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Book Riot - The Podcast
Our Favorite Books of the Year
01:05:32
Jeff and Rebecca reveal their favorite books of 2024.
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- [00:01]
Jeff O'Neill
The holidays are about spending time with your loved ones and creating magical memories.
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Rebecca Schinsky
That will last a lifetime.
- [00:08]
Jeff O'Neill
So whether it's family and friends you haven't seen in a while or those who you see all the time, share holiday magic this season with an ice cold Coca Cola. Copyright 2024, the Coca Cola Company Baking.
- [00:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
Hershey's Kisses peanut butter blossoms is the perfect way to celebrate the holiday season with friends and family with their classic, rich, creamy milk chocolate taste. There's no better way to heartwarm the holidays than by baking with Kisses chocolates. Find Hershey's Kisses holiday chocolates at your favorite retailer.
- [00:42]
Jeff O'Neill
This is the Book Riot podcast. I'm Jeff O'Neill.
- [00:44]
Rebecca Schinsky
And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.
- [00:46]
Jeff O'Neill
And today we're talking about our favorite books of the year. We each have 10. I have ranked mine 10 to 1. Have you done that, Rebecca?
- [00:54]
Rebecca Schinsky
I have. I ranked mine as well. And I left in the ones that we've historically, like, played into the? Rst L and Es because we're just talking faves.
- [01:03]
Jeff O'Neill
Faves. So I don't know that these are the best books I read this year. I really don't.
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Rebecca Schinsky
Okay.
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Jeff O'Neill
And a best book in your favorite book are different things. Is the best movie I've ever seen my favorite movie? No.
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Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
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Jeff O'Neill
Right. But the overlap is hard to parse. I have one honorable mention because it's sort of the gander to the goose of the rest. Like, it kind of stands apart. Well, you know, one is a productivity or business book. One of my 10 favorite books. But it also matters in my reading life, and people like to hear that. And so I have an 11th that's, I don't know, an extra special honorable mention, if that's a thing.
- [01:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. My calculus was like, what are the ones that I'm really glad to have read or that I keep thinking about or, you know, that I might revisit someday? But there were a handful beyond these 10 that, like, on a different morning with a different cup of coffee and a slightly different vibe. Some of those might have made the top list. I think probably five or six of my 10 are written in stone. And the rest of them might have been flexible or fungible on a different day. Swapped out for some of the other titles that I liked. But these are all 10 books I'm really glad to have read this year.
- [02:14]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. And so my process was I am going to finish the year with 111 books or so. I think I'll probably finish a few more. And so my general rule is I can recommend one out of every 10 books. So if I think about it that way, the 10 helps me. And on first pass, I just like, okay, here. This one's a contender. This one's a contender. I had 22, so I had to come down from there. I'll do some honorable. I won't do all of those because that seems like what's the point if I'm just going to list a bunch of book titles, which I feel sometimes I'm in danger of just doing that. But that's how I got to the process there. What should we tell people about what's coming up? I don't know what day this pod is coming out. Is this free?
- [02:50]
Rebecca Schinsky
This is coming out tomorrow.
- [02:51]
Jeff O'Neill
This is tomorrow. Okay, that's pretty soon then.
- [02:54]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, this one's fresh.
- [02:56]
Jeff O'Neill
Okay.
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Rebecca Schinsky
So after this one, folks will hear, hopefully, an episode about Nightbitch in the next week or two, depending on what theaters offer us in our respective locations. We'll do the best of the rest in the Patreon near the end of the year. We also have an episode for Patreon about the books we missed this year. That's always fun.
- [03:14]
Jeff O'Neill
That's a really a good exercise and fun episode, actually.
- [03:17]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, that's always a good time. Let's see. And we will be doing the Books of the year here on the main feed next week as well, which is basically our the it books. Look back at what was actually an it book versus what we guessed at the start of each month.
- [03:33]
Jeff O'Neill
And I think you messaged me about this today. I talked to Gilbert Cruz yesterday, the New York Times Book review, about the 100 notable books and the 10 best books process and selection criteria and what goes into that really interesting episode. Gilbert's always a good time. You're asking what to do with that. I think I'm just going to drop it as a standalone bonus in the next few days because that's hot. It's off the press. I don't want to tack it onto something else. I don't want to wait. So we're going to go do that as well.
- [03:58]
Rebecca Schinsky
I'm very happy for you and for Gilbert that he got the experience of you coming in hot with. What is the meaning of the word notable? It's a fun day in podcast land.
- [04:09]
Jeff O'Neill
Yesterday, because he hadn't listened to. I warned him that I came in with him.
- [04:13]
Rebecca Schinsky
The episode hadn't even been live yet.
- [04:16]
Jeff O'Neill
And he, well, I'm not gonna spoil it, but he gave the kind of answer is not disarming. It's a little fire suppressant on that. Cause it's kind of what you were. It's like it's a column A and column B and there's too many books and. Well, I mean we knew you were right, but like being right about the wrong thing is no victory. Oh, I.
- [04:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
What I'm hearing is that Gilbert and I are both reasonable.
- [04:37]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, what I'm hearing is that if you start with a faulty premise, a lot of true things can be deduced.
- [04:44]
Rebecca Schinsky
Anyway, I'm glad to not be alone in my position.
- [04:47]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. Anyway, so we talked about that really interesting process. I actually didn't know a lot of the details because they don't talk about them.
- [04:54]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I had no idea. I'm looking forward to listening.
- [04:56]
Jeff O'Neill
And we talked about in the Patreon that's getting published today, we talked about, you know, what we want from a year end list, what goes into them, strengths and weaknesses. Everything's a trade off, right? Like Gilbert and I talked about any list of 100 books at the end of the year someone's going to say what about this thing? Because you can't get it right.
- [05:15]
Rebecca Schinsky
You can do 200 and you still get the what abouts.
- [05:17]
Jeff O'Neill
And my rejoinder for making a list on the Internet or elsewhere for someone saying, okay, show me your list of 100 that's perfect without critique and error and slights and so on. And so that's part of the deal. But I think one thing we're asking about in that Patreon episode and maybe a little bit the notable is give us some transparency about the processes. Like what do you mean by notable? Is there a quota for the number of poetry books you want in the list? He answers that question, which I think is pretty and things like that. So anyway, those are a nice hand in glove, but we'll get that there. Thanks for him to coming on the show as fun as always for a sponsor break. And we're going to get into our 10 favorite books of the year looking for a pickup truck to get just about anything done. Look no further. The Chevy Silverado EV isn't just the most powerful Silverado ever with next level towing capability and technology. It also offers game changing versatility with the available multiflex midgate and tailgate. Which means Silverado EV helps you carry large, bulky and oddly shaped items up to nearly 11ft in length. Chevrolet together. Let's drive. Visit Chevrolet.com to learn more.
