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- [00:00]
A
Does your dessert game need a makeover? Scoop it or swirl it. That's the sound of an ice cream shop. On your countertop, the Ninja Creami helps you turn almost anything into ice cream. From sweet and indulgent to protein packed and low cal. No skimping on flavor. Reward yourself, Hit your macros, do dessert your way. No sacrifice, no stress, just flawless ice cream. However you love it. Treat, repeat. Pretty sweet. Get your Ninja creamy today. Tech moves fast, so keep pace with the Daily Crunch podcast from TechCrunch. With new episodes every day, this podcast will give you a quick overview on everything you need and should know about startups, new tech regulations and more. Listen to TechCrunch Daily Crunch now. Wherever you get your podcasts, that's TechCrunch Daily Crunch. Wherever you get your podcasts. Foreign. This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff o'. Neill.
- [01:06]
B
And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.
- [01:08]
A
Today on the show, we're going back to 2016. This was our bit became before it became the Internet bit. We'd go back and look 10 years ago as probably is over by now by the time I've heard of it. Apparently there was a meme Internet trend to show yourself in 2016.
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B
Oh, yes.
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A
I, I don't know why this happened necessarily, other than every generation needs to encounter the passage of time for the first time. So maybe 22 year olds are like, wow, it was a lot different when I was 12. It's like that's how time works.
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B
It's also a super helpful training mechanism for AI.
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A
Yeah, there is that. And on the other hand, was 2016 the last good year? Thinking about what happened in the elections and then looking at this list of books, Rebecca, are we sure we can't go back?
- [01:54]
B
Yeah, that was like, there are times where we've done these power rankings where it's like we are struggling to come up with the top 10 or to like figure out how to put them in an order that makes any kind of sense. I could have done top 25.
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A
My long list was 30. I had five that were easy to put in the top five. I found the last five very difficult to separate from another 10 or 15.
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B
Honestly, this was a hell of a year. And like, let's just, let's go back to 2016 for a minute. Most, most of these books come out.
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A
Even though we knew it was coming in 2017.
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B
Donald Trump has never been president.
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A
Oh, okay. It's a different world. I got you.
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B
Yeah. I mean, in 2016 he's running, but he's never been president. Like TV is still pretty good. TikTok is not a thing. We're not all completely zombified by the algorithm. No Jenny, no Covid, no Gen AI. And looking at these also, I think this was a turning point year for literary fiction inflected by genre, which is a place that we really solidly live now. And it's interesting to go back and see that turn happen. But the books were so good in.
- [03:05]
A
2016 and very powerful. I mean, we'll talk a little bit. Our methodology. Your first time joining us, I should say. I got a lot of requests for us to talk about recent book news because we were off last week. There's a major development in the world of the Washington Post book books world and a major piece that I devoted all of Today in Books yesterday to writing about what I think is a pretty bombshell expose of a single romance author, but I think has wide ranging.
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B
Yes.
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A
Import in the so we're going to spend a lot of time on that in the new show that will record this week will be out on on on Monday. So fear not, we're not going anywhere. Rebecca was vacationing and I was in New York on business. I've got some takeaways to share with you there. So, you know, just hang tight, folks. We'll get back to you here.
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B
We will talk about those big stories. Don't worry.
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A
In short order, if this is your first time joining us, Power ranking the books of the year. This is our first one of the year. Yeah.
- [03:56]
B
This is our first one of 2026.
- [03:58]
A
This is not the best books of the year. This is not the notable books of the year. This is more frankly kind of a historical document of looking back at the year of 2016 and ranking the 10 books that sort of meant the most both in the world of books and reading and then sort of outside of it. Like sometimes a book will become important in the world of books but then have import in the wider world. Rebecca and I have each picked 10. We have not consulted with each other. We will go from 10 to 1 and then we will talk about the book. If you have it at 10 and I have it at 6, we'll talk about the book at the higher placement. So we wait around to do six that way. I'm going to tell you something right now, Rebecca, and I'm going to tell you something right now, listeners. I have done something here with this list that the Apollo, the Apollonian man, the Dionysian man are in conflict because my head is telling me one thing and my heart is telling me something else. And knowing what I am. The head is winning, the heart's getting crushed, and yet my stomach is turning. So I've got internal organ strife going on in a way that's very difficult for me to parse. You probably know what I'm doing here. You probably know what I'm wrestling with. I bet you could guess.
- [05:10]
B
Yeah. And these are historical documents about the books at the time, but also where they sit today. And so sometimes these episodes. Because every year we go back to 10, 20, and 30 years past, sometimes these episodes are very different just because of something that's happened in the last couple of months that has brought an older book back into the publishing conversation. I did some more. I think I know what you're referring to. Maybe we can just get into that at the top. But I did some more a heart based. And readers and listeners will be shocked. I went that direction. I. I did not cheat on this list. Often I do groupings of like, these were the two big debuts and I'll put them both at number five or something. But I. I did a strict ten this time around. And I feel good about this list. For long term posterity.
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A
I feel terrible about it. Absolutely horrible. I really don't want to do this podcast. I feel really bad, Rebecca. Like, really bad.
- [06:09]
B
I was really not expecting this from you. I sat down five minutes ago, being pretty sure that we have the same number one, and now I'm nervous.
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A
You know, we don't.
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B
So our Add me to the list of internal organ strife, I guess.
- [06:23]
A
Yeah. Michelle can never hear this podcast based on what I'm about to unveil here in a few minutes. That's just what's going on here. All right, let's get into it, I guess just where we pull these things from. Award winners, Goodreads list, New York Times notable. Also, Rebecca, you and I were five years into this gig. We were really doing things. We had Book Riot Live. I think I've read a lot of these books and the ones I haven't read, I didn't read on purpose. On purpose, yes.
- [06:47]
B
Yeah.
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A
Which is very important here. What else do you want to say about the year of 2016, us as readers and where we are in the. In the book world?
- [06:53]
B
This is book, like, Book Riot was cooking. This was our fifth year up and going. And we were like, the show was a couple years old at that point. Three years, I think. And so we were really steeped in paying attention to new releases and the awards cycle. And big reviews. And this was like a more robust literary culture, I think, or robust in a different way. Like to address a little bit the recent note about the Washington Post getting rid of book review sections. Like many more newspapers still had book reviews in 2016, some folks were, were still running like relatively well known book review blogs. Tumblr, I think, was still going. And BookTube was the biggest thing I was gonna say.
