Ranking the Fiction Pultizer Prize Winners of the Century So Far.

Summary

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Book Riot – The Podcast

Episode Summary: "Ranking the Fiction Pulitzer Prize Winners of the Century So Far"

Date: April 22, 2026
Hosts: Jeff O’Neal & Rebecca Schinsky

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Main Theme & Purpose

In this special episode, Jeff and Rebecca dig into a decidedly bookish debate: ranking the Pulitzer Prize winners in fiction (including short story collections) awarded from 2000 to the present. Using reading experience, cultural impact, popularity, and critical consensus as their guideposts (plus a healthy dash of personal taste), they assess which winners have endured in the literary landscape—and which might have faded or felt anomalous. Their conversation offers recommendations, cultural context, and insight into how the Pulitzer both reflects and shapes American fiction. The episode is a must-listen for book lovers who want to understand the past 25 years of high-profile U.S. fiction.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Ranking Methodology & Parameters

• Scope: Books awarded the Pulitzer in fiction from 2000 to 2026 (excluding some Rebecca or Jeff haven’t read).
• Approach: Rebecca power-ranked her top 10 based on critical staying power, continued relevance, and "how a book vibed"; Jeff ranked all he’d read (23 total) based on personal and zeitgeist criteria.
• Notable Exclusions: Jeff omitted titles he hadn’t read (e.g., The Netanyahu’s, Night Watch, All the Light We Cannot See). Rebecca excludes 1999 winner (Interpreter of Maladies), sparking a friendly running debate.
• Meta-Commentary: Both hosts reflect on how recency bias and public reception can propel or deflate a novel’s standing—and that personal taste and cultural “vibes” often intersect.
  • “I just happen to believe that my sense of a book’s quality is coextensive with its place in the larger zeitgeist.”—Jeff [02:34]
  • They muse on whether newer books might fade or rise in hindsight, noting how popularity (e.g., The Help) can skew polls.

Standout Conversations on Key Winners

Fun Outliers & "Anomalies"

• LESS (Andrew Sean Greer, 2018):

  • Ranked low on both lists. Noted for being fun and witty but lacking the gravitas typically associated with Pulitzer honorees.
  • “It’s the most fun of the books on here… But it doesn’t feel like it has as much juice.”—Jeff [08:34]

• EMPIRE FALLS (Richard Russo, 2002):

  • Charming “small-town America” novel, but not a standout in literary achievement.
  • Rebecca recommends Russo for fans of “Man Called Ove”-type stories: “Old guys have a little something to offer if we just pay attention.” [10:32]

Enduring, Literary Heavyweights

• THE ROAD (Cormac McCarthy, 2007):

  • Chosen by Rebecca as #1 and Jeff as #4 (“I tried to talk myself out of it several times” [46:27]).
  • Praised for tension, style, and cultural resonance.
  • “It has more track record than any of these… people know ‘The Road’ who don’t know books.”—Rebecca [45:29]
  • Seen as a precursor to the literary dystopias (i.e., before The Hunger Games).
  • Noted for being “magnetized to the pages,” tightly tense and compelling.

• THE KNOWN WORLD (Edward P. Jones, 2004):

  • High on both lists (#3 for Rebecca, #7 for Jeff).
  • Remarkably ambitious historical fiction about Black slaveowners in pre–Civil War Virginia; called haunting, uncomfortable, and “a formative literary experience” [61:48].
  • “If you know, you know.” [60:07]
  • Noted as perhaps the most under-taught/forgotten masterpiece of its era.

• GILEAD (Marilynne Robinson, 2005):

  • Rebecca’s #4, Jeff’s #2.
  • Admired for timelessness, “most literary sensibility,” and pure focus on interiority and faith, rather than external plot.
  • “There is not a plot engine to be found in Gilead... by your standard of difficulty, it’s the most difficult to execute because there are no zombies.” —Rebecca [54:55]

Recent Blockbusters & Their Legacy

• DEMON COPPERHEAD (Barbara Kingsolver, 2022):

  • #8 for Rebecca, mid-tier for Jeff.
  • Lauded as accessible, popular, “captures a uniquely American moment” with its opioid crisis focus, but both wonder if it will have long-term legacy.
  • “It feels very of its moment… but is that moment something we’re still interested in 20, 40, 50 years down the line?”—Rebecca [22:05]
  • Discussion of recency bias and the Dickens connection.

• THE GOLDFINCH (Donna Tartt, 2014):

  • #9 for Rebecca, #9 for Jeff.
  • A “Demon Copperhead of its year,” weird, highly discussed, praised for art and ideas.
  • Donna Tartt’s relative rarity in novel releases highlighted.

Iconic Experimentation & Innovative Structure

• A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD (Jennifer Egan, 2011):

  • #7 for Rebecca, #5 for Jeff.
  • Iconic for its inventive use of form (the reference to the PowerPoint chapter “blew literary minds”).
  • Now feels “dated,” but revolutionary at the time.
  • “If you put it in a reader’s hands today, they don’t know from just the reading experience how mind-blowing it was at the moment. You have to do the three minutes of explanation…”—Rebecca [41:53]

• TRUST (Hernan Diaz, 2023):

  • #10 for Jeff.
  • Celebrated as “a fantastic New York City novel” combining metafictional structure and themes of finance, identity, capitalism.
  • Diaz’ career is one to watch: “He didn’t make my top 10 because everyone in my top 10 has an established literary legacy. If we were doing this next spring, it might be different.”—Rebecca [37:49]

The Whitehead Double Whammy

• THE NICKEL BOYS (Colson Whitehead, 2020):

  • Rebecca’s #6, Jeff’s #3.
  • Both call it the “better book” compared to Underground Railroad.
  • “In my heart, Nickel Boys is maybe number one on this list” —Rebecca [51:41]

• THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD (Colson Whitehead, 2016):

  • Rebecca’s #2, Jeff’s #8.
  • Applauded for balancing speculative and historical fiction, and cultural impact (“the real announcement of what literary genre was going to look like” [52:02]).
  • “Only other book [besides The Nickel Boys] to win both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award.”—Jeff [51:26]
  • The Barry Jenkins adaptation is lauded but noted as “really hard to watch for all the reasons.”

Unsung Innovations & Career Peaks

• INTERPRETER OF MALADIES (Jhumpa Lahiri, 1999/2000):

  • Jeff’s #6 (excluded by Rebecca by technicality, to his playful chagrin).
  • First collection of short stories to win the Pulitzer in recent memory.
  • “Virtually flawless collection… the signal work of late-20th, early-21st century”—Jeff [44:20]

• JAMES (Percival Everett, 2025):

  • Jeff’s #1, Rebecca’s #5.
  • Celebrated as a career-defining, high-wire literary act: “It’s like a sleight of hand... but you have no idea how [he] did it.” —Jeff [57:28]
  • Both agree Everett is the “writer’s writer” of the moment, with a major impact and academic readiness.
  • “Everybody is like, ‘only Percival Everett could pull that off.’” —Rebecca [58:37]

Trends, Surprises & Meta-Notes

• Adaptations: “Not many of these books have a wonderful adaptation. What’s the best adaptation on this list?” —Jeff [48:19]
• Pulitzer’s Track Record: Both hosts agree that the Pulitzer does “a pretty good job” picking enduring works, with few major misses [65:19].
• Recency Bias & Surprises: Both reflect on recency bias, cultural “moments,” and how one’s own surprise emerges as books shuffle up or down their lists over time.
• Short Story Collections: Noted how “winning with a collection” is rare, and how such collections fade faster from public memory.
• Literary Careers: Ongoing conversation about which writers have defined a generation and which have become overlooked or left behind, with special mention of how fewer midlist “white guy” authors have broken through lately.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It’s the most fun of the books on here… But it doesn’t feel like it has as much juice.”
  — Jeff on Andrew Sean Greer’s Less [08:34]

• “It strikes me as more in the commercial upmarket zone than in the literary zone, which is what this prize is intended to go to.”—Rebecca on Less [08:52]

• “I think this was maybe my first Richard Russo. Thank you, Barnes & Noble paperback table.”
  — Rebecca on Empire Falls [10:06]

• “Now we have The Secret Life of Trees, The Hidden Meaning of Trees, Trees Know Things, Watch Out for Trees... I’m out on trees.”
  — Jeff on the eco-literature trend post-The Overstory [14:01]

• “If you know, you know.”
  — Jeff on The Known World [60:07]

• “Once you’re in this top five, the distinction between one and two might be meaningless… that was my thought.”
  — Rebecca [46:39]

