← Book Riot - The Podcast
Book Riot - The Podcast
The Audiobook Wars Rage On, Big ACOTAR Announcement, and More
01:06:47
Jeff and Rebecca talk about the big ACOTAR update, Audible dropping the price on its standard product, market trends, recent reading, and much more.
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- [00:01]
Rebecca Schinsky
This episode is brought to you by Peloton Break through the busiest time of year with the brand new Peloton Cross Training Tread plus, powered by Peloton iq. With real time guidance and endless ways to move, you can personalize your workouts and train with confidence, helping you reach your goals in less time. Let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push and go. Explore the new peloton cross training Tread plus@onepelaton.com 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 trial@shopify.com specialoffer this
- [00:55]
Jeff O'Neill
is the Book Riot podcast. I'm Jeff O'. Neill.
- [00:56]
Rebecca Schinsky
And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.
- [00:58]
Jeff O'Neill
Regular Old Newsweek Rebecca, we're back in the saddle. Feels like a lot of news this week. Was it just me?
- [01:04]
Rebecca Schinsky
No, it does. I was looking at our agenda has a lot of items. Many of them have like real substance to get into. There was no like one big dominating news story of the week, but it feels like we are really like in the swing. The year has finally sprung, I think, and things are happening.
- [01:23]
Jeff O'Neill
Over on the zero to well read feed you can hear us talk about the book, not the movie because it's not out yet. Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir had a lot of fun talking about a book that we really like in an author that feels close to our hearts because we were there at the beginning when the Martian really took off and a lot of fun stuff gone over there. My local movie theater, Rebecca is playing Project Hail Mary. They just it's an old timey one. Don't be creepy. The Baghdad Theater on Hawthorne here in Portland and they've got an old timey marquee where they like to hand change the letters and the person was out there with like the long stick thing and I drove past it this morning and it said March 9, but I think that's wrong because that is wrong till March 20. So maybe they forgot the one. Do you think they said March 19 for like a midnight?
- [02:10]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yes.
- [02:11]
Jeff O'Neill
I don't know what's happening.
- [02:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
Sometimes theaters do get like Wednesday or Thursday showings of things when they're really officially debuting on Fridays. That's how I saw Wuthering Heights. It's how I've seen a Colleen Hoover movie for this podcast. I'm gonna guess that they forgot the one or we have reason to get. I know. Get very excited.
- [02:31]
Jeff O'Neill
I got very excited for a couple reasons. One, it's just sooner.
- [02:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [02:34]
Jeff O'Neill
But two, my birthday's on the 11th and I was like, I could skip the afternoon and go to a matinee of Project Hail Mary by myself.
- [02:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
I love this for you.
- [02:42]
Jeff O'Neill
I started floating like Ryan Gosling in zero G. I got. It was so visceral. I got motion sick.
- [02:48]
Rebecca Schinsky
Did you know? Speaking of this, we'll talk more about it once the movie comes out, but there's not a single green screen shot in this mov. Speaking of the zero G and C, like, there's cgi, but they didn't do any green screen. Lord and Miller really have some tricks up their sleeves. I have my tickets to see it in imax on the 21st with some friends. And then I should be visiting my parents like the week after My Dad Loves the Martian.
- [03:12]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean, of course we all got together and said it's approved.
- [03:16]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. He has a story about having been in the hospital and like being awake in the middle of the night and that the Martian came on. Like he's, you know, channel surfing at 3am and sees that the Martian is on. He's like, it was so great. That's exactly what you want to watch and, and feel absorbed. So I think I'm going to get to see it twice in close succession.
- [03:32]
Jeff O'Neill
I'm going to take my dad anytime. It could be in the old West. I don't think they existed in ancient Rome in space. If anyone gets out a wrench to fix something, the dads, we all feel something on our neck.
- [03:46]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's like the bat signal, but you just, you awaken just everyone.
- [03:49]
Jeff O'Neill
There's some sort of hand tool has been operated and you got its own close up shot of someone tightening or loosening or something. And I'm not even that much of a handy person.
- [03:58]
Rebecca Schinsky
And it's still just MacGyvering has occurred and now we're all dialed in. I'm ready for it.
- [04:04]
Jeff O'Neill
Speaking of other special events, Kelly Jensen, who is an editor here, senior editor here, has an interview that's going to be coming up next week in this feed, I believe on the 11th. Actually, as part of. Is that the whole episode or just part of that episode?
- [04:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think it's going to be the whole episode. She's speaking with Markus Zusak, who's the author of the book thief on the 20th anniversary of the book coming out. And so as you're listening to this on probably Monday, Kelly will be in the feed on Wednesday.