- [07:32]
A
That was the thing that was the hotness at that point.
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B
Bookstagram had not taken off like any meme you've seen bookstagrammers do. They did on BookTube first.
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A
That's right. And we did in blogs in 2010.
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B
So this is just the cycle that, that we run. But there was like big variety and like big cultural conversations. And what really resonated for me is how many of the cultural conversations that these books are tied to in, like a lot of these felt prescient in ways we couldn't have known in 2016, but they predicted and continue to speak to concerns and issues of the day today. And that's really not always true. You can go back to nonfiction from 10 years past and be like, oh yeah, that doesn't resonate. But a lot of these really do still stick.
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A
You can see a lot of the fingerprints of, as I like to call it, the Pax Obama of the previous eight years that we're coming to for a mission here. We saw a different version of it during COVID and George Floyd and the. And during the Biden administration too, with the Trump interregnum, like Oliver Cromwell. And so like, I think we're sort of seeing peak Obama era stuff that's really. They've had eight years publishing and has had eight years to develop voices and get things out there. And some of these are the apotheosis of a certain worldview.
- [08:46]
B
Yes, real enthusiasm, support for. We need diverse books really from a place of celebration and appreciation, appreciating the beauty of diverse voices and of what the, you know, melting pot of American culture can be and is supposed to be at its. In its highest expression, which was a, a very different mode than the way that we were engaging, as you said, with a lot of, especially books by black authors after. Or that wider culture was engaging with books by black authors after the murder of George Floyd, which was a turning of attention. And like, we have a responsibility to do this. And people woke up in a new way, which of course is important and valuable. But a lot of these books really came from a place of just like black people especially were In a new were elevated in a new way in American culture. There was a deeper and more genuine form of appreciation than I had seen certainly in my lifetime. That was very exciting. And it felt like maybe we could just live here forever and we will continue to, you know, have art by all kinds of people and celebrate all kinds of voices and, you know, little did we know. So this really feels like a time capsule.
- [09:55]
A
It also feels like the beginning of the audiobook boom. You could see. I mean, it's been a last. It was happening before this as, you know, really as the iPhone came out and smartphones where you could have an audio player on your phone and get your credits on this way. But some of these I remember distinctly. Some of my earliest, like powerful audiobook memories are books on the list. Not only in the top 10. We can talk about some of them there, but this is a little before even that wave. You see some early instances of things that we would now maybe call romantasy, like Three Dark Crowns and some other things. We were getting the commercial fantasy crossover stuff now it would take. Well, I mean, we get some Sergey Moss, we'll talk about. I don't have any of those on my list because we're sort of the middle. But the second seeds were planted since the second Acotar book and that was starting to roll. I didn't include that because I don't know enough about that book. And I kind of collect rookie cards when it comes to authors in series, like the rookie card is worth something. But like year three, it's like I really need some other breakout moment here to go. All right, without further ado, 10 to 1, Rebecca, why don't you kick us off?
- [11:01]
B
Okay, number 10 is for you and me specifically and long term listeners of the show as well. It's Lab Girl.
- [11:07]
A
Are you gonna do it?
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B
Lab Girl by Hope Yaren.
- [11:10]
A
There are three US Books. There are a few US books on this list, Rebecca, which we can talk about.
- [11:15]
B
A wonderful memoir about functionally being a woman in stem, but about her time in working in her science lab, about this really special friendship and connection that has with her assistant. It was a very memorable audiobook experience for you because I read it in print and then you talked about the audiobook. So just enthusiastically that I went back and listened to it. So there's. Did you have Lab Girl on your list?
- [11:42]
A
It was painful to not include. I think it was the first time I heard a narrator cry during. That was my first.
- [11:51]
B
I remember you talking about that.
- [11:52]
A
Remember of that. A wonderful story. Really Everything I want from an audiobook, frankly, it's personal. I learned something. It felt human. A really wonderful book. The only reason I didn't include it there is like there hasn't been really a follow up. It didn't lead to like a whole bunch of other things coming out of it in such a stocked year. Now I wrote about as one of my favorite books of the year that year and the best of book riots favorite books of the year, but that's not what this list is. I want to say that very clearly now. This is not a ranking of my favorite books of 2026.
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B
Oh my God. You have never been happ happier that this podcast is not on video because I think you're heading into aggregation.
- [12:30]
A
It's really bad. It's really bad stuff. My number 10 is grit by Angela Duckworth. It's a really good year for popular self help, personal development, popular behavioral psychology. In fact, we even get a meta behavioral psychology book. I don't think it's. I don't know if it's gonna be on your list. Yeah, we'll talk about the End by Angela Duckworth. It caused a tempest and maybe more than a teapot, maybe the whole china cabinet was tempesting around this idea of grit. And it's been perpetually misunderstood by people who haven't read the book or listen to Angela Duckworth talk about her research. The nut of it is doing hard things over time does things for you that not doing hard things over time doesn't. Which when you say it like that feels like stupidly obvious. But it's not obvious that grit is a skill, that it matters that there are things you can do to engender it. But it also can be a real differentiator if someone's going to succeed at something or not succeed at something. This is something that in my own household right now, to see someone who's a middle distance long distance runner is like happening before my biological eyes. Like it turns out if you run eight miles every day, you get faster at running long distance. And it's just sort of the most gross, ham handed, sort of corporeal example of this thing which can apply to algebra or learning how to paint or do play the piano or whatever these things may be. I find the book to be, when I read it, I was like one of those like shockingly obviously revelatory. Like one of those things that seems so smart because it feels not obvious. But yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Of course it's more complicated than all of these.
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B
It's the like this was on my long list. So I'm really glad you talked about it. And I wonder if this year being so packed is going to mean we have like greater spreads between our list.
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A
We get to talk about.
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B
But I also really appreciated grit. I think it's kind of the sciency version of we can do hard things.
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A
Like it is like very much the.
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B
Elevator pitch for it is doing hard things makes you more capable of doing other hard things in the future. And like the stick to it. Iveness of it all. We don't need to get into the I think almost intentional obtuseness in some of the critique around it from the.
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A
Left and the right. I should say it wasn't a one. It was, it was a one size fits all misreading.
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B
Duckworth has addressed a lot of that in her work ever since. But the, the core concept and the idea of developing resilience especially landed at a really potent time for millennials becoming parents.
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A
Yes. Yeah. And I'll raise my hand here with young kids at the time, especially no longer as young anymore. So that's my 10. What do you have at nine?
