Power Ranking the Books of 2005

Summary

Podcast Summary: Book Riot - The Podcast Episode: Power Ranking the Books of 2005
Release Date: May 21, 2025
Hosts: Jeff O’Neill and Rebecca Kishinsky

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Introduction: Setting the Time Capsule

In this vibrant episode of Book Riot - The Podcast, hosts Jeff O’Neill and Rebecca Kishinsky embark on a nostalgic journey, Power Ranking the Books of 2005. They delve into the literary landscape of 2005, assessing which books have stood the test of time and why some have faded into obscurity. This episode serves as both a reflection on the past and an exploration of how cultural shifts influence a book's enduring legacy.

The Literary Climate of 2005

Jeff O’Neill opens the discussion by highlighting the significance of 2005 as a pivotal year in literature. He states, "I think these 20-year flashbacks are the most interesting because this is long enough to have a sense of what has endured and stayed relevant and what was a flash in the pan at its time" (04:01). This perspective sets the tone for evaluating each book not just on its initial impact but also on its sustained relevance over two decades.

Power Ranking from #10 to #1

10. Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld

Jeff introduces Prep as a cornerstone of chick lit emerging in 2005. He remarks, "This was a huge debut novel. It was everywhere I read it, I think in hardcover, which was a big deal in my" (10:04). The book's reception, including its placement in the New York Times top 10, underscores its initial popularity. However, over time, while Sittenfeld has diversified her portfolio, Jeff and Rebecca acknowledge that Prep may not hold a "stable position" in the literary canon, leading Rebecca to keep it off her personal top list.

9. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

Moving to #9, the discussion centers on the global phenomenon of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Jeff emphasizes its mass appeal, noting, "a hundred million copies sold. It was truly everywhere" (14:45). However, both hosts express concerns about the series' sustainability, especially after Larsson's untimely death and the subsequent decline in adaptations. Rebecca adds, "there was so much sexual violence in these books...audiences have shifted against that a little bit" (13:02), questioning its long-term legacy.

8. American Prometheus by Ron Chernow

At #8, American Prometheus garners attention for its comprehensive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Jeff praises the book for its depth, saying, "it was a magisterial work of art and biography" (17:30). Despite its Pulitzer win, Rebecca points out that Chernow's focus on Oppenheimer's personal life over his literary contributions may limit its appeal to purely book enthusiasts.

7. Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore secures the #7 spot, representing Haruki Murakami's rise to mainstream popularity in the U.S. Rebecca highlights its significance, stating, "it was part of Murakami becoming mainstream, at least in the U.S." (20:24). The book's surreal narrative and metaphysical themes are praised, although there is acknowledgment of its niche appeal and the challenge it poses to casual readers.

6. On Beauty by Zadie Smith

In the #6 position, On Beauty by Zadie Smith is lauded for its literary merit. Jeff describes it as "the most accessible of the Zadie Smiths" (24:19) and appreciates its Forsterian influences. Rebecca concurs, noting its timeless quality, "it feels like a tree grows in Brooklyn..." (32:31). Despite not topping their lists, both hosts recognize its enduring presence in literary discussions.

5. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

The Lightning Thief claims the #5 spot, credited with revolutionizing middle-grade literature. Rebecca explains, "this series is huge... it continues to sell, and it's sold into, you know, the next 25 years of true middle grade" (30:10). The book's blend of modern fantasy and Greek mythology has resonated with generations of young readers, ensuring its lasting legacy.

4. Freakonomics by Thomas Friedman

At #4, Freakonomics is celebrated for its impact on popular economic and sociological discourse. Jeff comments, "it's like a certain moment for popular economics, business, self-help that was capitalizing on what Kahneman and Tversky's work" (33:17). The book's exploration of unconventional economic theories sparked widespread conversation, though its long-term influence is debated.

3. The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking secures the bronze medal for its profound exploration of grief and loss. Jeff lauds it as Joan Didion's "best-selling work" and a book that has become "a classic" (42:40). Rebecca adds depth to its significance, mentioning how it taps into the collective understanding of mourning, making it a timeless piece that resonates across generations.

2. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

Securing the runner-up position, Never Let Me Go is praised for its literary beauty and enduring relevance. Jeff emphasizes its depth, "it's masterful and it's dystopian, but in this quiet way" (47:51). Rebecca acknowledges its lasting impact, comparing it to Ishiguro's other masterpieces and highlighting its place in academic syllabi and personal reading lists alike.

1. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Topping the list is Twilight, recognized as a defining work in the romantasy genre. Jeff underscores its cultural phenomenon, stating, "160 million copies of the series in print... just old school sell it." (51:13). Rebecca reflects on its influence, noting how it carved a niche for young adult romantic fantasy, paving the way for subsequent series like Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. They discuss its enduring popularity, adaptations, and the way it encapsulates the early 2000s' cultural zeitgeist.

Honorable Mentions

While the top ten were meticulously ranked, both hosts acknowledge several other noteworthy books from 2005 that didn't make the main list but still left an impact:

• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
• American Prometheus by Ron Chernow
• Big Dumb Eyes by Nate Bergetzi
• King of Envy by Anna Huang
• Death on the Island by Eliza Reid

These books received brief nods for their unique contributions to their respective genres and readerships.

Reflections on Longevity and Cultural Impact

Throughout the episode, Jeff and Rebecca grapple with the notion of a book's ability to remain relevant over decades. They ponder questions like whether Never Let Me Go will outshine Twilight in the years to come or if Harry Potter will continue to dominate. The conversation underscores the challenges of predicting a book's timelessness, considering factors like cultural shifts, evolving genres, and personal reader experiences.

Jeff muses, "He's a tour de force of metaphysical reality. I think you could describe every Kafka or every Murakami that way." (22:34), highlighting the enduring appeal of certain literary styles.

Conclusion: A Reflective Journey Through 2005's Books

Power Ranking the Books of 2005 offers listeners a comprehensive look back at a diverse array of literature that defined the year. Through insightful analysis and candid reflections, Jeff O’Neill and Rebecca Kishinsky not only rank these books but also explore their lasting significance in the literary world. This episode serves as both a nostalgic tribute and a thoughtful examination of what makes a book endure in the ever-evolving landscape of reading.

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Notable Quotes:

• Jeff O’Neill (04:01): "I think these 20-year flashbacks are the most interesting because this is long enough to have a sense of what has endured and stayed relevant and what was a flash in the pan at its time."

• Jeff O’Neill (10:04): "This was a huge debut novel. It was everywhere I read it, I think in hardcover, which was a big deal in my."

• Rebecca Kishinsky (13:02): "There was so much sexual violence in these books... audiences have shifted against that a little bit."

• Jeff O’Neill (17:30): "It was a magisterial work of art and biography."

• Ambrosia R. Harris (20:24): "It was part of Murakami becoming mainstream, at least in the U.S."

• Jeff O’Neill (24:19): "It's the most accessible of the Zadie Smiths."

• Rebecca Kishinsky (30:10): "This series is huge... it continues to sell, and it's sold into, you know, the next 25 years of true middle grade."

• Jeff O’Neill (33:17): "It’s like a certain moment for popular economics, business, self-help that was capitalizing on what Kahneman and Tversky's work."

• Jeff O’Neill (42:40): "It's Didion's best-selling work... a classic."

• Jeff O’Neill (51:13): "160 million copies of the series in print... just old school sell it."

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For listeners eager to explore these books or reminisce about their favorites from 2005, this episode offers a comprehensive and engaging guide through time, highlighting the enduring power of literature.