- [04:32]
Jeff O'Neill
Zusek really ahead of the game of book related World War II historical fiction that has been mined and over mined, strip mined even to this point. A huge book really. That's another thing where BR was really getting started. Speaking of Andy Weir and the Martian, that the book Thief was everywhere.
- [04:47]
Rebecca Schinsky
It was, yeah. And it had been everywhere for like five years by the time Book Riot started. It was really incredible staying power on that one.
- [04:54]
Jeff O'Neill
I'm really looking forward to that interview. Listening to myself, I don't know the story of how that book became Me neither. Such a thing. All right, we're gonna take a quick break and then get into the news.
- [05:03]
Rebecca Schinsky
This podcast is supported by Quince as we head into early spring, this is a moment when layers really matter. You still need warmth, but you don't want bulk. And that's exactly where Quince's Cashmere comes in. I recently added one of their lightweight Mongolian cashmere sweaters to my husband's closet during a refresh and it's been perfect for this in between weather. The 100 Mongolian cashmere, which is the same kind luxury luxury brands use, is breathable, soft and it's easy to layer. It looks polished when we want to go out and it's comfortable enough for everyday wear on the weekends and evenings. And it didn't cost a fortune. Quince has the everyday essentials we love with quality that lasts, from lightweight cashmere sweaters to short sleeve Mongolian cashmere polos, linen bottoms and shorts and tees in 100% Pima cotton and European jersey linen. And Quince works directly with top factories and cuts out the middlemen so you're not paying for brand markup, just quality clothing that's built to hold up still look good. The kinds of versatile pieces that make a wardrobe actually work for you from season to season. Stop over complicating your wardrobe. You don't need a closet full of options. You need staples that actually work right now. Go to quince.com bookriot for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's a full year to build your wardrobe and love it. Which you will, I promise. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to Quincom Bookriot for free shipping and 365, five day returns. Quits.com bookriot this episode is brought to you by Redfin, you're listening to a podcast, which means you're probably multitasking, maybe even scrolling home listings on Redfin, saving homes without expecting to get them. But Redfin isn't just built for endless browsing. It's built to help you find and own a home with agents who close twice as many deals. When you find the one, you've got a real shot at getting it. Get started@redfin.com own the dream 30 years
- [07:05]
Jeff O'Neill
ago, blinds.com broke the mold and made custom window treatments easy for everyone. Over 25 million windows later, we're celebrating by giving our customers up to 50% off site wide during our anniversary sale. Whether you DIY it or want a pro to handle everything from measure to install, blinds.com has you covered. Shop online, access real design professionals and get free samples. Thank you for 30amazing years. Shop the anniversary sale now through March 11th and get up to 50% off site wide@blinds.com I wish I knew how to pronounce this because there's a diphthong at the beginning of aon I believe it's a on a E O N co which is in kind of an arts and letters sciences website. They do longer form things. This got circulated in our company chat today. An article by books called Books and Screens by Carlo Iacona, who is a University of librarian in New South Wales, so shouts to the Australians. Got a nice email from Australia. I'll share here in a little bit about something different. The title is Books and Screen and I'm going to try to summarize the nut of this and you tell me how close I got, which is essentially something like the following that people say screen time. Screen time has become this catch all phrase to describe our relationship with technology, personal technology. And the central argument here is like that is not exactly what really what we mean we're talking about not the medium necessarily, but I'm paraphrasing here and using my own language, but rather the mode of interacting with these devices, which is not only are you constantly interrupted by notifications or text or other things that get you into and out of whatever you're looking at, but many of the platforms and apps we are engaging with are themselves designed to keep you from focusing on staying on any one thing for a long time because that is not the best way to monetize your time and attention. And one cool thing that Iacona does here is go back to earlier panics about reading penny dreadfuls and some other things to talk about how this is different than that. And thus may need a different kind intervention. Rebecca Shinski, I submit to you how well did I do there?
- [09:13]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think you did very well. The paragraph that I highlighted as I was reading it says what's different now isn't the existence of shallow content, which has always been abundant. What's different is the existence of delivery mechanisms actively engineered to prevent the kind of attention that serious thought requires. And it's a really wonderful conversation in this piece about like it's not throw your phone into the sea. It is have architecture and maybe regulations around how these apps are built that allow us to have relationships to our phones and to technology where we can be literate in those forms. Makes the point that there are people who can't focus to read a book for more than three minutes, but they will listen or watch a three hour long podcast about a subject that they're interested in. So there is attention available to be used in a deep way. But it has to be that attention has to be turned on in a place where it's not constantly interrupted by the technology. And that if our technology were designed in ways to support paying attention rather than interrupting attention, or if we could build the architecture ourselves to do that, that's the way to think about it. I really appreciate, I mean most of the time I as a human really appreciate a like it's not that the sky is falling take it's that we need to reconsider how we've talked about these things and this jives with my own feelings about it.