• “You’re just scratching it out of the Iowa corn dirt. That’s what you’re doing with this book.”
  — Jeff on Gilead [55:34]

• “Only Percival Everett could pull that off. How did he do it?”
  — Rebecca on James [58:37]

• “If you said you could pick a book by any author to come out tomorrow, pretty high on the list for Egan.”
  — Jeff on Jennifer Egan [43:10]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:34] — Jeff on criteria for ranking: personal taste vs. zeitgeist
• [07:25] — Explaining which winners they haven’t read and why
• [08:34] — Discussion of Less and what makes a "lightweight" Pulitzer
• [09:54] — Empire Falls and the literary “old man” canon
• [15:43] — The spiky vs. softening portrayals of elderly characters (Olive Kitteridge)
• [17:00] — Early mention of Juno Diaz’s legacy post-MeToo
• [21:01] — First meeting point: Demon Copperhead discussion
• [24:50] — The Goldfinch: Literary vs. public enthusiasm
• [28:30] — The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay—why literary careers don’t always follow the book
• [33:05 & 44:16] — Interpreter of Maladies and short story collections in Pulitzer history
• [37:23] — Meta on ranking relatively new winners like Trust
• [41:53] — The “mind-blowing” formal innovation of A Visit from the Goon Squad
• [45:18]–[55:39] — The “big five”: Deep dive on The Road, Gilead, The Known World, Nickel Boys, and James
• [61:48] — The Known World as a deeply influential but now less-known title

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Hosts’ Final Top 10s

Rebecca’s Top 10

1. The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
2. The Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead)
3. The Known World (Edward P. Jones)
4. Gilead (Marilynne Robinson)
5. James (Percival Everett)
6. Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead)
7. A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan)
8. Demon Copperhead (Barbara Kingsolver)
9. The Goldfinch (Donna Tartt)
10. The Night Watchman (Louise Erdrich)
    [63:39]

Jeff’s Top 10

1. James (Percival Everett)
2. Gilead (Marilynne Robinson)
3. Nickel Boys (Colson Whitehead)
4. The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
5. A Visit from the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan)
6. Interpreter of Maladies* (Jhumpa Lahiri)
7. The Known World (Edward P. Jones)
8. The Sympathizer (Viet Thanh Nguyen)
9. The Underground Railroad (Colson Whitehead)
10. Trust (Hernan Diaz)
    [63:52]

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*Note: Lahiri’s book listed by Jeff; Rebecca’s list starts from 2000 proper.

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Takeaways

• The Pulitzer generally “gets it right”—most winners still matter, and the canon is enduring but not unassailable.
• Some obvious “blockbusters” (The Goldfinch, Demon Copperhead) are likely to slide down with time.
• There is space for both innovation (A Visit from the Goon Squad, James) and classic, contemplative fiction (Gilead, The Known World).
• Colson Whitehead’s two wins signal the enduring power of genre innovation.
• Some masterpieces (The Known World) may already be under-read by new generations.

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For further discussion, check out:

• Their full deep-dive on James
• Previous episodes ranking National Book Award winners

Contact: [e-mail]
More: bookriot.com/listen

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This summary skips sponsor segments, advertisements, and non-content banter—including intro/outro and unrelated audiobook excerpt.

Transcript

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

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

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Today on the show we are ranking the top pulitzing Pulitzer prize winning novels. Well, fiction doesn't have to be fiction. Could be short stories of the century. So far Rebecca, I ranked 23

[Rebecca Schinsky]

because I did not give you specific homework.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, you didn't. I ranked.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I power ranked the top 10

[Jeff O'Neill]

and I did not rank though a couple because I had not read them. I ranked everything I had read going back to 2000.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay, I went based on like vibes of how did this book perform? Where does it continue to sit in critical consciousness? Do people still talk about it? And do I know anything about sex sales? I have read all but one of the 10 that I ranked.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I just happen to believe that my sense of a book's quality is co extensive with its place in the larger zeitgeist. So I will make no distinction between what other people think and what I think they should if they don't think what I think they should. So there we go.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You have chosen the right career in podcasting.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Just unearned confidence. So what's a fun game? How I could throw out what I have. Maybe I will start at my number 23.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I'll just go until you hit one of yours. Is that interesting? Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And then we'll start talking.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So that leads me to have, yeah, 26 winners because 2000 I included inclusive of 2000s for reasons I think if you listened to Zero Red in the future may be inclusive of that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I did not include that since the book was not published in 2000 in my considerations that might change my calculus.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, again we're as the horrible mistake has been made to not put us in charge of books and publishing. We don't have rulings about when these awards are published, what year, all that kind of stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

So Anyway, so the three I there was of course no award in 2012 which just the worst possible look for

[Rebecca Schinsky]

still mad about it?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, and then I have not read the Netanyahu's by Josh Cohen. That was the 2022 winner. Okay, I have not read Night Watch by Jane Ann Phillips was a 2024 reader. And I have not read all the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Dore, the 2015 winner. So those are. No, I can. I can. As much as it pains me to say, I cannot cast judgment on those. Even. Even my conscience will not allow that to happen. All right, I will say this. I liked all 23 books. I didn't have anyone. I was sad to have on there that has someone had to be 23. But of the ones I had read, I'm like, I like all these now. I didn't go back and re adjudicate all these. We could at some point, but in the 23 hole, I have less by Andrew Sean Gree. Had you ever read that?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I have not read that one. Yeah. No. And in looking at the list of win was like, that is kind of. That's one of those Pulitzer anomalies of like, what happened that year.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm sure it's great. People love Andrew Sean Grier, but is this like a signal work of American literary achievement? It doesn't seem to have aged that way.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, it's. I mean, and I hate to say this, but it's the most fun of the books on here. And I hate to denigrate fun, but it just. It doesn't feel like it has as much juice.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It strikes me more.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It was smart and cool and fun, but, you know, it's hard to put up.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It strikes me as more in the commercial upmarket zone than in the literary zone, which is what this prize is intended to go to. So.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. So then in the 22 hole, I have Empire Falls by Richard Russo.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The 2002 winner did not make my top 10. I looked at it. Charming, lovely, but also like, not. Not a signal work of American literary achievement.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This feels like. Again, it's been a long 20 since I've read this. At least I think so. I did not go back and reread these. I'm sorry to all of you out there to disappoint. I did not reread 23 books this week so that I would brush up. This feels like a relic from a different age. Like this. And like Richard Ford's Independence Day winners from this time period. It's a lovely book about a small town, end of life kind of situation. I think a lot of the work that Elizabeth Strout is doing in a different Milou. Richard, Right. Richard Russo was doing sort of an earlier iteration of it. So if you haven't.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think that's right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Elizabeth Strout. I recommend Richard Russo. And if you haven't read Elizabeth Stroud. You like Richard Russo? I would. I would. I would recommend it. It's very difficult to not like this book, but it's very good.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I really liked Empire Falls. It's. I think this was maybe my first Richard Russo. Thank you. Barnes and Noble paperback table.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Absolutely.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And it set me down reading some of the ones that came before it because he's written several books sort of in the same small town with some of these same charact characters. I think I'm glad to be reminded of Richard Russo because I think this is also a good recommendation for folks that are in the man called Ova correspondent zone of like, maybe even Theo

[Jeff O'Neill]

of Golden of like. The old guys have a little something to offer if we just pay attention.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's not quite cozy, but it's not.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Not cozy very much so. I mean, I think probably is Straight Man, Richard Russo's most well known book at this point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't know. It's my favorite. I would bet it's Empire Falls because of the award win. And then there was that HBO Minise.