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B
I have the Girls by Emma Klein.
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A
I struggled. This was just off my long list. Talk about Emma Klein.
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B
It was one of the huge debuts of the year. It was a bestseller. It was nominated for awards literary fiction about like teenage girls or early 20s women who join a cult group that's kind of, you know, basically a stand in for the Manson family. It was just huge and splashy. If you remember Emma Cline's Was it the Guest. Was that the title of the.
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A
Yes.
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B
Yeah, the one a couple of years ago.
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A
I don't remember what year it was just a couple of years ago.
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B
It was 23 or 24. It landed with the same big hubbub around it, but it was a debut, which makes it an even bigger deal. It was just all over the place. One of the biggest hyped debuts of the year that lived up to the hype. And since Emma Cline is still in the literary conversation, it makes the power ranking. There were some other big there were actually a ton of BIG debuts in 2016 where many of those voices are not still really present in the literary conversation. So they didn't make my list as much.
- [16:17]
A
But that was my I didn't long listed. But you gave me a wonderful segue into my number nine, which is one of these debuts, which is the Mothers by Brit Bennett. Two teenagers, they fall in love. It's a story there. And again, I was into collecting rookie cards a little bit or the one that moved the needle. And some of this is Echo Glory Reflected Glory for the vanishing half and then Brit Bennett stock in the year since. But even at the time, this is extremely well regarded and a good book. And I wanted a Brit Bennett book here.
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B
So I love this. That was on my long list but didn't make my short list.
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A
Go eight. Well actually I'll go eight because I didn't mean to do it this way. It just happened like this was an honest ranking. I have homegoing by me too here at 8204. Yeah. Also why don't you lead off talking about.
- [17:05]
B
It's really difficult to overstate how huge homegoing was. Like this was the literary debut of the year. It has like tons, like what almost 400,000 Goodreads rankings. Huge. Huge. And number 21 on New York Times readers favorite books of the 21st century. So the rank and file reader, at least the kind who's voting in a New York Times poll is still thinking about this debut novel that's 10 years old. If Jesse had more books out and if Transcendent Kingdom which came out a couple of years ago had been bigger or if she had stayed, which we liked.
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A
We definitely liked that. Yeah.
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B
If she had stayed more in the conversation or was publishing more frequently, this would have been higher on my list. But for sort of the Yaa Gyasi stock. I think I'm holding my YA Jesse stock but I'm not buying more of it right now. And so eight feels like the right place on the list to me.
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A
And a short epic, like it's an epic story really. Beginning in the slave trade in Africa, coming over to America kind of immigration story.
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B
Hugely ambitious.
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A
It would have been the crowning achievement of a. Of someone with a 40 or 50 year old. A 40 or 50 year old track record of doing this. Stunning. We talk a lot about the major advances that fizzle out. This was a seven. We covered the civic seven figure advance for this. I remember talking about.
- [18:24]
B
Yeah.
- [18:25]
A
And being astounded at the time. And we give a lot of heat for publishing when something doesn't work out. It's worth saying this one, whoever made that deal, they should be in charge of some imprint somewhere because this is one of the best books of the 21st century as you said so far. And our long threatened pod about the best debuts of all time homegoing will have to be really up there in that particular really high up there. So that's our shared number eight. Rebecca. Let's Take a quick sponsor break before we get to your seven.
- [18:57]
B
This podcast is supported by Quince this time of year always feels like the right reset point for my wardrobe. Not a full seasonal overhaul, but it's a moment to swap in lighter layers and make sure the basics are really doing their job. My husband and I both end up taking stock of what we wear most, and more often than not, we're filling in those gaps with staples from Quint's. I've been shopping with them for years and it's become a go to for both of us when we want things that feel thoughtful, reliable and easy to wear. Quint's really excels at men's everyday essentials organic cotton sweaters, versatile polos, and lighter jackets that work across changing temperatures, which is important for where we live. These are the kinds of pieces that make a wardrobe feel intentional without being fussy, because who wants and everything is designed to stand up to regular wear and still look good season after season. We added a few organic cotton sweaters and polos from Quint's to my husband's wardrobe during this refresh and they have quickly become some of his most worn pieces. They're comfortable, they wash well, and they always look pulled together even and especially on days when he doesn't want to think too hard about what to wear. Refresh your wardrobe with quince. Go to quints.com bookriot for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. It's now available in Canada too. Q u I-n c e.com bookriot free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com bookriot this episode is brought to you by Peloton. Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross Training Tread plus, powered by Peloton iq. With real time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence, helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push and go. Explore the new peloton cross training tread +@1peloton.com this Friday I love him.
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A
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same Experience the greatest love story of all time.
- [20:58]
B
Why did you leave me?
- [20:59]
A
Why did you betray your own heart? A film by Emerald Fennell Heathcliff, Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi Kiss Me not let's both be damned. Wuthering Heights Original songs by Charlie XCX Only in theaters Friday. Experience at an IMAX rated R under 17 not admitted without parent all right, seven. Now it's getting. These were not easy. These were not to get here. But now the cheese gets binding, as they say in the upper Midwest.
- [21:28]
B
I've never heard that. It sounds upsetting.
- [21:31]
A
It is upsetting. Doesn't feel good.
- [21:34]
B
Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly. This was the pop history hit of the year. Became a big adaptation. And my notes specifically refer the Pax Obama. Like we now know that we were at the end of the Obama era where we were celebrating cultural diversity, telling previously untold and unacknowledged stories about achievements and contributions that people of color, specifically black people, had made in American history. And it was everywhere. You could not turn around in a bookstore for years after this without running into a paperback of his Hidden Figures. The movie did really well. There were Oscar nominations. That was a year or two later. But a really big popular nonfiction hit that book clubs picked up too. And that's unusual. A nonfiction hit that's going into book clubs is pretty uncommon.
- [22:24]
A
I think people are going to see in my picks. This was on my long list as well for a book like this. I don't know what to do with it in terms of power ranking because we get these from time to time. Do they lead somewhere? Were they memorable? Absolutely. But this year was so stacked. In a normal year, I think this would be like certainly six or seven for me. But my next non. My next pick is also nonfiction, but it felt like it was part of a larger conversation. Evicted by Matthew Desmond, Prophet in the American Sea.
- [22:53]
B
Okay, so I have it up at.