- [10:36]
Jeff O'Neill
That brick baby.
- [10:38]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, that like the, the app developers aren't going to make these apps any less addictive. And the phone people want you to have all of your notifications on all the time, but you can control that. And I thought the author of this piece did a nice job talking about how that's really the dividing line is people who have figured out architecture and structure for managing their technology and people who haven't and that it's not a moral failing if you haven't. There are all kinds of reasons that that's more difficult for some people than others, but that the thing that follows from it is not, oh, now we're in a post literate society and it's inevitable because technology is doing its thing. So just throw up your hands and allow the post literate world to happen to you. But like let's have some agency and have an active conversation about how to manage it.
- [11:27]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I kind of went all the way. I horseshoe theory myself on this where I was like yeah, I'm totally into this. But then I came back to throwing phones into the ocean for the following reason. No matter what you do, as long as you can switch between apps on your phone, this is going to be a problem. Now, it may not be as big of a problem, but for me, I don't spend time scrolling what I do spend time. If I find myself sucked into a vortex of my own making, it is email to text, thread to New York Times, app to something to ESPN.com, like, basically a desktop experience, like 2002 style on the phone. And I agree that there could be something done about legislation. I would also encourage all of us to think about the reality of that anytime soon happening. Really. And you're. I mean, there is how to solve the world and there's how to solve yourself. You have a lot more control over your own self in your own world than you do about what kids in Iowa are doing right now. So I do think that contents collapse is one thing we all could use to put ourselves on the right hook at the right time. And. And the right hook for me is I don't see a way out of my phone being a temptation to bounce into something else anytime soon. So my strategy is put the phone aside. That's really what it is for me. Because there's too much interesting stuff on there. I don't even. I don't even need TikTok. Right. I can distract myself, baby. I don't need the algorithm to do it to me. I can do this shit to myself. So I come back around to anything that makes it easy for me to check on something else that I might find interesting or that is updated. I'm. That's a me problem. I don't think that's a technology, but the technology allows that to be possible. But that's a me problem that no amount of legislation is going to change.
- [13:09]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I mean, the piece also makes reference to, like, there were people who have figured out how to, like, watch documentaries with a notebook next to them and people who read a paper book with a pen in their hand and like that. This is, you know, you got to put your. You got to put your phone in another room or like, use the brick. Like, you could get your plate, your phone, to the place where it really is just a utility to send messages to people you need to send them to with enough brick settings. But leaving, if you can, leave it in a drawer, leave it in a drawer if you can. Forget where it is, forget where it is. Like, I think it's just as you're saying it's unrealistic to think about legislation. I think, like, as much as I would love for us all to throw our phones into the sea, that's not going to happen either. So putting them aside, using tools to manage them, like building the architecture around it, and I love that that's really the thing that this piece drives to. But then how do we have a bigger cultural conversation about architecture? Like, parents do this with their kids in many cases. Like every parent that I know has some policy with their kids about where the phones live in the house, how much time you can spend on the phone, what you can do during that time on the phone. And adults need to be creating those same policies and practices for ourselves with it.
- [14:21]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean, I've used this metaphor for multiple years at this point, but they're attention cigarettes. And some people can smoke one cig on Saturday night with their gin and tonic and be cool. But for most people, the nature of cigarettes are not going to engender that kind of use case. So some people can have their phone and sort of interact with it in a way that's sustainable and ultimately sort of non harmful. But I think the median user of a modern smartphone is going to be like the median user of a cigarette. And they're going to have to marshal whatever forces they have at their disposal to put boundaries around that relationship. Right. Think of this as being a relationship with yourself, not just with your phone. What do you want to be doing with yourself and your time? Most of us don't want to be doing most of the stuff we're doing on our phone most of the time. I think that's generally true to a first approximation. And there's a temptation to say, well, you can't do anything about it. And that's just the way this and these are the end times. I think there's something between that and everyone should be, I don't know, Monk, like, and just be able to put it to the side and just sit there next to their phone and not touch it. There's some other way of being in the world that's more complicated than that. And I think that's where most of us are gonna have to live in that messy middle. And that's true of most things, not just our phones.
- [15:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. I mean, with my group of friends, we're having. We've had really recent conversations about it. We're like, phones aren't on the table when we all go to dinner together. The phone does not come to the dinner table in my household. But With a couple of friends, we noticed that like if one of us gets up to go to the bathroom and like the conversation gets interrupted, somebody might reach for the phone.
- [15:50]
Jeff O'Neill
Oh yeah, you're like Doc Holliday. Yeah, don't holster those things.
