The 2026 Pulitzer Prizes

Summary

Book Riot - The Podcast

Episode: The 2026 Pulitzer Prizes

Release Date: May 11, 2026
Hosts: Jeff O’Neill & Rebecca Schinsky

---

Episode Overview

This week, Jeff and Rebecca dive deep into the freshly announced 2026 Pulitzer Prizes, offering their characteristically sharp, thoughtful, and sometimes hilarious takes on the winners, surprises, snubs, and what the picks say about the current book landscape. The episode also touches on new copyright lawsuits related to AI, the UK TikTok bestseller phenomenon, notable new releases, adaptations news (Greta Gerwig’s “The Magician’s Nephew”), Book Riot fantasy league updates, and a round of recent reads, including the retiree-phenom Theo of Golden.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Pulitzer Prize Winners & Finalists (10:46–22:24)

• Fiction

  • Angel Down by Daniel Krause – Winner

    • Described by Jeff as “The Martian, but what if you were inside a whale?” (12:20)
    • Told in a single sentence, blending literary and speculative fiction
    • Jeff praises Krause’s originality and notes the book has elements of both horror and magical realism, although he finds the “magical realism” label a bit off; it's more singular and unclassifiable.
    • Surprise at its win, but retrospectively, “that makes sense. It's a great book and it’s doing experimental things.” (14:09)
    • Rebecca notes it surfaced late in “year’s best” discussions—flying under the radar until end-of-year lists.
    • Atria’s commercial reputation perhaps made it an unlikely awards favorite: “It leans more commercial. There's not a lot of Pulitzer winners on this list.” (15:35)
    • “We love that zone.” – Rebecca on unclassifiable writers like Krause (15:21)
    • Recognition that this win will put Daniel Krause much more in the sights of critics and readers for his next book (21:43)

  • Audition by Katie Kitamura – Finalist

    • Both hosts lament it didn’t win, having been their personal favorite, and noting Kitamura’s pattern of “always a bridesmaid, never a bride” in recent awards seasons. (11:07)
    • “It just would have been the cherry on top if she had rounded out the publishing year with a win.” – Rebecca (11:07)

  • Stag Dance by Tori Peters – Finalist

    • Noted as “a quartet of short story novella situations.” (16:46)

• Nonfiction Categories

  • History: We the People: A History of the Constitution by Jill Lepore (17:02)
    • Jeff and Rebecca praise Lepore’s depth and accessibility; “Never bet against Jill Lepore.” (17:02)
  • Memoir/Autobiography: Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yi Yang
    • “I absolutely cannot read this book…I just don’t think I can, Rebecca.” – Jeff on the memoir’s intensity (18:19)
  • General nonfiction: There’s No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone
    • Compared to Evicted by Matthew Desmond (19:25)
  • Biography: Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution by Amanda Vale
    • Praised for accessible narrative and present vs. past tense innovation (19:46)

• Critical Reflection

  • Rebecca and Jeff discuss the lack of a singular “book of the year,” but acknowledge Angel Down as a plausible candidate for that slot given its cross-over critical and popular appeal (21:19–21:43).
  • They explore how packaging and imprint perception (i.e., Atria’s “commercial” image) might have influenced Angel Down’s low expectations for prize lists.

---

Other Major Topics

---

NYT Best Books of 2026 So Far (24:11–29:18)

• Touchstone titles:
  • Kin by Tayari Jones (Rebecca’s pick for future awards/draft league front runner)
  • Transcription by Ben Lerner
  • The Keeper by Tana French (“I’m saving it for the summer.” – Jeff, 25:26)
  • London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe
  • Yesteryear by Carol Claire Burt (“trad wife thriller”)
• Reception of the list as “full of stuff with legs”—likely to continue appearing on lists throughout the year.
• Jeff and Rebecca speculate which have mainstream, bestseller, or awards potential.
• “Yesteryear has real Barnes and Noble Book of the Year, Amazon’s Book of the Year potential.” – Jeff (28:33)

---

Book Industry & AI Lawsuits (29:30–38:53)

• Major publishers and Scott Turow are suing Meta over its Llama language model’s use of pirated books.
  • Discussion about why lawsuits append author names—a legal strategy, publicity, or both?
  • The crux: Court sympathy for “damage” to authors remains uncertain, especially for fiction.
    • “If you can get a detailed summary [from AI], then why would consumers go and buy the book? … I don’t think this is actually a compelling argument for fiction.” – Rebecca (33:02)
• Judges have not been uniformly sympathetic—especially on the loss of market argument for copyright infringement.
• “I am sure rooting for these plaintiffs to gut these things like a pig for stealing the books and just using them.” – Jeff (34:01)
• Fatigue and cynicism about AI as a transformative force in books:
  • “I haven’t seen anything cool AI has done as far as I can tell.” – Jeff (35:56)
  • Rebecca: “The promised future of AI is just not gonna be that amazing thing that the tech world wanted us to believe.” (37:25)
• Both hosts loathe the hype, the grift, and want actual policy or legal resolution.

---

UK TikTok Bestsellers & PW Summer Preview (39:06–43:29)

• TikTok’s UK bestseller chart is predictably dominated by romance, BookTok darlings (Chloe Walsh, Sarah J. Maas, Colleen Hoover), and is overwhelmingly White:
  • “On an eyeball check, one book of the top 20 is by a person of color.” – Rebecca (39:29)
• Secret History by Donna Tartt is the only classic and “makes sense—Dark Academia, baby.” (40:23)
• Quick hit on Publisher’s Weekly summer preview:
  • Staff picks are “interestingly, weirder than anybody else.” – Rebecca (43:12)
  • Jeff notes his “extremely Jeff Corps” interest in How Not to Know by Simone Stoltzkoff.
  • Both hosts appreciate PW’s genre navigation amidst the somewhat confusing site design.

---

Adaptation News: Greta Gerwig’s “The Magician’s Nephew” (45:00–50:02)

• Big News:
  • Netflix’s “The Magician’s Nephew” adaptation (Gerwig’s follow-up to Barbie) delayed to Feb 12, 2027, with a rare-for-Netflix 45-day exclusive theatrical window.
• Reasoning:
  • Avoid box office congestion in holiday 2026 (Hunger Games, Dune 3, Jumanji, Harry Potter)
  • Possibly to position for awards in a lighter 2027 slate
  • Gerwig aiming for Lord of the Rings/Dune-level prestige
  • “I think dodging the Hunger Games … is super smart.” – Jeff (47:48)
• Rebecca: “Go see this in theaters if you’re gonna see it.” (49:41)
• Also a relief for their book podcast schedule—no need to “cram it into the fall.” (49:52)

---

Frontlist & Recent Reads (50:58–72:45)

Inside the Box by David Epstein (Business/Self-Help)

• Consensus: Good for fans of creativity and business books, but essentially a book-length argument for self-imposed creative constraints.
  • “If you really just want the nugget of truth, it could have been a New Yorker article or a really good TED talk." – Rebecca (51:21)
  • Main insight: Constraints help us avoid defaulting to old solutions; novelty often comes from boundaries.
  • “The biggest mistake that companies make and that creative people make is when you're faced with a problem adding things instead of taking them away.” – Rebecca (54:03)
• Literary anecdotes appreciated, but some analysis (Joyce’s Ulysses, Kubrick’s 2001) seen as a stretch.
• Both enjoyed Epstein’s earlier book, Range (57:36)

One Leg on Earth by Pemi Aguda (Novel)

• Rebecca raves about this debut set in Lagos: Magical-realist horror/fable exploring themes of pregnancy, colonization, and bodily autonomy.
  • “Really captivating…thought about it a lot when I wasn’t sitting reading it.” (58:06–60:33)

Theo of Golden by Alan Levy (“Retiree Book of the Year” Phenomenon)

• Jeff’s highly anticipated take: He did not enjoy it.
  • Describes the premise—elderly man buying and gifting town portrait sketches—as contrived and repetitive, full of “fable” aspirations stymied by over-specific realism.
  • Over-reliance on “dead/estranged/impaired daughter” plotlines: “Just too many times for that to be the thing.” (64:00)
  • Notes traces of “mildly Christian themes,” speculates why it’s a darling in church circles.
  • Critiques prose and editing: “At the very beginning, I was like, I didn’t feel in the hand. I was in confident hands.” (67:53)
  • On commercial success: “Nothing makes sense to be this huge. But it never does.” (70:32)
• “Thank you for your service.” – Rebecca, on Jeff finishing the book (68:22)
• The Correspondent seen as the stronger “retiree novel” (68:23–69:32)

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “I’m going to be as fair as I can—honest and unmerciful.” – Jeff on Theo of Golden (02:16)
• “[Angel Down] is told in a single sentence. So we’re doing art things, right?” – Jeff (12:53)
• “It just would have been the cherry on top if she (Kitamura) had rounded out the publishing year with a win.” – Rebecca (11:07)
• “I haven’t seen anything cool AI has done as far as I can tell. I’m just sick of it.” – Jeff (35:56)
• “Both ends [of the AI discourse] lack nuance and it’s just not interesting.” – Rebecca (36:54)
• “Secret History is in the first two episodes…Secret History outperformed almost everything else.” – Jeff on BookTok/Zero to Well Read numbers (40:27)
• “It never makes sense to be this huge. But it never does.” – Jeff on why Theo of Golden succeeded (70:32)

---

Important Timestamps

• Pulitzer Prize discussion: 10:46 - 22:24
• NYT Best Books of the Year So Far: 24:11 - 29:18
• AI Copyright Lawsuits: 29:30 – 38:53
• TikTok/UK Bestsellers List: 39:06–41:27
• PW Summer Preview: 41:27–43:29
• Greta Gerwig’s The Magician’s Nephew Adaptation: 45:00–50:02
• Frontlist/Recent Reads: 50:58–72:45

---

Tone & Style

• The hosts deftly toggle between literary seriousness, wry humor, affectionate bickering, and deeply informed industry commentary.
• Lots of “off-mic” asides, running jokes, and relatable asides for readers and book-industry watchers.
• Directly critical where need be (Theo of Golden), unafraid to show enthusiasm (One Leg on Earth), and happily nerdy and inside-baseball when talking imprints, book packages, or adaptation timelines.