- [06:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
This episode is brought to you by aws. Amazon Q Business is the new generative AI assistant from aws. Many tasks can make business slow, like wading through mud. Help. Luckily, there's a faster, easier, less messy choice. Amazon Q can securely understand your business data to help you streamline tasks like summarizing quarterly results or doing complex analyses in no time. Q Got this? Learn what Amazon Q Business can do for you@aws.com learnmore this episode is brought.
- [06:54]
Jeff O'Neill
To you by Lifelock.
- [06:56]
Rebecca Schinsky
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- [07:01]
Jeff O'Neill
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- [07:04]
Rebecca Schinsky
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- [07:07]
Jeff O'Neill
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- [07:09]
Rebecca Schinsky
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- [07:12]
Jeff O'Neill
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- [07:17]
Rebecca Schinsky
Save up to 40% your first year.
- [07:19]
Jeff O'Neill
Visit lifelock.com podcast Terms apply. We're going to list 10. I think we'll have, I don't know, 50% overlap. I'm looking. There's like three. I'd be shocked. Yeah, well, I don't know. Half feels about right. And all of these, if you wanted to, you could go get them over at Thriftbooks, which sponsors the show. 19 million individual things you can buy over there. Books, movies, CDs. A lot of the things you can give as gift free shipping, $15 or more in the U.S. readers reward program. Thriftbooks.com you know you can get some of these out now. Very competitive pricing, I should say, with large green themed branding, color websites that you may know. All the book websites are green anyway. That's a different. That's a different.
- [08:04]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, that's true. We should explore our feelings.
- [08:06]
Jeff O'Neill
It's like all my credit cards are blue. I don't understand. I don't know why this happens. Go check them out over there. Also check out mytbr Co. These are our favorites. But if you don't know what you want or you've got someone in your reading life that you want to buy a gift for. MyTBR co recommend personalized book recommendations. That's the three sentence things, but there's a digital only rate the recommendations. This fits for books. Do people talk about I haven't heard about Stitch fix in a while.
- [08:31]
Rebecca Schinsky
No, I think the like because it was the first one. But now the like custom clothing subscription situation is. Has just proliferated to the point of almost being meaningless.
- [08:40]
Jeff O'Neill
I just don't want to see a point where referring to it like Mork and Mindy, like no one's seen Mork and mindy in like 30 years.
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Rebecca Schinsky
Customized book recommendations is the way to go by actual people Not AI mytbr.
- [08:53]
Jeff O'Neill
Co link in the show. Notes for you there. Before we do our 10. Was it a good reading here? Rebecca Schinsky A what do you want to grade by letters? How would you like to characterize?
- [09:02]
Rebecca Schinsky
I'm giving it a B. There were, there were a couple, like, really big A hits for me. But looking back over my and I'll finish the year with about 85 books. Looking back over what I've read this year, a lot of them I was like, oh yeah, I read that. Like, a lot of things just did not hit as memorable for me, like pound for pounds book for book. I don't feel like I had as great of a reading year as I had the last couple of years, but it is stronger than it felt like it was gonna be. At certain times in like mid March and again in July, I remember being like, oh, I don't really know how I'm feeling about 2024, but I think the, like, the stars of the show are carrying most of the glory here for me. And then there were some other strong titles, but I didn't feel like this was an awesome year. And I've had some friends who have said the same of like, this is kind of a weird year in books. I don't know. How did you feel about yours?
- [10:01]
Jeff O'Neill
I think B is about right. I felt like a couple. I went through a couple of pretty dry for me reading droughts. I mean things come and go like I'll go on real terrors. And then I felt like the droughts were longer. Reading climate change for me maybe is a thing that was happening and the that could be me. The year happenstance for sure. It also could be like there were places where I weren't. I wasn't excited about a new release. I wasn't chaining together things consistently. And that leads up to a B. You know, in every year. The top three as strong A top three or four for me is in any year. I think I'm feeling like it's a weak end. Like, I read a lot of stuff I that was pretty forgettable or really flawed or didn't resonate with me on. So I felt like the tale of the My reading list was weaker and maybe that's affecting what I'm feeling about the rest of it.
- [10:52]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, maybe that's some recency bias. I But I'm looking at my list and feeling the same way that most of my hits for the year came out in the first half of the year.
- [11:00]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. Okay. With that said, let's do the list. Rebecca, number 10, would you please lead us off?
- [11:08]
Rebecca Schinsky
Sure. Colored Television by Danzie Senna.
- [11:10]
Jeff O'Neill
I haven't got to this. I'm sure this, you know, you don't know. This is probably going to make it onto my books we missed this year list just looking at what's left on the dock before. But please talk to me about color television.
- [11:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
And it was super fun. And more than the book itself, which I am glad to have read, I am glad to have been introduced finally to Danzy Senna's voice. There was talk about this as a breakout novel for her. I have not read any of her backlist, but this is about a. An English professor, an academic who has been spent. She spent like the last decade working on a book that she's been stuck on. She thinks that she has hit like an epiphany moment where she has cracked the code of how to turn this thing into. Into a masterpiece. And it's like a bajillion pages long and has tons of references and is like folding back in on itself. And basically she has lost the plot. Like, she thinks it's great. No one that she shows it to thinks that it's great. She cannot admit this to herself, but really cannot admit it to her husband and gets what she thinks is going to be a big break writing for television and gets kind of caught up in the world of Hollywood also, like, as a subplot. She and her family have been spending this last year that the story is taking place living in a really fancy home that belongs to a friend of hers who went on a similar path, who left academia, left the writing world to become a TV Hollywood person. And she's maybe taken advantage of some of his hospitality and his contacts. Things get complicated in that friendship. But the writing is just so, so sharp. There's commentary, like, threaded through about race. Senna is like, as a writer, kind of obsessed with the concept of mulatto, of people who are half black, half white. And this character is also obsessed that. And is told repeatedly that this is going to be a problem for her work. But the discussions that the main character and her partner have about race, the way that they engage with like broader cultural and political ideas is really pointed and really fun to read. Like, you come away kind of feeling like, you know where Danzy Senna stands on a bunch of things. But it's never preachy or lecture y. This is just a really good hang and it made me excited for whatever Danzy Senna does next.
- [13:19]
Jeff O'Neill
Great. My number 10. I don't know how to deal with endowment effect and recency bias. Right. This is something I've talked about several times of like, do these things counteract each other? Which one is stronger? Which one happens? Because if I read Rental House in March, is it higher or lower than 10? I don't know where to put it.
- [13:36]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I struggled with where to put it. I have it at 6.
- [13:39]
Jeff O'Neill
Okay, so let's do a thing that I think I borrowed from the ladies over at House of R on the Ringer podcast network where when they do a rank order list like this, whoever has it higher is when you talk about it. So we're going to wait until we hit color television. So that brings us to your nine then.