[Jeff O'Neill]

True. Good point. From there, I'm jumping up to Tinkers by Paul Harding, which I remember reading, I think, even before it won the Pulitzer because it had a Toni Morrison blurb on it, which again, back when this again, actually, if Tony Morrison blurbed a book now, I would definitely sit up because She's Dead for a minute. But this one is kind of not dissimilar. The main character is an old guy on his deathbed and he's thinking about things that happens. Everyone knows here that I am an old man waiting to die, especially if it's New England, especially if they worked with their hands. I am all into that kind of a moment. This one's quite good. I tried not to give it a ding because I did not enjoy Paul Harding's last book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But tinkers was number 20, which you famously to me.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do we have to do this again? Every time?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Every time we have to celebrate the day. You called a book Gormless. Gormless Day. It's a Jeff o' Neill holiday.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Gormless Day. The day after my birthday. Well, Michelle shall now be referred to as Gormless Day. Up next, I think really everything above here, I had to look at it pretty hard. Those bottom three were clearly my bottom three. I kicked. Next is the overstory by Richard Russo I have on my list. I assume it's not in your top 10.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Not Russo.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm sorry. Wrong Richard.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm so mad at Richard Power that

[Jeff O'Neill]

You're retroactively giving a demerit to the Overstory.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, I liked the Overstory. I did not find it to be revelatory as fol. And I'm still mad at him about the ending of the. What was the playground? That one playground. I'm not mad at the overstory. I just didn't. I thought it was fine. Like, it didn't do it didn't break new ground for me.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, so this is nine interconnected short stories, each of them named after a part of a tree. Pretty cool. Powers integrate science more than any other writer of fiction I know of. Right now that's not named Andy Weir. I guess with that caveat to the side, Certainly not a writer of genre fiction. Can we. Can I attribute the success of the Overstory, critically and commercially to how many flipping tree books there are in any independent bookstore I walk into now?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It was a real moment for Trees. And, like, I kind of wonder if all of this is Robin Wall kimmerer's fault, like, unintentionally, that Braiding Sweetgrass was book. People love, and we love it. That's a great book. A wonderful connection to the natural world and, like, spiritual practices and principles, people were sort of tapping into that. And then there was this flurry of tree books. And the Overstory is one of the big tree books I would much rather. Well, Braiding Sweetgrass is a work of nonfiction, so it wouldn't be on this list in the first place. Yeah, I think that this starts with indie booksellers. There's tons of tree stuff going on. And also, like, it's incredibly book clubbable. Like, it's about a social issue, but it doesn't feel super political. The story does read very quickly. Like you, I turned the pages on Overstory. I just kept waiting for my mind to be blown and. And then it wasn't.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, yeah. Now we have the secret life of trees, the hitting meaning of trees. Trees know things. Watch out for trees. We have the Trees by Percival Everett, which came out. It's just trees all over the place. I'm out on trees. Trees are great. I've enjoyed trees. It's time for something else.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Even Robert Moore had a book several years ago called On Trails that was this, like, philosophical consideration of what is a trail and paths and what does it mean to try to walk a trail. And he has On Trees this year, or in Trees. I should love this because I love the way he writes, but I cannot get it up to go read another tree book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I just tree Book divorce memoirs, addiction memoirs and cooking memoirs.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You gotta do something special.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They're way up there in the overstory. They're in the canopy now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There will be more up in the overstory.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The overstory above the canopy or above. I can't remember at this point. It's been a while since I did my Amazon rainforest. Layers of the jungle. Okay. From there I think I'm going all of Kitteridge. And now I'm very much recognizing that I've got some recency bias and how these things are playing out because Olive Kittredge won the 2009 National Book Award. So it's. I'm coming up on two decades since I've read this book because it was a 2000 and I read it at the same time again, Richard Russo. But not. Is what she's doing there, I think a little more character driven, a little more internality. Olive Kitcher herself is a little spikier, which I think you could do an interesting sociological, literary, anthropological studies of like, old women have to be spiky to be interesting and the old men have to be mush, right? Like, they kind of have to be tender hearted and they're softening where the women are spiky. I don't know. Is there something there? Maybe there is.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think it is. I think it's like literature attempting to be reparative of. Like, old men have this reputation for being difficult and curmudgeonly. So let's give them some soft, thoughtful, reflective ones that are like interested in changing even though they're in their 80s. And then old women, like, now they

[Jeff O'Neill]

get to get off moments my lawn. They get to shake fist.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, I. I think a lot has shifted since Olive Kid came out. Like, it does really feel like a relic of 2009. Because today, like a cantankerous older woman in a book is still a fun thing to read, but it's not novel like, it's not a new feeling thing. And I mean, you know, Elizabeth Strout helped break some of that ground or help soften it. But we've got cranky old ladies all over the place and I'm here for it. This continues to be name checked in comps like for readers of Olive Kitterage still comes up.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I do think she still sells. Those books sell like she has a real following. And when a new book come out, it sort of reliably will stick around the top 20 hardcover fiction for a few weeks, which is not.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

She's got a new one out in the next Several weeks. I think that I expect to do quite well.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I think it's part of the Olive Kittredge universe. There's been a couple set in the same town with same characters. I think I've read one subsequent Elizabeth Strout and I do not remember the title of it. So maybe I should have demerited a little bit more.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm not totally sure that Elizabeth Strout and Kent Harrif aren't the same person. Like, have we ever seen them in the same room?

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's a great call. Very interesting. Next up for number, number 18 on my list, I have the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wow. I am not excising anyone from my list for consideration here. Diaz had some personal stuff come up up five, six years, seven years ago as part of Me too on the outs now. He's sort of slowly being reintegrated, I think. Interestingly, there's a very popular, like touring production of Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wow. That tours. He is still associated with a couple of professional groups for some reason. The twice a month I log into Facebook to see what my family and friends are doing. It always wants to serve me that Juno Diaz has like. Like copy pasted a whole New York Times article into a post. I don't know why. Copyright infringement. Go look into that. I don't know. I'm sure everything's super well regulated on social media now. I'm sure someone will get right on that. This was a bolt of lightning from the sky. Brief Life of Wondrous. A Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wilde when it came out in 2007, won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. Dominican boy growing up in New Jersey. He loves science fiction and fantasy. An early, maybe early peak of genre mashup. Literary fiction, Multiple identities. A diversification of contemporary fiction in this regard. I remember liking it quite a bit. I have not read it since. That's the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wilde.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Same. Yeah. And that he was early on the tip of characters who are multilingual code switching on the page without going to great pains to explain what was happening for white people.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Mm. Next up on my list. We haven't got to anything of yours, which is super interesting. I guess. I'm not surprised. I think this might be the last. I would. I would bet a heavy amount of money did not make your top 10. It's March by Geraldine Brooks. Yeah, Geraldine.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Haven't read that one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Has written a whole bunch of different kinds of books. A lot of Historical fiction. You and I both loved her recent memoir, which I cannot remember.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Memorial Day.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Memorial Days, thank you very much. I was getting that confused with a novel she wrote called Year of Wonders. But this one is a. I guess it's not a retelling, but it's the story of. Inspired by the life of Louisa May Alcott's father, Bronson Alcott, who went to war. But it's actually John March, the father of the March sisters in Little Women. So it's historical fiction. It's very cool. I thought it was terrific. I think it's everything you want from a Pretty straight ahead. Historical, literary, historical fiction. She's an excellent writer. I think this is probably. I realized where I first mistook her for an American. She is an Australian writing American Civil War. So I just assumed. I guess I probably just assume everyone's American that I read because I read mostly Americans. But if you write a Civil War historical fiction work, but following John March, I just assume you're American. I have no sense of what Australians make of Little Women.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I think you can be forgiven for that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, I assume so.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I learned live on our zero to well read episode about Little Women that that's what March was about. I do love Geraldine Brooks. I haven't read this one, but like it's on my now, you know, someday maybe mental radar of like maybe over Christmas when I'm in the Greta Gerwig Little Women mood because apparently that's the thing I have access to now is maybe I'll pick up March.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This is only my second favorite novel named March, unfortunately, which is a tough beat for Jilltown Brooks. My first favorite is March by Eel Doctorow, which is historical fiction about Sherman's march to Atlanta.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And then there's also the people that

[Jeff O'Neill]

sort of follow in his wake there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, there's also John Lewis's multi volume graphic novel, March.