- [15:53]
Rebecca Schinsky
But then, but then when the group dynamic returns, you can be redirected. It can be like instead of we're all dropping back into the thing that we were talking about, the conversation is redirected into that article that somebody saw or the text that they received when they picked up their phone. And I was having this conversation with a few friends. Like we don't like that feeling that our time together that we want to be intentional can be so easily redirected. So the thing to do is practice with each other. Like if one of us is going to the restroom, the other one is not getting their phone out. Like, you know, look around and watch people in the restaurant for a couple minutes.
- [16:28]
Jeff O'Neill
Watch the people on their phones and shame them. That's what will work.
- [16:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
Feel superior for a couple minutes. It's a good drug.
- [16:35]
Jeff O'Neill
It's a good, it's really. I actually think that's more, that's a smaller example, but I think might be more powerful than Congress doing something. Because the practicality of that is the, the make it gauche, man. Make it gauche to be sitting with other people in public and both be looking at your phones. Like start with you. Maybe be the change you want to see in the world when it comes to your phone. I actually have much more. I don't know if confidence is the right thing. I would put more stock in that as being powerful, culturally powerful rather than legislatively powerful. Because legislation tends to follow culture. Right. It was a long time after we knew cigarettes were super bad for you, that you couldn't smoke on an airplane anymore. But people stopped smoking on airplanes and then there were sections. It'll be like kind of a stage thing. I would be super interested to see like no phone zones and restaurants. You don't get to use your, like, you know, your coffee. I've seen some in coffee shops. There's some coffee shops in Portland which, depending on your political perspasion might be the vanguard of nothing you want to be a part of. But they're laptop free environments, no tech, gotta sit there and do something else. But I think you're, I think you and your friend group are spiritually on the path that makes the most sense to me is that it is now the class to be on your phone zombie on your phone in public. Just, we're not going to do that anymore.
- [17:54]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I agree. Let's positive peer pressure each other and, and I think talk. Just talking about the strategies and like talking about what your own structures are. Because we don't have structures come available to us from, you know, big picture, from big tech, from legislation. It felt like liberating, but like a little bit scary with my friends to be like, you know, it is like it does feel like you get distract, distracted. Like I come back from the bathroom and all of a sudden we're talking about like that comment somebody left instead of the actually meaningful thing that we were talking about before. And nobody wants that, but until somebody named it that, that was the thing that was happening and we started unpacking it, it just felt like that was the inevitable dynamic. Like the thing you do is pick up your phone while you're waiting for your person to come back from the bathroom. And it doesn't have to be that way.
- [18:44]
Jeff O'Neill
Can I try something else on you? I'd be curious. You can take this back to the friend group and see what they think about this. Could I, Could I offer a writer to this legislation of nine or whatever that you're talking about, like, you know, your little cabal of the right thinking and right behaving. Can we also institute a ban on talking about things you just saw online?
- [19:03]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh, my God, yes, please.
- [19:07]
Jeff O'Neill
Now, if you read the full New Yorker piece or the full New York time things on your phone. I'm not talking about that, Rebecca. I'm talking about. Yes, I saw this thing on Instagram. I don't want to hear about it. I really. If that's all you've got. No, I don't want that I feel
- [19:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
the way about this that I feel about people describing their dreams to me. Let's not.
- [19:23]
Jeff O'Neill
Totally agree. Yeah, I prefer your dreams at that point. And friends, when I say that it's gotten very bad.
- [19:30]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yes. Yeah, I, I wholeheartedly second this emotion. Let's.
- [19:35]
Jeff O'Neill
I even go ahead.
- [19:37]
Rebecca Schinsky
Let's just not. I don't. I don't need to. I don't need to hear it.
- [19:40]
Jeff O'Neill
I also would suggest this. If you want to perform the change, you want to be in the world, don't be interested in it. If they bring it up and if you have seen in it lie, say you haven't. You're not interested. I saw the squirrel eating a watermelon. Sure, I enjoyed that. But I don't want to talk about that because there's nothing to say. There's no idea. There that's nothing.
- [19:58]
Rebecca Schinsky
True. And it's, you know, it's just harder with your own peer group. Like my parents tell me about things they saw on the Today show or somebody that they saw on Facebook. And I don't watch the Today show. I'm never gonna watch daytime tv. I haven't been on Facebook in like eight years. So I'm just like, I didn't see it. I don't care. I didn't see it. I don't care. Just like on a loop. I didn't see it. I don't care. I didn't see it. I don't care. I don't pay attention to those things. Yeah, just. Let's do it. We don't need to talk about the memes. We don't need to talk about the. Did you, did you see the whatevers.
- [20:28]
Jeff O'Neill
I don't need the clip of Benedict Cumberbatch talking about his. I mean, again, if you enjoy that, that's fine, but that is. Let's bring conversation back. Rebecca. That. That is not conversation. Boy. That is not something humans talk about.
