book that you can get. But if you've got some Spotify credits sitting there, use it up. If you got an audible credit, get go right now and get on hold at the library. If you do audiobooks on library, I'm sure there's a giant wait, but then when it comes up, you'll be so glad. And I think about her first visit to Chuck E. Cheese quite a bit. Every time I drive by a Chuck E. Cheese, I think of Zarnagar as visiting America and Ohio for the first time. And really, you know, it's, it's, it's not a representative lens of America, but it's not not representative in a way. So that's this American Woman by Sarnagar.
- [27:53]
A
That was a great recommendation. I would have missed it if you hadn't have recommended it multiple times. And I really, I enjoyed listening to that one also. Let's see, my next one is the Dry Season by Melissa Febos. Her memoir, ostensibly a memoir about celibacy. She sets out after a couple tumultuous relationships, one really abusive relationship, to re examine her relationship to love and sex. She thinks she's gonna be celibate for like three months. It becomes a much longer project. And while she's got a bunch of free time because she's not meeting people and flirting with them and seducing them and having a lot of sex, she's, she does this whole inventory of her entire relationship history and like documents key pieces of it for us, which is so brave. And just this is like a hallmark of Melissa Feebo's personal memoir is she will just tell you stuff about her life in a way that is kind of astonishing and I deeply appreciate it. So she's got this whole inventory of her like romantic history. She's looking for where she has gone wrong, how did these patterns develop? But this is not like an over therapized memoir about this. This she also then gets obsessed with what do people do when love and sex are not a primary focus of their life? And she starts researching like Hildegard of Bingen and these other like women ascetics from centuries past, famous nuns. And she starts identifying that like, oh, a lot of these women became nuns because that was the only way to escape the patriarchal expectations of getting married and having kids. If you wanted to pursue intellectual life, you Basically had to become a nun. And so they got the life of the mind. And she starts to think for herself. What other forms of expression and creativity and satisfaction could she have? She's not going to give up sex forever, but how to build out some other components of her life. And it's that wandering into like this would have been interesting as just a celibacy memoir. Melissa Febo's writing about anything is interesting if you don't know her work. Her first memoir was about her time working as a dominatrix. So, like, she's covering the whole spectrum. But Melissa Febos writing about celibacy, sex, relationships, and then also like the roles of romantic relationships and entanglements and what we get if we get outside of those, or if we change their primacy. That's really what it is. Like, what if your life was centered around something other than a romantic relationship? Just great sharp sentences. I stay in awe of her willingness to talk about all sorts of stuff. One aspires to be that open and then one is afraid of the Internet. So I appreciate her.
- [30:39]
C
Yeah, she's not afraid to ride. To ride the dragon. This is an interesting transition because the Ten Year Affair by Aaron Summers is not. It's not about dissimilar ideas about a limited imagination, the circumspection that can happen, or the circumscription that can happen when your life is bounded by your relationship. This is a novel we talked about before. It's a contemporary novel, and it's a story of a woman who's interested in having an affair. And then the narrative strikes, you know, gets split into two strands, one in which it does happen, one in which it doesn't. And Summer sort of follows them down. And it gets a little more complicated than that, as it goes. I think that's interesting, but I would be there just for Summers telling it sort of straight, because this is what. This is what I want from contemporary fiction that's interested in looking at a milieu which is what is. What are the mores of this place? How do they. What is said, what is unsaid? How do the expressed politics, cultural, sexual, interpersonal or otherwise have secondary ramifications for how people put together and how difficult it is to get outside of that. The affair as a scene of investigation, a scene of discontent, a scene of blowing up. Your life is as old as there are affairs. Like you go back to the Trojan War. We're all going to learn about what happens when someone has an affair, because the Odyssey is just all aftermath. Thanks, Helen. Thanks, Paris. And if Menelaus just could have let it go and if no one took the oath, it's a whole thing, right?
- [32:08]
A
If people could have been cool, just let it go.
- [32:10]
C
If we could all just been cool and say, you know what? People do things. People do things and the way in which they do them. And then particularly Summer's own. She had. It's not quite a gimlet eye. She is suspect, but generous towards her characters. And I was thinking, you know, I compared her to a little bit. There's a little Efron in there. I'm never gonna do a straight one to one, but in thinking about the works of Rob Reiner the other day, I was like, he kind of does similar. Same things. Like certainly sharp, certainly can be dyspeptic, but I kind of feel like you can heal. Like the floors are still warm. Even that these. The boards of these people that they tread on. It is not throwing everyone under the bus and looking how we should just all die. And no one's worth anything. There is an ambient warmth, but I think that gives a bit of a safety net to it being really nihilistic. And then she's just damn funny and the dialogue is just damn funny.
- [33:07]
A
And that's harder to find dialogue. I read this year. Yep, really great.
- [33:12]
C
So anyway, 10 year affair by Aaron Summers.
- [33:14]
A
All right. My last one is Heart the Lover by Lily King. As I've thought about this more, it's just.
- [33:19]
C
I'm gonna get to this, Rebecca. I think this is the one I'm gonna try to get to for sure. I've seen too much about it now.
- [33:24]
A
A couple hours on your couch.
- [33:26]
C
I know, I know.
- [33:28]
A
Sit by the Christmas tree. Make yourself a drink. It's like love triangle, but elevated. The main character, a woman, meets a boy in college and the boy's best friend is always around. And for a while, she's with one of the boys. And then as she grows up, maybe she's with another boy, maybe she's with somebody else. We. We come to them at multiple points in their life. It's like decades of these relationships. There's so much nuance and complexity. It's short. Like an entire pregnancy is encapsulated in one paragraph. Lily King, not wasting any time. I think it's under 200 pages. Like, I read it on a flight and I was texting you from the air. Like, don't sleep on the new Lily King just really packs a powerful punch. It's, I think, the closest I came to tears reading this year, being at 30,000ft might have had something to do with that, but just incredibly moving. Incredibly moving. It feels. Her writing always feels true to me about what it is to be a person and to be in relationships and how messy and tender and weird they can be and also just how beautiful inside all of that mess. And she does it all without ever straying into like cloyingness or triteness or the Nicholas Sparks zone of things. Like, it's just also very taught, like to to write 30 years. I think I said when I read this, like, there's a Jonathan Evison version of this book that's 600 pages long. And I read it it earlier this year and I also loved it. But like, to be able to do 30 years of multiple relationships in so few pages with such an economy of language is just real talent. And like, I'm always on the Lily King train. But this one is moving pretty close to the top of my Lilly King list. So I won't say anything else because you got to get to Heart the Lover.
- [35:24]
C
I saved two for the kind of do it in one shot if you can, or you're going to be sitting in your car in the driveway trying to finish. I'll start with with if you can sit down and give yourself two hours. Kind of like you said with Heart the Lover and read Tilt by Emma Petit. Do it in two hours. Just sit down and do the whole thing. Preferably in Ikea. That would be some real experiential, immersive reading there at the same time. So Tilt came out early this year, Patti's debut novel in which a woman is on the cusp. She's she's ready to have the baby any day now situation. She is. She lives in Portland. She's a creative slash knowledge worker and is married to another one. And she's at Ikea trying to get stuff ready for her new addition to her family and her life and has a bit of a breakdown and then an earthquake happens. The Big one. As Petit and Catherine Schultz have documented for us, the Big One is also pretty much the thing I'm trying not to look at. You remember how Snuffleuppagus and Sesame street was sort of invisible, but you also knew it was there. The big earthquake off that will someday happen off the coast of Oregon is my Snuffleupagus. I know it's there, but I'm really trying hard not to see it. And it is the earthquake and what happens right after it is a it's kind of a motherhood story but Cormac McCarthy's on the road, but not quite as zombie filled, actually not nearly as.
- [36:43]
A
There are no zombies.
- [36:44]
C
The earthquake is open pretty quickly. But then the main character has to. Doesn't have to. She's trying to get somewhere and cars are not available on the roads and bridges. And over the course of I think it's just a day, I don't think the sun sets. She walks through Portland, has experiences and it's just kind of a straight on rails, evocative, powerful, elusive. I think by the end this is not a, you know, let me just say this, it's not a spoiler, but if you're the kind of person that worries about dog dying, the dogs don't really die. I mean there's death and everything, but. But it's not manipulative in that way or super traumatic. It's harrowing. But it also feels like maybe what would happen and it helps and hurts its case. For the visceral reading experience I have where the character literally walks by my house on her way across town. So I don't know how other people will find it, but for a singular Reddit and afternoon, couldn't imagine it putting it down in that window of time. Tilt by Emma Petit is pretty unbeatable. And then in terms of the I was finding excuse to listen to it Audiobook of the year for me, people have heard me talk about this. It's the Carpool Detectives. It's the true story of four women who are, you know, one of them has been a forensic accountant, so she has some experience looking at like money crimes. But they're not, you know, they're not detectives. And over the course of COVID they come together and they're not all friends. They sort of meet through weird Covid like circumstances. They, instead of baking sourdough, they decide to solve a cold case. It's a true story, I should say, and I don't want to give it away. But they make progress and it's an unbelievably great audiobook experience. I don't know why this wasn't a bigger book. I don't know why it hasn't been optioned for a movie yet. There's something I don't get it. Chuck Hogan is the writer and has some real success there. I feel like this should have been a bigger book. And maybe this is just what happens because there are so many books. Maybe someone optioned the rights and they're sitting on it because I don't understand why Michelle Monaghan and Emily Blunt And Lupito Nuongo and Mindy Kaling. I don't know. I'm just picking actresses here that aren't 20. Couldn't do this book and have a great time. Why is this not a 6 part limited series on HBO yet? I don't understand what's happening.