[Jeff O'Neill]

March. Yeah, don't name your thing. March if you have a book coming out. All right, here is where. This is the first one, I think make my. Your top ten. I'm not for sure, but it could. This is where I slotted in Diva and Copperhead by Barbara Kingsol.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay. I have that at number eight on my top ten.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So why don't you speak on it then for this purpose?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, it is relatively new, so it's hard to give it a really high placing even though it was so, so big the year that it came out and hugely popular with readers like this was number one, I believe on the New York Times reader favorites of the last 100 years.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Hard to cast off. Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It also sold super well. So it lives in that zone that I think of as classically Pulitzer, which is like up, like upmarket tilting, really literary, but very accessible and popular and kind of the four quadrant hit Kingsolver. This was officially when she became no longer underrated, you think when she's number

[Jeff O'Neill]

one on the reader's poll and the best books of the century.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But like it's still so new that it's really hard to know how this is gonna age. And I think that a book that is a retelling of another book, which I'm gonna contradict myself later on.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was gonna say let's both be careful ourselves out there, but I just

[Rebecca Schinsky]

think it's kind of. It's harder to know what the legacy of something like this will be. It feels very of its moment, which was wonderful. But is that moment something that we're still interested in 20, 40, 50 years down the line? Like how will it stand the test of time in a power ranking? I don't really hear people talking about Demon Copperhead anymore. You know, like the literary establishment is not comping it to.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We've moved on to the correspondent at the of Golden, I guess.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, yeah. Like that's a. It's an important slot to be filled in the book conversation. But I just don't know that it's that that Demon Copperhead becomes like a huge legacy title even among Kingsolver's others, like one of her best selling books. But there are others of her titles that folks, you know, also still continue to talk about.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's. This is going to sound weird to say, but she kind of writes old fashioned books. Like this is a big sprawling prose epic based on Dickens. But it doesn't necessarily feel like a 2022 title. I mean a 2023 winner thing. I think I'm looking closely things that I have above it feel like it may be more modern, pushing the envelope in some way or another. But this is extraordinarily good book. Extraordinary good read. I did try to rationalize having it this low to myself, especially looking at that New York Times readers list.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And here is my posit to you is if that poll was taken the year after the help come out, are we sure Help wouldn't. The help wouldn't.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh totally. Totally. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So I think when it comes to recency bias on that is huge because what people have read, you know, it's one reason people say To Kill a Mockingbird is their favorite book of all Time. Because that's just. They've read most people.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And Demon Copperhead, like, it was so in the water that year. I remember being at a Christmas party and someone that I know who reads, like, two books a year, and it's always just, what have the people around him been mentioning enough was like, I'm. I'm reading Demon Copperhead. And I was like, okay, well, now it's crossed into the zone of, like, even the folks who only read one or two books a year, that's the thing that they're picking up. Like, I just don't know where this sits in the pantheon over time. It's too recent.

[Jeff O'Neill]

An absolutely worthy winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a wonderful book, but I just can't put it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You know, that's one of the reasons that it made it into my top 10, is that the Pulitzer is, like, looking for something really specifically that represents American culture, like where the National Book Award is American, but it's more interested in, like, literary experimentation. The Pulitzer tends to be a little bit more commercial. But I do think Demon Copperhead captures, like, a uniquely American moment with the opioid crisis through the lens of Dickens is really interesting, but. Yeah. How relevant is that in another 10 years?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm not sure, you know, what this book, because the adaptation flopped so hard. I actually think the Goldfish by Donna Tartt might be underrated at this point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I had it at nine.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. So the Goldfinch, it's. If we're doing Journey, well read. Is it about art? Absolutely. It's very. You know, there's an explosion. It's. It's. So. It's about art and ideas and inheritance and what you want to do with your life, but it's also plotty and super strange. It was a huge. It was the demon copperhead of 2013. It was kind of hit the same kind of heights that the King Solver did. I just think, what? Dart Dart is just weirder than bk. And I'm going to bias myself towards that strangeness. So that's where I am on the Goldfish. Rebecca, why do you have it so high?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I mean, it was because it was the Demon Copperhead of that year. And also, people do still talk about it. I still see the Goldfinch in comp titles. It was number 46 on the new York Times list, the critics list. It also was on. I started looking around at other awards, like, where does this. Where do these books sit in the critical pantheon? It was on the shortlist for the National Book Critics Circle Award that year and it was on the shortlist for the Women Women's Prize for Fiction. So, like, kind of almost universally agreed that the Goldfinch was something to be excited about. Demon Copperhead did not have that well rounded or robust of a critical reception. So I guess technically I should have made the Goldfinch higher than Demon Copperhead, but I had it one below. That's personal bias. Like, I did not love the Goldfinch. I felt like such a weirdo that year when everybody was raving about it. I thought it was good, but I was looking for even weirder from Tart, I think.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, Tart. Since there's only a handful of novels, each one that comes out, and this is the last Donna Tartt novel we got where we're 12 years in.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It has to bear so much weight.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I can't. Yeah, but you kind of have to reckon with it. Kind of like a new Terrence Malick movie or something. Like, you only get it every decade or so, so people are going to take it seriously from there. At number 14, I have the 2013 winner, the Orphan Master Son by Adam Johnson. Was that in your top 10?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I have not read that one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, okay. So this was a 202012 breakout.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It was huge. I remember that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Really heralding Adam Johnson, who had a book out last year called the Wayfounder, which I did not read, which wasn't it. With that data. It's. It's. It's big. It was a. It was a chunky boy. And the reviews I read were interestingly mixed, but not enough to put me over the top. Not enough to dissuade me, but not enough to put me at the top. But the plot of this is that the main character is raised in a North Korean orphanage and then tries to make his way to South Korea. It's a lot more. It's a lot more complicated than that. It's a real sort of journey through hell. And it's a satire. But next, exploration of Americans involvement, Korean politics, transmissions from the International Space Station. Get Involved. It is a real fractal, almost sort of postmodernist book. I thought it was terrific. I actually don't know why I don't have it higher, to be honest with you. I think I haven't read it in a long time. But I also feel like Adam Johnson's star has not been what I thought it might be. It didn't get made into a movie. I don't know that a lot of people read this book, Rebecca. So I have it at 14.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think that's pretty reasonable given what I know about it. And I was trying to think, like, why didn't I read this? And it's that I was hosting all the books at the time also. And Liberty was so into Orphan Masters. One of yours. Yeah. That it was like somebody's already carrying the flag for that. I got to go read something else. And there are just so many books that I didn't get to in that time because of that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. Number 13.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

13. All right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I have the Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Claire by Michael Chabin.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It did not quite make my top 10 either.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's. I imagine that it actually did not make my type 10. It make my top 13. I love this book. People who were into books, as readers of. You know, we're trying. You want to read literary fiction. You're young, especially. This blew a lot of our hair off. You were maybe a little young even, because I was just. I was 22.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I got to it a couple years later. Again, the paper favorites table.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's a wonderful New York novel. It's a friendship novel. It's a novel about art. It's a novel about comic books. If we. We've done drafts of movies or books we'd like to be made into movies. This one is perennial in the. You could make a movie about. There's been an opera. Opera seems very unlikely. Shabin. It's. He's had a strange career. He wrote for movies for a while. He did a couple other things. But I think based on this book and what I thought about this book in Shabon's career at this point, it didn't go the way I thought it was gonna go. And I've read some. I've read Gentlemen of the Road, some things that he's done, but nothing seems to me have hit the heights of the amazing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. If he. If there were an announcement of a new shaven book, that would be like one of the most interesting things of the year, for sure.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think he's written for Star Trek and video games like he's done by the Hollywood.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Really?

[Jeff O'Neill]

For me.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, number 12, I have the 2003 winner Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Was that in your top 10?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It was not.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Have you read Middle Sex by Jeffrey Eugenides?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think so.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think so. It was early book riot days.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I guess that's one where I'm a little surprised to hear you say think so because it feels like that's something you remember reading or then maybe not. Yeah. It sold more than 4 million copies. This was a paperback table for a billion years and also ahead of its time. It's about a main character who is intersex. And this was his follow up after the Virgin Suicides Kids, which came about as close to an epoch defining book in 1993 for like Gen X as there were. And he read this 19th century memoir by a French convent squirrel girl who was intersex. And he thought this was really interesting and provocative subject matter. Cal Stephanides, his masculine identity. The main character is also known as Calliope, the feminine and talks about the genetic condition. This person has some backstory. There's immigration. It's a story of immigration in New York and New America. It's pretty unbelievable. Eugenides, another one where it's hard to know how people's careers are gonna go for the next 20 or 30 years. Virgin, Sinic virgin suicides into intersex. And then he had the other book that was like. There was like a campus novel. I want to say it's called the Marriage Plot, but I'm not getting confused with the Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson's Vehicle. Anyway, what's your sense of where Eugenides is on the radar if he's there all at all?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

At all? I don't think about Jeffrey Eugenides ever. Unless we're talking about the Virgin Suicides and listening to you do that description. I was like, maybe I didn't read Middlesex. I just read a lot of things about.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It was called the Marriage Plot. No wonder I'm confused. All right, sorry. October 2011. The marriage plot.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think he kind of got swept up in that like mid teens, like 20 teens thing of like there were. There are just fewer, I think slots for in the mid list for like mid list middle aged white guy novels. Whether that's fair or not. Like, and it's a good thing for publishing that there is more diversity happening. But I think Jeffrey Eugenides, I don't know if he's been writing. I'm sure that his publisher would pick up a book from him if he wanted to. But he was one of those figures that was kind of like became sort of of one of our generations, like stand ins for Philip Roth, which is not fair to either of them. But in the way that we toss off like, oh, those old guys like Philip Roth, like it was Eugenides and Franzen and all the literary Jonathan's and Jeffries just kind of the star fell around. Around a lot of those guys. But I remember Middlesex was a huge deal. I think if you had a New novel out that would be make headlines. And this one does. Middlesex does, like, make the lists. When people do the looking back on stuff. I think that was also on the New York Times top 100 big book also kind of feels like a relic of its time. Like, if this were to come out now, we would be having conversations about, like, you know, own voices and how well did he do his research and is this really more the kind of story that we should leave for an intersex writer to tell? So also, you know, a cultural document in that way.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. The marriage Plot came out in 2011 and it did quite well. Was the finals for the National Book Circle Award. Made a bunch of top books of the year list. That was 2011. And then his follow up to that is a short story collection in 2017, which. There's no surer way for people to forget about you than to write a short story. I mean, seriously.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

To write. As we wait six years and then write a short story collection, then it's been seven years. No, we're up to nine years since he has a book come out. So that'll do it. Maybe as much as anything.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Just be interesting to see if he reappears.