- [20:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
Good luck for you. Good news for. About the things we've chosen to do with our professional lives.
- [20:46]
Jeff O'Neill
This is it.
- [20:46]
Rebecca Schinsky
Rebecca back.
- [20:47]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, we bring things from the Internet to people to talk about.
- [20:51]
Rebecca Schinsky
We have read these articles.
- [20:53]
Jeff O'Neill
We have read these articles. Anyway, speaking of, well, news, I mean, that we get our news differently is a separate kind of conversation. At the same time, the big book news this week is fascinating on a couple of levels. The headline is that Sarah J. Maas announced. I'm fascinated in the meta media story about this. At the end of a two hour long Call Her Daddy podcast is where she announces this. Now, I know that's a huge show, but I think Sarah J. Maas revealing this at the end of that show put it in the Louvre for media history. That's just a moment and I don't want to comment anymore about that, but I just find that very interesting.
- [21:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
It is very interesting. Like Sarah J. Maas has been sort of out of the publicity cycle for a little while because there haven't been, there hasn't been book news. But she's got two new books coming in the ACOTAR series. It'll be the sixth and seventh book. One is coming October 27th and then the next one will be out on January 12th. So they're also coming close together and we don't have titles for them. But she revealed this. Yes. And at the end of the two hour episode, Just Wild. I think they were recording it live. This piece in the Times from Hannah Ziegler notes that there were 166. 6,000 people watching. So I think Alex Cooper's audience has a significant overlap with the Acaton.
- [22:18]
Jeff O'Neill
No, I agree. I think that's not a. I wouldn't have guessed this, but once I saw it, it wasn't a surprise, I guess, is what I'm trying to catch.
- [22:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
Maybe the most interesting thing is that Sarah J. Maas wasn't on Call Her Daddy Sooner like that. We're this far, you know, into the cycle of the Romantasy TikTok boom. But yeah, there's. She didn't have news to drop, so maybe they waited until they had the news to drop there. But Acotar fans can rejoice. The most interesting thing about this to me is what it does in the horse race between Acotar and the I
- [22:47]
Jeff O'Neill
was thinking the same. That was. I have several bullet points. That was one there. Thank you for getting your divining rod out to locate that two is they're coming out within like four months of each other. October, three months.
- [22:58]
Rebecca Schinsky
October and January.
- [23:00]
Jeff O'Neill
Just flipping the calendar. So these are done. Apparently she had done some soc earlier saying that the. The manuscripts were done. Rebecca, I swear on my children, if you had asked me if this series was over, I would have said yes, very confidently because she was doing other series. And I, I am still. I was born in the 1900s, as my kids like to say. That's borrowing the Nate Bargettzi, but I'm old enough to remember that person did one series at a time. And so if you were working on another series, it de facto meant you were done with what you were doing. George Martin being the huge exception in many different ways. So I was genuinely shocked when I saw, wait, there's more of these. Because she's doing Crescent City and everything else. So that was my other. That was one of my other takeaways.
- [23:43]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I knew that she was not done with the series, but we hadn't heard anything about it. So, like, I don't think we knew that there were going to be. If we did know that there were going to be seven. I did not know there were going to be seven books. Only five have come out so far. Dropping six and seven so close together is a really interesting strategy. And I wonder how much of that is driven by, like the fact that we are in a Rebecca Yarros lull right now that the third book came out. There's no news about when the fourth one can be expected because she had so much difficulty writing the third one. And it really threatened her health in multiple ways. And this. It's fallow period. There will be available attention for a big romantasy. Because we haven't had a big romantasy in a while. And it's still just Yarrows and Mass that have actually accumulated this kind of concentrated attention for a romanticy series. No one else has cracked that book.
- [24:31]
Jeff O'Neill
That's a great point. There's really no. There's no third, third or fourth faces on the Mount Rushmore that would get a story like this that we would talk about in this space.
- [24:41]
Rebecca Schinsky
So. And a good book news like this is good news for the publishing industry for fall.
- [24:46]
Jeff O'Neill
Have to be thrilled. P and L is just stretching its arms. Sales bump in October.
- [24:51]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. And then another sales bump to start the year in January.
- [24:55]
Jeff O'Neill
The whole series, people. I'm sure there'll be special editions and the whole thing. I think that then my last bullet point for this is zero to well read book one. October 2026. I think we have to.
- [25:09]
Rebecca Schinsky
Okay. Don't you think I was gonna wait until the last book came out but I'm.
- [25:14]
Jeff O'Neill
I'm an aging person. Rebecca. We can't do this. You haven't seen. You haven't seen my cholesterol level. So you don't know. You don't know what we're dealing with.