- [13:56]
Rebecca Schinsky
My nine is Black Pill by Elle Reeve.
- [13:58]
Jeff O'Neill
Okay, I have not read this as well. You've talked about this before. What's the deal with Black Pill?
- [14:02]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, L Reve was a reporter for Vice in 2017 when the big march happened in Charlottesville, the Neo Nazi Tiki torch march. Prior to that she had been embedded doing research and reporting with like the worst people on the Internet and gaining trust from them, trying to understand like how these communities form and really how the leap happens from online community built on ostensible jokes that are about race and gender, highly offensive ones, into real world action bordering on and even actually becoming domestic terrorism. This was came out earlier in the year, especially seeing how the election went. I am glad to have read this. Understanding how lonely young men end up online getting radicalized and pulled into actions that like past versions of themselves would have found to be unthinkable. The whole thing is terrifying. But Reeve is a really great, also really fun and funny writer. Like for a story that is basically like documentary in book form about something that is so scary, the book rips like it's a great page turning time. I did feel like it expanded my perspective, gave me some empathy for things that I had not considered before that are certainly not excuses for how people end up behaving in the ways that these young men have behaved. But maybe I understand the reasons a little bit more and it feels like an important piece of reporting to have in a cultural conversation where we are trying to figure out what to do about the men and how to reach them.
- [15:37]
Jeff O'Neill
Number nine for me, I know you don't have because you haven't read it. It's Challenger by Adam Higginbotham, a spiritual sequel to Midnight and Chernobyl. I've even talked about the same thing. Both of these books do a post mortem on a Disaster and they're scientific and engineering disasters to be sure. But I think what makes them most interesting to a broader audience is that they're also personal, cultural and managerial failures. And if you're interested in those kinds of things, there's a lot of business books you can read, right? And they give you positive examples about here's how something worked or if I hear another Elon Musk or Steve Jobs anecdote in a business books, I'm going to jump off something tall and Adam Higginbotham will have to write a book about me. But these failures are as instructive as anything, right? In how these things that happen, where you have in the form of the Soviet Union, in the form of the United States, the two great technological powers of all time making terrible mistakes and how they're specific to that particular mistake in the people involved, but also indicative of something larger. So in the case of Challenger it is of course the denouement is the explosion of the Challenger shuttle in 1986. Yeah, 86. But how? The evolution of the U.S. space program, the American public's relationship to it, the American government's relationship to the military industrial complex. There are heroes and villains here, but of the most banal and mealy kind who want money and don't want to be on the hook for saying no to the giant contracts that feed them. You get to learn all you want to know about the freezing temperatures of O rings and booster rockets. But there's also a wide and varied cast of characters here as well. It's a long book. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It reads very well. Higginbotham is clear, concise and comprehensive, which is not. Those are three Cs that are not easy to do all at once. I am on board for a lifetime. Higginbotham reading commitment. I don't know what could be next. I wonder about the World Trade Center. I mean the thing that's different there, someone's actually trying to blow something up. But the failure of the World Trade center buildings which came so shocking would be fascinating to know. Maybe there's a story there. I'm sure there's other that are wild to see. Maybe the nuclear reactor in Japan or something else where there was a disaster that was self inflicted in hindsight was both preventable and inevitable. I think that's sort of the Shakespearean tension at the heart of the Higginbotham. What makes for a worthy Higginbotham subject? Challenger. Wonderful. Could be higher, hard to know. But as good as it gets for narrative nonfiction that has larger messages as well.
- [18:41]
Rebecca Schinsky
Did you do that one on audio?
- [18:42]
Jeff O'Neill
I did.
- [18:43]
Rebecca Schinsky
Okay. So worth it even for the length on audio. Yeah.
- [18:46]
Jeff O'Neill
And it's one of those things where I kind of let it flow over me if I miss a specific I find it's easier to do with nonfiction where with fiction, especially when I'm interested on the sentence level, I don't want to miss a sentence and I can't really go about my business like I will put the orange juice in my cereal in that kind of a situation where if I tune out for a minute generally second for a long nonfiction, I won't have missed a huge thing that's never mentioned again, which easily can happen in fiction.
- [19:11]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh yeah.
- [19:12]
Jeff O'Neill
But again, it's not ideal to be distracted driving, for lack of a better metaphor. But this is one where I just kind of put it on while I was doing all kinds of stuff. That to me is the best. There's no better sort of non conscious or non overt recommendation for me for an audiobook than I'm always finding an excuse to turn it on in place. I wouldn't normally.
- [19:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, it's like how NPR talks about the driveway moments, but it's like I will go construct a driveway moment when I'm trying to get to the end of a good audiobook.
- [19:42]
Jeff O'Neill
Right? Yeah. Like I generally don't listen to audiobooks in the shower, but if I'm into something I like turn my phone on loud and sort of hear it in the shower for a few minutes. Like the will I listen to Am I listening to it in the shower? Is not the worst heuristic for deterministic. So that's my number nine. That brings us to eight for you, Rebecca.
- [19:57]
Rebecca Schinsky
The other significant others by Raina Cohen.
- [20:00]
Jeff O'Neill
Good.
- [20:00]
Rebecca Schinsky
One of my most anticipated books of the year. It delivered. Cohen is an NPR reporter who has had unconventional non traditional living arrangements with her husband and their friends and their kids. It's kind of a cooperative living situation. And the book is about people who sent center their lives on something other than their romantic relationships. Not necessarily to the detriment or exclusion of romantic relationships, but what is what does a life that is built with friendship more at the center or you know, at the co center with a romantic relationship look like? Each chapter is a profile of a pair of people or a group of friends who have made some kind of commitment to live their lives in a kind of a platonic form of partnership. Some of them are raising kids together, some of them you Know, like, have bought homes together. Some are people who have just never really been interested in romantic relationships, but they're deeply connected to a friend, and they want that person to be the person who is, like, making their medical decisions for them at the end of life or that, you know, all these varieties of things that our society defaults to. You have a romantic partner and they do those things, or you are just alone. And Cohen is really trying to fill in all the other spaces that are possible, the other ways and arrangements that our lives can look. I just found it to be expansive and warm and celebratory. And I would listen to a weekly podcast with a different interview with different people who have set their lives up in this way. Just, you know, especially as we become more and more fragmented and people spend so much time online. I. I've long thought that romantic relationships hold way too much weight. Or we're, you know, kind of isolated into a nuclear situation. Yeah. And communal living situations or lives that have more space in them for community or where friendships are just as important and don't come. They don't come in second to, like, well, let me check with what my husband is doing that night before I commit to what my friendship might be able to do. Just really wonderful. And I would love to see Cohen get more attention for it. But I think especially with younger generations right now that are less likely to get married, less likely to have kids, it's a. A conversation we're going to have more and more often. And I'm really grateful for the way Cohen did it.