---

Takeaways for Listeners

• If you care about book prizes: This episode is your primer to the 2026 Pulitzers, with insights you won’t get elsewhere.
• If you want book recommendations: Take note of Angel Down, Kin, One Leg on Earth, and the summer picks from Publisher’s Weekly.
• If you follow publishing news: Get context for the AI/copyright legal battles and Amazon/BookTok sales trends.
• If you love adaptations: Greta Gerwig’s Narnia plans get the full Book Riot strategizing treatment.
• If you’re book club shopping: Stay alert for the odd success of Theo of Golden and Jeff’s candid review.

---

Transcript

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This episode is brought to you by Merit Beauty. I'm not a makeup person. I've never been a makeup person. In fact, my entire philosophy has always been the fewer products, the better. And I'm so delighted to have found Merit Beauty because they're the first brand that actually works with that instead of against it. Everything is designed for a fast, minimal routine that still looks polished. No 10 step process, no learning curve. Just a few good products that do exactly what they're supposed to. I use three the Minimalist stick, which pulls double duty as foundation and concealer the Flush Balm, which gives you that healthy glow like you just came back from a nice walk rather than applied something to your face and the signature lip Blush for a little color without any fuss. Clean, vegan, cruelty free, and full of skincare ingredients that are actually doing something for your skin while you wear it. It's the routine I didn't know that I needed Right now. Merit Beauty is offering listeners a free Signature Makeup bag with your first [e-mail] that's me for a free Signature Makeup bag with your first order merit beauty.com

[Jeff O'Neill]

study and play come together on a

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Windows 11 PC and for a limited

[Jeff O'Neill]

time, college students get the best of both worlds.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Get the unreal college deal, everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox game Pass ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn [e-mail] studentoffer while supplies last ends June 30th terms at aka Ms. CollegePC.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This is the Book Riot Podcast. I am Jeff o' Neill and I am Rebecca Schinsky. A preview of things to come here. I was just telling Rebecca that I read for knowledge research for the good of the pod. Also Theory of Golden by Alan Levy which is outselling the Correspondent by Virginia Evans 2 to 1 in the retiree book of the Year. The millennium runoff that we're seeing happen right now. So I would like everyone to stay tuned for my thoughts on Theo golden at the end.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's going to be an exciting front list foyer today.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I don't think it's not doing Theo golden any favors. Two things working against it. One that I read it, that's working against it. Two is that I don't mind saying for front list or for zero to well read. I am reading one of my favorite smartest books of all time today that we're going to record about tomorrow and that doesn't help it and also that I've been looking through Zero to well Read eyes at how this thing is put together and other things. So I'm not sure. So if if you are someone who has loved the of golden, you might want to skip the the end. I'm going to be as fair as I can be honest and unmerciful. As Lester B Says, the Zero to

[Rebecca Schinsky]

well Read goggles are such a double edged sword.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They are, they are. And I'm glad I don't get to look at myself with them. So there this preview of coming attractions of this own show. There's other coming attractions in the Zero to well Read feed right now. The Perks of Being a Wallfire by one Steposki, which is a favorite of yours and mine and some A good trip to the 90s. An interesting document there, Rebecca. And then let's see on oh a programming note. I had a couple people ask about the second half of our Mom's Dads and Grad show. It's going to be next week. We wanted to get the mom's part out. That was Rebecca's brainwave to do the mom's part and then get the other place a little bit closer to Dad's.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

As you're hearing this in the main feed on Monday as it drops. The second episode will be this Wednesday day.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We've also done a couple of spots of late. Rebecca, do you want to talk about what those have been and and why people should ask us? Because sometimes we say yes, we have.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We were just on W R T FM which is out of Madison, Wisconsin. It's great public radio station. So thanks to Jason Compton for inviting us. We got to talk with him for almost an hour about book podcasting in general, what the media landscape in books and reading is like. We talked a little bit about the origins of Zero to well read. It was a great time. We had a really fun time being on the show with him and a good conversation about all of so once again, if you've got a podcast, a radio show, a bookish event, we would love to hear from you. So you can email [e-mail] We've also got an episode in the can with Josh Johnson, who is a popular bookstagram and booktok folk. You might know him as Josh Reads Books. He also has a podcast called Compendium. So we're going to be on an upcoming episode of Compendium, probably coming out across the socials as well. We'll keep you all posted when that one comes out.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, check all those things out over there, the summer new release draft. If you haven't had a chance to go listen to it in our own Patreon, you can go find it there and vote. That's a really good hook. If you've never joined Patreon, we always have a good time doing that. What else is coming on the Patreon? Do a new book club or anything coming up. I didn't really look at the Ford.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We don't have any book club convos for a couple of weeks. We're going to do deals, deals, deals next week, which is always a listener fave. You go and comb all of the recent book deal announcements for the last quarter and present the most interesting, the most head scratching, the most Jeff and Rebecca core ones that you can find. We talk all about those. So that'll be next week. We'll have some book club stuff coming up. Late May, early June and then also mid May we will have our book fantasy league draft where Sharifah, our director of content and then friend of the pod, Laura McGrath will be joining us. We will be wrapping up the results from last year's fantasy league which was our first one. So we'll find out who won. We're gonna tally the points but we're also just gonna do a postmortem on that went because it was the first pancake. A lot of it was great. But I think we've all got some notes. Uh, and then you'll get to hear us live as we assemble the changes for the second draft and then go right into that second draft. So prep for it is going to be interesting. Without totally knowing the changes that we're making.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It will be a true post mortem. Cause I believe Sharifa Curb stomped us with two Pulitzer winner selections which we'll talk about here in a select in a minute.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, she, she really did a good job in her selection last year.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Trying to think of anyone that know that would be less likely to actually Curb stomp us. It might actually be Sharifa so that she, she so thoroughly. I think with that coup de coup de grace, a double coup de grace she gave us there at the end. But I'm anxious to see there and planning my strategy and looking ahead, well ahead and behind because of the way the book world works. We're going to be drafting things have been out for several months already. I think at least I have several things on my board, my preliminary board there. Check that out. Okay. We're doing a quick sponsor break and talk about those Pulitzer winners because that's, that's the big news of the Rebecca

[Sponsor Announcer]