- [25:24]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think that we will have to have some conversations about the balance of pop culture phenomena in the fall season of Zero to well Red.
- [25:31]
Jeff O'Neill
Because what else is there? I don't. You've been doing the.
- [25:33]
Rebecca Schinsky
We also have a new Hunger Games movie. We have a Chronicle of Narnia movie.
- [25:39]
Jeff O'Neill
They come out IP Month. IP week apart.
- [25:42]
Rebecca Schinsky
Maybe we will just have IP Month.
- [25:45]
Jeff O'Neill
Also known as Hollywood. Sorry. Sorry, guys. Sorry. Hollywood.
- [25:48]
Rebecca Schinsky
So.
- [25:49]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. Oh. Back to Project Hail Mary for just a second. That. That jog something I was gonna text you. The budget for Project Hail Mary is north of $200 million, making it the biggest budget standalone sci fi movie since Tenet by Christopher Nolan.
- [26:07]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's bigger than
- [26:10]
Jeff O'Neill
a series. Yeah. It's kind of a lot of qualifiers. But like it's a big bet on.
- [26:14]
Rebecca Schinsky
It is a big bet. I think it's gonna do just fine.
- [26:17]
Jeff O'Neill
We haven't yet. For zero to well read done. A lot of audience participation, listener participation. We have this. This is idea we're going to have. I think you've got some ideas for it. Maybe. This is. Pick the IP you want us to cover. We give them Hunger Games. We give them Court of Thorn of Roses. Well, Narnia we might have to do. But I. I'm not going to let Narnia lose. Don't you think of the three, isn't it the one you want to do? Or am I wrong?
- [26:37]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh, yeah. I think Narnia is the one that I would put in for sure. Because Hunger Games, Susan. We haven't had any indication that Suzanne Collins is done with those. So I feel like we'll have. We can just do the Hunger Games when we. Yeah, we can just do the Hunger Games sometimes when we feel like it. Or there will be continuing. I think we're going to see continuing stories from the Hunger Games universe. And we'd have another opportunity.
- [27:00]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. Anyway, so maybe we'll do something like that. O' Neill's Razor would like to raise its hand and just say, how many Court of Thorns and Roses are there? Do we have any?
- [27:09]
Rebecca Schinsky
I need to know. Like, I'm more open to doing Acotar when. When it's the last book and the series is complete.
- [27:15]
Jeff O'Neill
Wait two and four months is awfully tasty, though.
- [27:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
We'll talk about it.
- [27:20]
Jeff O'Neill
All right. Speaking of book sales market trends, a friend of the show, Brenna Connor, gave a stand up at Winter Institute about trends in book sales. A lot of interesting stuff here. Rebecca, what jumped out to you?
- [27:38]
Rebecca Schinsky
I mean, dark romance and escapist fiction are what's keeping fiction stable.
- [27:44]
Jeff O'Neill
Right.
- [27:46]
Rebecca Schinsky
Dystopias are doing well too. Interesting. George Orwell was among the top 20 fiction creators in 2025. And that I bumped on that language, fiction creators. I think George Orwell would raise an eyebrow at that as well. But for Orwell to be in the top 20 right now. We talked about that on the 1984 episode of Zero to well Read recently. And then also sort of the companion to people are reading really dark stuff is that there's all this energy around cozy about cozy, comforting cooking. And I don't know, do you think these are. Are these the same consumers? Like reading a dark romance. Yeah. And picking up a cozy something. Because I think that's been my sense too, is that it's not two different veins of consumption, it's the same consumer because all of it operates in escapism. And you can move between really dark dystopia and then you're comforting, whatever. But it's people using books for the same purpose.
- [28:48]
Jeff O'Neill
I'm not even sure what else cozy nonfiction could do. Right. Because if, if, if the thread, and I think I agree with you that the thread here is escapism. Well, fiction, you can escape and go lots of different places. That makes sense. The further away the better. So the more genres you stack on top of each other, as Brenna says, the further you kind of are from real life. But for nonfiction, you've got to lean into the parts of real life that are quiet, that are insulated, that are not really part of news cycles or really have much to do with ideas at all because that could very quickly verge onto any number of things. But cooking and crafting, they are loaded with politics and ideas as all things are. But you've got to really dig a few layers deeper than you do in a lot of other kinds of things. So I'm not surprised by this at all. I think there's a lot of people who like to knit while listening to Acotar. I just, I think that's a great point. A thing at all. That's not a stretch of my imagination at all to get there.
- [29:44]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Other interesting note, bibles hit a 21 year high. 19 million units were sold. And this piece from Natalie Opdebeck at PW notes that that's interesting because Pew research is showing that there's a flattening Christian affiliation in the US like the Christian faith is not gaining followers. So the speculation here is maybe that the people who are Christian are. Are leaning into it more, buying more Bibles. And certainly there was a rise in mainstream Christian rhetoric in the media last year. So interesting to see that. But a 21 year high. Okay.