- [22:54]
A
Three to three, but like I say, like, not only did Desmond's follow up book become a huge, you know, a cultural moment, but it feels like it's part of a larger conversation even than Hidden Figures was. And that story is amazing. It's a wonderful audiobook. My family and I listened to it over the course of several days driving. But just evicted is like there's more ideas in it and that's. It's just very tough at this place to just parse one.
- [23:22]
B
What's your seven?
- [23:23]
A
That's my seven.
- [23:24]
B
Oh, that's your seven.
- [23:25]
A
So we're up to your six then.
- [23:26]
B
Okay. My six is Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. Huge, huge memoir. Great audiobook. Like an all timer audiobook experience. I will never forget the day that our co worker Clint called me, crying, laughing, just recalling a scene with a poop story. Like just an epic poop story that Trevor Noah tells. But Trevor Noah has become so much more than a comedian and more than a guy who was on the Daily show like a really important cultural voice. And this was a conversion moment kind of audiobook experience for a lot of folks. One of the ones like we heard about from listeners. We get requests still for like memoirs that are like Born a Crime. And it's almost impossible to find a comp for a pretty singular achievement that feels to me both like a time capsule of 2016 and continues to be important.
- [24:23]
A
I had this at 14, so not on my top 10, but on there again, I find myself in the weird position of having to neg Born a Crime by Trevor Noah to justify it, which I cannot do. I think I use this example a lot of times as the kind of book that people who don't become Lifetime readers don't know exists, especially in audiobook form. And I wish this sort of narrative nonfiction that is that has substance but also is a joy to read and listen to was something we got exposed to in sort of English Clash and before. Like you have to discover this on your own as a free range reader, which is wonderful if you're going to get out there, but the inducement to do so is hidden from us, even US English majors or whatever, or people that don't go on to college and have to have an English class. And it can be a chore. This is really an example of how it can be a joyful experience. The reason it didn't crack the top 10 for me is actually think Noah has become less. He still has a career in podcasts or everything, but his bully pulpit is smaller than it was even five or six years ago. And telling your life story you kind of only get to do once. Maybe there's a showbiz memoir and I would sign up immediately to listen to his showbiz memoir, sort of the events that happened after Born a Crime. But yeah, it's really more of a question of one of one and didn't lead to a huge Noah as writer career. And we've gotten a lot of things in its wake, but I don't think they were because of Right. Because American Woman by Zarna Garg I find very much in the lineage of this. Yes, that's a great book experientially, but like it may have happened anyway. But a wonderful, wonderful book and I'm so glad that you had it on your list so I don't have to let it go unmentioned.
- [26:04]
B
What's your six?
- [26:06]
A
So a Gentleman Moscow by I have it at four. Four. Okay. Boy. What? What? What do you not have that I have up here all Right, let's keep going then. So we're up to your five, then.
- [26:18]
B
When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanichi.
- [26:21]
A
Wow, we are really off the reservation. We really are not on the same place. I have this on a long list, too. Speak on it.
- [26:28]
B
Okay. This was like, maybe the it book of 2016. And if you are not familiar with it, Kalaniti had just completed his training to be a neuroscientist when he received a terminal cancer diagnosis. And this is him coming to grips with mortality and all of the things around it. And his wife, like, finished, I think, finished the book or helped, like, usher it along to publication. He had died before the book came out. Everyone read this book like it was astonishing. There are 800,000 Goodreads ratings. The average rating is 4.41 stars, which doesn't happen.
- [27:09]
A
No.
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B
And it was just a really astonishing hit for what the subject matter was. It did the kind of thing in 2016 that the year of Magical Thinking.
- [27:19]
A
Did a decade earlier, down to the same design. Interesting. Even a similar font and cover. I think that people wanted to be confused into reading it.
- [27:28]
B
Like, we've continued to get books about. And we'll always have them. Books about reckoning with illness and reckoning with death and dying. So this would be, I think, even higher on my list if it remained like, the signal one. But it's like it is. So it was so present that year and it was on every list and it was nominated for awards. Like, we would have. It would have been the IT book of the month when it came out and we would have at the end, if we were doing it books in 2016. It would have been really high, if not number one on the list that year. I could see the case. Like, I didn't really know what to do with this because we're also not still talking about it. But I felt like this was. There's a strong argument for the IT book of 2016.
- [28:16]
A
Yeah. This. I mean, unlike the. The Dittian is the closest comp. So this is like Lab Girl meets Year of Magical Thinking. So it's a doctor writing their own mortality story right at the same time they're completing. So it really crosses those two streams of experience in a way that's very difficult to imagine anyone else doing. And then beautifully written at the same time. I'm going to make a confession. I read about two chapters of this and I. And I stopped because, like, I cannot do this. Right.
- [28:43]
B
It is a five alarm snot bomb.
- [28:45]
A
Yeah. So I do know what it's about. And I do have a sense of the reading experience, but I could not bring myself to actually get through it at the. At that piece. Yeah, I had this at 12.
- [28:59]
B
Okay.
- [28:59]
A
Just. Just because it is so singular. As you can see, I'm really trying to connect to larger streams.
- [29:04]
B
Yeah.
- [29:05]
A
Maybe some of those streams are historical and political. Who's to say what's to come in the top four or five we have here. Here. Okay. Is it. Am I up for five then?
- [29:13]
B
Yes.
- [29:15]
A
Oh, here I have the Vegetarian by Hong Kong.
- [29:17]
B
Okay.
- [29:18]
A
Her breakout. Did you.
- [29:19]
B
I had this at 2.
- [29:21]
A
Good Lord. Okay, so we're then to your 4.
- [29:24]
B
This is where I had A Gentleman in Moscow by Amer Towles. Why don't you take this? You're the Toles head here.
- [29:29]
A
So Toles, this book. I actually don't know if Rules for Civility came out before after this book.
- [29:36]
B
It did. Rules for Civility came out first.