Today's episode is brought to you by New York Times bestselling author Jack Campbell and AAN Vault, the best in science fiction, fantasy lit, RPG and horror. The latest by Jack Campbell is Squad Kill, which is an action packed military science fiction adventure. It follows Navy Officer Oz Aquino who is put in command of a research starship dispatched to an alien planet. So the planets show signs of intelligent life. There are these ruined cities and skeletal remains, but the only living things are these adorable aliens dubbed squonks and it all seems run of the mill until it isn't. Sounds like the squonks get a little squonky, if you know what I mean. So this is like Alien meets the Forever War. There's high praise for Jack Campbell coming from Brandon Sanderson who says, quote, it's an excellent blend of real science and space action. I enjoyed myself thoroughly from first to last page. Jack Campbell is also the author of 50 novels, 12 series, several short stories, anthologies, novellas and non fiction pieces. So get into all of that once you pick up Squad Kill by Jack Campbell. And thanks again to 8th and Vault for sponsoring this episode.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This episode is brought to you by Quince Working from home means that my getting dressed calculus is a little different than most people's. I need something that feels comfortable enough to wear all day at my desk, looks pulled together on video calls, but can also go straight to lunch with a friend or go to dinner out without having to change. The quince 100% European linen popover mini dress is doing all of that for me right now. I like it so much I have it in two colors. It's breathable, it moves well. It looks like I tried, but it it doesn't actually require much of me. And that is exactly what I need when I'm going from work, from home to important calls to dinner out. And that's the whole thing with Quince. The fabrics feel genuinely premium linen pieces starting around $30 and everything is priced 50 to 80% less than comparable brands because Quince works directly with ethical factories and they cut out the middlemen. You'll end up double checking the price every time because you won't be able to believe it. Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.com bookriot for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com bookriot for free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com bookriot.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Today's episode is brought to you by W.W. norton Company, publisher of one Leg on Earth by Pimi Aguda. This is one of my most anticipated of the year. It's set in Nigeria. There's mythology, there's lore, there's a dark mystery. So 23 year old Yasoya arrives in Lagos, ready to start her new life working for a slick architectural firm. She finds a city of adventure and opportunity. But Yasoya's idyllic version of Lego soon begins to seem naive. And it's darker. Stranger layers trouble her. Something is not right about Omi City. And as construction speeds ahead, stories of strange deaths in the city's open waters reach a fever pitch. And then after a chance encounter, Yasoye discovers she is pregnant. A revelation which puts her on a collision course with an inexplicable force that is as seductive as it is deadly. Now this is from the author of the National Book Award finalist, Ghost Roots. Ghost Roots is a short story collection. Like I said, I'm super excited to read this one. Make sure to pick up One Leg on Earth by Pimmy Aguda. And thanks again to W.W. norton Company for sponsoring this episode.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We were dearly hoping that Audition by Katie Kitamura would win. I think it's something better than kiss your sister that she was a finalist. Right? Like that's. We're still, I mean, we're happy of course, but it's not disappointing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is the worst case of always a bridesmaid, never a bride that I have seen in books in quite a while.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You mean audition for the awards last year?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, she was a finalists. Like she was on the long list for basically everything. She was a finalist for many of them and then just didn't win a single one. Audition was the first one that was announced of the Pulitzer finalists. Like the way they do it is here. Like in the ceremony. There's no information about the Pulitzers in advance. So in the ceremony you hear here are the three finalists and then here's the winner. And when they said audition by Katie Kitamura, I was like, okay, there's a chance. Got my hopes up for about 30 seconds, but glad to see her in the finals. Like it's been a lot of recognition for what was our shared favorite last year. It just would have been the cherry on top if she had rounded out the publishing year with a win.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. The winner is angel down by Daniel Krause, which I have read. My son read it first, it's one of his favorite books of all time. So I've just got to say the taste genes live, Rebecca. They thrive. We're gonna live into the future here.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You're raising them right over there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Wow. What can you say about that? Angel down, of course, is Daniel Krause wrote Whale Fall, which was a huge hit. And apparently there's a trailer out for the movie adaptation that's going to be hitting next year.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Cinemacon.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's the Martian. But what if you were inside of a whale? Which I promise I did not have an aneurysm, and that is the correct sentence for that, unlike anybody else. And I'm so glad to see this win for a couple of reasons. A, I think the book is tremendous. I think he's an extremely interested wr. And maybe I don't want. I don't want to get the gloves out right now, but I think we have to have a heavyweight match for master of spec fic literary fiction. We've got Whitehead, we've got Krause, we've got Mandel. We got. We got some. You got. Because now Krause, with this win and Whale Fall and the movie and the sales of that book, this is serious business. This is a cool book. It's told in a single sentence. So we're doing art things, right? We're doing, like.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I know that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Art things. It's about a group Of World War I soldiers who are a bit of a dirty dozen. Like, let's say they're not winning any medals here and they're sent out to do, I think, dig a hole or take care. I can't remember at the beginning. And then they find this is part of it. It's in the title. An angel there that has fallen. And then what happens there? I'm see, I'm seeing that the horror community is claiming this as one of their own. I can see that. I didn't think that immediately. I think it's more magical realism almost, though not in a Marquez sense. An angel hitting the ground is much more. I don't know, Yucatan Peninsula kind of asteroid than the. The very light stuff that Marquez and traditional magical realism is doing. But really cool book I have. I don't. I don't know if you have any sense of it, Rebecca, but I 1 thought I was going to kick to you is, I think, part of the surprise of. Or not surprise. I was surprised to see this, though. Once I saw. I was like, that makes sense. It's a great book and it's doing experimental things if rather than Atria Books was. If this was an MCD title, would we felt differently about it going in, like, as an awards contender, if you what I'm saying.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, you know, maybe like, this one was just. This is a my bad situation. Like, it just wasn't on my radar, really, until the very end of the year last year. And then when the New York Times dropped their list of best books of the year, it's done alphabetically, and angel down was right at the top. And there was a lot of chatter in the book world that day about like, hey, Daniel Krause, come on out. I believe it was in the top 10 for the year. The New York Times, not just the 100 notable. So, like, huge deal. Just sort of come behind. Like, I don't think any of us drafted it for the fantasy book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I should have taken it. Why?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Anyway, hindsight, but kind of just kind of a surprise. And I. Maybe the imprint was part of that. Maybe the. My read at least was that Whalefall is a little more straight genre where angel down seems like it's doing more literary things, so. And I haven't read either of them,

[Jeff O'Neill]

but is that a cool. No. I mean, it's super. I think both of them are pretty weird. They're not straight anything. I'd never read anything like Whalefall before. I don't think. I'd rarely really read anything by angel down before. And I was like, I don't have a good comp for Kraus at this point. Like, I don't know what this is. Like, what his next book could be. Could be anything at this point. Now that he's gotten this love that

[Rebecca Schinsky]

we love that zone.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm gonna have to read him.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I think you should. I think this book. I know Lib really loved this book. I really loved it. Atria Books is a Simon and Schuster imprint, and it tends.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It leans more commercial.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It has some literary, but it leans more commercial. Yeah. Like, the Frederick Bachmann books are Atria. Lisa Jewell is the Other Black Girl, which was the Zakiya Della Delilah Harris, which came out a couple of years ago, but kind of a thriller, literally. Like, I think upmarket literary slash genre. Again. That's. That's no slag on anything. But I don't know that there's a lot of award. There's not a lot of Pulitzer winners on this list. Now. There's like, Reese's Book Club stuff. The Three Lives of Kate K by Kate Fagan. But I think it's a little of an outlier there, but good on them.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, congratulations to them and that's just great news for Daniel Cross. There was a lot of celebration happening in the book riot back channels about this and a lot of folks really love it, are happy to see it. I heard from bookseller friends that they were happy about it and hearing good things, things from their communities. So a good win there. I'm very pleased that my conspiracy theory tinfoil hat moment about Karen Russell did not come true. They didn't give her a make good for the antidote. And then we do want to make sure we mention the third finalist was Stag Dance, a quartet of short story novella situations by Tori Peters from Random House.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So which I did not get to that was on Dissipated. I think I had it on the it books. I don't know. Wherever the list is, it moved up some slots. It's hard to say at this point what we're going to get to other on the Pulitzer side. It's always hard to know. So that's the big one for us. What do you want to say about the other book category winners, Rebecca?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, really appropriate for this year as the US prepares to turn 250 years old. Jill Lepore's we the People A History of the Constitution won the history category. That's a big book. It's been on my coffee table for months. Gonna be diving into it soon, but that came out from Live. Wright never bet against Jill Lepore. Like, I think that the writing is I mean, she's a wonderful writer and pretty accessible and the accessibility of her writing makes me think that it's like more casual than it actually is. But of course, this writing takes a ton of research and a ton of thought. She's one of the best doing it today. So I was really pleased to see her nominated for the Pulitzer. But if I were guessing, like, usually it's the books that look really serious that get nominated for Pulitzers for history. And Lepore has an intense, intentionally more like open, welcoming feel to it, which I also think is really great. Other notables, Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yi Yang. One for memoir, Memoir and autobiography. And then one of the other finalists, Bibliophobia by Sarah Chaheya. You spoke with her back on First Edition.

[Jeff O'Neill]

First Edition and I talked about Clam Down, a Metamorphosis by Annalise Chen in Frontless Foyer Memoir, in which she imagines herself as a clam.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And sort of of her own parental struggles, I thought was very, very cool. That book I really want to read Things in Nature Milligro by Union Lee. This. This actually can't. This does nothing to the amount. I want to read this. I want to read this at like, 10 out of 10. Except I absolutely cannot read this book. I. I just don't think I can. Rebecca. So if you don't know. It's a memoir of losing her youngest son to suicide, and then six years prior, her older son had died in the same manner. I don't have it. I really don't think I have. I'm not kidding. I don't know that I can do that. I believe this is a wonderful book. I just can't get there. I thought it was. So I'm not sure of anything else to say about that. There's, weirdly, three finalists in addition to the winner in Memoir, autobiography. Usually there's only two, so I'll tell you When I'm Home, a memoir by Halal Alyan from Avid Reader Press and Simon Schutzer, which I know nothing about. I mean, I didn't know anything about it. I looked.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't know.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Before this. I love this category. Probably this. In the fiction category, if you said you have to read all the books in two, I would pick those.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, me too.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What else on the biography front. Oh, go ahead, go ahead.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I would say the general nonfiction winner was there's no Place for Us Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone. Big book from last year, a lot of conversation about it. Sort of in the tradition of Evicted by Matthew Desmond, which was also, you know, very celebrated and highly decorated. And then. Yeah. Who won the biography? Oh, the Schuyler sisters.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That one of the Schuyler sisters? Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Pride and Pleasure. The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution by Amanda Vale. A lively and detailed biography of two daughters of wealthy and influential Dutch landowners who are also featured in Hamilton, who colored our nation's history, using present tense to tell their story and past tense to chronicle the dramatic sweep of the American Revolution.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Big shouts to the University of Arkansas president, James McWilliams, who got a finalist nod for the Life and Poetry of Frank Stanford, which is a poet I didn't know much about until I looked at this. I think I'd heard about this before. Died young. Congratulations. I love to see the university presses. Norton always overrepresented in these sorts of things.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