Transcript

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[Ambrosia R. Harris]

This is the Book Riot podcast. I'm Jeff O' Neill.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I'm Rebecca Kishinsky.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Today we're getting into the DeLorean, speeding up to 88 miles per hour and going 30 or 20 years into the future from 1985.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Time is challenging right now. I feel you.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Don't they go to 2005? Don't they go 20 years in the future from 1985?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think they do.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

So anyway, this was the future 20 years ago. Actually, no, 40 years.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Here we are, 2005. Where were you in 2005?

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I was right in the middle of grad school. Like right smack dab. Four years in, still had four years to go. So I had come out of the real intensive coursework part. I think I was working on the oral defense. So I was reading and studying independently and teaching and I was reading about and read some of these books as they came out, but I wasn't, you know, I wasn't doing BR level stuff. So kind of in the middle, I read. I've got 11 on my top 10. I'm going to have to make a hard decision.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Some cheese?

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Yeah. And I think I read 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 of them.

[Rebecca Kishinsky]

Okay.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

That's right. How about you?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I graduated from college in 2005 and started grad school. So I was. But I was only three years away from starting my book blog, unbeknownst to myself in 2005. So, yeah, we're like easing into the years where I'm becoming a person who's paying more attention to what's on the paperback faves table at Barnes and Noble. I read a lot of These at the time. I think my reading at that point in school was like about two or three pleasure books a month. Like, you know, we'd trot on down to the Borders in Lawrence and I would pick up my reading for the month and then we'd go back the next month and I would do the same thing. So I read a lot of these at the time or like shortly thereafter. I. Almost everything we're going to talk about today I had read before, like 2008 or 2010. So 2005 is, I think it lives pretty squarely in my. I have, you know, popular mainstream cultural memory for these and the ways that I don't when we're going back to like the mid-90s.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

So weird to think about, you know, these are 20 years old now. And so when I was, when we were reading these 20 years ago, this like would have been like talking about a book from 1985, which seems so early because it's sort of my pre adulthood era. I was 7 years old in 85. Whereas these do not feel like books that are 20 years old. They just don't.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, they don't. This is, I was thinking this morning, you know, we do the 10, 20 and 30 year flashbacks and I think these 20 year flashbacks are the most interesting because this is long enough to have a sense of what has endured and stayed relevant and what was a flash in the pan at its time or what like had a moment and looked like it was going to endure. And then some of these, you know, changes in culture really, I think impacted the book's trajectories. This is a fun, this was a fun year. I didn't find it like super hard, but there were a couple different directions my list could have gone.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

When I used to do the old zero to well read list, I would do like the hundred books to be well read from the last hundred years. But the last hundred years started 20 years ago because I felt like you needed 20. Like 20 years was the proper whiskey barrel aging process to have some sense. If there's something here. And I think in this one, you see it was pretty easy to get to my top 15. Honestly, like it became pretty clear. I think we have some conversations about like what was big then versus what is big now. Indie versus sort of pop hits. But there's a lot here. Let's see. Programming note. We may or may not have something for you on Monday because of the holiday. We're talking about it. Maybe there will be a new first edition on Thursday. You can look forward to that. I've done five first edition interviews this week. I was out last week, so there's a bunch going on. I read like three books in the.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Last second day of this.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Yeah, I know. And I've got another one to do. But there's a lot of fun stuff coming over the next few weeks. Well, it's heavy season May and June and trying to get some stuff into the can there on the Patreon. We're going to record on Thursday. That will come out Friday or over the weekend. Next edition of Deals, Deals, Deals coming out on that side. And yeah, the Patreon, the summer draft you saw that's still sitting there for you. And we'll be back, you know, before too long with the it books of June, believe it or not. All right, let's do a sponsor and then we're going to get into the list.

[Rebecca Kishinsky]

Today's episode is brought to you by 8th Note Press, publishers of the Taking of Persephone series by Ambrosia R. Harris. If you are into a lushly written fantasy, if you like Greek mythology, if you like grumpy sunshine pairings, stay tuned. I got you. Before the goddess of the underworld, before the dread queen, there was Corey. Now Corey is caught between two worlds. On the one hand, her mother schools her in duty in hiding her powers from the other gods. But Kori secretly finds freedom in visits from the feared king of the dead. When the struggles of Olympus threaten to find her after all, Kory flees to his kingdom in search of sanctuary. Though the journey is full of monstrous shades and vengeful gods, Corey discovers that the underworld is also full of wondrous possibility. Hades believes there is no room for love among the dead, but Corey is determined to prove him wrong. So you can collect all three books in the Taking of Persephone series, each from a different point of view. Of course, there is Corey's, there's Hades, and Demeter's. Make sure to check out the Taking of Persephone series by Ambrosia R. Harris. And thanks again to 8th Note Press for sponsoring this episode. Today's episode is brought to you by 8th Note Press, publishers of the Lost Saint by Rachel Craw. So Anna was meant to kick it before college starts. It's summer. She thought she was going to be visiting German castles and drinking in myths of saints and miracles, like one does before college starts, right? But then she goes to a party in the sacred caves at Aiden Forest. An earthquake strikes and the partygoers stumble out into a snowy landscape to find what a battle raging wtf, right? Okay, follow me. In the chaos, Anna is separated from the group and realizes she's been Transported to the 14th century with no evident way to return. On top of all of that, she also finds herself caught in a power struggle between the church, the the men of the north and a magnetic young lord who is determined to use her as a bargaining chip. Not the most romantic thing, but hey, this is giving Outlander. It's giving Joan of Arc. It's like a YA to new adult ish romantasy with a unique setting. Looking forward to it. Make sure to check out the Lost Saint by Rachel Craw. And thanks again to 8th Note Press for sponsoring this episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Poison Pin Press, publishers of Death on the island by Eliza Reid. When a murder on an island off Iceland's coast unleashes secrets on a small community, the wife of a foreign ambassador is left to uncover the truth. A run of the mill political visit to a small community descends into disaster when a woman dies dramatically and mysteriously at a networking dinner in the Westman Islands. Jane Shearer, the wife of an ambassador to Iceland, finds herself trapped on the island of by violent weather in the midst of an uneasy group of international players and can't help wondering if the woman's death was truly accidental. Eliza Reid, author of the internationally bestselling Secrets of the Iceland's Extraordinary Women and How They Are Changing the World, brings the atmosphere and culture of Iceland to life in this gripping debut mystery novel, drawing on her own experience as the former first lady of Iceland. So make sure to check out Death on the island by Eliza Reid. And thanks again to Poison Pin Press for sponsoring this episode.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

So we're gonna go 10 to 1 like we normally do. We take turns, we go back and forth and we will talk about the book when it is. Whoever has it higher will wait to talk about it then.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

So I need 45 minutes right now just to worry about my number 11 spot. I know what I have to do, but I don't want to do it. To quote Kylo well, you want to.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think once you make a decision, we should talk about what your number 11 is. I have. And. And if you want to give yourself permission to have an 11, I have one. No, I'm not in the grand tradition of starting from cheating.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I always exactly follow the rules and I'm not breaking that streak now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Sure you really like to follow the rules when I have decided to bend them a little bit. And if you think I haven't noticed.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Look, comparison is a thief of joy, but it depends on what side of the comparison you're on.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm having more fun. I'm talking about 11 books today.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Well, honorable mentions at the end or beginning. Let's do them at the end. Let's start with. Ted, you go first with your number 10.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. I did spend a lot of time on whether this book was going to make my list or not. So ask me again in 20 minutes how I feel about it. But I'm going to start with Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. This was a huge debut novel. It was everywhere I read it, I think in hardcover, which was a big deal in my.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