- [29:38]
A
So it doesn't. But it doesn't matter because this was the breakout and this is the one still. But he now is a brand for a certain kind of literary upmarket reader telling historical stories with charm, with wit, with grace, and with a kind of a strange sensibility for as straight ahead of some of these books seem. But this book entals like he has. Table for Two was a bestseller and it's a book of short stories. And I don't. This came out ten years later. Rebecca. So he is a brand now, is it cutting edge? No, not really. I think much like we have talked about genre and specific in incurring on literary fiction territory, so too has historical fiction. And Tao's is sort of the historical fiction pincher into literary fiction. And we're going to talk about the notable speculative fiction incursion, maybe the apotheos of the speculative fiction incursion into literary fiction that's also historical fiction. So I think he represents the sort of greater really centering historical fiction as being the prestige genre within literary fiction. Even. Even a specific is still on the rise. But this was. I recommend this book all the time. I would read 50 books just like this. It's just so wonderful. If you don't know it's a story of a. A Russian aristocrat who is living in a hotel in Moscow during the revolution, gets caught up in the Pollux of the day and strikes an unusual bargain where to keep his life. But he has to remain in the hotel. And him living in this hotel, seeing the world change around him, finding a way to find community and the trade offs and what he does with those trade offs ultimately is quite beautiful. Richly imagined, and everything Tiles writes, I find to be really enriching and satisfying. So that's a gentleman in Moscow.
- [31:35]
B
Yeah. It was so charming. And I held off on this forever because I didn't read it at the time. And the hype was so big, I needed some space. So I read it right before the adaptation came out a couple of years ago, the TV series with Ewan McGregor, which you can skip. But I was so glad to have read the book because it was charming, but I think I was afraid that it would be all soft edges. And there is enough, like, there's enough sharpness and surprising stuff that, like, it didn't feel too gauzy to me, which was the thing that I was concerned about. It's number three on New York Times readers favorite of the 21st century. And it does have three times. Three times as many Goodreads ratings as the debut. Rules of Civility had, like, just an enormous breakout.
- [32:22]
A
Yeah. A huge hit and I think a forever recommendable book. There's at no point can I imagine this. This is good for all time zones. Good for your mother in law, father in law, lit nerd. Someone who wants to just read more. I often have given this to someone who says they want to read more. And, like, what would you recommend that's not, you know, just entertainment? And it's not that it is entertaining, but it's also something else at the same time. I guess that brings me to my number five, which is speaking of breakouts, sometimes breakout leads you to win a Nobel Prize. Ten years later, the Vegetarian came out in the US in 2016.
- [32:56]
B
I had the Vegetarian at 2.
- [32:58]
A
Oh, okay. So we're gonna keep going.
- [33:00]
B
We're gonna keep going. Yeah.
- [33:01]
A
To your four. Now I'm all confused.
- [33:03]
B
My four was gentlemen in Moscow, so it's my four.
- [33:06]
A
I have. It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover.
- [33:08]
B
Okay. I just couldn't do it.
- [33:10]
A
You couldn't put on the top 10?
- [33:14]
B
I refuse.
- [33:15]
A
Okay, well, that makes me feel so much better because that's categorically incorrect.
- [33:19]
B
I just. I think it was a moment in time, and the moment of it ends with us has passed.
- [33:25]
A
So it was a moment of time, but it was not big in 20 when Brett.
- [33:30]
B
Okay, it ends with us did nothing in 2016. And in another 10 years. Years. I still am not. I'm betting that we're. We're not talking about. It ends with us in another 10 years. So just like I. I am willing to acknowledge that the right thing to do would have been to put it on the list. And also I refuse.
- [33:49]
A
It doesn't matter if it ends with us hasn't sold another copy. This is one of the bookish phenomenons of our lifetime.
- [33:55]
B
You're not wrong. I just.
- [33:57]
A
No, I know. You don't have to tell me. I know I'm not wrong. I know I'm not wrong about this one. But for those of you who maybe haven't paying attention, week by week, month by month, it really was until what, 2019 into Covid. I can't remember exactly.
- [34:12]
B
Several years later, early 2020, with like really, it popped as Covid hit and she made all of her ebooks free.
- [34:18]
A
Yeah, yeah. And you know a story too that has been told that people forget about the particular nature of Colleen Hoover's really remarkable laudable, gritty, for lack of a better term, entree into the world of publishing, which is working hard, working outside the system, finding an audience, getting picked up by a major publisher and then to the moon, as Jackie Gleason would say, for years and years on end. It is also bequeathed to us. I don't know if this burnishes or tarnishes its reputation. One of the great Hollywood mud fights I've seen in my life has come out of it's in with us. So that is a footnote in its Wikipedia page. But it remains with us. We will get at some point the follow up with it starts with us. The movie did extraordinarily well. Even though it was terrible. Know that it was great, I guess is what I've heard about it.
- [35:12]
B
I did see.
- [35:12]
A
I don't know was bad. I don't know. This is Colleen Hoover before Romantasy was the biggest phenomenon of our life. That wasn't sort of Harry Potter or Twilight or Hunger Games. So it's like 50 shades of gray. Yeah, it's in the top 10 phenomena of all time. So I felt weird even leaving it at 4. But now I'm looking great in comparison.
- [35:31]
B
You were due a moment of being right. It's fine.
- [35:34]
A
I think it's going to trundle on here. What do you have at 3?
- [35:37]
B
At 3, I have evicted by Matthew Desmond.
- [35:40]
A
Yeah.
- [35:40]
B
Why don't you talk about was. I mean it was prescient at the time and it just stays relevant. The book is about American inequality through the lens of the housing crisis, which like we thought we had a housing crisis in 2016 really tells you something. And then he follows it up with poverty in 2023. Like you can Desmond is really dialing in the thesis of his project. I don't even know where he's going to go next. This is number 21.
- [36:08]
A
He's writing an ice book. That would be like the Michael Lewis thing to have like started on an ice book or something like that.
- [36:14]
B
But this was number 21 on the new York Times Best of the Century. Not the reader's vote, but the one that the critics and folks like us participated in. I think that it stays relevant today and I think it will sadly continue to be relevant in the present for much longer than any of us would like it to be, but will then be an important historical document of this extended moment in the early mid 21st century.
- [36:42]
A
Let's see. That brings me to my three, which I had to do a little digging for this. It may not have hopped on your radar radar because it wasn't on New York Times notable list. It's not on Goodreads. No awards. Dogman, number one by Dave Pilkey did.
- [36:59]
B
Not make my list. Congratulations. This is an important release. We didn't know.
- [37:05]
A
We didn't know at the time. It has sold. Let me look here. Oh, a metric ass ton is the note I have here about how many copies Dogman has sold. There are 10,000 version no. So this is the number one. And I shouldn't joke though it's funny to talk about now. There are 14 books in this series that started 10 years ago. It continues to sell. We've got 10 of them. Every. Every school library in America has multiple copies of every single one of these books. When I was getting ready to prepare, I was trying to think of an equivalent Rebecca and the closest. It's sort of like a narrative. Calvin and Hobbes. Ah.