To Norton.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I've got my eye on one of the other biography finalists that True Nature, the Pilgrimage of Peter Matheson. Great travel.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Where are you on Matheson? Have you read any of that?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Not nearly as much as I should have.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Okay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, that'll be a retirement project sometime.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I think that's probably right. So cool that. I mean, that's the Pulitzers. I. I think now that we've come to the end of the award season, part of what we'll do in that wrap up of the draft to say, like, what was the book of the year? I think we're ready to sort of do that maybe at this point. And the answer is, I don't know that there was one. But you win the Pulitzer, you're on the short list for the New York Times best books of the year, if there is one. It might. It might be Angel Down.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. It's really interesting to have a sort of critical hit that arrives late in the year that we weren't just all that the industry just wasn't talking about through the course of the whole year. We. We did wrap up 20, 25 packaging.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I really do think.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think so too.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Think it is packaging.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It looked too commercial.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Publishes, publish. It ends with us like, and I'm guilty as that as anything. And even the COVID design, if you look at it, I think it's sort of. It's not clear. It's in the middle. It's like multipurpose, but then kind of does none of the work. Like, it doesn't read a strong literary. It also doesn't read a strong genre. And you know why? Because it's not either.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, it's really interesting. This will. This win is going to make like book review editors and folks like us slow down and take notice of whatever Daniel Krause does next.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, Daniel Krause. I thought just in general, you're saying we're gonna slow down. I was like, ow, how could we?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, but I think the next Daniel Krause book people will have their radar up for this is he's writing in a more literary zone. Let's pay some attention.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And he's had a really interesting career and maybe we should talk about that at some point. I was thinking in terms of like, if this had happened next year, let's say this book came out this year and the award was next year and Whalefall was out. He might have like, he might have had the Percival Everett moment with a thing in the theater and the new book coming out. And I'm sure he's doing just fine now. But I was thinking about, boy, it would be cool if the timing was just offset a little bit this at this point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Have you seen the trailer for The.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, I don't think it's out. I heard being talked about on the Big Picture over.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, that's where I heard.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Which I know we both listened to it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You know what they.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So there we go.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Talk about on their Cinemacon breakdown was any trailer for Clara and the sun. So which I know some of the

[Jeff O'Neill]

false stuff is not. Oh yeah. I don't know. They didn't even mention it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. So I don't know. Maybe, I mean it's one podcast, so maybe they didn't happen to see it. But I, I'm just gonna be here remaining nervous about the Clara and the sun adaptation until we've seen a trailer.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I've come around. I think maybe, you know, there's the only prediction market that's trading on Claire and the sun hype is our own like a bespoke. And I think whatever the price is, we had it. I'm buying at that price. I think, I think now it's underrated because I, I, I don't know why I'm just waking up today feeling better. This is always a good way to trade, right? This is what Bob says.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It works super well. Are you interested in some GameStop stock?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, sure. Who's gonna buy eBay? GameStop's gonna just buy.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I saw that. Wild.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Actually, that reminds me, I read a quote by Michael Burry who was commenting on Michael Burry, who is best known as one of the big short traders. I think he's the one.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He's the one that Christian Balen Bale

[Jeff O'Neill]

plays and he said something really interesting. It's like never confuse debt with creativity. And I think there's like a metaphor for living in there somewhere. I really need to get into that at some point because there's something there that's resonating with me. All right, anyway, Pulitzer's congratulations to all the fiction one which we pay attention to the most. We would have been over the moon with audition, but I think this win is actually maybe more more interesting.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I feel good about this win.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I do too.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Yeah. I'm not mad about it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So now we can just shift gears right into 2026 because actually the New York Times best books of the year so far came the Pulitzer announcement. Let's get it together, people. I don't know what else to say. I think what you've read one, you've read two of these at this point, right?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Let's see more. Two.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Did you, you didn't do Bell Burden?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, I'm still scrolling. I've read.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh Three. You've read Keefe too. The Ride and Keefe.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I have not read that one yet. That's on. Bob and I are road tripping next week. I've read three of these I've read. So let's take it from the top.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Sorry. This is really good Internet to listen to us scroll and say not that one.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Kin by Tayari Jones leads off the

[Jeff O'Neill]

list, which I think is my next, by the way. I need some.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's a great read. I mean, she's just in such a perfect zone for, you know, got selected for a big book club, is at the top of this New York Times list. I expect to see her on the end of year list. And I really do think that this is an awards contender. So would not be surprised to see that they've also honored. This is where the Serpent Lives by by Daniel Mnudin, a big literary hit earlier this year. Or critical darling debut. The Keeper by Tana French, which I

[Jeff O'Neill]

am saving for the summer. I have it. I'm saving it for the summer.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Then Transcription by Ben Lerner, which we have both read recently. Book clubbed on the Patreon over there. So good. So good. Starshiped by Cat Sebastian, which is a gay rivals to lovers road trip romance. Sounds super fun. About two people who meet working on a science fiction TV show and somehow find themselves on a road trip and also falling in love with each other. Yesteryear by Carol Claire Burt.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was very interested to see this on the list.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Me too. Trad wife thriller, situation. It's been so big that it's already getting a backlash from people who are like, this book is overrated. It's been out for like two weeks. What are we doing here? But that made it Strangers by Bill Burden. Big divorce memoir that's done huge numbers. Yeah. Fear and Fury by Heather Ann Thompson, which is about the Reagan 80s and Bernie Goetz shootings and the rebirth of white rage. Very timely.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Interesting. Vineland companion. I was thinking about that sort of doing that for Zero to War. I didn't think about that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That is an interesting.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The historical context would be interesting there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Days of Love and Rage by Anand Gopal, which is a chronicle of Syria's 14 year civil war told through the stories of six dissidents.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That sounds very cool.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I've heard it's a really powerful read. Then of course, London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe, which I know you loved.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Unbelievable.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Cannot wait. Like, it's kind of killing me that I haven't gotten to read it yet, but I promised Bob I would save it for road trip audience.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So next week, Vanessa. Vanessa went to go see him here in Portland and gave a talk and said he was tremendous.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, you got, you know, he had on a great J. Crew jacket and he did Patrick Radden Keefe thing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, like she told me something else I was gonna remember to tell you, but it's completely. It's gone. Maybe I'll shake it. So helpful in the fullness of time. Y. Yeah, that's a good. Not a classic anecdote, as they say

[Rebecca Schinsky]

in the boundless deep. Young Tennyson. Science and the Crisis of Belief by Richard Holmes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

When I'm retired.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yep.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The War within the Black Struggle in Vietnam and At Home by Will Haygood for a fresh perspective on military history. And then the third one that. That I've read at least a chunk of is on Morrison by Namwali Serpell. Great literary.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I read the introduction, and I don't. Maybe the next time I pick up a Morrison or Zero to well Read

[Rebecca Schinsky]

or something, will I read the Bluest Eye chapter. Since we had recently done that for Zero to well read. And it felt fresh. And then I have read SULA enough times that I was like, I think I'll, you know, pick up enough of the criticism to make that useful. But she moves through Morrison's whole catalog in order. Moves through the novels in order. And I kind of have. I'm saving the rest of it for, like, when we go back to Beloved, when we go back to Jazz or Paradise, pick up Serpell and take her along with us.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, I may be biased because I've read them. Exposure therapy is a real thing. But in terms of things that are going to be around at the end, Keith Jones and Lerner, that's what I'm looking at right now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think so, too.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The history stuff, it's impossible for me because I don't know what people are looking for there. I don't. And other things come out. Richard Holmes earlier book, the Age of Wonder was a huge hit.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, that was him.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, that was him. So that's one where I know a little bit more about the author. And who knows, some of them could be. I'm sure they're all great. But just in terms of what I've seen and what I've read and the kinds of things we've seen before yesteryear, I don't. It may stick around on a lot of lists. It's got real Barnes and Noble book of the year. It does potential Amazon's book of the Year. Because they those two outlets and it's not right or wrong, it's just differently. They're thinking about people buying books like general readers buying books. And they're looking for something that, that is interesting but also a little more accessible sometimes. And it feels like this is a pretty straight forward hook, as strange as that sounds.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Maybe. I think Ken is my front runner for that as well. Like we're going to be battling it out for Tayari Jones in the fantasy league.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, we definitely are. I think that's a really good point. Okay, so that was a look at 2025 and everything. 2026. And then something that's going to just be going on forever is copyright holders suing giant AI complaints companies.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yep.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So this is a new one where five publishers and Scott Turow, which. What, what is that a flex? Like what, what happened? What's the tick tock? Why isn't he as part of the thing? I don't understand.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is something that like, I would love the legal people listening to this to help us out with because a lot of these suits have been like a bunch of publishers and one author or a bunch of publishers and two or three authors. And like, like, do the suits have to have an author attached to demonstrate

[Jeff O'Neill]

or is it a PR thing? Just have like a human name on it that people recognize?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, yeah, what is the utility of that? Because like these publishers represent thousands and thousands of authors whose work has been affected. The charge here is basically the same as the claims in all of the previous ones. This is Hachette, McMillan, McGraw Hill, Elsevier and Cengage, along with Scott Turow. And it's a class action suit against Meta for copyright infringement. For use training their llama LLM. We've got to get better at naming things, guys. First of all, I kind of like