- [22:14]
Jeff O'Neill
I suspect you may have this higher. I don't know. My number eight is Beauty Land. Do you have this on the list?
- [22:18]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh, that's my four.
- [22:19]
Jeff O'Neill
There's four. Okay, so we're going to continue. That brings us to your seven.
- [22:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
Margot's got money troubles.
- [22:25]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. I haven't read anything on your list so far, but then all the things I picked are higher for you. This is so weird.
- [22:31]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's funny. Yeah. By Rufi Thorpe. We've talked about this, or I've talked about this one several times on the show. It's about a young woman who has a very brief relationship with her English professor. Ill advised. He gets in trouble. She gets pregnant, and she decides to keep the baby and has to figure out how to pay for her life. Her father, who is a former pro wrestler, kind of comes back into the picture, and he mentions casually one day that a friend of his who's still in wrestling is making more money through OnlyFans than she's making as a wrestler. And Margo gets a light bulb over her head and is like, what could I do on OnlyFans? So Margot becomes a sex worker, functionally. She starts an OnlyFans out of her bedroom in this two bedroom apartment and her dad eventually finds out and helps her run the business. And it is like surprisingly warm and wholesome for being a book about a young woman who is abused by a man in a position of power and then has a child and has to figure out how to navigate the situation. It's really funny. I think very timely. It plays in most time zones. Like, I could give this book as a gift to most of the people in my life who read and enjoy books. This is not going under the tree for my mother in law, but that's like the time zone it doesn't play in.
- [23:47]
Jeff O'Neill
It can go for the other. Your other significant others can get as a gift, but maybe not your mom or mother in law.
- [23:53]
Rebecca Schinsky
But it's like for the. For what the elevator pitch sounds like and that it seems like it would be like really edgy and maybe kind of dark. Like it actually is, I think very accessible. A really fun time. This was one of the best times I had reading this year and I just wanted to talk to people about it.
- [24:08]
Jeff O'Neill
I'm so sorry I wasn't there for you on this. Part of me is like, we've heard that this is being made into a series. The casting is out there and I'm like, until then. And hearing you talk about it, I don't know. Are you a Stranger Things person? Rebecca, have you gone?
- [24:24]
Rebecca Schinsky
I have been. I don't know if I'm going to get back on board, but I was current until like last year.
- [24:28]
Jeff O'Neill
I keep thinking about there's so many good parts in it. There's three awesome parts at least in Margo's got money troubles. I understand the dad has not been cast. Wouldn't David harbor be amazing in this role? Like sort of the protective but reluctant, like, I can't believe you're doing this, but we're gonna do it.
- [24:43]
Rebecca Schinsky
He would be great. It's gonna be fun to see who's cast in that. There will be several good roles. Okay, so your number seven is a.
- [24:51]
Jeff O'Neill
Little bit of a surprise to me. Not that I didn't know I like it, but I. I guess I hadn't thought about in the context of my 10 favorite great expectations by Vincent Cunningham. Hey, is that on your list? Did it make it?
- [25:02]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's one of my honorable mentions.
- [25:04]
Jeff O'Neill
Okay. And I think in my estimation. I said this at the time on the sentence level. Wonderful it is for being a, I don't know, having box seats to a huge American political moment. It's surprisingly quiet.
- [25:22]
Rebecca Schinsky
That's a great way to put it.
- [25:23]
Jeff O'Neill
And I think an understatement. I think initially that understatement in my mind I didn't grok the underlying really seismic observations, critique and understanding that was coming on. And I think a lot of the post mortems about the election are not dissimilar for some of the slantedly said critiques of Obama era Democratic politics in terms of star making, celebrity, money, power, privilege that comes along with it, the recognition of a kind of infrastructure of privilege that goes less said in Democratic politics, but exists anyway. And because it goes less said, I think it can be more. We can underestimate people's perception of it. And I think Cunningham is very good on this is an amazing moment. But isn't this isn't. Aren't these ideas amazing? But look, the world seems different, but is it? And that's really stuck with me. And I think that there's a different version of Cunningham's utilization novelization of experience that is more bombastic and bold and maybe gets more headlines and more fireworks, but the staying power of these quiet, personal and being searing all the more so because of it. Observations and experience have really stuck with me. So surprising. Again, it just didn't feel like a top 10 at the time. But when I think about actually how much I enjoyed the actual reading and then the slow charcoal barbecue over Kohl's for the night, thinking I've done about it, I had to put it on the list and this is kind of where it landed for me.
- [27:15]
Rebecca Schinsky
It sounds, I'm so glad that it made your list. And I think on a different day it could have made my top 10 and just I kind of waffled with it. But my favorite debut of the year, I think, and definitely a writer.
- [27:28]
Jeff O'Neill
It's insane to say it doesn't feel like a debut.
- [27:30]
Rebecca Schinsky
It doesn't feel. It is a half.
- [27:31]
Jeff O'Neill
It feels like the ninth book by.
- [27:33]
Rebecca Schinsky
Someone who's been an astonishing debut. And if you've not read this and you're sitting there going like, but Martyr is the debut of the year. Like, like, go read Great Expectations by Vincent Cunningham. It's. It is terrific. I will read whatever he does next for sure.
- [27:49]
Jeff O'Neill
All right, so we're up to your six, which may be rental house. Let's talk about it. You go.
- [27:53]
Rebecca Schinsky
Okay, so this is our house rule Is that when we have read three books by someone here, we are one of our guys, right? And so Rental House is the third. Wakey Wang. It is the third one that I have loved. Wakey Wang is officially one of my authors. And maybe recency biases at play here because we just, we've both just read this last week. It's fresh. But I felt more seen by this book than I felt seen by anything that I read in a long time. She manages to take like, you know, difficulties of family relationships. What it's like when you move away from the place that you grew up and you, your values change and you become very different and you want to stay in some kind of relationship to your parents and your former communities, but also you got like thoughts and judgments about them. What it's like trying to negotiate, like sharing physical space, especially with aging parents and navigating the demands of career and relationship and showing up for your family. And like, we've kind of alluded to it, Bob and I are in the middle of like really thick, heavy things with his parents right now. And this was, I can see how it might have been like too close to home, but it was actually like, ah, someone else gets it right. And that the main couple in the book are child free and they intend to stay that way. And the kind of pointed remarks that they're on the receiving end of from total strangers about the choices that the strangers think these characters should make about their family life and about their marriage. It is like just a great time for a book about complex interpersonal things. And she. It's just so, so funny. Like some of the scenes and the dialogue are hilarious in a way that I was not expecting from her. From how quiet. Like, quiet is the word I used over and over when Chemistry came out and was recommending it to folks. And this is not quiet. It's a little. It's louder than I thought Wakey Wang was going to be as a writer. And this makes me feel like, what else is in the bag? Like, I was already on board for Wakey Wang, but like, what else is she going to trot out for us?