- [37:50]
B
Okay.
- [37:50]
A
Is kind of. But it's not quite as like adults don't read Dogman. I'm not really sure what to do with it because it. I don't know that like if you're 18 years old now, are you like, man, I could go reread the Dogman series. It's hard to know what to do with. And I. And I. I had. I was like. Once I saw that the first one came out in 2016. It has to be on my list.
- [38:09]
B
It has to go on the list.
- [38:10]
A
And I didn't know where to put it. I was thinking about it the cowards 10. But I didn't do that. And it felt like right in here where this is a huge property that's going to sell for generations as kids books or want to do so that's Dogman by. By David.
- [38:24]
B
Yeah. If you could go back to 2016, Dove Pilkey. No one would be more surprised than him. Where Dogman has landed in 2026, like at the end of the year. It is not uncommon now for, like, some of the best selling. If you like the top ten bestselling children's books of the year, like, half of them will be Dogman. Yeah.
- [38:42]
A
Dogs, Man. Dog Man. I don't know how you pluralize dog.
- [38:45]
B
Yes. What is the collective plural?
- [38:48]
A
Dogman. Dogs, Man. That's clearly it. At that same time, too.
- [38:51]
B
You like dags.
- [38:53]
A
Which brings us to two and one.
- [38:56]
B
Okay. Oh, you look pained.
- [38:59]
A
I don't like. Can I change? Should I change? No, we have to do it now.
- [39:02]
B
Okay.
- [39:02]
A
Because now I'm just being a coward about being a cow. Howard.
- [39:07]
B
Two is where I had the vegetarian.
- [39:09]
A
Okay. Two is where I have Underground Railroad.
- [39:12]
B
Oh, I had underground railroad at 1. I have no idea what you have at 1. What did I miss?
- [39:19]
A
The book that introduced to us someone who has, I'd say, a 36% chance of being the next President of the United States. I put hillbilly elegy number one. And I don't like this, Rebecca. I argued against it, but I think so much of what we've seen over the last 10 years, it's all, it's. It's like, it's like a. It's like a petri dish of mitochondrial DNA that got shot from space and landed in a lake and created this whole other life form that we weren't expecting. And this is JD Vance's breakout book when he was just a writer about. And not a Republican and not a Republican. And I mean, it's up there with maybe the most influential political books of all time that we. But we didn't even know is a super strange book. It's a super strange story in a lot of different ways. But this is super weird. And I, I was trying. How can I get Underground Railroad number one? And you could. People could argue about it, but I'm thinking about what book was the most influential that had the most far reaching consequence. That was a story both in 2016 and today. And the son of a gun is the Vice President of the United States because he wrote this stupid book.
- [40:44]
B
You know, I don't think that's why he's the vice president, though. Like hillbilly. This is how I justified leaving it off because I did look at hillbilly elegy. Was that at the time that hillbilly elegy came out. It landed with readers who share our political leanings. Yes, like a voice for oppressed and you know, marginalized and sort of under resourced people in Appalachia. And like, let's tell this story like now, since the last 10 years, like a lot of Vance's approach and a lot of the details of the book have been challenged and debunked and. And he has started telling a very different story. Like the folks that his politics currently cater to are not fans of hillbilly elegy or the ideas that are in there. And I think for me, because his current audience or constituency is not into him for reasons connected to the book, like it's about something completely different, he's had to change his politics entirely and remake himself into a new image. I put it to the side, if he had become a Democratic senator or something, I think I would have been talking about it.
- [41:53]
A
I could certainly see that point of view. I actually think the flip flop makes it even more interesting as a historical and literary document. Like he. Because of the fame that came along with his book, he got into politics but in order to cry, in order to climb the political ladder as the apparently wanton parasitic opportunist that he's turned out to be the heel turn of hillbilly elegy. Like this is a fascinating document. It's like if Abraham Lincoln was Jefferson Davis to start with or the. It's very strange, but like this book will be a part of American history for as long as we're talking about American history and be a curio that means something that we don't understand for a long, long time to come. And because it was such a hit, it was a giant hit at the time. Like if it was nothing at the time, it'd be like little bit different. But because it was one of the books of the year at the time in terms of discourse, because it was, it felt like the other side of the coin. It felt like it was connected to Evicted by Matthew Desmond. It felt like they were part of the same conversation and product. But there's a story here to be told about self making and politics and the course of American history that even as much as I love Underground Railroad, I think this book is number one. That's me. So, you know, this is great.
- [43:16]
B
Of course I applaud you for it.
- [43:18]
A
Well, that's very nice because what I'm looking for is podcast applause. I didn't like doing it. I really was trying to talk myself out of it and I don't know If I sort of had weird in, like, there were in. In me or two wolves and one of them wanted to be a contrarian and one of them hated, what would result of that would be. I don't know how this works.
- [43:34]
B
Yeah.
- [43:35]
A
But I found myself just continually being like, it was the book of 2016. If you look at the long arc of what's happened since, that's a good case.
- [43:46]
B
So let's talk about the vegetarian.
- [43:47]
A
Talk about the vegetarian.
- [43:49]
B
Yes. Yeah. I mean, this is Hong Kong. The book was originally published, like, in Korean well before 2016. Yeah. Comes out in English in 2016. She goes on to win the Nobel in 2024. The book has. Continues to be talked about, has a lot of fans. We may or may not be doing a 10th anniversary episode about it on some other podcast that we host. But she was the first South Korean author and the first Asian woman to win the Nobel. So historically significant from that perspective as well. Number 49 on the new York Times best books of the century. The National Book Award. I was like, this should have won awards. And so I went digging. The National Book Award wasn't doing translated lit in 2016, which I didn't remember. Only did it from 1967 to 1983, and then picked up translated lit again in 2018. So there's like, tough week for the vegetarian.
- [44:46]
A
Maybe. I wonder if the vegetarian was one of the reasons to reinitiate.
- [44:49]
B
Maybe like there. Because there are decades, like, several decades were translated lit. There's just no acknowledgment of it in the National Book Awards. It would have been the winner of that or a contender for it. At least if we had been doing that and was much more popular. I remember being surprised by its popularity in 2016 because Cong is not straightforward.
- [45:10]
A
This is a tough book. Yeah.