[Jeff O'Neill]

that one, Rebecca, because it's an LLM and there's a double L in it. I like that one. Sorry.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But they've also. One thing that makes this one unique is that they name Mark Zuckerberg individually in the suit as well, with the claim that he was directly involved and enthusiastically encouraged the developers to pirate copies of ebooks to use for training the models. So you might recall that in a previous case, in the anthropic case. Actually in the anthropic case, the judge ruled that use of copyrighted materials was fine. It was under fair use as long as they were legally acquired.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But should someone say not acquire them legally? I'm just putting it. I don't know. But I'm just saying if just putting it out there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And then Anthropic and Meta had already fessed up in multiple cases that they had used pirated copies of ebook books. So that's where the Anthropic settlement, that big $1.5 billion settlement came in of, like, they've admitted to pirating. We figured it all out. It's going to be a billion and a half dollars split up between all of the authors. So this is specifically about pirated copies of copyrighted materials that were used. And we'll see how it goes. Like, the judges in these cases have not all agreed with each other, but they have been pretty unsympathetic across the board to the argument that just the existence of AI that can reproduce similar material or flood the market with AI books, which is absolutely happening, is dilution that negatively impacts authors enough that it constitutes copyright violation. Like, which damages to show and then how to show that they exist is really tricky. And the judges are, I think, also still figuring out what that looks like. And then there is the, like, the secondary thing of, like, will the judges be sympathetic to it? But also, are these authors even making a compelling case to the public? Like, some of it is AI generated works. Like, I know this. If I go on Amazon to search for something for research, if I put in a popular book title, often the first couple returns are like, summary of

[Jeff O'Neill]

this book horrible and stuff. It used to be for really popular things, we do something on our back end where we can automatically link to books. It's to the point now I have to make sure I'm not automatically linking. Do you double check? Because it used to be like Huck Finn, but now it's, you know, mid list novels will have a study guide to, like, no, that is totally AI.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, like, this is totally fake. But like, one of the things that Tarot and some of the other authors impacted are complaining about is that, like, you can ask the llama model to summarize what happens in a book and it will give you a detailed summary. And their case is, if you can get a detailed summary, then that affects the market that these authors are in, because then why would consumers go and buy the book? And I've been thinking about this. Like, I can really see that for nonfiction. If you're like, explain to me the big points of, I don't know, Atomic Habits by James Clear. Summarize it. Like, I don't think this is actually a compelling argument for fiction. Like, give me a summary of what happens in this book is not the reason that people pick up a novel to read. Like. Like maybe when. If you're. If you've been assigned it for school. But people who are going to read fiction for fun. Like the point is to have the reading experience, not just to get a bullet point list of. Here are the main things that happen in yesteryear. Like you actually want to read the story.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And again, we've talked about this a lot and I am not a legal scholar. I don't know the ins and outs here, but sort of my plain Jeff reading of that particular is if a I could read something and give you a summary of it, the LLMs can just do it better. Right. It's the same kind of work product whether or not the machines you have to feed it in there. Like I have to feed it into myself. So like on a moral is not quite right. But an equivalency level like that's available out there. What's not available out there is write me a book that sounds a lot like that's like Scott Turow, which they can do if you put. Or a short story or whatever. That's a. That's a thing I cannot do myself in one second. And if someone else did it and said here is my Scott Turow look alike they would be sued for that. For copyright infringement. The thing here is, and I have to say that that particular one I'm not sure about. I am sure a rooting for these plaintiffs to gut these things like a pig for stealing the books and just using them because all they would have needed to do is pay for them. And like. And then we have a different kind of conversation. There's this. There's a moment in Star Wars I was thinking about this particular quote. Zuckerberg himself personally authorized and actively encouraged the infringement. Reminds me of this line in Return of the Jedi when Mon Moth is like describing like we can go blow up the Death Star. And we hear Emperor Palpatine himself is overseeing the final stages of construction. Meaning we could get him too if we take the whole thing out. So I think there is very much a inclination here. I guess if we do a quick AI check in earlier, like a year or two ago I was like sort of benignly interested. Now I'm just sick of it. I'm not even morally opposed to it. I may be that. But the overwhelming feeling I have right now is I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of AI podcast AI stuff in my. Whatever. I haven't seen anything cool AI has done as far as I can tell. I'm just like, maybe if you're making a bunch of spreadsheets or you're doing a bunch of busy work, but like I'm not really finding ways to work it into my own workflow. So much of what we do doesn't feel amenable to it. Maybe the other people see differently but like just as a personal level I've come around to just sort of discuss. It's like gauche. Like using AI to me is gauche right now. That's kind of where I am at this point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I mean I'm also a billion percent done with the discourse all the way on all sides about it. Like the extreme discourse on both ends is deeply uninteresting. Both the like avid. You've got to use this. It's changing the world, people, all the, the layers of grift that are happening with it. Like Mel Robbins out there being like ladies, we've got oh, I wonder.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, the Reese Witherspoon in hello Sunshine selling Purdue.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And yeah, Mel Robbins doing the like girls. I'm so disturbed because it turns out that we're not adopting AI at the same rates that men are and we're going to be left behind and actually here's a course you can sign up for that'll teach you. And I'm going to make money off the top of it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Certainly, certainly planned with AI.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, like that's, I'm tired of all of it. Like the you, you have to use this in every part of your life is old and was also never really relevant. And then the people who are like on the other end of every bit of AI is evil and bad and if you've ever touched it, you're a terrible loser. Like I also have no time for that. Both ends lack nuance and it's just not interesting. I think that like the promised future of AI is just not gonna be that amazing thing that the tech world that way wanted us to believe.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's gonna be all the worst parts. It's gonna be like taking some jobs away and then we have to, we're gonna, we have to wade through so much digital shit.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's gonna be mind boggling.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right? It will be very annoying. Like I do think it can be useful in my personal use case. It is useful for like not quite busy work but like yeah, you know, structuring of a spreadsheet or honestly the most utility that I got have gotten out of it is like I'm trying to Jailbreak the thermostat in a hotel room so I can make it actually cold enough.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Take a little picture and put it in chat GPT and be like this is the thermostat in this hotel room. It won't go below 72. How do I free myself and get some instructions? That's really helpful but like that's not life changing stuff. It's not going to make me into an apostle or an apologist for it. And it's mostly I think just very boring. And the fact that they stole all of these books to train it like you gotta pay for them friends and that's like this is just so truly like the hubris of move fast break things where they were like it's cool. We'll just steal all of them and then admit to stealing all of them. Like yeah, we used pirated copies because we just didn't want to slow down.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like yeah right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Pay for it. Pay out the wazoo.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Pay out the wazoo. Yeah. I hope they get really. My hope is that they have to pay through the nose. That really hurts them and that some precedents are set because I, I'm just not interested.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, like let's get to some actual policy, you know, like this. Yeah like actual policy and settled law would be really interest but this phase is annoying and frustrating and bureaucratic and

[Jeff O'Neill]

so TikTok speaking of things I'm just not interested in right now. Also annoying, frustrating kind of TikTok Bestseller book talks bestseller list. This right now is only uk. I had an unpaywalled version of this and now I've switched computer. Oh, I've got it on the other side but also pretty boring. Rebecca is my uptake of this list. I guess exactly what you would think except not. But also just as boring. That's. That's my quick summary of this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I'm looking at the top 20 and on an eyeball check, one book of the top 20 is by a person of color. It lands right at number 10. It's alchemized by Sin Lin Yu and again as you said, only available in the UK. This is a partnership between UK book charts and TikTok. Heated rivalry is number one. Taming seven by Chloe Walsh is number two. She also has the number four spot, the number five spot, the number seven spot, the number nine spot, the number 13 spot. Sarah J. Maas shows up a couple times. Colleen Hoover shows up a couple times. Rebecca Yarrow shows up a couple times. Mel Robbins speaking of is at number 15 with the let them theory. And the only thing I'm happy to see on this list, the Secret History by Donna Tartt at number six.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Who would have believed? I mean I guess we would have

[Rebecca Schinsky]

believed Dark Acade, baby.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Just because Dark Editions thing. But also we saw in our zero to well read numbers like Secret History outperformed I think almost everything else.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. It's in like the first two weeks episodes. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Which is very interesting to see. Methodology here is all over the mess. We have to take their words for it. They don't have sales data. They have some tools. Again, I think it's sort of proximally indicative rather than let's. Let's look at number seven versus number nine and try to make some hay out of that. I will be one note pretty bored. Yeah. Out of Paige. Paige Lewis's canon making the publisher's weekly summer preview which we're gonna talk about here because that was one of my it book debut novels. I just kind of like the look of it. You know, kind of like a look like the look of this book. Again, we can put the link in the show notes. It's probably best to browse. They do a really good job of going by specific genres. The Cool Machine by Colson Whitehead I was really glad to see there. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I found myself surprised. Maybe that's an indication of where I am. Like I want to play out the string with this, but I'm already anticipating the next Coulson Whitehead book after Cool Machine is kind of where I've gone on to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. It's just fair, I guess. Kind of double edged sword of Whitehead doing a trilogy where it's fun to see him do the trilogy but also especially the two of us really like to see all the different things that Colson Whitehead is gonna do and what's the next trick that he's gonna take out of his bag. So I'm excited to wrap this up and that the third book sounds good. Like three books in a trilogy, all being great and fun to read is the kind of thing that you get with Colson Whitehead and not necessarily with other tril writers stoked to see the industry rally around that. I will just note for listeners if you are going to click on this PW summer reading guide. It's. It's huge and wonderful. There's a ton of titles. Their design remains really hard to navigate. So like when you land on the link that you'll see in the show notes, make sure you look at the teal navigation bar across the top of

[Jeff O'Neill]

the screen that's somehow blurry and and faded. I don't understand what the I complain

[Rebecca Schinsky]

about this every year. Yeah PW gods hear my cry like but it has staff picks. Fiction, mystery, thriller, romance, and on and on. But make sure you look at that top nav bar so you can pick get their recommendations in all the genres and not just those first 10 that are staff picks.