That's the thing to say. We are prime chick lit, right in 2005.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes. Oh, very much, yes. We are right in the middle of the Devil Wears Prada Prep, all of these things. We were calling it Chiclet. It was being marketed. Marketed.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Fighting about calling it Chiclet, which was important as anything.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, all the things that you do around a new genre. We were doing them around Chiclet, which of course wasn't a new genre at all. It was just a new marketing term as genres tend to go. And it was huge. And I had, like, I have a memory of reading this and that. Everybody else was reading it and people were talking about it, and it was set at a boarding school and I was in college at the time, and there was, you know, some similar vibes. But I went back and it was one of the top five novels of the year in the New York Times top 10 of 2005.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Which is really surprising when you see, like, this is a good book. But when you see the other novels that came out in 2005, that prep made the top 10 from the Times really notable. And the thing that tipped me over into putting this on my list was not so much just what happened with the book when it came out, but that this established a lane for Curtis Sittenfeld. And then in the 20 years since, she has, like zigged and zagged in and out and around that lane, and she's published some books that felt like they were for the same reader who liked Prep. She's done some other things. She's done short stories. She's like, really established herself as a writer with some range, but she's figured out how to do it in a way that she continues to have a really eager and engaged readership. And 20 years on, that's like a 20 year long publishing career is nothing to sneeze at, though.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

All those are the reasons I kept it off the list because it doesn't have a sort of stable position and I think it's fair. The memorable practitioners of this genre. She's like number six, right. I'm not saying best or anything.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know. Then that's really interesting because it is kind of Chiclet, but it's not the same. Like Jennifer Weiner Devil Wears Prada model.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

It's not exemplary of the thing. Nor. I mean and I don't have a relationship to it. So I'll say nor does sort of stand alone as like as we'll get to some of these other things that are not part of a genre, not part of a trend necessarily. It just wasn't kind of. I did look at it and it was extremely popular and it was a huge deal at the time. My number 10. I. I didn't know where to put this. I'll be surprised if it's not on your list. But I don't know. I guess I should say something else. We do get a lot of number four in a big series this year. I'm not doing any of those. You one, one or end. I'm sort of interested. But if you're in the middle, great. Game of Thrones hp. There's some others, but there's quite a few numbers.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I didn't do any mid series entries.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Either because those are about the series, not about the year. But Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It is hard to communicate now what a sort of four quadrant sensation this was. It was in every airport, but it wasn't an airport book because it was about something and it was violent.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This is my nine.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So we can. So we can do it right here.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

And I think the only reason it is entire is because tragically the author has died and the series is continued. But there wasn't. The movie's adaptation kind of sputtered out. They just didn't catch on. They didn't really become. There was like the Nordic noir thing, like the Jo Nesbos of the world followed a little bit after. But this feels like it didn't really lead anywhere. It's sort of a cul de sac. But it was. There were mansions in this cul de sac. It was a huge deal.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A hundred million copies sold. It was truly everywhere. Like I remember we went to Mexico the year one of these years and looking around the pool at a big resort and it had that neon green like super recognizable.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Which was novel. Excuse the pun. It didn't look like anything else.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, it didn't. Look like anything else with the really striking black font. The second one was bright orange, I think the third one was silver. And you could see them like you could just spot from a distance people on planes and people around port reading these. I think you're right that it tapered off because the author died and someone else stepped in to finish the series. But also, there's so much sexual violence in these books. I remember when the movie came out, going to see it and telling people who hadn't read the book, like, you really need to know what's coming for you in this movie. It looks like a big thriller and she's a total badass in her leather jacket. And it can be like a good time in the suspense mystery of it all. But there is so much violence that I also think the audiences have shifted against that a little bit, and that's going to make it hard for a book like this to age well.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I mean, I think even contemporary. With this book coming out, there was conversation about, okay, this is a book about sexual violence and fighting it and the perniciousness of it, but it also has a lot of it in it, right? Like, can you do both of those things? Is there a responsible way to do that? How can one ethically represent something that shouldn't be represented without codifying it or edifying it? The other thing that's about these books is that they're sort of bad. I mean. I mean. I mean, I can still remember some of the jokes about, like, how many frozen pizzas. And just like, it's. It's not the. Harriet Vanger herself is a. I don't know. When you compare us to Ethan Hunt or something like that, or Robert Langdon, it holds up fine. But on its own, I think it's a bit of a tough hang. Like, the characters themselves are not lovable like an HP or even like a Game of Thrones where you get a Tyrion Lannister. Like, the characters are good, but the plots were so interesting and the setting was so interesting that it kind of papered over some of that other stuff.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned Robert Langdon, because I think that's the right comp, like, into a contrast to make here that these had really, like, familiar recurring tropes. The characters became repetitive. Stuff happened over and over that. That was sort of predictable and in a way that Stieg Larsson did not seem to be in on the joke where, like, we know Dan Brown has.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

He was supposed to be above that. It's supposed to be more serious, right? Because about Nazis or whatever.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, yeah, Brown is, like, cracking his knuckles and he's like, guess what, friends? Robert Langdon's gonna swim some laps.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

We're having fun.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And you know. Right. And he knows that's happening. But Larson, like, these books take themselves seriously in a way that also can make it, I think, difficult for a book to really age super well. But that combination of, like, the writing's not incredible, and thrillers remain one of the most popular genres basically all the time. So to endure beyond being a moment for a big thriller is really a tall order.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Yeah. So that was your nine. So that takes me back to my nine. I think we both were thinking along the same lines where you need to tell the story of books in 2005 and not talk about. This book is wild, but it has to be at the bottom.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I agree.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Because it's a 2005 story. And really 2006 and 2007, because I think they came out in short order because they were translated, so they're available quickly. But then it kind of burned brightly and burned out. You know, this book. If you would have asked me what book year this book came out, I wouldn't be able to tell you. I could have maybe said 1971. I could have said 2017. Because it has a timeless quality. It's the Glass Castle by Jeannette Walsh.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, I have this at 5, so.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Let'S talk about it a little bit later. Great. So that then brings you to your eight.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I have American Prometheus.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

That's exactly where I have American Prometheus. So we get to talk about it now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Hell, yeah. You know, it won the Pulitzer. This is the big book about Oppenheimer won the Pulitzer this year. That story, of course, continues to be important. I wondered when I was looking at this if, like, 2022 Rebecca or 2027 Rebecca would have been putting this on this list. But the Oppenheimer movie is still recent enough. The cultural moment around that is still recent enough that we're talking about Oppenheimer. If the movie had been called American Prometheus, we would have had even more affection, I think, for the book. But a story that needs to be told, you know, decisions that need to be interrogated. I'm not sure we're going to keep returning to this book for decades to come. You know, it feels to me like Christopher Nolan gave it the big bump that it was going to have, and you really only get one of those. But big book, we're power ranking it right now. People are still thinking about Oppenheimer. That's still fresh enough, so that's why it's on. But it's.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I remember it was a big deal when it came out and of course it won the Pulitzer prize for non fiction especially. That's not enough to make the top 10. I mean a lot of nonfiction gets to pull one gets every year a few make it, but the story is definitive. It was a magisterial work of art and biography. How. How do you feel about just calling your thing the last name of the person you're making the movie about? Because Cherno's like, he looked at Oppenheimer's like Twain or you know, Alexander Hamilton. I guess you have to have a like Oppenheimer. Not. You're not confusing that with Chris Oppenheimer. Like you know what Oppenheimer you're talking, right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know what Oppenheimer. I prefer this as Biograph. Go. Just name it after the person. We don't need to, you know, gild the lily at all.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Apparently there was in 2005 a big twain biography. Did you come across that in your research?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I. I did see that. I was like, oh, someone has done Mark Twain.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Okay, well I don't think we waited 140 years. I'm sure there have been other Mark Twain's there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Have you. Just as a sidebar, have you seen some of the early reviews?