- [39:08]
A
My only theory, and it only can go to Luke. Like, part of this is that since you find out in the course of the book that there are reasons that the women's identities have to be protected and so there are no, like the real women can't like go on book tour with Chuck Hogan and do a bunch of appearances talking about the story.
- [39:27]
C
But that couldn't that be an angle? Like, this is so hot. We can't have the original people here.
- [39:33]
A
It should be like. It should. I mean, I, I read it after I listened to 2 it after you recommended it and we had the. Like, when are we getting the series?
- [39:42]
C
Exactly.
- [39:42]
A
Yes, it would be and it would be a.
- [39:45]
C
The process stuff is very cool. Like, I mean, it's amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I had someone text me this story saying, wouldn't this make a great book? Because it was like some Instagram stories like, I've got good news for you.
- [39:57]
A
Yeah.
- [39:58]
C
Because it is. But also made me think, gosh darn it.
- [40:00]
A
It just, it does feel like something that really like, like had the hallmarks of a book that could break out.
- [40:05]
D
Yeah.
- [40:06]
C
Yeah. I. The. The question mark behind the question could be, is there something about this story that if it were gotten. Got a bigger spotlight, would. I don't know. Did you read the thing about Oliver Sacks in New Yorker? We haven't talked about it, Rebecca.
- [40:18]
A
Yeah, I did.
- [40:19]
C
I just wonder. I wonder maybe in the vetting or due diligence process. I don't know. I. That's pure speculation. I have no reason to think that it's all that is really only a symptom of my affection and my belief that there's a thing here that a lot of people who don't listen to read books would like and it would work. And, you know, you don't need dragons or robots or AGI to do it.
- [40:41]
A
A great way to get it made into an adaptation would be for more people to go read it and build up a sales history.
- [40:47]
C
There you go. So those are my six. I think we got your five a B reading year. I liked all these books, but I didn't. I didn't have a lot of. Oh my gosh, I can't believe I didn't put this on My list. You notice we didn't get to 10.
- [41:00]
A
Yeah, I could have done 10, but I think the six are really stand out. Like for honorable mentions, like I'll just toss out a marriage. C Youth by Kate Riley. Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy and our boy, Dan Brown. The Secret of Secrets. Love to have a Dan Brown book. Yeah, it was a real delight. It was a good Dan Brown book.
- [41:24]
C
I. I wanted to mention we do not part. It came earlier in the year, again early. She's operating at such a different level. It feels like, I don't know, part of the Hong Kong corpus rather than a book that came out in 2025, if that makes sense. I really like the Weepers by Pete Mendelsohn. I interviewed him for the show. It's a really good, interesting, strange little book. You both. Both you and I liked Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin. I really like Bibliophobia by Sarah Chahaya, which I talked to her for First Edition, A memoir. It's not always goes great when you fall in love with books. Really honest and interesting there. I think I'm kind of. I like the Language of Mathematics by Rel Rojas, though that may have come out the end of 2024. I'm just looking at what I read in 2025 and some stuff in the earlier in the Year or How Things Are Made by Tim Minshell I talked about before. Just like Weavers in Sussex doing stuff.
- [42:20]
A
Was this the year of ingrained? Was that. Was that last year?
- [42:23]
C
I read it this year, but it came out December of last year. I actually initially had it on my list. I was like, wait a minute. I think I maybe read that late. Poet's Square by Courtney Gustafson. It was on my middle of the year list that we did for Powell's. It's still really good, especially on audio. A woman moves to a new town and there's a bunch of feral cats that live around her place. And she becomes a advocate, watcher, steward, documenter, poet of feral cats and what it means it can do for you. And that's not a joke. That's. That's actually what happens. And it was quite good. Endling by Maria Riva. I think I talked about that before. A strange, elusive metafictional book that it's very hard to recommend to people, but I liked it quite a bit myself. Yeah. And then I had Dead On Live. And the only reason it wouldn't have made. It didn't make is because I'd encountered those things before. And it felt like a culmination, but again, entered my favorite reading experience of the year that didn't have to all new in 2025. I would have probably had ingrained and dead and alive there.
- [43:28]
A
All right. A pretty solid year. I think a B year overall. There were some a book books, but it was a beat year.
- [43:34]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so without further ado, here are a sequence of conversations. Each one's about 15 minutes long. Rebecca, we asked them to pick two. So you're gonna hear Erica, Danica, Kelly, Sharifah and Vanessa. Rebecca, I'll talk to you later.
- [43:49]
A
Thanks, y'.
- [43:50]
C
All.
- [43:50]
A
Happy holidays. Marshall's buyers are hustling hard to get amazing new gifts into stores right up to the last minute. Like a designer perfume for that friend who never RSVP wish list topping toys.
- [44:02]
E
For her kids who came too. Belgian chocolates for the neighbor.
- [44:06]
A
A cozy scarf for your boss and a wool jacket for your husband that you definitely did not. Almost forget. Marshalls. We get the deals, you get the good stuff, even at the last minute.
- [44:18]
C
Phew.
- [44:19]
A
Find a Marshall's near you.
- [44:22]
C
This episode is brought to you by State Farm.
- [44:25]
E
Listening to this podcast.
- [44:27]
C
Smart move. Being financially savvy.
- [44:30]
E
Smart move.
- [44:31]
B
Another smart move. Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle.
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E
Home and auto bundling.
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C
Just another way to save with a.
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B
Personal price plan like a good neighbor. State Farm is there.
- [44:42]
E
Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state.
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C
Coverage options are selected by the customer.
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B
Availability, amount of discounts and savings and.
- [44:49]
C
Eligibility vary by State.
- [44:54]
A
Ford BlueCruise Hands Free highway driving takes the work out of being behind the wheel, allowing you to relax and reconnect while also staying in control.
- [45:05]
D
Enjoy the drive in BlueCruise enabled vehicles.
- [45:08]
A
Like the F150 Explorer and Mustang Mach E. Available feature on equipped vehicles. Terms apply. Does not replace safe driving. See Ford.com BlueCruise for more details. All right, now we are joined by Kelly Jensen. She is our senior editor at Book Riot. I am personally very excited about this segment because these are bonkers selections, Kelly. One of them I've read and one of them I've been looking at kind of through my fingers all year long and I cannot wait to hear from you. Tell us how your year in reading was and about your highlights.
- [45:46]
E
So in terms of like the reading year, it was fine. I read a little bit more than I have in the last few years. Thanks in part to not scrolling TikTok anymore.
- [45:56]
A
That'll do it.
- [45:57]
E
Yeah. I mean, really it does, right like when you have the choice of laying in bed, scrolling tick tock before bed, or reading a couple chapters. When you read a couple chapters, it makes a difference in how much you read.
- [46:08]
C
Simple. I mean, it's that hard and that simple at the same time.
- [46:11]
E
Right, Right.
- [46:13]
D
So.
- [46:13]
E
So it was fine. Most stuff I read was fine. Which is not, you know, to say bad or good, just fine. The stuff that really stood out for me this year was the weird stuff. I read a lot of of weird fiction, a lot of very unhinged female lead characters. And those were so fun. They were really good. This year I read several of them back to back to back in the middle of the summer, which was a wild ride. And then I grabbed one at the very end of the year that like, I didn't get to write about for our best of books that like, I keep thinking about because it was so good and unhinged in the best of books.
- [46:51]
C
Well, let's start there. Now I'm curious because we saw your picks before. I know there's one that Rebecca read that's on shelf, that's on your list, but what's the one we don't know about? Let's. I can't wait any longer. Kelly, you have to tell us about.
- [47:01]
A
Kelly's taking a cheat. We're doing three titles.
- [47:04]
E
I. I am. So the cheat is Best Offer Wins by Maurice.
- [47:09]
C
I've heard of this. I know this book. Yes, it.
- [47:12]
E
It didn't come out until the end of the year, so middle or end of November, I can't remember when it came out. But this is a story about a woman who is obsessed with an idea and she pursues it relentlessly to her own detriment. So it follows Margot, who's 37. She's really tired of losing bidding wars to other home buyers in D.C. so he, she and her husband Ian have been trying to start a family and they've been struggling with infertility here. So this is also happening at the same time after they've built some pretty solid careers for themselves, you know, they are ready to buy this house, their current apartment that they moved into after selling their first place in anticipation of being able to buy a bigger place is just too small. But They've now lost 11 bidding wars and Margo is going to do anything she can to get a house. So when she gets a tip that there's a home, checking all of her boxes going on the market soon, she decides she's going to check the place out to be ready to put in an Offer like the minute that she can, the minute that it goes live. This leads to her breaking into the backyard of the home to look around, which leads her to running into one of the homeowners, which leads her to putting together a string of lies about her life, getting to know these, this couple. And all this is being shared with the sellers in order to befriend them and she hopes, buy the house out before anybody else can get it. The plan, however, as you can imagine.
- [48:37]
C
It goes great, right? This works perfectly. She gets the house perfect under asking. Yeah.
- [48:43]
A
Episode of Normal Gossip.
- [48:46]
E
Unfortunately for Margo, it backfires and it puts her job in jeopardy. Not. Not to mention that she becomes obsessed with finding any dirt on the couple who is selling the house. So she's spiraling. And it's this really interesting story of obsession that's also a clever takedown of modern housing and social class as well as a really thoughtful exploration of race and gender. And it's the kind of book I picked up on a women von myself.
- [49:11]
F
Going, Going.
- [49:12]
E
Okay, just one more chapter. Just one more chapter. Yeah, I loved it. I loved it. It's been pitched as a domestic thriller and I kind of hate that description for it. And that's because I think thriller readers will probably like this one, but they're going to be mad that it doesn't have a murder.