- [30:21]
Jeff O'Neill
Indie bookstores outperform the total market which is flat high intent for people to shop at local indies. I think that's fascinating too. Brenna. I'm sorry Brent. I'm using your first name. Connor. That sounds more fish. Recommended that bookstores quote consider building analog living sections into your stores. Thought that was fascinating. Is you know, can you make a little place where I don't maybe you have not just a non fiction section but cozy living or I mean analog living. Maybe that's a hashtag that's existing on TikTok that people are recognizing they're not.
- [30:55]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [30:56]
Jeff O'Neill
47 year old men like me. But you're gardening the same things you're knitting.
- [31:00]
Rebecca Schinsky
Cookbooks. Yeah, all of that stuff.
- [31:03]
Jeff O'Neill
Neither of us are really crafters. You do some cooking. If you had to pick up one craft, what do you think you would pick?
- [31:10]
Rebecca Schinsky
I have attempted some and just concluded that that is not my journey in life. I learned to knit really badly. I think this is not a direct answer but like I would like to revisit learning to play the piano like that would. I played the piano as a kid, but I quit when I was like 10 or 12. But I think that would serve the same role in my life. Of an analog activity. You can't be on your phone while you're doing it. It's creative and generative and occupies a different uses, a different part of your brain. That's where I would go. But realistically, it's probably learning to bake some other complicated thing. That's my daily zone. What would you do?
- [31:52]
Jeff O'Neill
I have no answer. I just wanted to hear you say something. I have nothing.
- [31:55]
Rebecca Schinsky
I was waiting for you to be like, cross stitching and be like, please,
- [31:59]
Jeff O'Neill
my eyes are bad and I've got giant hands. So any of the micro arts are not something for me.
- [32:03]
Rebecca Schinsky
But I feel like if you learned it, you could stream it and it would be the equivalent of like Nick Offerman just sitting by a fire sipping whiskey. It's like, here's Jeff o'.
- [32:13]
Jeff O'Neill
Neill.
- [32:13]
Rebecca Schinsky
Just cross stitching. You could just be monologuing about, like whatever you've been learning about.
- [32:18]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, if I get to barking people now, that's a different hobby. I already have that hobby. You're listening to it right now, Rebecca. Which is telling people about stuff. Anyway, let's move along. I used to draw and I played the piano too. I was bad, but enjoyed both of them as a teenager. Yeah, I never just good to do
- [32:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
a thing you enjoy but are bad at.
- [32:36]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. My piano I only ever got is like rhythmic typing. Right. Like I just kind of like got it. And my brother, who's an extremely accomplished musician, when he. He's six years younger than I am and when he first started playing, I was like, oh, oh, that's what it's supposed to be. Someone who has a predilection for it. It just came so much. I don't want to say easier because he put a lot of work into it. It came differently into him, so. All right. Marvel Television's Wonder Man. An eight episode series now streaming on Disney.
- [33:09]
Rebecca Schinsky
A superhero remake.
- [33:10]
Jeff O'Neill
Not exactly what we'd expect from an Oscar winning director. Action. Simon Williams audition for Wonder Man. I'm gonna need you to sign this. Assuming you don't have superpowers. I'll never work again. If anyone found out.
- [33:25]
Rebecca Schinsky
My lips are sealed.
- [33:28]
Jeff O'Neill
Marvel Television's Wonder man. All eight episodes now streaming only on Disney plus. If you're a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility and your machinery isn't working right, Grainger knows you need to understand what's wrong as soon as possible. So when a conveyor motor falters. Grainger offers diagnostic tools like calibration kits and multimeters to help you identify and fix the problem. With Grainger, you can be confident you have everything you need to keep your facility running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER clickgrainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.
- [34:03]
Rebecca Schinsky
Hello everyone, Takui here and I'm Gabby and we are the hosts of History of Everything, a podcast which you can probably guess by the name is. Well, I mean, it's about Everything.
- [34:14]
Jeff O'Neill
Do you want to know why people
- [34:15]
Rebecca Schinsky
thought potatoes were evil and would give you syphilis? Are you curious about all the stories of the terrible and stupid ways that people have kicked the bucket over the years? Do you want to hear tales about
- [34:25]
Jeff O'Neill
all of the different badasses of history
- [34:27]
Rebecca Schinsky
and the lives that they had brought to life? Well, if so, then look no further. History of Everything is just the right podcast for you. It's available on Spotify, Pandora, and anywhere else that you get your podcast from.