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

No. Mark Twain. I've been in an island with 14 year olds.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, you've been in nature. They're not bad. But apparently Chernow spends like little time on the writing and a whole lot of time on like Mark Twain's messed up personal life. So Mark Twain's not looking great coming out of the, you know, thousand pages of Ron Chernow exploration.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I think that makes sense in terms of what Chernow's going to do. He's not a literary scholar. Right. He's not going to you know, dive into a Connecticut Yankee or sort of the notorious jumping frog.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like who's going to be most interested in a Mark Twain biography if not book people?

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I don't know, I'm not sure. Maybe the people that like salacious details of. Of an 80 year old scribe.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, so that was our shared eight.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Now I'm clicking around and trying to find where I am. 7.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, I have on Beauty by Zadie Smith.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I have this at six. I have that at six. So I'll do my seven. I have Kafka on the shore at seven.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I left this off because I don't have a relationship to it. And I knew that if there's a Murakami in the year, you're putting the Murakami on the list.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Wonder about this. Because I was like, okay, I am not a. I don't think I am when it comes to this particular exercise. Exercise. We found ourselves if it's like a Titanic global author. Every book that. Because I don't. There's a Marquez this year. I didn't put the Marquez.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

But Kafka on the Shore. I feel like at this time specifically was part of Murakami becoming mainstream, at least in the U.S. right. And I think in terms of his most recommendable and most read, I think this is top three.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

In fact, if I'm. I was. I just looked this up. It's his. The second most read on Goodreads. And if it was third or fourth, I'm like, huh? And it was first.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What's the most wind up Bird Chronicle.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Norwegian Wood. Norwegian wood, which is 1987. I think that was the first one. But by 2005, and I think it was originally 2002 for in Japan, Murakami was a global literary superstar. Like this is when he came out. And then over the next few years, by the time QT84 comes out five years later, that's an enormous like day and date drop. We all know it gets the big vellum release covers like. So this feels like a bit of an inflection point. In fact, I think there's a chance this was peak Murakami in terms of popularity in the US and now it's a little more. There's been a lot of them. There's been a lot more. And a new Murakami isn't as special as it was back then because it felt. It felt to me. Let me put it this way. It felt to me and I think to other people picking up Kafka on the shore, like 2005. Like you weren't at Nirvana in a Seattle like club in 90, but you might have been there in 93 at like Lollapalooza, if you're what I'm saying.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Not a real hipster. But you were still early.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Right? It's. It's not. When Nirvana T shirts are in Target. Do you know how many Nirvana T shirts I saw this weekend on 14 year olds? I guess it was like me wearing a Led Zeppelin T shirt in high school. That's where I eventually came down to. I'm not kidding. It was. It's pretty wild.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, I believe you. That's. And could do the kids know any Nirvana songs is.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Listen, I'm not going to make you name five robins. That's not the kind of person I am. That's just not what's going to happen. A tour de force of metaphysical reality. I think you could describe every Kafka or every Murakami that way. I'm not going to get into the synopsis because that's not what Murakami is about. It feels like you drank Hawaii or something. So that's.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I know. I think. I think you might be right that this was peak Murakami or it was like making its way into that class of readers like us who want to be kind of early on things. You want to know what's going on with literary trends. I heard so many boys talking about Murakami in dorm rooms that I think I am just ruined forever.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I've again, this is our own idiosyncrating experience. I felt like this is more of a literary young woman phenomenon on the whole. But maybe I'm. That's my own.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Really?

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Yeah. I don't know. I felt like. Yeah, I don't know. I could be.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. I need listeners to tell us about their. Help us one sentence.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Cats and cats people carry on conversation. A ghost like pimp employs a Hegel quoting prostitute. A forest harbor soldiers. Apparently an age since World War II. And rainstorms of fish and worse fall from the sky. You're not having a fever dream. You're listening to the Bitcoin podcast. That is just simply one sentence from. Also, I think the Kafka reference made it for us nerds, right? Oh, totally. Indexers out there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. You know who Kafka was? Yeah.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Can I tell you about the reference now? Absolutely not. But anyway, Kafka.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Great. So that was your seven.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Six.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So we're up.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Is my. Okay, that's what I have on Beauty. Where'd you have on Beauty?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I had on Beauty at six.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

So let's talk about. Wow, that's fantastic.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I know. I had on Beauty at seven. That's right.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

So right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We're doing it.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Why don't you take on Beauty? Since I did.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, Zadie is just going on my list. Like this is not the best Zadie Smith. It's not my favorite Zadie Smith. But most Zadie Smiths are very good and a like so so for Zadie Smith is a better than most.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

You think this is so so Is that what you just did? You just so so Beauty. Zadie Smith.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, of the Zadie Smiths. It's in the middle of the pack. It's so so for Zadie. On the Zadie scale, it's like a so so Zadie Smith is better than most people's best names.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Most red Zadie Smith after white teeth.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And modeled on Howard's End. Like, I don't know if folks at the time had Forster affection and were picking it up. But that literary connection I think matters. It won the Orange Prize for fiction. I think this is maybe the most accessible of the Zadie Smiths. It's pretty straightforward. It's a delight to read. I just reread it a couple of years ago.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Great ending. Wonderful ending.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Yeah. And if you have somebody who's like, how do I get into Zadie Smith? This is a good place to start. I think it's a good entry level Zadie Smith novel. It's a Zadie Smith book. It has to be in the top 10 of the year. Like by virtue of the fact that I'm in charge of my list. And that's where it's going.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

445 pages. And I think the other thing about this in 2005 is this was so Autograph man didn't do that. Great. Right. It's, you know, it's a low. It's one of the lower rated. In fact, I think it's the lowest rated of her things on Goodreads, which is take it with a grain of salt, but salt is a spice. And that's how we're figuring out how to think about this. Not that many ratings. But On Beauty came roaring back like the third book doing way better than the second. And again, White Teeth is like double ish. Just sort of looking at the tea leaves here. But from here, yeah, I, you know, it's kind of been white teeth was peaks 80 but this was the second mountaintop. And it's really been. It's enduring. But like the other ones haven't been as popular. Like the fraud has ratings. It's in the middle. But it wasn't very well received. So I don't know. I mean, White Teeth into On Beauty that three may have been peak ZD and she was still. She wasn't the kind of phenomenon of white teeth because that was its own story and you were probably too young to follow that. I was just graduating from college. I was very aware of what was going on there. But On Beauty was a cementing. But I thought that was going to be more of a floor to her career. But it was more one of the high. It was the second highest peak in the in the career, which is really interesting to see. I think the other thing about On Beauty is, and we saw it with the Fraud is that she was not as more of a classical writer than people thought coming out of white teeth was going to be.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