- [49:27]
C
Someone gets their head cut off or something or I don't want to spoil. I don't know what happens. So sorry, I stepped on that. So it's not a thriller. I guess I'm bringing my own expectation of what I would expect from a thriller. But you're saying it's not that, Right, right.
- [49:38]
E
It's not that. I, I mean, I think thriller readers would think that the mystery part takes too long to get to, to fit like the, the contours of that genre. And then for folks like me who are not thriller readers, I think that the incorporation of the mystery is far less about the question Margot is exploring and more about how absolutely unhinged Margot is in pursuit of this story. Her background's in journalism, so this is like her scouring archives. Like this is not, you know, I'm going to the police and like working with them or trying to sniff out details. It's more I'm going to write this story to like fit this narrative.
- [50:14]
A
Like a late stage capitalism satire maybe more than anything. Totally. Okay.
- [50:18]
E
Yeah, absolutely. I loved every minute of it. And yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Margo was just. She get this idea in her head and like, really, really, really pursued it to the point where you're like, please stop, please stop, please stop. You're going to lose your job doing this. And like, you're watching her do this and you as a reader are like, what are you doing? Knock it off. But there's also this, like, bit of, you know, empathy for the situation she's in because, like, you know why she's doing it. Even if you completely disagree with the. The means and methods by which she's. She's pursuing.
- [50:50]
C
I know you don't mind scrolling a Zillow listing either, Kelly. So probably that, that like looking at real Kelly's vote most. She probably would be voted most likely to buy an old Carnegie library in the middle of nowhere and move into a it amongst our staff.
- [51:03]
E
Possibly, Possibly.
- [51:06]
C
But Blob is completely normal compared to that, right, Kelly?
- [51:09]
E
Totally.
- [51:10]
C
So let's go. Let's go normal from there.
- [51:13]
E
All right. From there. I don't know that well, anyway, so. Blob by Maggie Sue. I did not expect to love this book as much as I did. And I'll be honest that it was reading this one that made me realize how great, like weird girl fiction was this year. And by weird girl fiction, I mean books about women young and middle age, in the case of these books, who are just acting on their basest instincts and or who are indulging in these intrusive thoughts that so many of us write off as no go's. And in the year of our Lord 2025, when everything has been hard, slipping into the world of marginalized people, women and women of color, just going all in on these instincts has been the sort of escapism that I didn't realize I needed. So all that's an intro to say Blob. You will go in and maybe not particularly like V, our main character, but you empathize with her experiences as a college dropout living in a Midwest town where she kind of sees herself as having no future. And a lot of readers have written her off as so unlikable that they either have 1 stopped reading or 2 cannot empathize with her. But I love me a good, unlikeable character.
- [52:22]
A
We love a weirdo.
- [52:23]
G
Yes.
- [52:23]
D
Come on.
- [52:24]
E
Right, right, right. That label tends to get applied to women and girls more than anything, and especially to marginalized women and girls.
- [52:31]
C
Because dudes get to be anti heroes, Right? Yeah. You're unlikable if you're a lady or an antihero if you're a dude. Yeah.
- [52:36]
E
Nailed it. Yeah. So if you buy into the premise that you're not necessarily supposed to like V, you're certainly going to be unable to stop reading this book when she discovers a blob on the street and brings it home.
- [52:48]
A
Well, I mean, just that sentence alone.
- [52:51]
C
I mean, it's on the COVID Like, they don't hide it.
- [52:54]
F
Yeah.
- [52:54]
E
You're like, what does this mean?
- [52:56]
G
It means.
- [52:56]
C
Exactly. Yeah. There's no subject.
- [52:59]
D
Yeah.
- [53:00]
E
This is not, like, you know, a metaphor for anything. Like, it's literal, a blob on the street. But it's not an ordinary blob, unfortunately. Fortunately. I don't know, it's Setian. So over the course of the story, it starts to grow limbs. It grows this whole personality. V. Lee leaves her home with Blob, just sitting there on the couch being a blob. And then she comes home to Blob having changed the TV channel or having grown a limb or two. And, you know, like, that's the thing. Blobs in the street just do.
- [53:27]
C
Yeah, I can fix him.
- [53:28]
D
Yeah.
- [53:28]
A
It's like, so. It's so amazing. Like, it's an impossible to really talk about this book.
- [53:35]
G
I.
- [53:35]
D
Right.
- [53:36]
E
Like, the premise is literally the. The title, because it's Blob, a love story. So, you know that there's.
- [53:40]
A
There's.
- [53:41]
E
You know, so. So V realizes that she has this opportunity here that she can make Blob her ideal partner and finally find true, meaningful love. But Blob, being sentient, may have some other ideas, and Blob doesn't necessarily want to partner up with V. Maybe Blob's starting to have feelings for a woman and that V's been trying to maintain a friendship with. Even if friendship is a loose word for what the relationship really is. But, yeah, it's a weird and funny and surprisingly moving read about identity and family and street Blobs.
- [54:16]
A
What do you do when your street blob gets agency?
- [54:19]
C
I don't know, Kelly. I know you pay attention to covers, too. This was one of my favorite book covers of the year.
- [54:24]
E
Oh, it's a great cover. Yeah, it's got the blob right there.
- [54:28]
A
This is incredibly so gutsy for a debut novel, too. Like, where is Maggie sue gonna go from here?
- [54:37]
D
Right?
- [54:38]
G
Right.
- [54:38]
E
I don't care.
- [54:39]
A
I'm going with this totally. And I would believe that either she goes even weirder, or maybe she was like, let me roll out with my weirdest idea, and the next book will be like mainstream book club fiction. Like, I would buy any and all of that at this Point.
- [54:53]
E
Same, same. I. I was 100% in from the start. I didn't anticipate that to be the case. I bought it when it was, you know, it was on sale for, like, $1.99 or $2.99, because the COVID I loved it. And then I was like, oh, this is amazing.
- [55:05]
A
This is all right.
- [55:07]
E
This is everything I want in a book.
- [55:08]
A
So from falling in love with blobs to being attracted to airplanes, where else are you taking us? Kelly Jensen.
- [55:19]
E
So my last pick is about getting jiggy with an airplane.
- [55:24]
C
Probably the only time I'm also not a metaphor. That's just what happens.
- [55:29]
E
No, no. You know, we have to admit that in 2025, one of the best books out there was about a woman who finds airplanes sexy. And I. I really think more people need to recognize what literature did this year. And it was this. So this is Kate Folk Skydaddy, and it follows a woman named Linda. Her job is one that most of us would agree is pretty sucky. She does content moderation, free video sharing platform, making a whopping $20 an hour in the San Francisco Bay area. And she hardly gets to keep that money because her, you know, cost of living is so high. Her home is literally in a windowless garage on somebody else's property. So, you know, she. She has to live for something. And that is the last Friday of every month where she'll go to San Francisco and she will fly to a regional airport hub. She doesn't care where she goes. What's important here is that she is with an airplane during that time. And it's really important to her that nobody knows that her trips are about fulfilling a fantasy with the plane and not about the travel at all. So she is, to put it mildly, obsessed with every part of the plane. And as readers begin discover, her sexual fantasies are wrapped up in a really terrifying experience she had on a plane as a child. But things go from weird to weirdly complicated when Linda meets a man and she's torn between her belief that her future is with an airplane and the beliefs that others have pressed upon her that she should find somebody who makes a little money and build a, quote, unquote, normal life from there. But is that what she really wants? Where and how can she be normal when deep down she knows that her plane obsession is anything but just simply an obsession?
- [57:13]
A
Just all the cookies in the world for getting through that with a straight face. Kelly. Incredible stuff.
- [57:17]
C
So, Kelly, riddle me this. So, like, it's clearly strange, but it's not Just about making her seem to be cracked. Right. Like, it's. It's more sympathetic to the character.
- [57:26]
G
Okay.
- [57:27]
E
Oh, yeah, yeah. But I think she would also think it's kind of funny.
- [57:31]
D
Oh.
- [57:32]
E
I think that she, you know, there's.
- [57:34]
C
A self awareness a little bit, like, wow, this is some. This is something else that I've got going on here.
- [57:38]
E
Yeah, Yeah, I think so there. Sorry. She bought a plain fragment off of ebay that she, like, keeps in her mouth. Like, this is a comfort object to her.
- [57:52]
D
Okay.
- [57:53]
E
Yeah, yeah.
- [57:54]
D
But it's a.
- [57:55]
E
It's a subversive and funny read, and I will say that it is forever ruined. How I look at airplanes. I would love a drink with Linda because I think she would have a lot of really interesting things to say, but we would have to have that drink somewhere that is not her. Her garage apartment because the owners of the house get her get really mad when she has people over. But we'd have to have this drink somewhere that's also not an airport or.
- [58:19]
A
An airplane because no Delta lounges for Linda.
- [58:22]
D
Yeah.
- [58:23]
E
No, no. But I.
- [58:26]
C
Again, wonderful things about it. I know Lib loved it. I know a lot of people really enjoyed this. I don't know that I'll get to this this year, but I am glad this book exists and bring it on.
- [58:34]
E
I was so surprised. I had no idea what to expect. I put it on my TBR after it showed up on a bunch of the links, like, best books. Halfway through the year, I was like, all right, what? You know, in my head, I knew what it was, but reading it was a whole different experience because you're like, oh, she likes planes in that way.
- [58:51]
B
Oh, really?
- [58:52]
E
No, that's what the book is about. She likes planes in that. That capacity.