[Jeff O'Neill]

In the 11 hole, I have the Night Watchman by the great Louise Erdrich.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I have that in the 10. In the 10 spot.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, why don't you take over on the Night Watchman?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm just gonna put Louise Erdrich on a list if Louise Erdrich is available to me. The Night Watchman is one of her titles with better name recognition than the other ones. I think if people know one Louise Erdrich book, they probably know that one because it's the one that won the Pulitzer. She has so many books that any one of her. For any one of her titles to become like the Louise Erdrich book people talk about is really difficult. There are so many of them, and most of them are critically acclaimed and well received by readers. She lives in a really sweet zone there, but we hear from her pretty often, and she's regularly nominated for awards. And it's just impossible to know right now while Louise Erdrich, thank God, is still living and writing. Which Louise Erdrich books are really going to be? The ones that we look back on as being the most important or the most. The ones that had the greatest impact. So I had it lower on the list because I just don't know. Like, I think we're talking about Louise Erdrich for many, many years and decades to come. I just don't know if it's the night watchman or not.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Her standard is so consistently high, it's hard to pick out a peak to focus on. It really is, though. You could do worse than this one, for sure. It's got a mystery element to it as well. There's a. You know, there's stakes. They're working at a jewel factory, for God's sakes. You know, like, there's all kinds of stuff. It's set, most of the main characters, Ojibwe. And the imminent threat is this termination bill that's heading to the house floor that would, if my memory serves, would like, erase the reservation or some protected stat or something. It would. It would materially impact to the detriment of most tribes in the United States. It's really quite good. And a lot of people really like that. I wonder, too. I never note this was. The publication date was March 3, 2020, which is eight days before COVID I mean, eight days before the NBA shut down and Tom Hanks coveted and my birthday. Nothing was keeping track of that when really that's when, like, we just stopped doing things on March 11, 2020.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But we were already talking about COVID at the end of February and like into early March. So, yeah, terrible day to have a new book come out. I don't remember if it made bestseller lists or any of the stuff. I just remember that it was, you know, it won the Pulitzers and it can, like, I'm always going to be happy about Louise Erdrich, whatever she wants to do.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, now we're up to 10. So then you can sort of reveal your first, because we're nowhere to this our regular structure here.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We have done my 10, which was the night watchman.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, okay, crap. Then I have to go to 10.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, yeah. What do you have?

[Jeff O'Neill]

2022 novel won the 2023 Pulitzer. It's trust, by Hernan Diaz, which is also a fantastic New York City novel. It's in the world of finance and it has a metafictional element where it's four fictional texts, there's an incomplete biography, there's a diary, and there's a novel all based on the same characters. And then the reader has to sort of figure out what's going on. But it's a. It's. The first one is during the Wall street crash of 1929. And I think most of them stick around that same period. But it's very much a novel by identity and finance and capitalism and America and history and memory. It's terrific. I like New York books I like books about New York in the 1920s and 30s and, like, metafictional text. So this one is, like, right out of the petri dish. For me, it's a challenge. I mean, it's not impossible to read, but it's more challenging than, well, even something like the Night Watchman or, you know, Empire Falls. It's a terrific book. He has a new book, Ply, coming out in the fall, which I think is a very important text in the. Hernand Diaz. Like. Like, where is he going to land?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's what I was just gonna say. Yeah. That I. He didn't make my top 10, because everybody in my top 10 has a pretty established literary legacy. And it's. It's still an open question whether trust is going to be, like, the big anomaly that popped in his career or was that the breakout? And now we see Hernande Diaz at a higher level consistently. So if we were doing this next spring with whatever data we get about how Ply performs.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, that book is awesome, Rebecca. Yeah. We have to look at a different.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Differently. It really might, but that's an exciting moment. Like, it's exciting to have novelists where we're on the hook for, like, what's about to happen with his career. And, I mean, now we're just debating the best of the very best when you're in a top 10 of the. The Pulitzers. So, okay, so that was your ten.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What's your nine?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

My nine was the. Was Demon. No, my nine was the Goldfinch. My nine was the Goldfinch.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, and we did your eight. Two already, I think, which was Demon.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Copperhead. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, so I am then up to 8, which is the Sympathizer by Vietnam Nguyen, which. That book felt like a breath of crazed, overheated fresh air to me. I. It's debut novel, I guess. I didn't really look. Is this the only debut novel on here? Oh, I have one that's a debut short story collection. Coming Here in the Limit, but I don't think I have a debut novel anywhere else.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Else.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't think Brown was Diaz. I think Drown was a short story collection.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, Drown was his short story collection, and that's it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So maybe a debut novel, but the anonymous narrator here is a Vietnamese spy in the South Vietnamese Army. So this is like Apocalypse now with catch 22 sort of situation. It's a good North Korean. It's funny, it's dark, it's entertaining. Just a wild ride of invention. Storytelling and. And storytelling and sensibility. Yeah. And launched him to be a writer to watch even through to today. There was a sequel that didn't do as well and a pretty poorly reviewed series adaptation that did a thing that didn't sound like it worked that I was very afraid of, which is Robert Downey Jr. Paying a bunch of parts, making it the Robert Downey Jr. Show. But it doesn't matter because this book is awesome. Rebecca. I love the sympathizer.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It is. He didn't. This didn't make my list for the same reasons of Hernan Diaz of, like, waiting to see a legacy established. 10 years.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure if we're gonna.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, yeah. I don't. I don't know. It's tough, but I did really love it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. All right. Do you. Have I not talked about your seven at least?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You have not. My number seven is a Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. That's my five, but go ahead.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay. This was also, like, a breath of fresh air at the time. It felt mind blowing at the time that it came out. Like, one of the chapters is a PowerPoint presentation. And literary writers were not doing stu with technology in literary fiction at the time. This is what, like, 2011? Something like that?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes. 2011.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

2011. Like, and it's dated now because the technology was technology from 2011. Like, a version of this today would have to have TikToks in it or something, but it was text exchanges or. Yeah. And it really is like, linked short stories, but you. That you kind of read as a novel. The. The publisher wisely packaged it as a novel.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. They joined it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. The Internet disagrees about whether this is a novel. It's not a traditional short story collection.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But do you care about calling it one versus the other? I really don't.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Not really. No. Call it what you need to call it to when it's Jennifer Egan. Get people to read the book so they can enjoy it. Yeah. Like, I don't want you to miss out on a Jennifer Egan moment because you have some preconceived notion about short. Short stories and just wonderful about music and, like, technology, but also secrets and past connections and sort of all the creative stuff that Jennifer Egan wants to spin out. The way that these characters end up linked to each other was so surprising, and I think it would have been higher on my list if it didn't feel as dated as it feels now. Because the farther out we get from Goon Squad, the more I think I just don't know that that book stands the test of time because if you put it in a reader's hands today, they don't know from just the reading experience how mind blowing it was at the moment. You have to, like, you have to do the three minutes of explanation that I just did. And that's. Oh, that's a ding, I think.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And I think even I overestimate how important that piece was. Like, there was this. That's the easiest one to say what was different about it? But, yeah, a lot is about New York and being a student and art and technology and very dexterous literarily. The sequel, Candy House. You and I talked together. We loved that. Came out a few years ago. I have a hard time expressing how cool I felt reading A Visit from the Goon Squad on the F train in, like, 2010 when I was in New York.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, that sounds like a beautiful moment.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. All the lit hipsters were very into Jennifer Egan. And also. Yeah, I think it matters too, that, like, New York rock, like the Strokes and stuff was, I guess, kind of coming to the end of the, like, this really felt like it was cool to read this book at this time.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And I'm not sure I can say

[Jeff O'Neill]

that of any other book on my list.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

She's such an interesting thinker. I think she's one of the most interesting thinkers in contemporary fiction. And she doesn't get as much credit as I would like her to for that. Because her books are also fun to read. Like, if they felt like homework, she might get more stars.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, like, Manhattan beach is like a straight up mystery. I mean, it's. It's Egan. It's like a mystery novel.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Novel.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's great.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Terrific.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. It's kind of. I mean, it's everything that I want from a literary experience.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Absolutely.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

She's wonderful.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. If you said you could pick a book by any author to come out tomorrow, Pretty high on the listener for Egan. Serious consideration on that list.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay, what was your seven?