And you know, another book of 2005, book that did not make my list, but I think of as a similar generation. Jonathan Saffron Foers, Extremely Loud, Extremely Loud and Close, which has this, I think, you know, Dale Peck or someone called it hyper realism. On Beauty is not that you can tell if it's not directly influenced by Forster. It is of the Forsterian sort of big English novel kind of vibe, which is surprising to me and maybe one reason it's endured a little bit too.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, so that was your six. We have my six now. I tossed in the World is Flat by Thomas L. I looked at this, I did and I, I have, I think there's a case for both on the list and off. But I went for on because of how big it was at the time. Like this was. This is a book about real substance. But it was also like every business dude's airplane book. Like I think it probably got left behind in so many seat back pockets. Delta just has piles of them sitting around somewhere. But the case he's making like 2005 is right before the Internet, really Internets. And the book is about globalization and the way that technology is making the world feel flat. And at the time, Thomas Friedman is kind of a techno utopian tech optimist. He's like, this is going to be amazing. For the most part, we're all going to be connected. We'll be able to cooperate in ways we've never cooperated before. We'll be able to solve problems. We'll be able to do things like as we know, sitting here 20 years later, that is not how the Internet has panned out or not the whole story of how the Internet has panned out. And it's certainly not the popular narrative about what the Internet and globalization, this kind of connectivity have done for us. But it's a real signal work that reflects the time. Like if you, you should put this in a time capsule of what was happening in the year 2005. So it's on the list, but that's why it's at 6. Like we're on the second half.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

And this was how long after. What's the matter with Kansas?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, what's the matter with Kansas was like early 2000s, I think.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

And I think this, this genre of popular political discourse in book form was a big deal at the time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And this was also, like, around the Guns, Germs and Steel time. Like these. Those kind of sit together in my memory of what was big.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

The dad books. I mean, we don't get dad books of this flavor anymore.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right?

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

We don't. We get in. It's dead. We get. I guess we get more of the professional development book that's. That used to be kind of what colors your parachute, but now it's Adam Grant.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, that's. That's right. Like, Bob as a grad, a fresh graduate from business school, is reading Thomas Friedman in 2005. Like that. This was the thing you needed to be able to talk about when you were a newly minted financial advisor.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

My number five. This could have been higher by three spots, I think. I don't think it had been two, but I. I don't think it'd been one. I think it'd been two. But it's a Lightning Thief by Rick Reardon.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, okay.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Because it's the first one. And I've had tweens, and the tweens are still jacksoning out like they're going hard and into some degree. I think some of the overflow, slash immigration, slash evacuation from HP fandom has found a new, more palatable home in Percy Jackson. Also, the new TV show on Disney is good, and it's just right for 10, 11, 12 year olds. Family fun. But this series is huge. Like 3 million shelvings on greeds. Like, it continues to sell, and it's sold into, you know, the next 25 years of true middle grade. It didn't really age up. At least that's what Rowan tells me about this. But, you know, this is. You don't. You don't mint a forever character that often. And I think Percy Jackson is a forever character. So I had to figure out where to do with it. So I put it right in the middle and compromised with myself at number five.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right. My five is the glass castle, which I know you had lower down.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

So the glass. Well, I just did, Percy, so go back to class. Get Glass castle for you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. Well, I mean, this was huge at the time. It sold more than 7 million copies. And it laid the groundwork in my way of thinking about this for things like Tara Westover and Educated to come out. Like, this was certainly not the first time that someone had written a memoir about their difficult childhood. But there's, like, a certain type of father that Jeanette Walls captures, and Tara Westover is doing a Similar thing.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Bastard out of Carolina is in the same vein, right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, like that's. There's a lineage here that Walls exists in, but this was the first, like contemporary one that really blew up in the way that it blew up at the 20 year mark. Earlier this year, Jeanette Walls did like a bunch of press around it. I think Kelly Jensen from. From Our side of Things even talked to her. It holds up pretty well. When I was a bookseller in 2007 and 2008, this was on a bunch of high school syllabi. Like you could read it as one of your summer reading picks and they were using it to talk about different forms of storytelling. It's one of those cases where the particulars are personal, but the universal elements of this make it so popular and so timeless in a way. And I think when you were talking about it further down, you were like, there's a version of this list where it's up at 2. And I can also see that it was just huge. And it continues to be.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Well, I think the reason it didn't climb much higher for me, and that's not about the book, it's that it feels like a timeless book. Like, it feels like a tree grows in Brooklyn or even. I know it's fiction, but To Kill a Mockingbird like this, the precocious young woman telling her story of like a lower middle class upbringing, that was tough. It works if done well. Like, that's a timeless sort of a genre that people come back to and come back to and come back to. It can sit on a paperback story forever. So weirdly, I was dinging it for being more eternal than 2005. Kind of the opposite of.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, it doesn't. You can't really make the time capsule case.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Yeah, I would have. I would have missed my two decades in dating it. I really would have. I could. I could have easily done it that way. So then, are we at your four?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, my four is Freakonomics.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I really struggle. It didn't make. It did not make my list. I really struggled with. With Freakonomics.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, it was tough. And I was like four or maybe nine or maybe not at all. And so I landed at 4. I'm pairing it with Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. This is like a certain moment, maybe a peak moment for popular economics, business, self help, like of this flavor that was capitalizing on what Kahneman and Tversky's work. And things don't function the way that you think they function. There's something.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Yeah, right. Turns out it's called Turns out literature.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. But especially, yeah, it turns out exactly like, turns out that, you know, like, everyone is secretly racist and that. That shows up, like in our elections. Yeah, right. And it shows up in ways that you don't expect. Like if you give the exact same resume but with different names on them, those people are going to get called for interviews at different rates. Which feels like, duh. Now in 2005, like in this moment where we know about intersectionality and there have been two decades of popular research about this stuff, but this was, I think, a moment of waking up to some of these kinds of things for contemporary, for liberals at the time who just like, well meaning, educated white people who had not thought about, like, how these things actually can work and free economics. Like, it kind of is the ship that lost, that launched a thousand copycats. Like the Turns out genre became a thing. And that flavor of content lives on in like LinkedIn influencer right now.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, like, this was.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

It's the best time to wake up is yesterday. It was like, wait, wait, hold on a second.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, but I mean, even I can't even remember now if it's Freakonomics that where we all learned that, like, if you're going to court, you don't want to get the case right before or right after lunch because of hunger or how the judge is feeling. Right. But it was those kinds of things. Like there's just more to it than you than you previously knew. Like, the Freakonomics guys have or had a popular podcast. The book has been like criticized and canceled and then reconsidered and then like recontextual. It's gone. Like we've gone all the way around on Freakonomics several times and it was, it like served to flash a cultural signal about like the kind of person that you were, that you wanted to be, how you wanted to understand the world at the time. I don't think anybody's life is changing from picking up the 2005 edition of Freakonomics today. We're not moving the world forward in some fashion, but it introduced a new kind of like big cultural conversation.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Yeah, I've thought I was thinking about Freakonomics and what it meant at the time and what it meant this sort of genre means now. Also, just the COVID design, you can tell is like a real transitional moment. Like this is the archaeopteryx of a dinosaur turning into a bird. Like, it feels like older looking self help, but it's not, it's not an older school.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, it doesn't know what it is. It's like are we self help? Is this a business book? Is it like a neoliberal, you know sociology. It's kind of all of the above.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I think this. This the popularization of turns out literature thinking anecdotal understanding and a lot of people get thrown into this category. I think Gladwell does sometimes observe it and some doesn't. Kahneman and Tversky don't. I mean this is kind of where you are did lead to and it has led to a the life hacky optimizer data nerd stuff that is kind of pernicious in its own way. Like you don't want to be a sucker. And actually the right way to do it is the way that no one does it it Right. I think that's the thing is like these are exceptions to the conventional wisdom not a new conventional wisdom. And I think a lot of people have taken these as new conventional wisdoms. Like the right thing to do it is anyway. But now and this goes all the way and I think in some ways the popularization has led to a distrust in institutional and expert thinking because of turns out as a model of understanding how the world really works. And no one wants to be a sucker. So I don't know I guess that a little moment in me on that. But. But definitely I definitely considered it. I definitely consider.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh yeah. If Freakonomics comes out today like Joe Rogan's recommending it that's how that would go. But I don't know that we get to Joe Rogan without the Freakonomics moment which I think is an interesting path.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Is there there's. But these. These guys wouldn't be in favor of Dewormers for Covid. But like there's a line between right. Actually you should do it this way. And I don't trust anything other than what I heard online.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Like I think that if you know if they were going to talk about it my guess would be that what they intended to do was prompt people to ask what else might be going on here or could something else be going on here beyond what it. What the pattern on the surface looks like and that it got sort of turned into a turns out or there's an exception and therefore the rule must not ever be valid sort of thing was not the intention. But that's right. That's where we've landed with critical thinking these days.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