- [58:56]
C
Shout the author again. I. I think we maybe stepped out, Kate.
- [58:59]
D
Folk.
- [58:59]
C
Folk. Sky Daddy.
- [59:00]
A
Sky Daddy. One of the great titles of the year. Certainly also a great cover.
- [59:07]
D
No.
- [59:07]
E
No hiding what's going on here.
- [59:09]
C
Kelly, a pleasure. I'm so glad we got you. And I got you. I got. I'm so glad you. You snuck a third one in, too. Real delight to talk to you.
- [59:16]
E
I. I'm just here to talk about all the weird women this year and how great the weird women have been in a year that has been really challenging. It was such a delight to watch people really, truly, like, do the things that you think about sometimes, but are like, I would never do that. And you're like, oh, so I'm literally watching a train wreck right now, and I'm really enjoying It.
- [59:41]
C
Thanks so much.
- [59:42]
A
Thanks so much, Kelly.
- [59:43]
D
Thank you.
- [59:45]
A
All right, now we are joined by Danica Ellis, one of our editors. Danica, I think our listeners know from your appearances on the show, you have fun. Weird, whimsical taste in fiction often. And I'm delighted to see Tusk Love by Thea Guanzon show up on your list because I think you talked about it on front list foyer when you were on the podcast with me earlier this year. Why don't you tell us about your year in books? Talk to us about Tusk Love.
- [60:12]
F
Yeah, I feel like in books I want to be on the extreme. So I either want, you know, really serious, dark, thought provoking books or I want the fluffiest thing you can possibly write. I feel like everyone says you need conflict, and I disagree. Sometimes I don't want any conflict at all. So I have a couple of lighter books for sure, and Tusk Love is one of them, which is a little bit of a backstory of how I got to it because I was gonna.
- [60:41]
C
Say how you have so many titles, your discovery mechanisms that you could pick from. How does one. How does one. Danic Ellis say, you know what? It's Tusk Love Day. Let's go.
- [60:51]
F
I know it's because I love Critical Role, which is a web series where people play D and D together. But it's really good because they're all voice actors, so they're. It's great storytelling. And it's recently been made into two different Amazon prime animated shows, which I highly recommend. Very popular. And in one of their campaigns, they go to a bookstore and they pick up this raunchy book called tusclub and they read out excerpts from this, like, book within a D D campaign that is now a real book.
- [61:28]
D
So great.
- [61:28]
C
Now here's something I want to pause here just for a second. Danica, I'm much older than you are, not like decades and decades. But if you would have told me when I was 15 playing Dungeons and Dragons in my friend's basement, which was essentially like a satanic ritual as far as everyone's concerned in this, in suburban.
- [61:44]
A
Kansas, if you would have told me.
- [61:45]
C
That this Critical Role exists, there'd be Amazon series, it'd be, I would not have believed you. So I just want to take a moment for history to put the mainstreaming.
- [61:55]
A
Of D and D is a real thing.
- [61:57]
D
Yeah.
- [61:57]
F
Ever since Stranger, I think Stranger Things and Critical role and then D20 as well, they have really elevated it. So that's why I initially picked up Tezclove because I haven't been a big romantasy person, especially straight romantasy was pretty unlikely that I was gonna pick it.
- [62:18]
E
But I'm so glad I did.
- [62:20]
F
I was wondering how they would kind of thread this needle. Because in the game, the book is like, a little bit silly. It is, you know, raunchy. It's when they're reading out excerpts, they're not particularly well written. So how do you make this an actual book? And I think that the author just somehow managed to make it feel tongue in cheek and heartfelt, like it really worked.
- [62:45]
D
Works as a standalone.
- [62:48]
C
Princess Bride paradox almost. To do something like that.
- [62:52]
F
Yeah, yeah. It definitely, like, it doesn't take itself too seriously, but it also completely works. I think if you have no background in it. It's a. It's a good romance. It's very steamy. And it's this also interesting balance of being both slow burn and steamy because they. They fall in love slowly. They are quick to sleep together. So you get this, like, mix of both that I think works really well. I feel like I didn't talk about what this is about at all. It's about a merchant's daughter with suppressed magical powers who is on her way to her kind of arranged marriage. And then the caravan gets attacked. And Oscar.
- [63:39]
C
No caravan goes unattacked.
- [63:40]
F
I know, right?
- [63:42]
C
No caravan is ever sort of made it safely from point A to point B.
- [63:47]
F
Exactly. And she is sort of rescued by Oscar the half orc, which is where Tusk love comes from.
- [63:54]
A
These are just incredible sentences that are coming out of your mouth right now.
- [63:59]
F
And he kind of reluctantly helps her, accompanies her to keep her safe. And then obviously they fall in love. So.
- [64:06]
A
Great.
- [64:07]
F
Yeah, it was.
- [64:08]
C
There's a future story within it. Like, are they, like, doing quests and stuff or, like, what's the, you know, the plot kind of beyond.
- [64:14]
F
It's more of just a journey.
- [64:16]
C
Okay.
- [64:16]
F
Yeah. So they.
- [64:17]
C
Like a journey.
- [64:18]
F
Yeah. They're trying to stay safe. There's a little bit of danger, but it's. It's mostly them trying to come to terms with the fact that they have feelings for each other because it's very inconvenient. So.
- [64:31]
C
Okay.
- [64:33]
F
Yeah. That's my first favorite.
- [64:35]
A
That sounds like a really fun time. What else do you have on your list?
- [64:38]
C
I don't think I know what geozoology is. I could maybe guess geology. I could do a little of breaking down.
- [64:44]
F
Please do. Guess.
- [64:48]
C
I don't know. I mean, geo zoology, I guess, the study of animals in particular places. I don't know. Tell me about this, your next book, Danica.
- [64:57]
F
Yes. So my next pick is Lewin Wren's Guide to Geozoology by Angela Shea. I had to say that on I did an all the More Books episode where I was listing my favorites and I had to take that like eight different times because I just couldn't get through geozoology properly. So this is a middle grade fantasy graphic novel and one of my favorite books of all time is the Tea Dragon Society by Katie Neal.
- [65:27]
C
A real fandom. We could do a whole. In the old annotated days to come. Anyway. Yeah, people love that book.
- [65:35]
F
Yeah. And I am definitely on that train. I'm looking at. I have a big print of the Tea Dragon Society on my wall in my office. So I have been looking for something to kind of scratch that itch. And this is really it. So geo zoology is basically in this world. They have these massive animals that are essentially part of the landscape. Like you could be walking over these animals. And it is about this girl who. Her grandmother is a famous geo zoologist who traveled all around and helps Geofauna is what they're called. And one day she kind of stops coming home. She stops sending letters. And Lou decides to try to go after her and find out what happened to her grandmother. And she's accompanied by her friend. And it is. The illustrations are just so beautiful.
- [66:33]
C
They look beautiful. Yeah.
- [66:34]
F
This is the, like, only book, I think, where I literally finished it. I closed the COVID I took out my laptop and just ordered prints so I could have them because I just.
- [66:46]
A
Great recommendation.
- [66:47]
F
Yeah. I love the art style so much and it is very cozy and comforting. But it's also a really interesting story about grief and these cultural divides between generations. Because her grandmother would write to her, but not in a language that she actually understands. So she's trying to kind of come to terms with how their relationship was a little bit distanced because of that gap in their languages. And yeah, it's beautifully illustrated. It's also beautifully written. So this is. I hope that this author does a lot more because I just love it.
- [67:29]
A
What a fun discovery.
- [67:30]
C
Danica. It looks a little bit like. Did you do the Hilda books? Do you know the Hilda books at all?
- [67:35]
F
Yes, I really like the Hilda books.
- [67:37]
C
And my kids love them too. They're little, but this one that you're talking about, Lu and Wren's Guide, looks kind of a combination of like Pokemon and Hilda put together, like these fantastical creatures. Like, it looks really cool. So I'm saying that not to, I think for comps, for read alikes, for people who might be doing gift shopping is why I say that. I know there's a lot of people that might find that particular Venn diagram useful for. For shopping for kids and others in their life.
- [68:00]
F
Of course, I'm always looking for graphic novels about cute little fantasy animals or I guess cute giant fantasy animals.
- [68:08]
C
Do you have a favorite, like graphic novel as a kid, when you were a kid? Because like, I think you're old enough that like graphic novels for middle graders weren't quite a thing yet.
- [68:16]
F
Yeah, yeah. They really weren't. I think when I was a kid, we were just reading like Garfield stuff, which is.
- [68:23]
C
You did the holy trinity of Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes and the Far side. Yes, that's what you did.
- [68:27]
D
Yes, exactly.
- [68:28]
F
Yeah. Which I gotta say, Garfield is so puzzling. Looking back, I still don't know why kids love it so much.
- [68:35]
A
And I feel like the far side of the up. Unexpectedly far side.
- [68:40]
C
And Calvin and Hobbs into a two day long trance. When we got the complete far side from the library, he was just, he was just gone.
- [68:49]
A
I mean, a kid who loves wordplay is going to be like, see, See you later. Calvin and Hobbs. I know, still holds up. Bob puts a friend's twin boys onto Calvin and Hobbs several years back and they left our house holding like his whole stack of childhood Calvin and Hobbs paperbacks.
- [69:05]
C
Yeah, well, and Lumberjanes too. In my house.
- [69:07]
G
Oh yeah.
- [69:08]
C
For my daughter and my son. They both love Lumberjanes. I'm. I feel like when we were doing like, I don't know, this is maybe seven or eight years ago now. Rebecca, when we did, like there was the comics renaissance now.
- [69:20]
A
Yeah. That we think almost 10 years ago.