- [29:55]
Jeff O'Neill
I think quite. I agree that I would have used that before. I think I'm going to use a different word. Is that she is droll. I don't get to use the word droll very often, but she is droll. And then that drollness sets you up. It's like a play action pass in football. You're set up for the run. The run. And there's a Couple of scenes where she throws a deep ball that you're not quite ready for. So it hits all the harder. I think there's a couple things that are super fascinating. I think the Our guys list is. Have we talked about the Patreon episode? We should go through our guys. We've done three or more.
- [30:26]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think we did one, but we have another one.
- [30:29]
Jeff O'Neill
Maybe new ones or we can see what that list was. But anyway, there. We talked about it recently on a show, so I don't want to belabor the point, but the ending moment that the one of the one of the half of the main couple has is cathartic and aspirational impossible all at the same time. Interesting for a book that's about relationships with the main couple and parents as sort of the. I don't know, the dialectic happening. It's really a moment with a sibling that catalyzes that which I think you and I both understand in very interesting ways about how that is both a pressure release valve and a. I don't know and a powder keg. To have siblings that you need to talk to or get in the mix that also they both complicate and strengthen the relationship you're having with the generation that came before and you don't have the same kind of experience. It's sort of homologous, but not congruent. I'm screwing up geometry. I'm sorry to Euclid and his followers out there. It's not going well for me right now. But in a 20. 24, 224 pages. I know it's a bit of a bit for me for runtime, but this was just enough. You didn't need any more in less confident or, I don't know, knowing hands. The temptation would be to make this into a longer book. Let's get a limited series out of it. Like this cannot be a six episode miniseries. It could be a movie. It would have been a great Covid movie shoot because it's like on isolated beach. There's like six people cabin and like six people. But there'd be some great acting opportunities someday down the road. But I agree with you. This is terrific. I didn't know what to do with. I was like, I got to put on the list. I'll put it at 10 because I don't want to feel like in six months or two years really that well. But I think there's a world in which it could have been four or five. Yeah, easily.
- [32:20]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think I'm going to be trotting it out on recommendation episodes for years to come.
- [32:24]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, that's right. That brings me to my six, which I think I will be as well. And I kind of forgot about it for recommendation season and I don't know why. The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman. I sank into this one on my iPad while at home visiting my family. Funnily enough, that we come off that. But at the end of the day, it was the right book for the right time. It is a retelling of Arthurian legend, but not of Arthur, but of the aftermath of the death of Arthur, which I guess Lamorte Arthur is the same kind of idea. It's reimagined for the 21st century and 21st century, let's call them progressive sensibilities at this point. It has English history, of course, Arthurian history, questions about love, identity, redemption, purpose. Great fun. If you have a fantasy reader in your life that likes a little bit of wink, get a smirk. I just introduced my kids to Monty Python and the Holy Grail was certainly more slapstick than this. And it took them about 30 minutes to enter into the cracked mindset of the Pythons. But once they got it, like, I felt like it unlocked something like the meta ness of it. You have to get into a different kind of a mindset. We're like, okay, this is not the thing, but it's about the thing. But then it is becomes about the thing. Because the thing that's crazy about Arthurian legend, and this is explicitly on the page with Grossman, is that any entry into Arthurian or English legend becomes part of the canon because they're all secondary and tertiary sources and retellings, right? There is no primary source, There is no real thing that's like, yeah, this is the last will and testament of Arthur. And we all agree that this is what actually happened. So the whole thing is about myth and storytelling. So that's great fun for a storyteller of Lesmond, of Gross Levsman's. That was an storytelling interests and history. He's done a lot of mythic franchise big stories at this point. And this one feels more expansive and deeper and so. So has more personal. Which is a really cool trick to do. It is quite long, but I don't know, I feel like if you've got a teenager or an adult that likes the Princess Bride or that kind of a. That kind of a vibe or Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, not quite as zany as those, but there is a drachma of zaniness. I guess that's the nominalization of Zany. A really great time. And Oneills Razor was so happy that as a standalone so we got to read it right away. And really no exit ramp for a sequel or a series. And Grossman himself doesn't seem that interested. And though it'd be very tempting to return to this because the characters are such great fun. So that's the Bright Sword by Lev Grossman is my number six.
- [35:03]
Rebecca Schinsky
That's great. I'm so delighted that Monty Python is now in your family.
- [35:07]
Jeff O'Neill
It's amazing. There's a couple. There's a couple of scenes that I'm like, you know, you were white knuckling through, to be honest. But that's part of growing up.
- [35:16]
Rebecca Schinsky
Everybody takes their turn being mortified.
- [35:18]
Jeff O'Neill
Yep, that's right. All right, your number let's do another sponsor 5. Let's do another sponsor break before going into our top fives.
- [35:25]
Rebecca Schinsky
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- [36:16]
Jeff O'Neill
Okay, Rebecca, proceed.
- [36:18]
Rebecca Schinsky
Splinters by Leslie Jamison this is my number two.
- [36:21]
Jeff O'Neill
So.
- [36:22]
Rebecca Schinsky
Okay, so we'll save it there.
- [36:24]
Jeff O'Neill
That brings me to my number five again. A recency Bri's problem. But if I had read this in January, I'd still be thinking about a few moments at least. In Ghost Roots by Pemi Aguda there's no question this is a series of short stories set in a Lagos, Nigeria that is. I don't know, it has there's little perforations to the other side, I guess is a way of putting it in this world, right, Rebecca? Where the speculative and the supernatural are around the corner or behind the wall. Always and already and not all of the story. Some of the stories do more or less with them, but none none of them. We never sort of walk into fairyland and stay there. And like now we're through the looking glass and that's where the story happens. And if anything, those dalliances or interruptions or interregnums are complicated to say the least. Yeah, I think it's great. Short stories are hard because it's hard to hold on to one. But if I think about the moments for the year, I remember in all the books that I've read, there are moments in these that are as powerful and memorable and new as anything else I've encountered. And that is worth a lot to me. A lot. And five felt high. But when I started putting, I was like moving it around in my Google Doc. My little hand, my little icon hand kept dragging around and every time I got below right this spot, it started feeling wrong. So that's where I have Ghost Roots by Penny Abuna here. Rebecca.
- [37:59]
Rebecca Schinsky
I still don't know if I should have put this in my time.
- [38:01]
Jeff O'Neill
It's tough, right?