It's gone great for all of us as we've found. Yeah that's interesting because that was your four that means one of my top four is not on your list, and I'm guessing it's the next one, but that's what we call the tease. But we're doing another sponsor break in the middle here.

[Rebecca Kishinsky]

Today's episode is brought to you by Sourcebooks, Landmark, publishers of the Girls of Good Fortune by Christina McMorris Oregon, 1888Amid the subterranean labyrinth of Portland's Shanghai Tunnels, a woman awakens disoriented in an underground cell. Though no stranger to upholding a facade, being half Chinese yet passing as white, she's perplexed by the male disguise she's wearing. Of more pressing concern, however, are the dangers she faces as a crimped or shanghaied sea bound to work as forced labor. While struggling to recall what happened, she desperately tries to escape so she can return to her daughter, left in danger in a place where unearthed secrets can prove even more deadly than the dark recesses of Chinatown. From New York Times bestselling author of Sold on a Monday and the Ways We Hide comes a story of one woman's journey through Portland, Oregon's Chinatown and its infamous Shanghai tunnels, giving voice to those in the shadows in a spellbinding story of a young, half Chinese mother and her determination to forge a future for her daughter in a world that shuns outsiders. Make sure to pick up the Girls of Good Fortune by Christina McMorris. And thanks again to Sourcebooks Landmark for sponsoring this episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Sourcebooks Fire, publishers of His Face Is the Sun by Michelle Habaz Gobora this book. I'm so excited, y' all. It's giving Game of Thrones. It's giving the Mummy. It's the start of an epic, lush trilogy. It's also for YA readers, so it's like it's got a little bit of everything. It's if you like Leigh Bardugo. Tap it. Listen up. The kingdom of Katara is a jewel of the desert, but there's a crisis on the horizon. Rebellion's growing secrets are flourishing and an ancient evil has awakened. Then there are four strangers. A princess, a young priestess, a rebel, and a tomb robber who are ripped from their lives and thrown into the conflict. Amid murder and betrayal, magic and monsters, these four unlikely heroes find themselves connected by a forgotten oracle that whispers across the land. Only together can they save the kingdom. But when the bloodshed is done, who will sit on the throne? So we've got magic, romance, adventure, and horror that collide in like, the most perfect package. Make sure to check Out His Face as a Sun by Michelle Habez Guebora. And thanks again to Sourcebooks Fire for sponsoring this episode.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

So my four, I'm guessing this is the one you don't have. I have no country for Old men by Cormac McCracker.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I just decided I was going to give you the moment. I put Cormac on the last like ranking that we did of something and we had that conversation then. So I just made some. Some Jeffrey.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I mean, so this is not the most popular of the McCarthy. The road had its own semi viral moment, but this is peak McCarthy for most people. The Road is him trying out this post apocalyptic thing after no country is really only the Passenger, which is really weird. Stella Maris and the Passenger are very weird. But no country is the, I mean, really the nexus of his western stuff, his philosophical stuff and his approachableness. Because it's not sort of Blood Meridian or some of the stuff that was earlier. It's not all the pretty horses, but really all the pieces that make McCarthy dialed in, dial in. It makes an interesting narrative choice that's represented in the really excellent adaptation. The Cohen's offer to McCarthy. It's elite. I mean this is. I had on my best books of the century after the Cormac McCarthy stories. I'm not sure what I'd do with it now, but I'm comfortable in this position saying of the books of 2005 in McCarthy and where he was and just yeah, this is Peak McCarthy at the time. If people ask me if they want to read a McCarthy to get the experience all in one, it's no country for Old Men. Pretty, pretty amazing book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, so that takes us to three.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Which would be you. We haven't gotten to your three yet.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The Year of Magical Thinking.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Joan Didion is exactly in the right order or the same order. It's not the right order. Your magical thinking. Go, Rebecca, go.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, this is Didion's best selling work. It won the National Book Award that year and it kind of instantly became a classic. Like came out and everyone talked about it.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

It just shot right like there was a magnet in the bottom of those tote bags.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It continues to be cited when people are talking about great books about marriage and loss and it's a book about both.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Is it the one? I mean, if you're doing a draft of like grief books, is. Is this go number one?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Overall, it's up there. Some really mean person recommended it to me like, like three months before my wedding.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

And I'm trying to Think of.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, but as a, like, reflection on having shared your life with someone. There are passages of this that I still think about, you know, of, you know, expecting to see his shoes by the front door, and then, you know, that they were both writers and that they would spend their mornings working, and then in the afternoons, like, meet in the kitchen and have a sandwich, and then, like, get in the pool after that and just have a drink and hang out and like that. Just the scenes that she paints of the both, like, totally quotidian, but also magical because they were quotidian moments in their life as a couple. And how she's processing the loss of this person that she spent decades with and what that meant. Like, the older that I get, the less likely I am to pick this up because it wrecked me so much. It's a little too true, Rebecca.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I mean, come on.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And there's like, I had not been a married person. I had not been a long partnered person when I read this book. And so I could see that this was a roadmap of sorts to, like, you, too, will probably feel this someday, but from the middle of middle age, like, I don't feel the need to go back there, but I have recommended it to other people and said it's, you know, beautiful for what it does. Like Didion at the height of her powers.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Yeah. I mean, you can just going to the quotes page on Goodreads to remind myself of, like, the tenor of this. I was like, I can't look directly at this. I have to kind of. No, yeah, I remember. I don't remember the line specifically, but there's something like grief. We don't know grief. None of us know grief until you're there. Like, you can't anticipate it. You can't get there. It comes to you specifically. And the suddenness and permanence of it. You know, it's about time and long times, and it is. I. I think, especially as the boomers age, like, I. You could probably demographic this. That at this point, as the boomers were starting to lose their peer group in a real way, it made sense that it was that there would be a book like this. Like, frankly, Tuesdays with Mori is doing a similar thing that comes at a different time. Like, it's tapping in the same idea. This is.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