- [69:22]
C
Saga and Lumberjanes and Planet. Yeah. And a whole bunch of things. But I picked up Lumberjanes again. We have a bunch of them. And I was like, this is. I would read 20 more volumes of this. And I know the creators have gone on to do other things, but I guess Nimona too, in that same.
- [69:38]
F
Yeah.
- [69:38]
A
Good stuff there.
- [69:40]
C
Cool. Well, thank you so much.
- [69:41]
A
Thanks so much.
- [69:42]
C
Thanks for joining us.
- [69:43]
F
Thank you.
- [69:44]
C
Do you want to say the names again? Because we may have stepped all over them. Why don't you say the names?
- [69:47]
F
Sure.
- [69:48]
C
One more time.
- [69:48]
F
So that was Lou and Red's Guide to Geo Zoology by Angela Shea. And then the other one was Tusk Love by Thea Guanzon.
- [70:00]
C
Thanks so much.
- [70:02]
D
Thank you.
- [70:04]
C
Friday, Avatar Fire and Ash arrives in theaters.
- [70:07]
D
I am the fire.
- [70:09]
C
Get your 3D tickets now for the greatest chapter of the biggest saga in history. Whatever happens, protect this family. Critics rave. It's by far the best Avatar movie.
- [70:22]
A
If your father and I do not.
- [70:23]
C
Return, you go as far and as.
- [70:25]
A
Fast as you can move.
- [70:26]
C
Movies don't get any bigger than this. Avatar Fire and ash. Rated PG13. Get tickets now. On December 12, Disney invites you to go behind the scenes with Taylor Swift in an exclusive six episode docu series.
- [70:42]
E
I wanted to give something to the.
- [70:43]
A
Fans that they didn't expect.
- [70:45]
E
The only thing left is to close the book.
- [70:47]
C
The end of an era. And don't miss Taylor Swift. Swift the Eras Tour, the final show featuring for the first time, the Tortured poets department. Streaming December 12th only on Disney. Close your eyes.
- [71:05]
D
Exhale.
- [71:06]
C
Feel your body relax and let go.
- [71:08]
D
Of whatever you're carrying today.
- [71:11]
A
Well, I'm letting go of the worry.
- [71:13]
B
That I wouldn't get my new contacts.
- [71:14]
A
In time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts.
- [71:18]
G
Oh my gosh, they're so fast.
- [71:19]
A
And breathe.
- [71:20]
D
Oh, sorry.
- [71:21]
A
I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order.
- [71:25]
C
Oh, sorry.
- [71:27]
A
Namaste.
- [71:28]
E
Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order.
- [71:32]
C
1-800-Contacts.
- [71:33]
A
All right. We are joined now by Erica Ezzafetti, one of Book Riot's associate editors. Erica, it's been a little while since we've had you here on the show. Thanks for coming back.
- [71:42]
D
Thank you for inviting me. I always look forward to a good yap sesh with y'. All.
- [71:48]
A
Likewise. You are queen among the yappers.
- [71:52]
D
I really am. I wear that title proudly.
- [71:54]
C
They say in Walk the Line, no one follows the killer. No one wants to follow Erica on a company call when we're doing an icebreaker or something like that.
- [72:02]
A
So to my great delight, Erica is going to facilitate our monthly all hands calls once again next year. And it's gonna be a good time. It was a good time the first time around. It's going to be a good time again. You told a story about leopards a few years ago that I'm not sure I totally understood, but I remember it fond.
- [72:21]
D
Cougars. Cougars. I saw a cougar. I'm from Tennessee. We got all types of stuff in the back.
- [72:26]
C
What did you call them cougars in Tennessee? Because in. I heard I was in North Carolina over break and they called them mountain screamers and I thought they were pulling my leg. Oh, okay.
- [72:34]
D
You said you were aware North Carolina.
- [72:36]
C
Over Thanksgiving and we were talking about as one does Big cats. Because my family is who we are. Are. And apparently the local lingo for cougar was a mountain screamer. But I. I don't know. You don't.
- [72:47]
A
You don't need to feel like someone made that up.
- [72:49]
D
Yeah, I. You know what? I will say I almost feel like they were pulling your leg. But on the other hand, when you go deeper south, it just gets wonky. Like, I'm from Nashville, but we moved to what's it called? Bolivar. No one knows it. I barely remember it, but it was in west Tennessee, like, not too far from Mississippi and Memphis.
- [73:06]
F
And they.
- [73:07]
D
I was used to, you know, them being called a cougar, a mountain lion. They call them swampy cats out there.
- [73:12]
A
Swampy.
- [73:13]
D
Swampy cats. Yeah. So I really. I actually believe you. And there was. I didn't tell you all this. There was one time, maybe that. Maybe that makes this make sense, but there was one time at night that me and my brother and stuff, we were outside and we heard this, like, animal scream, and we still can't look.
- [73:30]
C
Was it a mountain screamer? It was a mountain screamer. It might have been.
- [73:33]
D
I think that's a new species, actually. I think that's something else.
- [73:36]
C
Something else?
- [73:36]
D
It has to be.
- [73:37]
C
Well, but speaking of wildlife, one of your picks for us today.
- [73:41]
A
Look at that segue, right?
- [73:43]
C
Only a thousand episodes. That's what. That's the kind of muscle memory you get. Erica, why don't you talk about the Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones.
- [73:52]
D
Okay, so the Buffalo Hunter Hunter. I was not expecting. I'm a weenie, first of all, despite mountain screamers. Okay. Tales of mountain screamers and all of that. I very quickly. Nope. Out of scary situations. You know, if the wind blows a certain way, I'm out. So I don't read a lot of horror, but I was like, indigenous horror. There's, like, a little vampire action going on.
- [74:14]
C
So that was enough to get you out of your scaredy cat corner. Okay. I was gonna ask you, like, why.
- [74:19]
D
Why did you pick this one Scaredy Cat? Not to be confused with swampy Cat. Yeah, so I did choose it. So, yeah, so this. This gets. This gets nasty. I'm gonna be real. Like, this is nasty. Like, I had a nightmare from it. I'm gon.
- [74:36]
E
Why?
- [74:36]
D
I don't read. Yeah, I did, like, the third. The third night of reading this, I had a nightmare, but it wasn't because of the monster in it. Well, it's a monster, but not the one. You know how that goes. So this takes place in like two timelines, mostly in like 1912, but we get a little, little taste of 2012 and this 100 year old diary is found and it's given to the descendant of the writer of the diary. So it's the diary of Arthur Bucharn. And they give the diary, whoever found it in some kind of excavation. No, it was found in like a wall.
- [75:16]
C
I talked to Jones. I remember reading the abstract like it was found in a wall. Someone put it in a wall. That's all I remember about that particular.
- [75:21]
D
Yeah. Trying to, you know, get rid of it. So trying to hide it. So it's given to Bucharn's great great great granddaughter or something. Her name is Etsy and she's trying to make some things, you know, shake, rattle and pop at the university. Honey, she needs tenure. She's like, maybe this diary is it, girl. Like, maybe I can get something from this diary. Girl, I need that tenure. I need the check. Okay? So she starts reading it and then we. The narrative kind of basically shifts to Arthur Bucharn's perspective. And he is like this Lutheran pastor, you know, out in the west in, you know, the frontier days where people like, didn't bathe but once a year. What? You know, it was very funky, nasty times. And so one day, this Native American man comes into his church. He stands out, obviously, because frontier days, you know, racism's all that. And it's so interesting hearing his internal dialogue because he's like, he's patting. He pats himself on the back for being like, you know, like a considerate Christian, like, you know, this, you know, Indian man. But then he's like extremely racist in it. So his name is Good Stab. He's a black feet man. And he's, you know, he's like kind of chilling in the. In the corner kind of. He comes in each day and then eventually they start to talk and Good Step starts to tell him his life story. And Arthur's like, wait a minute, girl. Some of this doesn't make sense, okay? You're talking about some stuff that happened like 70 years ago, and you don't look at Dave.
- [77:03]
C
Oh, that's always a tell.
- [77:06]
D
It's always a tell. And he's like, you know, oh, he's just a, you know, a touched Indian. A little touched in the head. That's what. Well, that's one thing we say in the South. I don't know if you've heard that.
- [77:13]
C
I've heard that.
- [77:15]
D
Yeah. So, you know, Arthur's like, oh, this is just, you know, Bless him. Bless his soul. He's still one of God's children, et cetera, et cetera. And then Good Stabs stories get a little. Well, they get a little stabby, they get a little bloody. You know, they get very morbid. And he just is recounting his story, especially since the day he encountered this creature in a cage. I'm not going to give too many spoilers there, but there's a little, A little raggedy little thing in a cage that was doing something. All right, that's what I'll say. And Good Stab is journeying through his days. He's kind of takes on this transformation and Arthur's listening and he's like, huh? He's still not believing things. But then Good Stab gives him details about things that only people who saw them firsthand could have known. Like one thing in particular. In 1870, there was this very real, like, this actually happened massacre that the US army did to around 200 Native Americans. It's called the Marias Massacre. And side note, reading historical fiction is one way I've learned about so many different things because, yeah, you know, the US public school system is not what. It does not give, what it needs to give. So I. This is the first time I learned about it. And it was in a very personable way because is, these were Good Stabs people, basically. So back to Good Stab, our good man. Good Stab. So as time goes on, you know, Good Stab is visiting him every day. Arthur starts to notice peculiar things about Good Stab. He has a very particular appetite, let's say, and he does weird things and he's a little uncanny. And then we eventually learn that Good Stab is not. Not just there to spill the tea. You know, he's there for like, revenge. And it's like. I will say the thing that. The thing. Yeah, the thing that gave me a nightmare was actually not supernatural at all. It was like, based on the real life historical facts. I was like, oh, that was terrible.