- [38:02]
Rebecca Schinsky
It is tough. I really loved it. And it's definitely some of those moments you referred to are the most surprised I was reading this year. It felt kind of closer to like in those moments, like surrealism or some of the things that happen, like in Marques, where you're like, like dead grandma's just showing up at dinner and you're like, sure, that just happens in this world. Those kind of mythical, not magic I wouldn't call it, but like mythical and mystical.
- [38:29]
Jeff O'Neill
Magical realism is, you know, a term of art that's usually reserved for South American, especially literature. But structurally it has all the, the other markings.
- [38:38]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, really great. And I, yeah, I could have put it on the top 10. I kind of couldn't figure out what to do with it. This is definitely one on a different day. I think it makes it into my top 10. I'm super glad I read that. So that was your five year four is up next. Four is beauty land for me. I just came back to it over and over. Okay, talk to me about how it ended up at 8.
- [39:02]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, I guess we got into some head and head, head to head stuff. I think the, in a way this could have been a short story when I put it up against Ghost Roots. Like there's one idea that Helene Bertino then spins into a story which is to fracture, not to refract through a prism of a conceit. The idea of a coming of age story. Right. Because there's essentially a coming of age story, I think of someone in of Helene Bertino's age. As far as I can remember. I didn't go back and do my homework. Right. So sort of starting in the 70s through today. And the conceit is, what if we saw a character, did a coming of age story like we all do, but they were also getting missives from an alien intelligence saying, you are our emissary and you need to report back to us about what is life on earth. And that little move then highlights and codifies the feelings so many of us have as we're coming of age and maybe throughout the rest of their life. Isn't it weird that I'm me and that I'm alive and that I feel so different from other people? Right. But it gives it specificity and that is the grain of sand around which the pearl of this book operates. I think that could have been done in 50 pages, a novella length. Just as well. I really love the book. So again, it's on my top 10. But after that, do I remember specific moments? Not as much, honestly. I remember the feeling quite well. I think the ending is quite beautiful. But I guess when it comes back to, you know, really when you really kind of hit with champions here at the end of the year, it had a good cross, but it didn't have a follow up uppercut for me. And that's why it's at number eight.
- [40:52]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think I have it at four because of the vibes. Because, you know, it's one of their early reads from the year. And I've continued to think about it. I loved how I felt reading it. It's eminently recommendable. And it does that thing, like so much fiction that's about alienation and how weird it is to be a human is like dark and heavy and hard to read. And she does this, you know, like tap dancing backwards in the rain wearing heels situation of like making it look easy. Like this goes down easy. The writing is so. It feels so effortless. It does that she has this character who is becoming a person as we all become people, coming into an understanding of what it is to be human, what humanity is all about, what people do, the strange things we do, the funny things that we do, the painful things that we do and that we experience and then having that enough distance because this character also thinks she has to observe and report on these things. Just. It just worked. This just worked for me. But I think it was mostly because the level of difficulty is a lot higher, I think, than Maria gets credit for because her books go down so easy. But that's one of the hardest things to pull off.
- [42:00]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I agree. I mean, it's more recommendable generally because the vibes are so interesting and pure and affirmative. Right. Ultimately, it's more. It's not. Everything's going to be great, don't get me wrong. And that goes a long way, for sure. Yeah.
- [42:16]
Rebecca Schinsky
That's the vibe of Beauty Land is probably the closest that either of us gets on our own to like, healing fiction and the conversation that's been going on around that.
- [42:27]
Jeff O'Neill
Any more affirmative or sweet or sentimental, and I start to sort of go into diabetic shock as a reader.
- [42:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, it gets a little treakly.
- [42:35]
Jeff O'Neill
I can't process that much sugar. Number four for me then is Knife by Salman Rushdie.
- [42:39]
Rebecca Schinsky
That was my three.
- [42:41]
Jeff O'Neill
All right, so that brings me to Knife by Salman Rushdie, which is your three.
- [42:47]
Rebecca Schinsky
This was going to be in my top three for the year, I think. I knew it. Going into the year, it's Salman Rushdie writing about having been attacked in an attempted murder, losing an eye, processing that experience, processing trauma, like, with himself on the page in a pretty recent situation. Like, the stabbing was in the summer of 2022. And he must have started writing pretty soon after that. But the places that this goes and which we've talked about on other episodes about art and speech and the powers of art and speech, also the complexities of religion and how they intersect with art and speech and public life. I chewed on this more across the course of the year than I've chewed on anything else that I read. And I feel like I'm going to continue. I don't know that I will go back and read it, but these are ideas that I bumped up against in a way that felt really productive. And I could feel Salman Rushdie being like, come on and let's just talk about it. This is going to be difficult, but we need to have some tough conversations. And it was just. Just rang a bunch of bells for me. Tough to recommend.
- [43:53]
Jeff O'Neill
I haven't recommended to anybody. Yeah, I haven't. I mean, I haven't. It's tough.
- [43:59]
Rebecca Schinsky
You don't know how you tell someone. Here's a thing for you to read.
- [44:02]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. It exists at the most productive friction point of I'm in with Rushdie, but maybe I disagree with a lot. Some of this an important part. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I am. And you don't have to decide. And I think I've. Over time, I tend to be pretty good about not having. Not forming an opinion. If I don't have to make A decision like holding things in abeyance and keeping multiple possibilities open. And this reopened the utility of that for me and the remembering that I don't need to have an opinion or be resolved on every particular thing unless I have to do something about it. I can, you know, do some John Keatsian negative capability and to hold two competing ideas in my head and not go crazy and not feel like I am impotent or betwixt or between or somehow morally repugnant with not coming down quickly or permanently on one side of equation. An interesting thinker who has all the chips in the world to talk to me and write to me about what it means to write and speak and exist and risk and protect in this world. So it's a wonderful addition to the Rushdie canon, I think. Again, there's so many writers in the world, so you can't say that one writer is deserving a Nobel and everyone else isn't. But boy, oh boy, if this wasn't an end cap to what the Nobel itself should represent, it'd be a real. It'd be a real shame, I think, if Rushdie went out his life and we didn't get to re. We didn't get to re encounter with one of the great thinkers of one of the great world thinkers east and West.
- [45:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
And also surprisingly lovely at points like his.
- [45:38]
Jeff O'Neill
His love.
- [45:39]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Late in life love story when he thinks that, like, romance is over for him and meets the woman who is now his wife. The way that he writes about his adult children, like, I remember when we read it and talked about it together for the Patreon, being like, this was what Much more sentimental than I was expecting. And getting to see new dimensions to a writer, and especially of someone of Rushdie's stature is always really fascinating. So was your three.
- [46:06]
Jeff O'Neill
My three? There's always this year by Hanif Abdurabki.
- [46:09]
Rebecca Schinsky
That's my two.
- [46:10]
Jeff O'Neill
All right, so what was your four? I lost track right now.
- [46:13]
Rebecca Schinsky
Beauty Land.