[Jeff O'Neill]

An extremely Jeff Corps book that I had not yet come across is I'm scrolling back to it how not to Know, how to Not Know by Simone Stoltzkoff, which is the value of uncertainty in a world that demands answers. Thank you very much Norton. I see you. Let's. Let's. Let's be together forever.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Norton I'm really happy to see the new Ben Fountain called Rasputin Swims Potomac on the South. The staff picks been looking at that. Really love Ben Fountain, but excited to see him make this big list. That's a good vote of confidence. And as always, the PW lists are like interesting and weirder than anybody else is doing because they're just casting such a wide net.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Because they've read most of these, right? They're playing like that's, that's the difference is they've read most of these. Most of these, yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You're gonna run into titles on here that you haven't seen on any other seasonal preview. So like if the Goodreads anticipated lists are all looking pretty samey same to you because they are, the PW list is a great service and a good place to go.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I've got to say the the IT Books of May did very well. Good job. Yeah, they did selection a lot of stuff coming out here.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Good sleep is everything. That's why Ollie's Science back support is made with a blend of melatonin and L theanine for both kiddos and grows. So when your mind won't switch off, you've got something that can help your racing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance. Find Ollie Sleep Solutions for the whole [e-mail] that's o l l y.com experience a membership that backs what you're building with American Express Business platinum. Unlock over $3,500 in business and travel value annually with statement credits on select purchases from brands like Dell, Hilton and Adobe and other benefits. American Express Business Platinum there's nothing like it. Based on total potential value of statement credits on select purchases and other benefits, enrollments required monthly and other limits and terms apply. Learn [e-mail] Business Platinum starting a business can seem like a daunting task unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing, to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into Sign up for your $1 per month [e-mail] specialoffer things

[Jeff O'Neill]

that will not be coming out this year, interestingly, notably Greta Gerweg's the Magician's Nephew, which is chronological. Well, that's not right in the chronology of the stories. The first of the Narnia books, which I think is just going to be. That's our cross to bear. We're about going to talk about how this is not in fact the lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In a way I think it's bad because that's confusing and it's a lesser known. I think it's also good because I think the adaptations of Narnia have some weight to them. They haven't always been successful. And there's. So this is coming out. So this was going to be fall 2026, Thanksgiving and now it's going to be February 12, 2027. So there's that piece of it, the other piece of it. Let's take, let's get it all out so we can talk about what these things might mean. Yeah, the other piece of it is that's gonna have a much longer theatrical window. Netflix has committed to a 75 day theatrical window. I think that's what I saw. Something 45. So still for Netflix that might as well 10 years. That's a six weeks theatrical window, which is extraordinarily interesting. Gerwig, hot off the heels of the Barbie phenomenon success Smash, you balled up and used her clout and formed it into a fist and smashed Netflix in the face to get a bundle of money and some guardrails around the theatrical experience. She really wants this to be in movie theaters. So there's that. I don't know what to make of moving it out of Thanksgiving. Is it not ready? February 12th is a very strange time for something of this size. That's a very strange time.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, it's. This was going to be such a perfect family holiday movie and it also was going to be competing with the new Hunger Games film that's coming out around the same time. The end of the year is packed, but February 12th next year is currently the day where the adaptation of the Nightingale by Kristin Hannah is also coming out. So, like, book people are going to have a big one no matter what. I think this has mostly to do with just what else is in theaters and moving things around that Netflix traditionally will do a simultaneous release where a film hits the platform, hits the streaming platform, and then might be in movie theaters for a week or two for people who either really want to see it on a big screen or who don't have Netflix and are going to go out to a theater. But Gerwig wants an exclusive theatrical release window, so she's going to get these 45 days where it's only in theaters, and then it will come to Netflix. That's a big deal. It's also, I think, a product of the fact that Netflix is no longer in the business of trying to buy Warner Brothers. Like, they were promising bigger theatrical windows and for more of their products when they were in that Warner Brothers conversation, but now they're not. So it's. It's kind of finally settled. And it might just have to do with, like, how many theaters they can get it into and what else they would be competing with, not just for audience space, but, like, literal screens.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That was my thought. I had two, I don't know, idle speculation. One is Avengers, Doomsday and Dune 3 come around around Christmas time, and Jumanji comes out a little bit before. So if they want the big premium format screens, the iMaxes, the Dolby Digital, this Infinity vision that Disney's trying to make, it's like them trying to make Fetch happen. I don't know. But if they want six weeks of that, it's going to run right into Christmas time and over the new year, and there's going to be a lot of stuff in there. So maybe they just want some more space. I think dodging the Hunger Games sunrise at the Reaping is super smart. I think that movie has much more juice behind it than this is going to. Just judging from that book is good. The Hunger Games is so much more relevant. I was thinking, like, who cares? Who cares about Narnia?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. It also dodges the Harry Potter release

[Jeff O'Neill]

on hbo, which is Christmas Christmas. My. My second thought was it also dodges for, like, awards consideration. It becomes a 2027 movie. Like, I don't know, it's gonna be Best Picture, but maybe production design, digital effects, like some of those downstream things. One thing we see with these fantasy franchises, especially the ones that become sort of critical successes, Dune Lord of the Rings is the subsequent iterations sort of climb the ladder of prestige. Right. I think there's a lot of chatter right now that maybe Dune 3 will be a best picture winner. Possibly. If it's good. You know, Return of the King won best picture, won like a billion awards, maybe. And Gerwig has said she wants to be in that kind of business making. So maybe there's a world in which this is part of. Like, I don't want to compete with Dune 3 for any of the craft. I don't. Have you seen that trailer?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't be competing with the Odyssey, which is a jewelry for any of those. Like, so maybe 27. I've heard that 27 slate is not as stacked as 26 is. 26 is an unbelievable movie.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is a great movie year.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So I think that part of it makes sense. So my initial is like, oh, no. But maybe there's crazy like a fox is the great double G. Greta Gerwig here.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think there's some strategy going on here. And excited to see that she got this theatrical release window. That's great news for moviegoing in general. Go see this in theaters if you're gonna see it. For also for zero to well read programming. I'm really. I'm relieved that I don't have to cram it into the fall.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, I think it's time to get to front list for you bought to you by thriftbooks.com where you can buy 19 million new and used books. It's probably 19.1 million now. There's 4 million new books every year. Again, some of those are digital. So we're probably up to the 20 or 22 by the time time. We're actually updating our priors here about the number of books in the system. For ThriftBooks.com you can get free shipping on orders of $15 or more and get a free and get credit towards your next reading reward, which is a redemption for a free book. Look, if you're buying books for moms, dads or grads, send it to them. Have it sent to your house. You can have it sent to them. Get free shipping. Buying books for other people. You still can get the credit. Buy through your account. Get. Get some of those credits in there and you could do that that way. Thanks so much to ThriftBooks.com for sponsoring the show. Also books, games, movies, movies, movies, music and more. I know we're in the physical media era and you can go to thriftbooks.com to get a bunch of that stuff. All right, we both read Inside the Box by David Epstein. So maybe let's get. I don't want to say get that away. Let's take on that one first.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, let's talk about that and then I'll do my quick novel hit and then I will clear out for you to talk about that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You get a cup of soup and a sweater and we'll, we'll get into the. Of Golden.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