- [79:33]
A
The, the thing you said a few minutes ago about the monster but not the monster makes me wonder if this is an interesting pairing for folks who liked cinema Sinners.
- [79:41]
D
This year I made a list of books for people who like Sinners, and this was on it.
- [79:46]
C
There you go.
- [79:48]
D
I almost forgot about that.
- [79:51]
F
Oh my gosh.
- [79:51]
A
That was so 2025 is just one woman's search to see how many times she can watch Sinners before the Oscars.
- [79:58]
D
I mean, that is a goal to have. Yeah, I, Yeah, I mean, this one didn't have a nice little Irish jig in it.
- [80:07]
F
But.
- [80:07]
D
But you do what you. You know, you do what you can. You make do.
- [80:11]
A
I'm also kind of a weenie, and I have not yet dipped my toes into Stephen Graham Jones, but I think this is going to be my starting place.
- [80:18]
D
Yeah, I. I personally feel like the supernatural horror aspect, well, first of all, there are some unique qualities to it, I suspect, though. I'm not sure, but I suspect that obviously it's a vampire story. I think that's, you know. No, that's not a spoiler or anything. Anything. But I think that he kind of meshes indigenous lore into how that vampires express. So it's not the usual vampire that we're used to seeing. So that's an interesting aspect, honestly, to me, that the vampire part wasn't even scary, like I said.
- [80:51]
A
Okay.
- [80:51]
D
You know, so, you know, for my fellow weenies who also like history, you know, you will have a nightmare, but not from the monsters. Okay.
- [81:00]
A
Just the good old horrors of American history.
- [81:03]
C
Exactly. Just a regular stuff. Real life, just thrill life.
- [81:08]
D
This is not escapism, it's just terrible. Got it.
- [81:11]
C
Yeah.
- [81:12]
G
Interesting.
- [81:13]
A
Through line here with your other pick, then, because Harlem Rhapsody by Victoria Christopher Murphy is also a totally different kind, but another way of exploring black history and American history that hasn't been told. If you want to tell us about that one.
- [81:28]
D
Yes, I am noticing a trend with myself. I think I read a lot of historical fiction, and it was not just that I read a lot of it this year, but it made it to my favorite list. So I am very much in the Harlem Renaissance and the jazz era, and this book kind of perfectly embodies the two. Just like the prose and the setting and how the setting is set up. It feels very musical at times. It feels just very indicative, evocative of the jazz era. So, yes, this also taught me something that I didn't really know about before. I shamefully recently found out within the last, like, couple of years about Jessie Redmond Fawcett, who was known as the midwife of the Harlem Renaissance. And that's because of how much she influenced it. She worked at this literary magazine, this black literary magazine called Crisis, and it was. I think it had other things other than literature. And it actually, I read this book for a book club, and one of the ladies in the book club remembers reading this as a younger girl. She was a little.
- [82:39]
A
Oh, wow.
- [82:40]
D
Yeah. Reading the. The magazine. So they had different. A lot of different stuff in the magazine, but she was the literary editor, Jesse Redmond Fawcett, and she Is the reason we know about people like Langston Hughes, Noel Larson, County Cohen, Claude McKay. So she was iconic, but it's like, why have I. I like, I've hardly heard of her. Well, that, you know, might be for a reason. No shade, but shade one, she was a woman, so there's that. And she was, you know, one of the like few only really black women to hold a title like this at that time. I would say even one of the few women really even to hold a title like this. So now why, why did I say shade? Okay, so the literary magazine was founded and mostly still ran by E.B. du Bois. He's who hired her. And they were having a full on affair and he was very married.
- [83:39]
C
I don't think I remember. I mean, I know some of this era, but I didn't know. I don't think I knew that piece. So when I, when I was reading, I think Vanessa talked about this at some other point and I looked it up the book. I was like, oh, that is spicy.
- [83:52]
D
Yeah. So they were just running around. I lived in Harlem. Harlem is not that big. And I was just running around gallivanting. Gallivanting as they, as they.
- [84:01]
A
You're gonn into everybody, you know, and you're.
- [84:04]
C
And it's not just that.
- [84:05]
D
It's like, it's black people. So you know, you know, you know, I saw WB the boys with that girl. You know, I can hear my grandmother, you know, she little fast, but you know, uhhuh. His wife knows. It's like, you know, it was so messy. So there was one part in the book. Again, we discussed this during. In, in the book, in my book club. There was one part in the book where Jessie, Ms. Jessie did something very messy. Messy Jessie. It was like it involved a birthday party and I was like, oh. I was like, that's not even believable. Meanwhile, there was an author's note saying that that was actually real. Like it actually really happened. And I'm like, you know, there's this thing on. I see like on TikTok when people are like, you know, telling people to, you know, maybe reconsider their romantic options. It's a phrase and it's like, girl, stand up. Girl, stand up. So yes, there are. It has all of that going on at a point is like, jesse, what are we doing here?
- [85:04]
C
And they had a falling out.
- [85:05]
B
Right.
- [85:06]
C
I mean, this part I remember. Eventually Du Bois and Fawcett falls out and she leaves as literary editor, like right in the middle.
- [85:12]
A
You mean a messy affair? Didn't turn out well for the woman especially.
- [85:15]
C
It always turns out great for the lady too in that position too, because. And it was this right in the heart of the. I think 1927 or 28 my memory. So like right in the white hot.
- [85:25]
F
Yeah.
- [85:25]
C
Heart of it. Which is a real shame. And editors on General General are under appreciated. So I think there's a combination of things there for sure.
- [85:34]
A
Historical fiction that really shows people in all of their messiness and that's like juicy and fun to read, I think is one of the great gifts of this moment of publishing that we're in history kind of gets a bad rap. Or people tend to think of at least like history nonfiction as like dry or maybe it's going to be boring or heavy. But for books like this to really bring characters to life and show their full, glorious, kind of disastrous humanity is really fun. Always a delight to have you, Erica.
- [86:03]
D
Always a delight to be had.
- [86:05]
C
So that's Harlem Rhapsody. I don't know if we said Victoria Christopher Murray is the author. Maybe you said it. I had forgotten it. And she also wrote a book called Personal Librarian, which if I remember correctly, for real heads from the Be Our podcast days, I believe is historical fiction about Belle da Costa Green. Green, who was J.P. morgan's personal librarian, which we did an episode about, who was also a super fascinating woman. Erica, thank you so much for regaling us.
- [86:31]
D
Thank you for having me. All.
- [86:34]
C
All right, now we have Sharifah Williams, who you've heard before in the show. Our director of content here at Book Riot. Sharifa, you have toddlers. And I know from experience that having toddlers can do unusual things to your reading life. Talk about your year in reading and how do you work in books to your. To your life as you're chasing the twins around.
- [86:53]
B
Well, it's funny you should mention that because I have a pukey.
- [86:55]
C
Oh, no, no. We'll keep it to 12 minutes, then. That's all you need.
- [87:03]
D
It was.
- [87:04]
B
It's been an interesting year for me for sure, in reading, and I've had to really rely on before bedtime reading in a way I haven't before audio. Audiobooks have always.
- [87:13]
C
Before your bedtime. Before your bedtime.
- [87:16]
B
Yes, before my bedtime, which is much.
- [87:18]
A
Later than the girls bedtime.
- [87:21]
B
Audiobooks have been a savior for me, but I definitely have read less books this year and I am a lot more selective about which books I read because I know I have limited time and I want to read something that I'm really going to enjoy if at all possible.
- [87:40]
A
And you've taken on some hefty reading projects, though, in the midst of this. It's not like I've got toddlers at home, so we're keeping it light and fluffy. You just came off of a big read, the Warmth of Other Suns. You've done some heavy reading this year.
- [87:53]
B
Yeah, I mean, I wanted to challenge myself, but I wanted to do it within the confines of. Okay, if this book is really compelling, it is really engaging my attention, then I'm going to continue on with it. And that was the Warmth of Other Suns. It's a doorstopper. But it was also so captivating, like, I couldn't put it down. And so I feel like I've done some of my, I've experienced some of my best reading this year, even though it has been a much more limited year in reading. So a mixed bag.
- [88:29]
G
Yes.
- [88:30]
C
And with that, we'll start you off with a real light one, it sounds like. Here is your, your first pick.
- [88:37]
B
I assume you mean one day everyone.
- [88:39]
C
Will, you know, just a little beach reading for you.
- [88:42]
F
Yeah.
- [88:43]
B
By Omar El Akad. So this one, actually I was really terrified to go into, and I read it at the top of the year because I knew that, you know, as a parent, as somebody who has seen the news and has been exposed to a lot of things I, you know, know, have, will never be able to unsee. Like, I knew that this book that Omar El Akkad, who is known for writing fiction, this is his debut nonfiction work, I knew that he was not going to go gently into the conversation about Gaza and Palestinians. And I knew that I had to brace myself. But I'm so glad that I read this book because it really captured for me what I think I struggled to express about what I was seeing in the world, what I was reading in the headlines, and just the sort of inner turmoil I felt as a member of the Western world. And Omar El Akkad talks about, from a background of reporting, journalism, writing, being in the world and in the world of politics and war, he really talks about his own feelings, his own experiences. He talks about the media and about publishing and about creatives and activists and how we have all engaged with, with the discussion about Gaza and about what's happening to the Palestinian people, about murder and terrible things that, you know, we can tend to feel not apathetic to. But, you know, you can be made callous by the amount of just the onslaught of news about violence and horror coming at you. And so it was a really grounding experience for me reading this book it really brought me back to, like, my own principles and really helped me to understand that this was a book that is not just a great read for now. Because I think that right now a lot of people who have read this book and who are reading it are people who probably don't need to be told that this is an important issue that needs to be discussed and that needs to be fought for. But I think that it will stand as a historical document that we can return to when we do need a reminder of, you know, even when it's unpopular, to stand against something to say this is wrong. This is a reminder that we have experienced this before, we have been through this, we have seen this. And as removed as we may feel from any situation, there is always a call to stand up for people who cannot speak, for people who don't have a platform. So I truly can't think of a more important book I've read this year, and one that has really helped me reconcile what felt like something that was irreconcilable, something I could not understand, grasp, wrap my head around.