- [46:13]
Jeff O'Neill
Beauty Land. So. So year two. So then we're to year two, which is. Then there's always this year. Okay.
- [46:21]
Rebecca Schinsky
I mean, Hanif Abdurraqib, one of my Alzheimer's. Like, he's on my Mount Rushmore, but writing about place, a connection to home and family, his personal history, basketball as it's woven into his personal history. But like the greater meaning of sports in our lives and how that connects to home and family and his own experiences, you know, like being unhoused for a while, having run ins with the law, being in jail for A bit. And how all of those things have informed the poet's life that he lives the way that he teaches this just like deeply. This is a book about being deeply rooted in a place that you love and all of the sort of tangential components of that place. And Abdurraqib just doesn't. He doesn't write like a straightforward situation ever, which is the thing that I love about him. So it's ostensibly about basketball and being committed to a team and what it is to follow a team. But the book is also structured as the four quarters of a basketball game with different moments on the clock running out and just the level of care and thought in the writing. On the sentence level there is like nothing like it.
- [47:37]
Jeff O'Neill
Unbelievable on audio. I don't know if anyone's out there. It's unbelievable as an experience on audio. A prayer meditation on the cultural poetics of sport. I don't. I think it's a. One of. One of a genre as far as I can tell.
- [47:49]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think so.
- [47:50]
Jeff O'Neill
I don't have a good comp for it by any stretch of the imagination. Yeah, I mean you don't have to care about basketball, but boy, if you do, it's kind of like with our number one pick. I'm guessing you don't have to have read Huck Finn, but there's more there. Or if you do, in fact you may be more enchanted the less of a relationship. I don't know. I'd be curious to hear because I'm a longtime basketball fan, a very mediocre practitioner at one point of the art of pickup basketball. Ross Gay writes very eloquently about the poetics of basketball and interesting. So does Vincent Cunningham and Great Expectations and elsewhere. And there is a. I don't know if this represents a cohort, but these 40 and 50 year old predominantly black men writing about basketball when black culture in the 80s and 90s especially started to really coalesce around hip hop and basketball as the two cultural industries in which that were sort of most germane and most appreciated and lauded. Now we're getting to a point where these folks are middle aged, have had a lot of life experience and they've written a lot of sentences and they're ready and able to write at the peak of their powers about this thing. Probably similar to white dudes writing about baseball in the 50s, to be perfectly honest with you. And the Poetics of Sport is a reading list I should. Could try to come up with. I used to do a lot of reading about baseball, but these are better than that. You know, Carl Sandberg or other people wrote about this sport, but I don't think quite like this by any stretch of imagination. So. Okay, all that's left is my two because.
- [49:30]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [49:30]
Jeff O'Neill
What was your two? My.
- [49:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
This was my two. There's always this.
- [49:33]
Jeff O'Neill
So my two is Splinters by Leslie James. An all in one. I think I said this one talking about it before this year. I think both a AAA title about marriage and a AAA title about parenthood and a AAA title about COVID quietus is kept. It does all three of those things in combination. Interestingly, this is Splintered, which is fracturing. But what Jameson is really doing is synthesizing. How do these things connect to each other and bleed into each other? So if anything, this book is about, you know, reforging the flame of the west and to become a sword of understanding and progress. Leslie Jameson, I know we have on our future patreon is you do not want to appear in a Leslie Jameson book if you've done her wrong.
- [50:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
You do not. Don't do Leslie Jameson wrong.
- [50:22]
Jeff O'Neill
Just don't. Just don't. Just don't. It also has very raw and open discussions of getting back out into the dating world and then buttressed all. The thing that's already always there with Jameson is just beautiful phrases, sentences, metaphors, comps, connectivity that by themselves stopped me in my listening tracks for a moment, which is really something to do because fishing out my phone and hitting pause so I can breathe for a second is not something I'm accustomed to doing. And when I'm doing something unusual in my reading or listening life, that's when I've got a special book. It is painful. It is not for everyone. I'd be careful who you recommend this to because it could be a Rorschach test for what they think you think about them. So maybe, you know, you need to hang a lantern on. Just say, this is not about some. This is not advice or I'm not trying to give you a mirror or something to look at yourself, but if you are interested in the complexity of a certain kind of existence, which is of the mind and of the heart and how we relate to other people and our own flaws and foibles and potential, it's as good as it gets, Rebecca. To me. Yeah, you know, two, three, and four, I looked at. There's always. This year, knife and splinters. They kind of are all orbiting my number two spot. And it was just kind of where they came down.
- [51:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [51:40]
Jeff O'Neill
This is the. The route, the cakewalk the music stopped and this is where the chairs landed. But I'm not sure.
- [51:46]
Rebecca Schinsky
I mean, I had it at 5, but that pitch that you gave, I'm just like vigorously nodding my head to, like, I could have had it in two or three. I could have had it at three. Nothing's gonna come above James and Nefud Abdurraqib me this year. But it's so good. It is just so good. And so, as you said, raw and open. And I like a memoir that gets into the messy places. And I'm sure that Jameson has done her work around this and there's enough therapy speak on the page to know that she has also done her processing. But I want a memoir to be from the messy place, not from the sense you made of the messy ten years later. Because when we're living it, we're all looking for that, some kind of mirror for the mess or evidence that someone has been through something similar. And the messy parts of human life are the things that are the most interesting and the most worth talking about and sharing and creating art about, because that's the stuff we have to try to understand and get through with each other. And I so appreciated that. She's just, it's warts and all. Like, you don't want to be, as we were saying, on her bad side and end up on a page in a Leslie Jameson novel. But she gives herself the same exacting treatment and turns that same really unflinching analysis on herself as well. And that's, it's, that's so brave and so few writers are willing to go there.
- [53:09]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, you know, there's the WWJD bracelets or whatever. I think there's. What would Leslie Jameson write about? This is not a bad heuristic for any scenario you find yourself.
- [53:17]
Rebecca Schinsky
Should you do this thing, are you willing to have it described by Leslie Jameson?
- [53:21]
Jeff O'Neill
The categorical imperative is not Kant. It says, would you want Leslie Jameson to give a full throated honest accounting of what the hell is going down right now?
- [53:29]
Rebecca Schinsky
Right, yeah. Yeah, the good old, like, don't send that text if you wouldn't want to have it read in court. Like, Leslie Jameson is scarier.
- [53:37]
Jeff O'Neill
Don't say this thing in a heated moment unless you're willing to have it relayed back to you by LJ. All right, which brings us to. By 1 James by Percival Everett. What to say, Rebecca, that we haven't already said? Well, there was the whole episode that everyone definitely listened to and it sounded great. Well edited and executed by our Team.