All right. Yeah. Inside the Box by David Epstein. I'm not quite done with it, but I'm done enough. Enough to talk about it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You absolutely are. You could have been done enough halfway through this book. I think that's. Which is not an indictment of the ideas. I don't. I'm sorry I stepped on what you were gonna say.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, no, you're right. It's the nature of the business self help book. Like we talk about this every time that one of us or both of us read something like this. That it's just extended illustrations of the main concepts which I think are useful if you're trying to figure out how to apply these kinds of ideas. But if, if you're, if you really just want the nugget of truth. Like it could have been a New Yorker article or a really good TED talk. But this is a book about why we need constraints and sort of pushing back on the notion that absolute creative freedom is actually the thing that will help you be the most creative. I listened to it on audio. I think you listened to it too.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I did too.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Where did you land?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Similarly, like, I think because Epstein himself is not a researcher like say an Angela Duck worker or M. Grant, he can't talk through bring to bear novel experiments and talk through methodology. And so I say no. Duckworth and Grant are now popular writers, so they are actually doing more aggregating of other people's surveys. Because that's just what happened at this point, which, which is fine. But it's a lot of anecdotes and like versions and there's some studies and things like that. This is going to be familiar to people to do like the, the biggest takeaway for me was this, which, which is adding boundaries. It's not the boundaries that help you. Mostly is if you don't have boundaries, you're going to default to strategies you've used before. So it's really about avoiding defaulting to extant answers, strategies or habits of mind. Right. So the constraint is just don't do that. A constraint makes you operate outside of what's comfortable with you, which I guess intuitively is sort of obvious, like why else would a constraint help you? But I think you can do. You can make your own constraint for anything saying, okay, what are my first five ideas? Don't do that. Or like put them aside and like look at ideas 6, 7 and 8. Because those are the ones that you have to think about orthogonally. So I think it can be quite helpful. I think that could be helpful in sort of a daily. More of a daily mode. Like you don't need to. To put on some structure or five part process or the outside the box strategy. Copyright 2026 David Epstein Just like the reasons unconstrained creativity can be more mud spinning and derivative is because you're just doing what you already. It got me thinking about LLMs a little bit actually. I was thinking about that because it's just defaulting to the mean, which is defaulting to the familiar. You have to do a lot of work to get any of these things to do something that's actually seems groundbreaking, interesting, edgy, otherwise sort of dangerous as an idea just because it's sort of proposing because everything's available to it. So it's just picking the most common solution.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The other flavor of example that he gives are like cases where like developers of a software product.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Didn't have any constraints, so they just kept chasing the things that were interesting to them and that lit up their curiosity.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I wanted a book about that company, by the way. Yes, whatever that like I read a whole book about that company, but that

[Rebecca Schinsky]

they never actually like met a deadline or solidified like the one product that made sense to take to market. And, and that's like, I mean we know that feeling as people who do creative work. Like it's really easy to get in the dopamine firing zone of like, and then we could do this and then we can do this and what if we chase it down this path and you know, like, that's a really fun place to be, but it's not always the most useful. And figuring out like what you're trying to make and why you're trying to make it. It made me think a lot about genre fiction actually. Like the utility of the trope that like for if you're writing a mystery or you're writing a romance, like you do have a certain box that you're writing inside. But you can then go like totally ham in how you execute, ringing those bells of the tropes. And that's where the real fun lives for writers who do it really well, it's where the real fun lives as a reader for genre fiction. But, like, I valued the reminder also that he hits on of that. The biggest mistake that companies make and that creative people make is when you're faced with a problem adding things instead of taking them away. Like, it's just really easy to default in problem solving mode, to like, okay, well, then we'll just add this, and we'll add this and we'll do this thing on top. But that really taking a pause of, okay, what could we actually take away from how we're doing? This can often be the way to crack it. The. The anecdotes are really fun. There's a lot of writers in here. There's great stuff.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Isabelle, a lot of literary Christian. Yes, yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And it's like Isabel Allende locking herself in her office every year on January 8th to start writing a book. And like, all the rituals she had around it was extremely aspirational for me.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. How much is discipline? I think the literary criticism stuff was a little hit and miss. That one, I thought was interesting. I thought the stuff about Virginia Woolf moving from night and day to Jacob's room was fascinating. I bought less. The James Joyce uses the. The. The Odyssey story for Ulysses so that people feel more comfortable. I was like, you know what? No one. That. That is not what he like. And Kubrick was not like, you know what? People are going to be more comfortable with 2001 because it's based on the Odyssey. Ain't nobody knew that. That's just not so a little bit tough in some of those things. But again, I like the stories. I like culture. I like thinking about creativity. I like. I think Epstein's an interesting person. His own story about hurting his arm playing football, which led him to running. Like, I'm not sure that's really a constraint, but, like, it's. It's something. It's useful there to know that. Obstacles. His next book could be called Obstacles for all I care. I would still read the book. Whatever he's going do next.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And I really liked his first book Range, which is about basically the benefits of being a generalist. Like, the world tries to. And definitely the business world will try to push people into being specialized. And there are real arguments for that. You can have really interesting, satisfying, successful careers. Being a specialist on something. For the kind of work that I do and the. The kind of utility, especially in creative work. Being a generalist has a lot of upside. Like, you know, know, kind of Renaissance person. Jack or Jill of all trades. Like having your fingers in a lot of pies, however you want to put it. But I, I really appreciated the data and the high level perspective that he brought in range. So like I think I'm in the David Epstein bag. Yes. But it's just, you know, kind of expect what you typically expect going into a business self improvement kind of book that it'll be a lot of examples anchored to the same principles and some of them will work for you better than others. Others.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I think it's, it's much, it's like listening to a bunch of related stories around the idea and outside of like I'm going to learn about this tried and true provable repeatable stances process, I can do something better. But the stories are engaging and interesting for people who care about ideas and making stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, like we were just talking off mic yesterday about something that we're working on and it was like this is too loosey goosey. I think we actually need to give ourselves some constraints. Constraints helpful to have, have that help, have that reminder.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, you want to do yours.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

One Leg on Earth I mentioned this a little bit in the It Books of May episode, but One Leg on Earth by Pemi Aguda, which first novel from this writer who was a finalist for the National Book Award for her short story collection Ghost Roots a couple of years ago. I really loved this. It is set in Lagos where I guess an epidemic is sweeping the city of pregnant women walking into bodies of water, daughter dying that way. The main character is fresh out of college. She is serving a year in the youth corps, which sounds basically like they send out interns to companies that need them and then you get to start your career after. She's interning at an architecture firm that's designing a city that's supposed to be like a planned elite kind of city in a community that is on the coast and that was like previously eradicated. The people who lived there were just like pushed out so that this place could be built up for rich people. And she gets pregnant and she's watching this stuff happen in the news. She's kind of obsessed with what might be going on. She can't stop thinking about it. Maybe that's a better way to put it. Not, not like she's not scrolling for hours a day, but this is really occupying her thoughts. And while she's becoming more and more pregnant and having the experiences that a pregnant woman might have, it feels, I said on Wednesday, like a mix of horror and fable. Aguda I think is really getting at ideas about colonization ideas about where our bodies are allowed to go and what happens when industry tries to claim space and pushes out some bodies in service of other bodies. I need to spend a lot more time thinking about the utility of pregnancy in the novel. There's a lot of, you know, unanswered questions and open ends and that's intentional. It feels artful. It really feels like she landed the plane. Like I loved reading this, but nothing is going to be. Don't read this if you're looking for like a clear answer at the end about what was happening to these women and what does it all mean. But I really was like, like captivated by it. I thought about it a lot when I wasn't sitting reading it and just wondered what Agura was talking about, what this character was thinking about. Really interesting. And like, gosh, I am so stoked for whatever she's gonna do.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm so excited for this. Yeah, I'm okay. So. Thea of golden by Alan.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I want to know what the deal was. Right. Like that's why I read this little background. A surprise hit it last year really. It was, I don't know if it even had a hardback version, but it was really paperback. My understanding it's booktok Instagram kind of stuff. People picking this one up like they picked up we have never Known Men or some of those other sort of backlist titles are relatively new. So the story here, Alan Levy's author, he's a first time writer. He's. He's an older fella and he's lives in the south. The setup of this is a 80 something year old man named Theo moves to this art fictional southern town in Georgia. So I'm actually not sure. It's sort of vaguely southern like it's to the south of Atlanta. I think at one point someone mentions Atlantis to the north. So could be southern Georgia, could be Alabama, Mississippi, somewhere pretty deep south. Not, not your part of the South. And we don't know why he's there. We don't know his backstory. We get some of it as we. And I'm going to go far enough to give a sense of it before telling everything that happens. But we know he's there for a reason, but he's very cagey about it to the people he encounters. He walks into a coffee shop called the Chalice and on the walls of this coffee shop there's a bunch of portraits of people in the town. I think there's 92, 95 of them. Something like that. He becomes enamored with them and talks to the owner and gives the backstory of how they got there. They're done by a local artist, and they're all people in there, and they all have the names of the person on the back. So, like, apparently the person took a picture and then drew from a picture. They weren't sitting. These aren't portraits. These are just sort of sketches of people he was really met. And Theo becomes so enamored with them, and he's surprised how cheap there are. They're only $25. And he devises the scheme to buy them and then give them to the person represented or someone that they love if they don't want them or whatever. So he engages a local. Sounds like, like lawyer. With his administrative assistant to help him find the locations. And he writes a letter saying, come meet me at this bench, you know, in the middle of the afternoon, and I'd like to give this thing to you. No strings attached. I know it's weird. Blah, blah, blah. And that begins. And so he has a series of interactions, conversations with the people he gives these portraits to, and then other people in the town he sort of meets along the way. And. Let's see. So that's. That's as much as you're going to get from. From the summary.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Why do people like this book?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think I gotta tell you, I hate this setup already.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, can you say why? Maybe that's interesting? Like, because I didn't like it either. But what. What. What rubs you the wrong way about this setup, Rebecca?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It just sounds really trite to me, like, let me buy these photos and then I'll sit and have a meaningful conversation.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, they're drawings. I should stay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But yes, drawings. Yeah, you did say drawings. It feels a little Forrest Gumpy to me. Maybe that's the bench.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's something. So I think what's going on here is there is a genuine, admirable. And I think the people that are loving this book felt and received desire to connect with people differently than we connect them with our everyday lives.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay, okay, okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm on. I'm on board with this. This feels contrived in, like six different ways. And it feels more and more contrived as the book goes on, as you find out what the connections and not connection these people are. I also think the thing that jumped out to me is as you meet people and Theo's own story, and I don't want to get specific, but there's four instances in which a Dead or imperiled or estranged daughter is the problem. Like, we just keep going back to the same well over and over.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, and it's always the daughter.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's all. I think,