- [92:08]
A
Hearing you talk about it is, I think, the final push that I need to. To pick it up. The reason that I've been hesitant since it came out was precisely what you just said of like, I wondered if there was a preaching to the choir element of it in which I would certainly be a member of the choir. But that idea of really having a piece of grounding reflection that also we can carry into the future is very appealing. We should mention Omar El Akkad won the National Book Award for nonfiction for this time this year, one of the ones that is very likely to stand the test of time. I think it's a little.
- [92:44]
C
I mean, it's hard to know we were talking about the books of the year contenders over on Zero to, well, read things or not, sort of canon contenders, things that can become part of durable conversations. And with non fiction, it's even harder, believe it or not, than fiction to know what's going to hold up or what will become a signal work about a particular issue. You know, sometimes it happens. You get a Silent Spring. You get the big Hiroshima piece in the New Yorker. You get notes of notes on a Native Son by James Baldwin. Things like that become idea documents that aren't a history, you know, that aren't sort of a full accounting. And sometimes you do, but you do, you do get something like, Egovich, we're sorry to inform you that tomorrow you'll be killed, along with your family about the Rwandan Jews like it does happen. So I'll be curious to see as historical events unfurl. I think a National Book Award win certainly gives it an anchoring outside of whatever else might happen. But an early contender and probably something we should have seen a little bit more coming from a. This is important. And people who read books are going to be engaging with this. It's a book that's beautiful.
- [93:46]
A
Sharifa saw it coming. She took it.
- [93:48]
C
She took it in her fantasy draft. Right. Honestly. And then did the work to read it there. Only, I mean, your next pick isn't exactly light, but it's lighter compared. Anything is sort of lighter compared with that. This is something that Rebecca and I will probably be talking about in the segment we have not recorded yet, possibly. But go ahead and tell us about the Wilderness by Angela Flournoy.
- [94:10]
B
Yeah, I mean, it's funny you mentioned that it is a lighter pick because the reason this book really stood out to me and I couldn't put my finger on on it for a while until just a few days ago when I was trying to think about how to talk about this book, I realized that it was because, you know, when we talk about literary fiction, especially when we're talking about, you know, what makes award winners, what makes literary fiction work stand out, often we talk about, you know, what did this book do for literature at large? How did it push?
- [94:49]
C
Where did it push a little bit. That's a really good way of thinking about it, I think.
- [94:54]
B
And one thing that I realized was that it's the tenderness and compassion with which Angelo Flournoy treats these young black women, these characters, that I found unfortunately refreshing in literary fiction. Because this is not. This is a story about young black women, about these friends, but it is not a story about the racism they face. It is not a story about their struggles against bigger problems in the world. It is not not focusing on trauma as the main story point. Although all of them experience these things, all of them have traumas and difficulties and challenges, just like a lot of us do in our lives and especially as we are coming into our own in our early 20s and then being able to follow them through their lives throughout all of these challenges they face, they can always rely on and return to their friendship. And it is the sort of tenderness of this narrative, of these friends coming together, the compassion of these are young women who are really trying to figure it out, who are going to make missteps, who are, you know, going to let their egos take them places they really would, you know, should not have gone.
- [96:31]
G
And.
- [96:32]
B
And, you know, I don't see a lot of that in literary fiction. And so it felt not only really impressive from a place of, like, this is a story that really does capture the lives of these women as they grow up together, but also from the standpoint of this is a book that really shows in a way that is not about, you know, I mean, I hate the phrase trauma porn, but, you know, it's not that. It is about exploring the nuances of these women that they are. They contain multitudes, and they are. They have a lot of, you know, life stories and backgrounds and things they go through, and it forms this bigger picture of them, that they are these complicated, complex people. And I just loved it. I loved being taken on that journey. It felt familiar to me. It felt like a bit of a love note to me in my 20s, especially, because a lot of it takes place in LA. You know, it goes between New York and LA. And there were points in this book where they were talking about la, and I was like. Like, was somebody spying on me?
- [97:52]
A
Because Angela Flournoy is reading your mail?
- [97:58]
B
And so I am also biased in that respect because I was like, oh, my gosh, this book feels so close to my heart. It feels perfect.
- [98:05]
C
If someone rolled by on roller skates in a pink wig, you would have had to send her a note to be like, what's going on here?
- [98:11]
A
There is something really magical about reading a book like this by an author who's about our age. Like, Sharifah and I are the same age. Angela Flournoy is right in that zone. And while I don't share the experience that you and Angela Flournoy have of being a black woman in the world, like that depiction of their friend, the friendships that these women get to be whole and messy, and they have these great big moments together, and they also hold each other accountable, like, sometimes more softly than others for their stuff, but. But they're all in there. There's a real witnessing of each other's lives and that Florida lets us witness their lives. I had the same experience of. It really made me think about, like, my younger self and the friendships that are enduring. And I found it to be really surprising. There were a bunch of points where I thought I knew where she was going. And then we would zag in the plot and be like, okay, Angela Flournoy, like, what else do you have for us? Let's do it.
- [99:09]
D
Yeah.
- [99:10]
B
I tried not to know too much about the story going in, and I cannot be any happier that I did, because it's a wonderful book to just go in blindly and let the story take you all over the place.
- [99:24]
A
And with your sci fi background, too, you must have been delighted for the Octavia Butler of it all.
- [99:29]
F
Yes.
- [99:32]
B
As a little internal dialogue of like, have I even read a Butler book? Like, I was like, come on, come on now, pick up that parable of the Sower. But it was, yes, I was absolutely thrilled by that mention.
- [99:46]
C
And for those of you who haven't read it, who haven't seen it, I'm looking. It's on my nightstand. It's actually under my lamp right now. For reasons I don't really understand, it must have been why it's not very long. So if you're trying to get in under the new year, it's like 240, something like that. I don't think it's even 300 pages pages. And it reads very quickly. So, you know, you could get this one under your belt here in the last few weeks. If that's something you care about, there's no reason you have to do it for this year. But it is a 2025 release and I know some people like to play along and read 2025 releases in the year they come out.
- [100:14]
A
Oh, yeah. And if you're in a book club that's waiting for paperbacks, like just sometime mid-2026, this will come out in paperback and it will be an excellent, like a substantial book, book club conversation.
- [100:26]
B
That is a great point. I can't imagine a better book club.
- [100:30]
A
Read than this one. So much to talk about.
- [100:33]
C
Sharifah, thank you so much for joining us.
- [100:36]
B
Thank you.
- [100:38]
C
All right, Vanessa Diaz, our managing editor here at Book Riot, you're up now. You've got two picks. Tell us about two of your favorite books of the year.
- [100:46]
G
I do, and I think I may have even mentioned them on the show on my front list, foyer appearances. But, you know, we're going to give you a little more detailed analysis. First one is probably not a surprise for anybody who has ever paid attention to anything I've read. And that's the Bewitching by Silvia Moreno Garcia. It's witchy. It's Silvia Moreno Garcia. I like to make the joke that I'm pretty sure she has a genre roulette in her home that she just spins whenever it's time to crack open the keyboard. And she's like, I'm gonna do that. And she did. And it's great. It's sort of dark academia. It's a mystery. It's horror. It's of other things. So it starts off in 1990s Massachusetts, where Minerva is a Mexican grad student who is studying the history of horror literature. And for her thesis, she's researching this obscure horror writer named Beatrice Tremblay, who also went to that same university, obviously decades prior, wrote some twisty, macabre tales. But there's also a bit of a mystery kind of swirling around this particular writer, and that's that there is this unexplained disappearance of that writer's roommate, Ginny. Ginny was a spiritualist. She was one of those kind of gauzy, very glamorous, beautiful women that everybody was kind of surrounding. You know, she would pull people into her orbit and everybody was kind of fascinated with her. And it also created this weird tension with, like, who could claim her as their bestie. So there were some kind of dynamics going on there that play out interestingly. But that's kind of the buzz. That's really what most people know this writer for versus, like her actual work or her actual horror writing. So Minerva starts to research this. It's slow going. She has to do a whole bunch of very tedious, you know, poking, as research often is. But the more she learns about the disappearance and more learns about, like, that spiritualist angle, the more it becomes pretty clear that Giddy may have actually been at least convinced that she was haunted of some sort. And the types of stories that she's learning and, like, weird quirks that she would mention that, like, she felt that she was being pursued by this really weird presence, that she would walk away and then seemingly kind of disappear in a way that didn't make sense to people, really are echoing tales that she remembers her grandmother telling her about her life in 1900s Mexico. And then we do get that perspective of the grandmother Alba, who is telling you about her experience growing up in Mexico as the daughter of a family where the patriarch dies and then a brother of her mom kind of comes in and we've got some weird feelings about who he is and, like, what he's trying to do with the family. And that's kind of all you should know because those stories just start to kind of quietly converge. You probably know from the title that there is some sort of witchy something, but it's a very particular brand of witchy. It's this like Mexican brujeria thing. That's not, you know, what you might expect from just like a typical witchy novel.