[Jeff O'Neill]

My seven is the Known World by Edward P. Jones. Have you ever read this book?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes, I have. It's my number three.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, well, then let's save it for three, then move to my. Your six. What's your six?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I had that at three, so let's save it. Okay, what was your five?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

James Percival Everett.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This is where I have A Visit from the Goon Squad. I have James Higher. I will not spoil it from there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay, so let's go to your six.

[Jeff O'Neill]

My six is interpretive Maladies by jumpalier.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay. Which I don't have on my list because it came out in 99.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes. Right. Now let's play. So we've talked about interpretive maladies this several times before. We are going to do, say, a more in depth discussion into a podcast feed. Coming to an RSS feed near you very soon. We do not need to belabor this. We both like this book. Reel me this, Batgirl. Were you to include this, like, where do you think it would be? I might actually do a full triage. But, like, where would it be?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It would be high. It would be in my top four or five, probably. Yeah, right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. Her enormously selling, virtually flawless collection of short stories that continues to be one of the signal words of late 20th, early 20th. However, you're gonna roll the odometer over

[Rebecca Schinsky]

from there and you get bonus points for winning the Pulitzer for a debut collection of short stories.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You absolutely do.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Has happened one other time in, like, contemporary fiction and it was in 1993,

[Jeff O'Neill]

so very high bar from there that then I had five. I'd visit from the goom squad. Is that Rev James?

[Audiobook Narrator (Our Perfect Storm excerpt)]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, we'll wait for a second at number. What do you have at number four?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

At four I have Gilead.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I have Gilead at deuce.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

At four, I have the Road by Cormac McCarthy.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I put that at one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, so let's just do our one through fives right now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay?

[Jeff O'Neill]

You start one through five, and we can figure out how to talk about these damn books. Now I've lost track of who's got what where.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, let's do. Let's go from the. Yeah, let's talk about the road.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, the road. All right, fine.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I ended up with this one at one because it rang so many bells.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm very surprised to hear this, by the way. I'm not mad, clearly, at 4, but I'm quite surprised. Were you surprised?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I surprised myself, like, and I waffled around about what I should have at 1, what I should have at 3. My heart wanted to put Gilead at 1, and then my heart wanted to put colson Whitehead at 1. But the road, like, it wins the Pulitzer. It's high in the New York Times list. It was a National Book Critics Circle finalist. It's also older and we are still talking about it. Like, it has more track record than I think than any of these in my top ones, other than the known world. And McCarthy has such a legacy. It's one of those, like, people know the road who don't know books and people recognize Cormac McCarthy's name. And it was on the, like, early end of. We would call it literary genre now. Like, we weren't talking about literary dystopia at the time, but McCarthy sort of opened the door or at least walked through the door before many other writers had. It just has a huge cultural impact.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't even know. Like, once you're in this top five, the distinction between one and two might be meaningless and then between two and three. But that was how I. That was my thought process to get there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I will back you up these top four. I moved around in several organizations and I looked at McCarthy at one for a hot minute. I really did.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I did notes on paper. And my notes are like, now it's like crazy murder board with red string of like, which ones actually stayed in the spot that I originally slotted them into.

[Jeff O'Neill]

First of all, and this is underappreciated, especially if it read the. If you haven't read this book and especially didn't read it at the time, this is one of the all time. Your books are magnetized to the pages until you're done reading. Reading this book. I defy you to slow down and read this book. Like, maybe as much as any book I've ever read. I was like. I just. It's like an episode of the Pit where I sort of. I'm compelled. And I also kind of need it to be over. Like, I can't look away, but I kind of need it to be over.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We gotta get through this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We gotta get through this. One of the great endings of all time. McCarthy is a wizard at setting tone and like the macabre, sinister setting. Here's another thing I didn't think about. And what. And finally, I. I think maybe I underrate it for this reason. This predates the Hunger Games.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Predates that. Like.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. We weren't doing dystopia yet.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We weren't. We weren't doing that. He was ahead of the game on that. McCarthy is a brand name. And if I had to take a bet of authors on this list that could be talked about in 50 or 100 years, McCarthy. You could do worse than McCarthy as your number one overall draft because he's a certain style, a certain time. A mediocre adaptation. I don't think it matters because not many of these book have a wonderful adaptation. In fact, what's that best adaptation of a book on here? It's not an amazing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's probably. Yeah, nickel boys. Yeah, nickel Boys, Nickel Boys and Underground Railroad were beaten contenders.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Whitehead holding them both out. Out. And this was a cultural phenomenon at the time. And McCarthy was, and I think is a brand name author in a way that, you know, if you can parody someone, that's a real sign that they did something. This is what I think about writers.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think McCarthy is underrated now because.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Glad you said that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We haven't had. We haven't had like a big. Well, you know, he died. The last couple books were not as big, but this was, I mean, such a cultural moment. And then McCarthy also gets swept up in the. Like, just, we're kind of done with all those old white guys doing stuff. It's not cool to be into Cormac McCarthy anymore. And saying that McCarthy is your favorite, your favorite writer now might be kind of a signal about a certain kind of sensibility that like, you know, people might want.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think we need to get rid of that. If you think.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I agree.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Cormac McCarthy is a red flag. You can think whatever you want, but it's not the same as some of these other books.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, this is. We were having. We had a similar conversation about Catcher in the Rye on. I guess we recorded an episode of. About Perks of Being a Wallflower that'll be out like in a week or two. And we were talking about that. And I don't think that that book. Loving that book in itself is any kind of red flag. It's that, like, if you're 45 and that's still the best thing you've ever read, like, then I'm a little concerned for you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And it's To Kill a Mockingbird and the Fountainhead. Are your other two favorite books. Like, let's be careful out there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. That McCarthy gets written off for reasons of bigger cultural phenomena that don't actually have much to do with him.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Can I tell you why I have it at 4 and not higher?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Sure.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This is the only thing that crossed my mind. It's a corollary to my. I give demerits to TV shows with guns. Like, because if you got Zombie Apocalypse, the tension is just easier. Whereas if you are, and I'll say my one through four are James Gilead, Nickel Boys, the Road Squad. Those are my top five. Zombie Apocalypse. Of course you're gonna be an easier, more tension filled read. Now McCarthy does that like no one else I think could do it. But I'm like, the Nickel Boys is a historical. A short historical fiction novel about this abusive reformatory school that's very elusive. And like a horror. Like I feel like that's harder. Gilead is certainly harder.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Harder.