- [45:12]
B
And for it to be that popular among even, like, book club kinds of readers who were elevating their selections into literary fiction and picking up something like the Vegetarian was just really surprising and impressive in that it stays in the conversation. And Kang picks up the Nobel and stays in the conversation and put it at number two. For me.
- [45:32]
A
It's. That's one. I so really. 3, 4, 5. I had an. So that was, for me, Dogman, the Hoover and Vegetarian. I like, had them in all different orders because there's a version of this, like, stuff. Maybe vegetarian should be three because of the Nobel. And that book was extremely popular at the time. I think there's a really good chance that this book, especially in America, and I don't Know how the Swedes really calibrate popularity in different markets for what they're giving. But, like, this was an indie bookstore hit. It's still on paperback favorites tables. It's set out all the time. You see it. And it is much more difficult. It's much more grim. It's not a difficult read, though. Kong is, like, elusive and can be difficult to follow, but the subject matter difficult here. And I think in a lot of ways presaged a lot of what we see in literature today of a certain literary indie. Literary indie press kind of event. Here we read. We do not part at the beginning of last year, which was tremendous. And I think both of us had in our favorite books of 2025, which brings us to my number two, your number one one, Colson Whitehead Crowning achievement to date. Even though we both.
- [46:43]
B
We like the Nickel Boys, we like.
- [46:44]
A
The next the Nickel Boys a little bit better, but maybe only because Underground Railroad hit the heights and did what it did. And Whitehead chose to do something smaller, quieter, and I think more difficult with Nickel Boys, which is a historical novel that doesn't. Doesn't have this high concept idea, which is good on paper. What if the Underground Railroad was actually a railroad? But then, of course, it's not about that at all.
- [47:13]
B
With Underground Railroad, one of the best elevator pitches for a book in the last. In the time we've been doing this in our careers.
- [47:19]
A
Yeah, right. What else to say about. I mean, also, it gets us Whitehead on the list.
- [47:24]
B
Yeah. It's the turning point for Colson Whitehead's career. Like, he had been a name. He had been in the conversation. We had interesting books from him in the couple years before this. Like, Zone One was really fun and different, but this wins the National Book Award and the Pulitzer and just breaks him out in a huge way. And then he goes on and he wins the National Book Award again the next year.
- [47:45]
A
I know. It's like. I guess we have to. He did something different.
- [47:48]
B
Right. Just also just one of the most interesting careers. Like, the books are always weird. Folks who have been listening to us for a while know that we love this. That you don't know what you're getting.
- [47:59]
A
Except for the last five years, which you totally do know.
- [48:02]
B
In the last. Yeah. These three. This trilogy about Ray Carney, set in Harlem, but also wonderful. Like, Colson Whitehead just has every tool in his bag, I think. And he did these really heavy historical fiction. And, like, I don't blame him for wanting to, like, have fun and do some heists for a while.
- [48:19]
A
Like so many heists.
- [48:20]
B
Let's do a gritty Harlem crime trilogy. Like also, hell yes, it's great. And he'll pivot into something else after that. Just one of the ones that, that we're always excited for because it will be surprising. It's going to go in directions that you're not expecting. The journey is such a joy with Colson Whitehead and you can tell reading his writing that he is having fun doing it. And that just feels like magic to me that you can tell he's having fun even writing about the kinds of difficult things that he writes about. There's a real underlying humanity to Whitehead.
- [48:59]
A
Right. I mean it's just very much there. You know, the, the feeling we. I had. I, always a huge Colson Whitehead fan, had been there from the beginning, like with the Intuitionist buying a remaindered copy of the Strand shortly after.
- [49:12]
B
I love this story.
- [49:14]
A
So always followed Whitehead even through the years where he's writing John Henry Days or Apex Hide the Hurts or like the middle. The middle time between being a phenom and between being one of the, you know, bandied about as the great American novelist. Novelist. Right before this book came out, when I knew, when I'd heard the premise for this book, I had a similar feeling to another author. He gets compared to a lot is when we heard what the premise for James was because you're like, oh my God, this is the one that's going to put him over the top. And both of them happened, Rebecca. Both of them happened.
- [49:51]
B
Sticks the landing.
- [49:52]
A
That's amazing. It's so, it's so. It's so joyful to have those kinds of moments with those kinds of books and authors, authors that you care about for them to make the flip into if not mainstream culture, at least mainstream books and reading culture where you get to be the kinds of person that people say, I wish I'd read Colson Whitehead or I wish I've heard of personal Evan. I'd like to read that someday. And then it turns out the book, the high concept, maybe a little bit mass markety premise is actually interesting and it works. And it's not a sellout, it's not a. It's not a cash in but it is actually used using our expectations against us to do a secret third thing. So that's my full throated support even as I have to slot it in number two for, you know, I have to be right. Unfortunately, I can only be right. So that's where that has to send.
- [50:40]
B
Your emails to podcastookriot.com.
- [50:42]
A
Yeah. All right, let's read our list back 10 to 1. Rebecca, why don't you recap your list?
- [50:47]
B
I had at 10, Lab Girl by Hope Yaron. At nine, the Girls by Emma Klein. Eight was Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Seven is Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly. Six was Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. Five is When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalaniti. Four was A Gentleman in Moscow by Amer Towles. Three was Evicted by Matthew Desmond. Two was The Vegetarian by Han Kang. And number one was Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead.
- [51:13]
A
My list is as follows. Grit, number 10 by Angela Duckworth. Number 9, the Mothers by British Bennett. Number 8, Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Number 7, Evicted Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond. Number six, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Tolles. Number five, the Vegetarian by Han Kong. Number four. It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover. Number three, Dogman, number one. It was just Dogman. There was no number one. They didn't even know.
- [51:39]
B
Time o' Neill poll. This is great.
- [51:41]
A
Yes, thank you very much for that. Dogman number one by Dave Pilkey. Dav. Do we say dav? What do we do with that?
- [51:46]
B
I think it's Dove. There's no E on the end.
- [51:48]
A
Yeah, there's a reason there. There's no e there. Number two, the Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. And number one, correctly and sheepishly, Hillbilly Elegy by one J.D. vance.
- [52:02]
B
If you have to be right, at least you could be sheepish.
- [52:05]
A
That's right. It's really my only. My only move is sheepishly correct.
- [52:09]
B
Got a lot of. Also ran.