- [53:57]
Rebecca Schinsky
Producer here using the word magisterial to talk about James. I think that is the perfect vocabulary choice for this novel. You know, Informed by Huck Finn. A reimagining of Huck Finn, but really a look at like, American literature and the history of, you know, how these stories get told, what the. What some of the canonical American literature means. And so clever about language and performance, the ways that we understand social roles and how language and performance come into those social roles and how they factor into race and that. And Everett is just. He's playing like nine dimensional chess. And I think I understand maybe you don't.
- [54:40]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, there you go. Thank you.
- [54:42]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Maybe four of the dimensions.
- [54:45]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, he's playing nine dimensional chess in a snow globe in which he holds in his hand while he's surfing or something like. It's a different kind of a deal.
- [54:53]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, it's masterful. One of the best feelings as a reader is the like, I am in good hands. And I don't know that you can be in better hands than Percival Everett with a book like this.
- [55:05]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. And it was our most anticipated book of the year. I had a lot of confidence that would be interesting. If you go back and listen to us talk about this book when it was announced or getting ready for it, our worst case scenario is like, it would be extremely interesting. I think that it. I don't know if it exceeded expectations, but it's done everything you would hope and more. And the acclaim has been almost a little too. I was telling Gilbert yesterday, like, there's no contra case against James and Everett right now or a. And at least I haven't seen it. I'm sure there's bad, good reviews that I can't understand this, but I haven't seen like a big piece that's like, actually, James isn't great and that can be interesting to talk about, but the meta discourse around Everett and black writing coming out of American fiction and then to have this happen is so can Vincent Cunningham write about this for one of his long things? And like, I need someone to help me process this because is it a valedictory moment or is it another instance of a kind of. I don't know, is it in line with what's being said in Erasure or not? I think it's both and it's probably both. But navigating that territory is interesting because I think even in the text, this is in Huck Finn, that the slaves in the world of Huck Finn speak a different, more conventionally understandable as articulate speech when white folks aren't around. Right. And Everett has been doing that himself as a writer and. Or. And not as a black person as well. Because sometimes race appears as a central theme in his work and sometimes it is. Isn't. But then it's also there. But also sometimes it's not. Can I say I get James and laud James without participating in a misunderstanding? I don't know. But that all makes it the more interesting to me. That's not a. That's the merit. That's the affirmative case for what literature do, what ideas can do, representation can do, what a unique, mischievous, mercurial, and in all ways genius can do. And it towers above everything else. Like, there's no. It's not close. It's like one. Then there's a couple of empty spots and then there's my next wave here. It's not close to me.
- [57:37]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Like, what else have we ever read where you both recognize that it is the masterwork of the year or maybe the decade, and also that you might be indicted into, like, indicted for participating in predictable and often harmful patterns of criticism.
- [58:00]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. Right.
- [58:01]
Rebecca Schinsky
Even though it is the masterwork of the year or maybe the decade.
- [58:06]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. And the timing is impeccable. That Everett has both has earned the recognition for past work, but leveled up in profile is fascinating. The only more interesting thing to me about James is what he does next.
- [58:24]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yep.
- [58:24]
Jeff O'Neill
Because I don't know where you go from here. And thank God I don't have to do that. And thank God the one that does is one personal effort because I can't imagine what we're in store for. Yeah.
- [58:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think all we can count on is that it will be mischievous and interesting.
- [58:40]
Jeff O'Neill
And there's no looking back at the past few years. There's nothing that comes close to what we look for, both in our own reading. But what we get to talk about, the show and we hope for the reading world of America especially, is something that is by a master that's approachable, that's readable, that people like. That's good. And it has rooms and chambers to explore beyond that. I just really like that book. Anytime we put it on Instagram or the site, everyone who has read it is like, yes, this is my. I'm so glad. I'm so glad. I'm so glad. There's maybe a few. It was good and not my favorite, but almost. And I don't want to go on Goodreads because I value myself and my mental well being.
- [59:24]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. I'm not going there, but I'M sure.
- [59:26]
Jeff O'Neill
There'S some but usually when there is one of these kinds of books there is a contraindication and I just don't see that. And that like kind of when people are getting all on the one side that becomes a group think I'm worried about that but that's I'll well, let's revel in it for a little while in time and distance will give us some more perspective but it's what we hope for. It's a four quadrant hit and yeah, I don't this is it. There's nowhere to go.
- [59:51]
Rebecca Schinsky
There's not a bell. It didn't ring.
- [59:53]
Jeff O'Neill
No, not a bell. It didn't ring. All right, quick time for honorable mentions. Rebecca. Three, four. I'm late. Next thing but that's okay.
- [60:00]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, me too. Intermezzo because it was fun and also introduced me to the Rooney verse and I I went like hesitatingly into the Rooney verse. But I'm glad to have read Intermezzo. I'm mostly here to enjoy Myself by Glynnis McNichol tied with the Ina Garten memoir Be Ready when the Luck Happens for my like enjoy your life, have pleasure, be unconventional like you know, second Half of life. Middle Aged Lady Memoirs and Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Berkman. Ghost Roots was also one of my honorable mentions.
- [60:31]
Jeff O'Neill
My number 11 so just outside Slow Productivity by Cal Newport which we've talked about Cal Newport but meditation more than I thought about but it didn't give me and I definitely glad it exists. But the earlier book I think does most of what I want from there Calports a different way of understanding quality and taking time and it's a great companion to the Berkman but it's a welcome addition and we did some reading with it. We did some stuff with that work so that that matters to me. Simon Van Voy about an older pensioner in England that is not having a great time and a mouse makes all the difference. Greta Valdin by Rebecca Reilly We've talked about before a new to me voice that I enjoyed the voice and individual lines of dialogue. I had as many belly laughs there as I got from anyone this year. All that Glitters by Orlando Whitfield. I really struggled not putting the top 10. I just couldn't figure out what to knock out so but I recommended Clint. Our co worker is listening to it on his vacation already said he likes it a great deal. I talked about Sonny Boy by Al Pacino. It's like Pacino's just telling you stories over a cup of coffee. I It's an amazing experience of intimacy and performance that I really don't know an equivalent of. And yeah, that's mine. There's there's a bunch of other good stuff.
- [61:37]
Rebecca Schinsky
Pretty good year in reading.
- [61:38]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean what any I was thinking about this when you said B any year you get James Howell's not an A plus year. What I mean what are we doing here?
- [61:45]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I mean it could have been if all I read this year was James, I would have been like this is an A plus year. I think if you toss James into the mix and we're grading on a curve or something, it ends up being a B year. But James by itself is an a reading year.
- [62:00]
Jeff O'Neill
Bookriot.com listen to find the show notes podcastookriot.com you can also find the show notes TBR, the Patreon Instagram substack, All the Things that we Go along and the BRPOD Extended universe. Thanks everyone.