[Jeff O'Neill]

James is maybe the highest degree of difficulty thing I can imagine. So I was like, that's the only thing that again, the road is amazing. But when it comes down to really winnowing the field amongst the really highest achievers, that's the only thing I could really come up with.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I had James at 5 because it's so new. Like that was really the only. I would. I just don't feel like we have enough longitudinal data about it. But I wouldn't be surprised if the me of 10 years from now wants to come back and put it it in number one. Like I really think that that book is going to have a long life, but we just, we just don't know yet. But it's in rare company having won both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award. And the only other. I think the only other book on this list that did that was the Underground Railroad.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. Which we haven't talked about yet. Did we?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, that's my number two.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's your number two, yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So Nick, as we've established on this podcast, we both think Nickel Boys is the better book, right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

But the bona fides of Underground Railroad are unimpeachable.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So I had nickel boys at 6. Just because it didn't. It did not notch up all the bonafides that the rest of these titles did. But in my heart, Nickel Boys is maybe number one on this list. Like I, I love that book. I had Underground Railroad. It too. Huge breakout for Colson Whitehead or the real announcement of what literary genre was going to look like, I think and

[Jeff O'Neill]

that he maybe the pinnacle, maybe, maybe this is like the peak of literary genre.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And he had done this before. Like we had this conversation when he did Zone one and it was like, it's zombies, but it's literary. But this was. Can you do a novel about American slavery with magic realism? And will it work? Because the pitch of the railroad is a literal railroad instead of a figurative one. Could go all kinds of ways.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But Whitehead just, he pulls it off so flawlessly and everybody recognizes it. So of course, like he gets the Pulitzer, he wins the National Book Award. It's high on all of the lists of all of the things. The Barry Jenkins adaptation is excellent, but really, really hard to watch for all of the reasons. Probably not as widely watched as it

[Jeff O'Neill]

could have been because it just 10 part Amazon Prime. They spent all the money on a real one of one peak adaptation. Gold rush TV stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And if Nickel Boys had come out first, I think Nickel Boys could have won all the awards too. But since it comes out after and they were in close succession to each other and just kind of feel like awards. Juries. The prize juries.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I already won the Pulitzer Prize, Rebecca. What else do you want?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I want Colson Whitehead to get all the things he deserves every time he publishes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think he's got them now. I think he's fine. The CW is doing fine.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. So I had underground railroad at 2 and nickel boys at 6. Because of the differences in public reception,

[Jeff O'Neill]

I had Gilead at 2.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay. That was my 4.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What can we say that we haven't said about again? Right now you can go listen to us talk about it for almost two hours in the Zurdorod feed. I guess it's hard to place because it's a book that feels modern but also out of time at the same time. Like, it's very intentionally set, you know, in the decades ago in a little town where time sort of hasn't passed for 60 years. It feels like at the same time time. But it also is dealing with old fashioned ideas about faith and legacy and the meaning of it all in a way that doesn't feel fusty. Like the main character is not a. Like he doesn't have a real racist moment or a misogynist moment to put him in his place in time and space. He feels like a modern searching consciousness.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

In a way that's embracing and warm and difficult and beautiful and sad all at the same time. Time. I don't know what to do with Marilyn. Like, you look at this kind of work. Like, I just don't know what her legacy is going to be 50 years from now. It could be something that people forget. Edna Ferber keeps jumping into my mind like some. I think the Marilynne Robinson books are better. But sometimes people get left behind. Even things that sold quite well. Because it's not at the cutting edge of literature. It's not at the cutting edge of ideas. It's not like a Jennifer Egan like thing, or even a Nickel Boys thing or Jhumpa Lahiri kind of thing. It's just. Just. Can you transcend time?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And I don't know, like there's a way of looking at it where this is the most literary sensibility of any of the books on this list. Because it is just about ideas. Just about sitting and thinking and seeing your life and thinking about what it is to be a person in the world. Like there is not a plot engine to be found in Gilead. And there's a real plot engine around all the rest of these, like, things happen. And there are genre elements. Elements in a lot of them. And so by your standard of difficulty level, it's the most difficult to execute because there are no. There are no zombies.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You're just scratching it out of the Iowa corn dirt. Like that's what you're doing with this book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. So I think that leaves the Known World by Edward P. Jones as the only one we haven't talked about.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, we haven't really talked about James either. But then, I mean, interesting to talk about together, actually.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do you want to say something about James? Where'd you have James again?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I had that at 5. And just as I said, because it's so recent, you had it at one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, I do think it's unusual in this regard. Well, many more regards than this one. But looking at the rest of the list, there's. I don't see another Scorsese wins the Academy Award for the Departed when maybe he could have won for four books ahead of it. Where that's kind of. I mean, James deserves it on its own, maybe more than Departed did by it. I actually quite liked it. Departed.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Whatever.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm not. I'm not. I'm out of my zone expertise. But having said that, like, there's like 25 books. Like, there's a long and varied history and coming out of American fiction, which was the adaptation of Erasure, which is his book, like, it felt like all the rivers coming together and crowning Everett and then giving a lot of entree almost for literary prestige what TikTok did for Colleen Hoover in terms of sales else. Now you can go back and see everything else. And now people can go back and discover, like, oh, my God in Backfill. And then God knows what he's going to do next. Like, the next personal ever book is going to be another. Yeah, it'll be another thing. Huge thing. And the book is good. It relates to literary history in American. The pitch is quite easy. I think this is. Whereas Gilead is difficult from a simplicity. This is like difficulty from. Like a strange Cirque du Soleil kind of difficult, like trying to do the Twain thing, respectively. Interesting, but then trying to have a high concept that both is stupid and serious and impossible, but actually quite moving and provocative all at the same time. Like, I stand in wonder at that. It's readable and simple.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It is.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's like a sleight of hand where they just makes the coin Disappear right in front of you. He's like, that's all they do. But you have no idea how they

[Rebecca Schinsky]

did it because it's disappearing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A coin.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

If we were doing a power ranking of Pulitzer winning authors ever, it would be right at the top of my list. For, for all of those, you take

[Jeff O'Neill]

the career, you get the whole career out of it and the whole body.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's, I mean, really hard to beat in our landscape right now what he has done and what like because of his track record, I believe he will continue to do.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes, yes. And probably the most readily to, to slide into the canon of like teaching right away. I mean there's everything you're going to want. There's so much to talk about, so much to study, so much to. To think about. And while it's, it's forward looking, it's actually modern in its own sensibility. So it's very tough to beat.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The, the thing I said about Demon Copperhead, like it's a little, it's derivative based on Dickens. But Demon Copperhead is a more direct mapping onto the ideas of, of David Copperfield where Everett really reinvents what's. What he's doing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What do you think King Solver sees like when she reads something like James, I assume she read. Let's prove like she's like whoa. Whoa. Is she like whoa or like do that?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Everybody is like whoa. Like, I think that that's one of the like pieces of magic about Everett is that basically everyone is like, only Percival Everett could pull that off. Like how did he do it?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Could anybody else have done it? You can even be as great and popular as Barbara King Solver and, and just know like there are levels to this and Percival Everett is just on another level.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The known world falls into the. I'm not sure the Internet could handle this now look, say more about that and I think that's, that's an indictment of the Internet because Edward P. Jones is a wonderful writer and probably underrated.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, totally.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Because it's been a while. I don't actually know the last book Edward B. Jones came out, but it's historical fiction as well. Set in Virginia during pre, pre Civil War days. And it's about black and white slave owners. So there's black people that own slaves. Slaves. And as you kind of imagine, that is complicated, Rebecca. And it's uncomfortable to read based on real situation. This is a real thing that happens. It happened. Sorry. Not anymore. It's an unbelievable, ominous, taut, frightening. And there's a, there's A closeness feel makes you extremely uncomfortable. The New York Times, I guess this was the critics or those of us who voted had it number four on the best books of the century. It's kind of if you know, you know.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, very much. It was also a finalist for the National Book Award that year and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. Huge. I had the same feeling reading it that you were describing with the road where you're like, I cannot put this down. But also, oh, my God, how am I going to survive it? It.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Edward P. Jones has three books. He's in the Donna Tart land of like, three. Like, hit him and quit him. Like, I'm gonna drop a novel every 10 years and I'm gonna leave you to deal with it. He hasn't published a book in. Since 2006. So, like, his follow up to this book was all in all Aunt Hagar's Children. So it was three years later, pretty quickly there. That is a collection of short stories. Again, nothing to defuse your rocket ship to the moon like dropping a search collection of short stories. Maybe because you have them and people want you to get the book out. I remember reading this book and liking it, but I couldn't tell you one short story out of all Ann Hagar's Children.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, yeah, I couldn't either. I. I know I read that, like, around that time, but I don't remember it. But the known world really left an impression on me. I read it when it was pretty new. I was in college or just. Yeah, I was in college. And it was one of those, like, oh, yeah, there are so many more stories about the realities of chattel slavery in American history than we're discomforting. Then make it into the. The canon or then, you know, then your English professors have time to take on. And I think this book is being taught now. But it was so new at the time that it wasn't. At least it wasn't taught in my college classrooms. But I was glad to have read it. And it was it. That was a. I think, among my formative literary experiences. So it. That personal experience with it put it up pretty high on my list.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I know it's come up a few times. Lib and I are keep. We have liberty. And I have a secret clock that's counting down towards Donna Tart and Edward P. Jones novels. That's our George R.R. martin is Edward P. Jones.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

What a good day that'll be for us.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, I don't. I don't know anything about Edward P. Jones. I really don't. I think I'm just looking at bio and he took a visiting or a professorship in 2010 at George Washington University. He's a D.C. guy. Yeah, but I haven't heard. It's been 20 years. I mean, at this point he might