- [52:10]
A
Oh, my God. Let's see. A couple of faves that I would probably make my 10 favorite favorite reading experiences of the year. But I could not put on this list because, like I said, I have to be right. The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis. I'm sure you put that one on there, too. The Wild Robot, which is good. Turned into a wonderful movie. It's a wonderful book. Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel. It's a wonderful series about extraterrestrial robots that have been buried and you have to undercover. Why? He's a linguist. It's amazing. Let's see. Woman in cabin 10, which got the translation last year. Huge thriller bestseller. Let's see. And then I didn't know what to do with Harry Potter and the Cursed Child because it sold a billion copies. It's still on Broadway. We don't love talking about HP for JK Rowling reasons. But in this particular space, what that even at the time, it felt weird to know it was weird.
- [53:05]
B
Yeah. Nobody really knew what to do with it. So I think leaving it off, it's fine. I also had the, like, really great year for nonfiction and like, self help pop psychology. I also had the Undoing Project Originals by Adam Grant came out in 2016. I contain multitudes by Ed Yong. The Gene by Siddhartha Siddhartha Mukherjee.
- [53:26]
A
I hated not including this one.
- [53:28]
B
I know. Also the first in Jane Harper's Aaron Falk series. The Dry one of our shared mystery writers, literary titans. It pained me to leave off Swing Time by Zadie's Smith.
- [53:41]
A
I have, like, it just by itself. Like on the side, I couldn't even put an.
- [53:46]
B
Yeah, Sweet. And Time by Zadie Smith. Larose by Louise Erdrich. For cultural impact. I looked really hard at Love Warrior by Glennon Doyle. Because Love Warrior.
- [53:56]
A
I looked at it, but not hard. I just sort of skipped on it.
- [54:00]
B
Comes out in 2016 when she is riding the wave of mommy blogger, like Christian success. And then. And like, here's how we're gonna save our marriage. And like right after it comes out is when she actually, like, gets divorced and then reveals that she's in love with Abby Wambach. And then ultimately they're married and now they're doing the whole, we can do hard things together. But Love Warrior itself is not. Is no longer an important cultural document. It's the Glennon Doyle that came after Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X Kendi came out in 2016 that was not widely read until 2020. But I looked hard at that. And then from like popular fiction hits Sweet Bitter by Stephanie Danler. Fiction set in the restaurant world, sort of like kind of in the lineage of Anthony Bourdain. There was an adaptation on TV that was pretty good. And then the Nest by Cynthia Dupree Sweeney was like the upmarket commercial book club book that was just everywhere that year. We could have done a top 20. This was a huge year.
- [55:03]
A
I did want to note too, this, I think was maybe in the late prime of comics and graphic novels. Oh, yeah, mainstream Paper girls number one and Monstrous number one. I think also the volumes came out that year, people. Paper Girls is terrific. And I think probably the creator of Paper Girls look at stranger things. Like, oh, no. What we could. Because it's so simple. It's crazy. Like, you know, there's this group of. Of girls that are paper girls. They're. They're delivering papers and a extra Dimensional incursion occurs and they travel through time together. And it's really wonderful if you have someone in your life and I may have one that's 12 years old in my house. I've been trying to get to crack Paper Girls as to follow on her Stranger Things fandom. It's a really good pick there. The Power by Naomi Alderman was also. That was really big at the time. There's an Ann Patchett. I think we got the. The pinnacle of the Sweary self help book and the Art of Not Giving an F, which came out that year and sold for quite a few years after. So really a fascinating. In terms of the pop nonfiction that you and I like, a top 10 of that alone is a good list for us.
- [56:13]
B
Yeah, it was a really good year. And then a couple other debuts that year that felt like those authors might go on to become really big or in the. Like Brit Bennett and Yaa Gyasi were some of those names. But Behold the Dreamers by Mbolo Mbue was another huge one. And Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dinner and that sort of quad of young black women writers. It was like, here they come. Who's gonna do it? Yaa Gyasi, like undeniably won that year. But Brit Bennett has gone on to have a great career and Bolo Mbue's had a couple other novels. I don't know. I haven't seen anything else.
- [56:48]
A
There's been another one. I don't remember the name of it. I don't think I read it. Yeah, I think interestingly the sort of Cross Homegoing was the big hit. But the vanishing half, I mean, I said in our Pals event, the most recommendable book of the century so far to me because it does so much so well that pleases an interest and provoke so many different kinds of readers that it's a. It's a really wonderful Swift's army read there. What a year 2016 was.
- [57:14]
B
This was really fun to go back and look at.
- [57:17]
A
Yeah, I'm so glad this is over. I was dreading this recording for the last several days once I realized what. What I hath wrought. Like Frankenstein. Frankenstein realizing what he could do. Should he. He could. Should he? Must he.
- [57:30]
B
I just. Sometimes you can just pull a Bartleby and prefer not to.
- [57:34]
A
I couldn't prefer. I can't. Don't have a barable gene in me. Rebecca, thank you so much. You can choose to email podcast@book riot.com find shownotes@bookright.com listen. The Book Riot podcast is a proud member of the Airwave Podcast network. And if you haven't listened to enough of us, natter on on. We've got a big show over in Zero to well read that's out right now. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. And my plug, as we agree is Wuthering Heights is not the book you think it is and it is not a romance. And the discourse is discoursing. And I'm so glad we got this episode in the can because the discourse engines are fired up, Thrusters are at 9, pushing into 10. We're redlining ready to reach escape velocity into mainstream discourse about Wuthering Heights.
- [58:20]
B
Have tickets to see it Thursday night in imax, which is a lot of Jacob Elordi.
- [58:25]
A
That's a lot of everyone that's a big fella on a big screen in a big role.
- [58:28]
B
Vanessa Diaz has saddled up to go see it as well that night. So the back half of Monday's episode will also be me and Vanessa talking about Wuthering Heights. So if you want to hear us before you pony up here, 20 bucks to go to the movies, we got you. But if you want to just tell your friends that if they think Wuthering Heights are is a love story based on the trailers for the movie, they're wrong. Just pop over to Zero to well read. We'll cover you there.
- [58:52]
A
Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Rebecca. This time of year, everyone talks about going dry, but at Athletic Brewing Co. We're skipping that because we prefer going athletic, which isn't dry at all. From crisp goldens to hoppy IPAs and limited releases of in between, you'll find something that fits your style. Every single nonalcoholic brew is packed with flavor and the same craft experience you love. So, yeah, you could call it dry, but there's really nothing dry about it. Find your new favorite near beer at athleticbrewing. Com Athletic Brewing Co. Fit for all times.