- [103:26]
A
Not your practical magic.
- [103:27]
G
No, there are no ancestors around here. This is a much deeper, darker, more Sinister sort of thing going on. But the way she blends those two stories together is really brilliant. And I'm just a huge fan of the kind of horror that Sylvia Moreno Garcia writes.
- [103:41]
A
You are maybe like the captain of Silvia Moreno Garcia's street team unofficially. And I know that you've loved, I think everything that she's written. I've heard you talk about them on the podcast podcasts and seen them show up in Book Riot's best of year after year. Where should people start who have not read her? Or is this really a pick your genre that you like and jump in situation?
- [104:02]
G
Kind of. I think the picking of the genre is probably great just because she does have something for so many of those vibes. But I mean like her earlier stuff, Signal to Noise is great if you are wanting to do something that's a little bit more on the sci fi tip. I think Gods of Jaden Shadow is phenomenal if you like, like sort of time rompy. She tends to weave in a lot of historical elements into her stuff and that's one that takes us all the way from like jazz age Mexico with, you know, dead vengeful gods and somebody that gets brought back to life.
- [104:31]
F
So that's great.
- [104:32]
G
I think Mexican Gothic is the one that really kind of put her on the map.
- [104:36]
C
Right. I mean, it's the first time I started seeing her name pop up in lists and lists and from the author of kind of stuff.
- [104:42]
G
Yep. But if you read Mexican Gothic and like it, which is very much the. This horror gothic, taking the prototype of that decaying English, literal English matter, but sticking it in the hills of Hidalgo and Mexico, you should also read certain dark things because that is her vampire novel set in Mexico City that is also not your typical vampire novel and brings in aspects of mythology and history from Mexico. So she just does it for me. But yeah, lots of great places to.
- [105:07]
C
Start and she pumps out one a year, right.
- [105:09]
A
No, it's really incredible.
- [105:10]
C
Yeah, it's really.
- [105:11]
G
And she's. Yeah, because she's a huge advocate for like the horror community and specifically like the bipoc horror community, but for reasons that no one needs me to explain, is like really exhausted by a lot of social media. So she'll just kind of go away and then really come back out to be like, by the way, another book coming next year. And then like. And just literally what she just did, she announced the intrigue, which is this like noir. She has been dipping back into noir lately. So anyway, yeah, she's busy.
- [105:37]
D
She keeps the.
- [105:38]
C
That keyboard warm but yeah, I recommended Silver Nitrate to my brother because it was the only book I ever knew that was about an audio engineer. So that was a fun one with.
- [105:48]
G
Like some Nazi occultism. Yeah.
- [105:50]
C
Again, as one does, a little hellboy mixed in at some level. Your other pick for us this year is something that I've seen pop up a lot. And I think when Rebecca first linked to it in the Book Riot newsletter, we were shocked about how many, like, clicks it got.
- [106:03]
G
So many clicks.
- [106:05]
C
So, I mean, this is one that I don't know. I mean, I've read the COVID I have no reading experience. But why don't you talk about the macabre?
- [106:10]
F
Yes.
- [106:11]
G
So, yeah, the macabre is apparently my theme for today. First in Vibe and also in Vibe, but in title, always, always, does it ever change? Yeah. So the Macabre by Kosoko Jackson, which was my first time reading Kosoko Jackson, most of the work that I associate him with is more in the ya, romance and. Or like rom com space, Queer romance. And this. He took some queer romance, but applied it to this book that's full of art and. Yeah, horror vibes. And so at the very beginning, we meet this gentleman named Lewis, and he's in a hospital. It's all in a prologue. His mother is dying and he's sitting next to this really mysterious woman who's sort of just making conversation with him in the way that you might in a waiting room, except that she starts to sort of get more and more sinister with the stuff that she's saying. And it becomes pretty clear that she maybe knows him and the mother, but he doesn't recall why. And then she quite literally wraps that conversation with saying something to the effect of like, yep, didn't like your mom and that's why I killed her and why I made it hurt. And he's like, wait, what?
- [107:06]
C
And then, wait, hold on, wait, back up.
- [107:09]
G
But then she basically magically, you know, men in blacksm were like. He suddenly is looking at her and like, slowly starts to forget what it is that she was just saying and he doesn't. And that's literally where the prologue ends. We flash forward. He's running through the streets of London because he has been invited by the town, Tate and I think the British Museum in tandem for this exhibition where they have allegedly chosen different artists from different countries that Britain, at what point colonized in an act of sort of artistic retribution to be like, hey, sorry, we colonized. Do your art thing. He's like, great, I guess I got chosen. He's a struggling artist, can't really like, figure out why it is that he was chosen. But he's not going to look the gift horse and the mouse. So he goes shows up at the, you know, museum with his, the specific piece in tow. But when he enters the room, everything looks kind of funky and creepy and he realizes that he has been brought here under a ruse. And that ruse is that he has been specifically brought for this sort of test to see if the suspicions that they have of him are true. Which is that this fugue like state that he enters when he's working on his paintings is actually a form of very rare magic that allows him to physically step into paintings. And the reason that's a big deal in this particular, like, yeah, situation is that there are these nine sinister paintings that are scattered across the globe. Origins of most of them unknown, that need to be recovered at all costs because they are capable of like an unspeakable evil. But also the person who did those paintings in the first place is literally Lewis's great grandfather.
- [108:42]
C
So they're all by the same person. All the paintings are all by the same person. Horcrux with that type of situation. Exactly.
- [108:48]
G
You took the words out of my mouth. So he, they test it out, right? He enters that first painting and it is one that is the one that's featured on the COVID So if you looked at that cover and you were like, ooh, that's creepy cool. He quite literally steps into that cover and it's this story of a young boy who is at a funeral because a woman, the one woman pictured in the picture has died. But like, how did she die? That's the creepy part. And he realizes that it's, yes, he has this power, but like, what do I do with it? How do I get out? And they're like, well, you can sign on to do this. It will change your life if you do. It will not change your life or it will if you don't, but not in the way that you want. So you probably kind of have no choice but to join us. And so he does. And that just kicks off this globe trotting, time hopping adventure into history. Gothic magic, magic, cursed objects. Definite commentary on the effects of colonialism, of stolen art, stolen artifacts, with some of that queer romance in the back too. But it is a gory romp and a history lesson and is, I think the darkest that I've seen. Kosoko Jackson, by his own words, get with his books.
- [109:51]
C
It was just a bloody good time.
- [109:53]
A
A gory Romp and a history lesson is a hell of a cover blurb.
- [109:56]
C
And it's sort of a coward. But I'm like the very opening of Da Vinci Code, right. Is like in a museum and there's like people splayed out and flagellated, dilated and bleeding. I kind of dug that. Like that's, I think one of the magic things of that book. And it sounds like there's elements to that there also. I was thinking about this as you were talking, Vanessa. I think macabre is like top 10 word. That's just an unusual word.
- [110:19]
A
It's a cool idea.
- [110:20]
C
It's just a wonderful. I'm so glad that someone took that to just title their book.
- [110:26]
G
I didn't know anything about it. Saw the title and was like, well, you know, because, yeah, it's a good word and I just love lives up.
- [110:32]
F
It's.
- [110:32]
G
It's. I think Jeff and I talked on the last episode about how we're, you know, the art books thing is like having a bit of a moment. And this was. Which is so different considering I'm trying to read Mona's eyes right now.
- [110:42]
A
Very different tone.
- [110:43]
C
Yeah, but those two would be interesting, right? It's like the Shining meets Simona's eyes.
- [110:49]
G
And Kosoko Jackson is funny because I kept reading this thing.
- [110:52]
E
God, this is just like cinematic like.
- [110:54]
G
The way he envisions that. I could see that this is a thing he could potentially turn into a film. And that's. He's been all over social talking about how one of his big passion projects all his life was to get into film. And then he just decided the state of the world is terrible. I'm going to pursue those dreams. And he's pursuing film right now and like making headways and as I'm watching him take these baby steps and they could. Could you one day do this?
- [111:14]
A
Like also Ryan Coogler, what's he doing next?
- [111:18]
G
Like Black Panther 3?
- [111:20]
C
I just saw that actually.
- [111:21]
G
Yes, that is true. But yeah. So macabre theme.
- [111:25]
C
I'm stepping on a future. Deals, deals, deals. But there was just a deal announcement for a book called the Louvre Heist that I think someone at Xando is going to do. That's a non fiction account. Great, we're all ready. We can do a six hour podcast.
- [111:37]
G
I'm available.
- [111:38]
C
Did you just see that Someone boosted a bunch of Matisses from a museum in Brazil. Brazil, Old copycats.
- [111:45]
G
It's just, well, I mean, once, you know how apparently like you know, rough shots, targets.
- [111:50]
A
Yeah, I was like Berlin was like.
- [111:52]
G
We can steals arts.
- [111:53]
E
It's fine.
- [111:56]
C
That one in my city's just sitting there.
- [111:59]
A
Get yourself a little truck with a ladder attached. They're all over the place.
- [112:02]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [112:03]
G
If my 401k doesn't deliver, I have a backup plan, but.
- [112:06]
F
Right.
- [112:06]
C
Just yourself a bottle, a B and a little moxie and you've got yourself a criminal enterprise. Vanessa, thank you so much.
- [112:16]
G
Thank you.
- [112:26]
A
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- [112:36]
D
Problem of the day is a clanking.
- [112:38]
A
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