[Rebecca Schinsky]

just be having a nice time teaching. Like, you say what you need to say in a book. Like the Known World.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, I mean, maybe because his first book, Lost City, was also a collection of short stories, the Known World. You win the Pulitzer MacArthur genius award, you get 10 year.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, what do you want from me?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't know. It's fascinating to see underrated. So if you're. You're into this kind of book or just knowing what the very highest heights of literary fiction are for the last 20 years, that's way up. Yeah, I wanted.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I was happy to have a chance. Yeah, I think we got everybody. I was just going to say I was happy to have a chance to talk about the Known World because I know so many of our listeners are like younger than we are. And this was not like it had already fallen off the radar by the time they were coming up in books and getting their heads around what was big and popular. So if you don't know, Edward P. Jones definitely pick up the Known World.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I remember having the thought when I was watching 12 Years a Slave, which again, a very good movie thinking is the known would. Would. Would Hollywood ever make the Known world? Like, what kind of a world would we have to be in where that's a movie that could get made right now? Because it. I. You can hear in my voice and shoulders, which you can't see moving up and like being very defensive, like, I don't know what you would do do with this at this point. It's extremely, extremely difficult stuff. So that's our list. You want to read our top tens and.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Okay. So I had. Do you want to go 1 to 10 or 10 to 1?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Go 10 to 1.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

People like that better.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The Night Watchman, the Goldfinch Demon, Copperhead, A Visit from the Goon Squad, Nickel Boys, James Gilead, the Known World, the Underground Railroad and the road mine from

[Jeff O'Neill]

10 to 1 Trust Burnetia, Thunderground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, the Sympathizer by Vietnam Nguyen, the Known World by Edward P. Jones. Interpretive Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, which Rebecca is cowardly not included because she lost. 1999 Number five, visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. The Road by Cormac McCarthy, the Nickel Boys at number three by Colson Whitehead. Number two, Gilead by Marilyn Robinson. And then James by Percival Everett. Here any what your biggest surprise was where you had to. Where you were forced to put the road.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Like I tried to talk myself out of it several times.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But I made my list last night. I was like, this is it. I think I'm done futzing with it. And then I just resisted the temptation to move things around more today. So that's where we are.

[Jeff O'Neill]

My biggest surprise, that a visit from the Goon squad kept floating up. So here's what I did. I just put all 23 of the ones that I was eligible to think I could say something reasonably confidently about in a spreadsheet by year. And then I just float them up to the top, start moving the top. And then a visit from the goon squad was relatively late because I started first and like I just didn't move James. Like it just stayed there the whole time. But the visit from the Goose Club just kept floating, floating, floating, floating, floating. And I had it sort of right there with interpretive maladies. And you know, if Edward P. Jones had another book or two out, out, I think that would have gone a little bit higher. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think a fun exercise.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean the Pulitzer does a pretty good job.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, pretty good. I wasn't.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Except for not awarding something in 2012, which is a disaster beyond comprehension.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's dumb.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Am I ever going to read the Night Watch or the Netanyahu's If I haven't done it now, it's gonna be like when I'm retired or hospitalized or.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, maybe if something gets a big adaptation, you'll pick it up.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But. Yeah. I don't think I've ever been as surprised as when the Night Watch by Jane and Phillips won because the Netanyahu I literally hadn't heard of.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But the Night Watch I had. I'm sure it's great.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Every now and then there's a. A big out of left field. I think the Pulitzer's left field picks are better than the National Book Awards. Left field picks.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I agree with that. Is the same. Is there a whole episode in the NBA is doing the same thing for the. For them?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We did it last year.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What I meant to say is if you want to hear us do the same thing for the National Book Awards, we.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't know if we did the century so far or if we just power ranked like the last 10, but we did a National Book Awards power ranking.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What would be the most obscure but still above the line worth of a patriot of an episode like the nbcc, the pen, the Penn Debut Award would be interesting. Like what happened to those careers of the last.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Oh, where are they now? Would be interesting.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Where are they now? Wow.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

National Book Critics Circle, I think, also has a Debut Award, so.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, maybe a twofer. We do look at both of them and I don't want to put anyone on blast, but that would be interesting from our own.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, like there's a version of that episode that's just like this person won an award and we haven't heard from any of them ever.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What the hell? Your agents are so mad.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right. Shownotes bookride.com listen or just in the pod show notes for the podcast players there, there. You can check out the Patreon. You can check us out over at Zero to well read. And by the time this is posted, you'll hear us talking about James. It'll be there and out in paperback this week. Yeah, for those who've been around for a little while, at least that I came out. You know that famously technological glitches ate our first discussion of James and we did not. We had to wait like a full year and a half to have enough juice in the tank to talk about again. But I'm glad we had the chance to talk about there as well. Rebecca, anything else we need to make people aware of?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, Think that's it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, the Book Riot Podcast is a proud member of the Airwave Podcast Network. Shoot an email podcastookriot.com until next time. We'll talk to you later.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this excerpt from the audiobook edition of Our Perfect Storm by Carly Fortune, read by A.J. burdell and Jack Coplon. Thanks to our sponsors at Penguin Random House Audio.

[Audiobook Narrator (Our Perfect Storm excerpt)]

I met George St. James the day my mom vanished. The night before, I fell asleep the same way I always did, wishing for something extraordinary to happen. At eight years old, I was certain of one thing. I was destined for great adventures. In the morning, a heavy spring rain attacked the last of the snow, liberating purple and white crocus blossoms from their icy beds. My older brothers and I knelt by the window, watching tire grooves fill with Heaven sent tears. Mom's station wagon was missing. Our dad barely spoke when we roused him, but as he sipped his first cup of coffee, he told us our mother had gone home. Only Darwin, who was 12, seemed to understand what that meant. Moby was 10, and I could tell he was as confused as me. This was our house. Wasn't this home? Dad couldn't say how long mom would be gone, but he assured us she'd come back, and we had no choice but to believe him. As soon as the rain tapered to a drizzle, we were kicked outside. Without mom to patiently comb out the tangles, My hair was a ratty mass. I was still wearing my nightgown, but Darwin made sure I put on my rubber boots and yellow raincoat. Moby fetched the basketball. I wanted to play, but my brothers wouldn't pass to me. They never passed to me. I yelled and stomped in puddles, but they kept chucking the ball over my head. Fed up, I grabbed the green butterfly net from the mudroom and set about trying to capture a creature in the thicket at the edge of the field. A worm, a grasshopper, maybe even a frog. Instead, I found something far more exciting. A pale brown rabbit sitting in the fresh blades of grass. It had long, velvety ears and a twitching pink nose. I was going to catch it, and oh, how jealous Darwin and Moby would be. But patience had always eluded me. I charged after the rabbit, twigs cracking beneath my feet, and off it went, bounding across the field. I chased it all the way to the cedar hedge that bordered the neighboring property. The rabbit didn't know what I did. The woman who lived in the big house next door was a witch, and witches had all sorts of uses for rabbits. I had to save it. I followed the dense wall of evergreen to a gap wide enough to slip through. I peered through the branches and gasped when I saw a pair of dark blue eyes squinting at me from the other side. I'd never seen the boy before. He was winter pale, with round, rosy cheeks and dark eyelashes. His hair was buzzed short freckles dotted his little nose, and he was the same height as me. He was nothing to be afraid of. Hello. I'm Francesca. I stuck out my palms like dad taught me. But you can call me Frankie. The boy blinked, and I wondered if he might run away. But then his hand shot out suddenly and he took mine in his.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm George.

[Audiobook Narrator (Our Perfect Storm excerpt)]

Hands on hips, I gave him a thorough inspection. He had no rubber boots, no raincoat, and his pants had a hole in the knees.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Me.

[Audiobook Narrator (Our Perfect Storm excerpt)]

All he had to keep him warm was a hooded sweatshirt with a stain on the sleeve. Were you watching me? I asked.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No.

[Audiobook Narrator (Our Perfect Storm excerpt)]

He blushed.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, not for long.

[Audiobook Narrator (Our Perfect Storm excerpt)]

What are you doing over there? The big house was no place for a boy, especially one as soft looking as George. He'd need defending, maybe even rescuing. My toes curled at the thrill of it. I live here now, he said, sounding resigned. I gaped at him. You live there? I pointed at the imposing stone house behind him. With the witch?

[Jeff O'Neill]

She's not a witch. She's my grandmother.

[Audiobook Narrator (Our Perfect Storm excerpt)]

I hate to tell you this, George, I said, relishing the moment, but your grandmother is definitely a witch.