[Rebecca Schinsky]

well, having a hard enough time out here.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, no. There is one other case that it's important, but I won't. But like it's. But four times it's him or someone else is that the daughter in peril or missing or whatever is a problem, which is just too many times in a book. Like just too many times for that to be the thing. I also just didn't buy the. The way that people interacted with each other. And I think for me, if it works for you, I think you're going to read it more as a fable. Kind of like Forrest Gump is more like a fable. You don't want to read it straight ahead. But it felt like it was trying to do verisimilitude because there's so much specific description of people's bodies and the location. And Theo himself will just like walk into room and stare at stuff and talk about how awesome everything is all the time. Like, I just didn't buy that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So it feels like a fable, but it's not supposed to feel like a fable.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, I think if there's a. If there's a 160 page version of this, which is a little more. More misty. Like it's sort of out of time and out of place. But we're talking about like one person he meets as a Vietnam War vet and he tells him a story. It just, it's too embedded to have like the fable like quality. Like the encroachment of the real that Levy gives us, I think starts. Starts to totally undermines this fable like quality. I think you want the book to have or something like this. Like think about Old man in the Sea, right? It feels out of time and out of place because Hemingway is like, we're out on the ocean. It's just the guy in the back boat and the world is left behind. We don't. It could be. It could be 2012 for all we know. But it was like really 1971. But this guy is like dealing with ancient forces. But in order to do that, he puts one dude on a boat out in the middle of the sea. So he's away from the things of man. So you have to deal with current political climates. So I think that starts to really erode the fable like quality. Because I think this is a fable. I think there's a little more light to moderate Christian stuff going on here that I'm. That I want for myself. Like. Like heaven is real and God talk. Like, that's fine for other people. That's not what I'm looking for. I'm wondering if churches are picking this up. I'm wondering if there's. Again, it's not evangelical, but it's definitely a theme here. Is Theo a Christ like figure? Who's to say?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes, a lot of churches have book clubs.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes. And they get sold and maybe they're buying them and hanging on Again, it's not there. I will say this. It's not a dangerous book. It's not an upsetting book. It's not offensive in any way. Like, it doesn't have, like, subterranean evil intent. I will say something else to you. I want to be very careful of here. And I'll be general. The deployment of dialect, I think would be a good research paper for someone to go who is speaking in dialect and who isn't and how they do so.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I'll say no more about that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm making a face.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I'll say more about that. And then the sort of last piece is this is a debut novel and there's some moments of writing which just didn't work for. I just want to read one. And I don't want to put anyone on blast because that's not what I'm doing here. But, like, I'm doing a little critical stuff here, so I'm just going to do it. Right. It just sort of shows up every now and again as being. Is that the way we're really wanting to say that? Is that really the way to put this together?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, this is sold bajillions of copies. Levy's going to be fine. Let's hear it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. Right. Yeah. Honestly. But one point he says, like, the gadgetry of the zeitgeist of the times. Right. Which zeitgeist includes time? You don't say zeitgeist of the time. So we have. This parallel structure is supposed to be gadgetry and zeitgeist. You could end with a period right there, but it goes on to do it. And that could be an editing problem too. But the editor can only do so much sometimes. But that's something that actually wrote. And there's. There's a lot of. Of the. The first couple of pages feel like he's trying to be artful. And I'm not sure it works for me. So at the very beginning, I was like, I didn't feel in the hand. I was in confident hands. Like we talked about this Ishiguro and again comparisons. Ishiguro is not fair to anybody.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Unfair.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But that's the other end of the spectrum. Right. Where from the beginning I was like I felt wrong footed by some of the descriptions, some of the wording. It just didn't feel confident, didn't feel like mastery of the language in which I would expect for something generally. But it was and it's not and it was trying to do that. I think it's different if it's like a mystery or thriller or something. I think it was reaching for something that worked for a lot of people. It just didn't work for me. So that's the year of Golden. I cannot recommend.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Thank you for your service.

[Jeff O'Neill]

At that point the Correspondent is going to win in a knockout for the retiree book of 2023 into 2024, 2025, 2026. The correspondent itself I think is pretty conventional. In the end it gets wrapped up quite neatly. There's some quite dramatic action at the end of Theo of Golden that I would. Wouldn't mind saying more about. But I don't want to ruin it for people who want to check it out.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

At what point do I have to like come off my ledge here and read the Correspondent? When will we know if it's time for me to do that?

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, I don't know. I think you would.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't. I think I probably would enjoy it. It's just now a question of. It's a book from last year. Oh, we're halfway through this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think you could be fine not reading it because it didn't win a bunch of awards. Right. I mean it was sort of talked about but I.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We'll see if it's still sticking around in the conversation in five or ten years.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, you. I don't like it as well as things. I think it's kind of related to these older, older people, older women, single women, you know, their groups of friends trying to re. Like it's in the fried Green tomatoes, Steel Magnolia sort of vein. But I don't think it's good as either of those. But I quite like the form and I thought that was fun and interesting.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, actually now I'm remembering Jane Fonda is going to star in the adaptation. I will read it before the adaptation.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's also really short. It's not a big ask and I, I, if it were just me, I would have DNF'd Theo of Golden. But I wanted to Be able to talk about it and know what the deal is. I would have stopped 100 pages in. I just. I just would have. I didn't.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm glad that you did that for us. Thank you, though.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. So if you've got your. If you've read Theo of Golden or know someone who has and you've got. I didn't read any reviews. I'm not looking at Goodreads. I didn't do anything. I haven't read any interviews with Alan Le. Alan Levy. I just wanted to have this straight ahead experience of it myself. I don't know. I, I really hope that Tom, an agent says, you know what, Tom, we can't. We can't do this. I don't want. I don't want you doing this. He's already done a Man Called.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, like he's doing Lincoln in the Bardo. He's going to be busy.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't know. Tom Hanks likes to work. So do you have Golden, Allen Levy? So the, the question I was thinking to myself, like, it never makes sense. Nothing makes sense to be this huge.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But it never does.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, it never does. But what about this makes sense? And I do think there is a nostalgic, lowercasey conservative thing of like, couldn't the world be simpler and we all just got along and how would that work?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That warmth and desire to connect, but also maybe the stuff that didn't work for you, like kind of failed attempts at artistic writing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes. Feature, not a book, we've learned over

[Rebecca Schinsky]

time can be a feature, not a bug. Like, as people told me very vocally about Colleen Hoover.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And my other. I guess my critique on top of the critique would be this person come in and he's a generous person, he's very interested in other people and he, he wants to connect with people of all different kinds, which is admirable. But then he. It's. It's so nice to be rich. I guess it's so nice to have infinite resources where you can sort of take care of people's hospital bills. Right. There's sort of a magical thinking of like, ah, you know what I'm saying here?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, well, and everybody wants to think that that's what they would do if they had unlimited money. Is what. Well, that, that's. That you would just.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And God love it if billionaires did more of this. But like, is that actually connection or is that like a short. It's like awfully easy to connect with someone where you can buy them really expensive stuff and you don't have to worry about working and, you know, and, and, and, and. Okay, so maybe that's in there too. All right, I guess that's enough of that. I, I do not like to be negative, but I want to be honest about that. And I. It's a phenomenon, like a huge, like, it's a huge book. It's a huge book at this point also, weirdly, and I don't know what the. It's like the cheapest quality paper and cover. Like, I'm not used to putting my, like, diet in a glass on top of it. And it's not even, it's not even like, coated enough. Like, I, it's all wrinkly.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's a debut paperback original that that publisher did not think was going to go anywhere. That's what that is.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But even when we got New York Times bestseller, we didn't go back. Like, you know, maybe we should. We could spend another 75 cents and put a wax coating on it so when you put your iced tea on, it doesn't get all wrinkly and ruined. Ruined.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We're gonna get emails now that are like you animals sitting your iced tea on a book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, usually I can trust it. I can put it on the COVID of a paperback and also I fold the page anyway. People can calm down. But I don't like that it was indicative rather than determinant. So.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

All right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Choose email podcast bookright.com go to bookwright.com listen to find the show notes, but they're also in the podcast player you are right now. Let's see. Go check out zero to. Well, read the summer release draft. I don't know. What else are we saying? I can't remember.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's all the things.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, cool. All right, Rebecca, thanks so much. We'll talk to you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Be good. Out there. In Michigan, you can feel the energy everywhere in the fresh breeze of a riverfront stroll or nightlife that hums with electricity. Let it bring you together in pure Michigan. Find your [e-mail].