You cannot compare them miles ahead a million different ways. Sales, not the least among them, but it's certainly tapping into the boomer generation facing their own mortality squarely. And then didding and turning her considerable craft and sensibility attention towards, you know, the thing we're all going to face. Like it or not, it's a terrific sort of beyond category.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like maybe the OR5 alarm snot bomb.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I actually think it might be underrated. I was thinking about this too, because Didion herself has become such a. A totem. Right. I was talking to Alyssa Wilkinson about this, who's. Whose book we were talking about like she's become a writer for whom people may have a relationship that they've never read anything because of the style.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I totally agree. I think there's like a halo around her that might make people think that she's going to be difficult or inaccessible or cold in a way that this book isn't.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

And even the way this became so popular, it may feel more approachable or. Or tame than it is. It's. This is an unruly book. It's going to make you feel some unruly feelings. So then we're back to year two, then. So how are we going to do this? Let me. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me think through this. We have to have the same.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. We have to. And one of them won the Nobel Prize. Yeah.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Did you struggle with where to put one or two at all? No, I did. That makes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Because of personal. Just personal preference. I just decided.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

You put ears ago at once one. Okay. I put Twilight at one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

And I didn't feel great about it. Well, you make the case for Never Let Me Go at one. And I will. I will put myself in the enviable position of making a case for Twilight.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The truest expression of a book riot moment ever. The argument that Twilight should be number one, I think it's more likely to endure. I like Never Let Me Go as a work of literature is good 20 years later. And it's good without the kind of pop culture success that Twilight had. Like, I. I could. I can make an argument for putting Twilight in one also. But my notes literally just say Never Let me Go. I mean, it is. It's.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

It's wild that there's even a question, but I think there is, but continue.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. It's masterful and it's dystopian, but in this quiet way. And we weren't really talking about dystopia as dystopia yet. Right. It wasn't marketed that way. It's just this quiet novel that happens to have this dystopian thing happening in the background, but does the thing that Ishiguru is always interested in doing, which humanizing and exploring empathy the Sentences are perfect. Like I think we've reread this together twice in the last.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

We're never gonna let it go.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Just. Yeah. Just to have excuses to read it. A shared favorite among his oeuvre and. And the one I think that you tell people to start with if you want a sense of Ishiguro. Granted, though I still haven't read the be.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Would it be amazing if you're like, you know what the actual stuff is? The Buried Giant.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Ask me in a couple months. But I mean Nobel Prize winner, he just pulls off things that if you describe this book to someone and you actually tell them all the things that are that happen in it and what's going on, what you think you're getting based on like the plot synopsis is so different from what the literary experience and the emotional experience of reading it are. And I intend to still be Talking about it 20 and 40 years from now in a way that I'm not sure I will still be talking about Twilight. But I have mad respect that you just went ahead and put Twilight at number one again.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

My tortured logic went something like this as great as Never Let me Go is. And I think I would put it number one of the books of the century so far. Which makes it weird for it be two for this year. That's some real. That's some real gymnastics I'm trying to do is that other Ishiguro books are also really great. Like Claire in the sun is really great.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

No remains of the day. We've talked about that. Also really great. Like I'd put alongside maybe 1a, 1b. Those three together I think are pretty clearly the three. Whereas Twilight is a one of one. And as cultural phenomenons go with longer legs than we would have thought. I think we don't have the romantasy thing we have today without 100, without this. And 50 Shades, which is very much directly came out of it like fan. I mean again, there's a whole thing you can read about it. Don't at me. But like this. The popularization again that we remembered again of romantic stories primarily aimed at younger into middle aged women that have a fantasy element is. I don't know, it's. It's like discovering nuclear fusion. It's the Oppenheimer of books. Like we didn't have this before and now we do.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes. Yeah, this. I mean this is what launched the readers that were ready for ACOTAR and 4th Wing. And it also launched 50 Shades of Gray which was first self published in 2005. But I'm saving it for power rankings about 2012 because that's when it came out, you know, in a big way. It felt like a fad at the time. And it is not a fad. And we have also kind of like Freakonomics. We've gone all the way around. Where are we now on Twilight?

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Stock is up on Twilight, I think.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think the affection is up for Twilight.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Well, it's aged, right? It's sort of got a little bit of rosiness over time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And you like the first adapt, the first film is not great, but it's bad in really enjoyable ways. And there are things like, you know, Twilight live where you can go and like everybody just sort of of Rocky Horror Picture Shows watching Twilight together, which that's really endured. And it's people my age at that, and it's people 20 years younger who go to those kinds of things. But yeah, I think It's. I mean, 160 million copies of the series in print without a mechanism like TikTok, just old school sell it. Like, you have to let that sink in. 160 million copies, just really incredible. And also came out at kind of the end of the mid to late 90s obsession with purity, culture. Like one of the selling points of Twilight, at least as I heard parents talk about it during my bookseller years, was it's clean that there's like all this. What the TikTok girlies would talk about, all the yearning. There's all this yearning in Twilight, but they don't have sex until they get married. And that might seem like a really quaint concern to have about books right now when you've read some contemporary romantasy. But that was what we were coming out of in like pop culture in the late 90s and early 2000s, was like the true love waits and all of this. And are they gonna do it or not? Was a really big question. It was not a foregone conclusion that they would.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Is this the most influential work by a Mormon of all time?

[Jeff O'Neill]

You mean other than the Book of.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

We're not doing founding documents here.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Probably.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Interesting. Influenced by Jay Nost and William Shakespeare on the official page. So we got to settle down. Just keep. We really need to be careful out there with these cops 100. So, yeah, I think it's the wattage man. And it's so 2005 where if issue girl wrote this Never let me go in 87 or 2017. There's some. There's a time capsule element to. To this here at this point Also, she was so young. Stephanie Meyer. She was writing this in her late 20s, which is kind of amazing to think about. Also, Ishuguro won something called the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize for his first novel, which is the most English novel name. Winifred Holt. Winifred Holtby.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Is there a Beatles song?

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Yeah, I think she was. She lived alone and got her crisps every night.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Ms. Havisham.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

That's right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Winner.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Okay, let's go to honorable mentions. How are we doing on time? Let's do one more sponsor break.

[Rebecca Kishinsky]

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[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Did you have a top? What was. Did you have a toughest 11? What was 11? You said you were gonna double something you didn't double anything. What were you gonna do?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, no, I put blink in with economics.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Okay. Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, none of these were, like, really tough, but, like, Julie and Julia, a couple at a different time. That would have made this list. Yeah, that was peak, like, blog to TV deal. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova was huge in 2012. Oh, yeah. Big, like. And I. I haven't read it since then, so I don't know if it holds up. I have. I have a memory.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I feel like maybe I did, but if you asked me to tell you what's about, I don't think I've got anything in it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I. This is one of those books I have, like, a weird snapshot memory of because I was reading it the weekend we moved into our house in Richmond, so which would have been like 2007. And I remember sitting just, like, turning the pages on it, waiting for the cable guy to come. But huge paperback bestseller. Team of rivals. The Doris Kearns Goodwin talking about dad books.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Huge book. A huge book. Yeah. I took a look at that too, though. Another Lincoln book. I don't know. But it broke out of another Lincoln book. You know, sales, like, she became a household name for people that, you know, spent money at Barnes and Noble.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close would have made my top 15, but I didn't really struggle to keep it off the top 10. And then Marley and Me.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Marley and Me. Really? Marley and Me. Honorable mention.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It had a moment. It had a moment. I mean, I hated it because Marley. It doesn't. Things don't end well for Marley. Everybody cries. But Marley and Me was everywhere. And that was like the beginning of a real Dogs in books.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

When was Art of Racing in the Rain?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Was that it was after Marley and Me? Yeah. And then the Edgar Sawtelle book, also about dogs. Like, this was Marley and Me Marked a time for Us. So that would go in my 2005 capsule, but it's not on my power ranking.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

People of my age often talk about the. The books of the pets dying that we had to read when we were in middle school. Between where the Red Fern Grows, the Day no Pigs Would Die in Charlotte's Web. I'm like, what were they trying to do to a nine year old out there? What was that? I don't get that. It's wild.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Character building meant different things.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Kids had one emotion. Kids, let's get just so sad. Unbelievable.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What was on your own?

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

My hardest excision, and the way I rationalized it to myself is that it was actually a collection of 12 comic books that came out of the 10 years before. But Black Hole by Charles Burns, the full Compendium, Kato in 2005, a signal work of comic art. The story centers around teenagers who get grotesque mutations after, you know, doing stuff. And it feels like in another world this becomes a seven episode Hulu series or something. Or hbo, where it was a little before. I think it was a little before his time. Because when we were doing BR in like 2002, 13, 14 in those eras, that's when like the sagas of the world, the graphic novels of the world. But I think Black Hole by Charles Burns was a approximate antecedent to that move. A lot of those people really look up to Charles Burns. And it kind of blew me away when I read it too, you know, the Painted Drum by Louise Erdrich, but it's kind of hard to distinguish from other Erdrichs.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, that's why I left that one off.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I really love the March by El Doctro, which was the story of Sherman's March. But doctor, My Doctoro stock, it's kind of in the drawer with my Blockbuster stock. Like, I guess there could be a moment. I thought Ragtime the Musical, we were going to be good for a while. But I'm not sure that anyone reads Yale Doctoro anymore. Even. Even Ragtime, which is the pinnacle there. I had Freakonomics. Then I looked real hard at the Book Thief.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

And I didn't know what to do with it because 10 years ago, this was the YA book. It really was, Rebecca. Like, it was. It was the YA book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It goes in the time capsule for 2005, even if we're not still talking about it today.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Yeah, it probably is. Right. Tucked in with Girl with the Dragon 2 in paperback that you. That you borrowed or found at the hotel shelf that you got with there. I might forget.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And I think maybe some of that is also just that, like kids books and YA have gotten so much more comfortable being weird. Like, the big pitch for the Book Thief is that it's narrated by death. And that was novel at the time, but we're doing all kinds of things now.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Now YA books have pretty graphic sexual thunderstorms, or maybe they're not, but they're not for ya. I'm sorry, I forgot. That's actually not for teenagers. Teenagers don't read that. They don't let them. They can't get their hands on them. That's not why they're popular, Rebecca. That's not why.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, never.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Yeah. Pretty interesting year. I mean, there's there's four or five Jeff books on this list. I'd be happy to revisit many of them over time. Shoot us email podcast book riot.com what were we asking about that I was wrong about something.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, Kafka on the shore. Is it like are. Are we. Was it girls in dorm rooms?

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Or maybe it was talking about more. I don't know, maybe it wasn't that easy. You know we have different language for this now. But I felt more like maybe it's because I had a couple of friends that were, well, still are women who were super into it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So I maybe yeah. My experience it was very similar to like to the scene in Barbie where the guy is like let me explain the guy.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I thought they were still picking up David Foster Wall Wallace at that point. Do you think people went from Officer Foster.

[Jeff O'Neill]

David Foster Wallace. The David Foster Wallace fan and the Murakami dude are in the center of the Venn diagram with each other in my like dorm room literary dudes experience.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Well, you're a little bit younger than I am, so maybe it transmogrified.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Over time. Making more in podcastbookride.com for email the link in the show notes bookride.com listen, you can find. Well, there's no notes to this, but you can also go to the Patreon. There'll be a link there, Instagram, other stuff going on and Rebecca. With that I guess we'll return to 2005 and how. We haven't figured this out yet, but at some point we're gonna have some five year overlaps. I think we have to put this in the can for another 10 years, right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh yeah, we're just doing the 10, 20 and 30. 10, 20 and 30 year jumps. So we'll talk about 2005 again in 2035.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I'll pull out the cork and we'll sample and see more ages.

[Jeff O'Neill]

See what's happening in romance. If you Twilight goes on the list over time.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Let's say in 20 years. 30 years. I think your inclination that never let me go sort of rises and supersedes Twilight makes sense to me. I'm not sure about Percy Jackson. You just don't know. Sometimes that becomes like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and sometimes it could be right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It could become like one of those kids tibblet things that just stays there for 60 years. Or it could.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Murakami is not going anywhere. We could. We could argue about this one versus that one. But Murakami is a made man. I'm not so sure about on beauty.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I'm not sure about.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

People didn't read the Frog. Rebecca. We haven't talked about this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

If people didn't read that, the synopsis for it is not great. I'm so mad. Justice for Zadie. I don't know about the glass castle.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

In another 20 girl dragon tattoo. I also think American Prometheus, when Oppenheimer is now a 20 year old movie, I don't know.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Also real opportunity to retitle the book and they did not do it.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I mean American Prometheus is a very good title. It's a very good title.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It is. But if you don't know who it's about and you're just hearing American Prometheus.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I think it's not like Mark Twain by Ron. For a movie, you got to put it on there. But someone who may consider reading a 730 page biography, if they can't get past the title, the subtitle, they shouldn't be picking up anyway. This is like how you know those Nigerian little gatekeeping. We're gonna do like the Nigerian princess emailers, right? Like they make it bad on purpose because they don't want the people that. That can proofread an email. They don't want them. Okay, you've heard this, right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think I have heard this.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I think I probably read that in Freakonomics, to be honest with you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

If you're trying to sell your 700 page Bible biography, I think you want every tool available to you. But that's.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Look, if you're writing seven page biography, you're not afraid of a subtitle. You just aren't. You didn't get into this business for being afraid of subtitles.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Zen in the art of like the top 10 subtitles would be amazing.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

How do you feel? How do you feel about the first initial, middle name, last name J. Robert Oppenheimer? Oh, worry about.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't have any feelings about that. I think that's fine.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Makes me wonder like how bad was the thing that Jay stood for that you just went by Jay Robert.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

I'm assuming it's Jeff because we need a couple good ones. We don't have a lot of great ones. It's like Jeff Bridges.

[Jeff O'Neill]

If you want to claim him as a Jeff, you go right?

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

It could be anything. If you wanted it not to be Jeff. You shouldn't have put a dot there. Jelly James. I don't even know what it is.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I have never considered this.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

You haven't stared at this document as long as I have. What can I do? Where can I. Where can I put black hole? Let me go to Wikipedia. Julius.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This is great radio we're doing right now.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Julius Oppenheimer.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, yeah, he. But in that. Why not just go by Robert?

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

Like, why not Bobby App? Okay, thanks, everybody. We'll talk to you all later. Welcome to those who Can't Teach Anymore, a narrative podcast series that explores why teachers are leaving education and what can be done to stop the exodus. This season we're getting a look at the year and the life of teachers from across the country through their audio journals.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I am Darcy Ostermiller. This is Megan Obergart. This is Sophie V. This is Charlie Blackwell. This is Taylor Barros.

[Rebecca Kishinsky]

This is Iva Mon Redman.

[Ambrosia R. Harris]

David Whisker. Dan Morris, Amanda Smith. Look for those who Can't Teach Anymore, Season two, a Different Kind of the Same Thing.