- [34:38]
Jeff O'Neill
Join us for some fun and just see how weird and wacky history can be. Oh, I'm so excited by this next this is the most excited I've ever been about a three dollar a month price drop in a product of all time.
- [34:51]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, multiple exclamation points from you about this in the last couple weeks because
- [34:56]
Jeff O'Neill
we have been talking about the war for your ears that's largely being waged right now between Spotify and Audible. And I think I was not talking to you about this, though I may have floated it before where I wondered aloud to someone in a meeting in New York when we're talking about audiobooks. Like I wondered about Audible's interest in possibly dropping the price of their single credit audiobook selection just because it wasn't really competitive with why would someone pick that versus Spotify Premium him for all intents and purposes, that was my thought. And Rebecca, I think maybe I was onto something because they have dropped the price of their single credit audiobook to not just below $10 but 8.99 and I think this is a bigger deal than maybe a civilian might think. Am I wrong? What do you think about this?
- [35:45]
Rebecca Schinsky
No, I think this is a big deal and it does speak to or implied in here is how well Spotify has been doing with this that Spotify still is secondary to Audible. Audible has a to the market, but Spotify has been successful in eating into Audible's market share of audiobooks and Audible is having to respond like that. Market pressure is real and it's good for consumers. Market pressure is good for consumers. You know, competition is good for consumers. And dropping to 8.99 where you just get the one audiobook, you can access podcasts, you can download the titles that are in your library. You can also purchase additional things like it makes it more competitive with the Spotify Premium model where you get music and podcasts and 15 hours a month of audiobook listening and sort of, you know, that whole package. I don't know if Audible is getting new users like if someone sits down to choose between Audible and Spotify unless they already have an established like music catalog somewhere else. But this probably is a shore up against people abandoning Audible. If I'm Audible, I would have been really scared the last couple years about people doing exactly what I've done, which is abandoned Audible because I listen to about one audiobook a month and I can do it on Spotify.
- [37:05]
Jeff O'Neill
Yep. I also think it re establishes the buy your morals versus doing like Libro FM which is 14.99 for one credit per month. Of course, as as people know that can be a part of supporting your local bookstore. If you go through the hoop jumping that goes into it over there. It should be said on the audible front that this 899the credit does not roll over. It's been a while since I was a standard member, so it's a user loser situation. Though frankly to be perfectly comparable, that's de facto what happens with The Spotify Premium. 15 hours. You don't roll over any unused hours there. I also wonder if they're thinking about some people that maybe are our Spotify listeners that use their 15 but want to do one more. Maybe they're a one plus ish person and this is cheaper than topping off your Spotify Premium for another audiobook.
- [37:59]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. And it's interesting to see these two services now are like trying to carve into each other's, you know, side offerings rather than just the primary menu choice here. It's. I'm so glad to see this. Like let's. Can we. Can we do ebook pricing next please?
- [38:17]
Jeff O'Neill
Who could even. Who would do the do that?
- [38:20]
Rebecca Schinsky
I don't know. Ebook pricing just has been out of control for years and I'm not sure.
- [38:26]
Jeff O'Neill
I had an idea that's sort of related that was for half baked ideas. Would you like to hear it right now?
- [38:31]
Rebecca Schinsky
Always.
- [38:33]
Jeff O'Neill
So you know how with this you get with. I was thinking in terms of Spotify and I'm like what's the text version of Spotify? That was my thought of this half baked idea because what I want to do is someone to pack in ebooks like if and my thought was this. What if the New York Times offered you one free ebook a month from us from a curated library that you could read in the New York Times.
- [38:58]
Rebecca Schinsky
Well I love this and they could
- [39:01]
Jeff O'Neill
get it sponsored they can get a cut of whatever but people they're really good at digital experiences. The reading would be they have a bunch of content they could do around it. I kind of if I'm in the New York Times I like this idea even though even despite me having it which you should discount your own ideas. But I thought this was kind of an interesting play on the Spotify audiobook thing.
- [39:22]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah I mean the only knock on it for me is that I don't want to have to read in any more apps that I'm already reading in and like I read the news in the New York Times app. But if it was a tab.
- [39:33]
Jeff O'Neill
There's a tab. Right.
- [39:35]
Rebecca Schinsky
If I were right if I were a normie reader who's reading maybe a book a maybe a book a month and the New York Times had access to it like this would all the curated part of this is the way that you would sell it because publishers are not going to sign up for the all you can eat like stream your ebooks model. We tried that about 10, 15 years ago and rip to oyster we still miss it but that's we're just not going to see it. But I think a curated selection that you could read and that would almost function like Libby does like you have access to this ebook for a certain amount of time would be that's a. I like this idea a lot. I think it would serve a lot of rank and file readers. We're weirdos like this is not for me but no this wouldn't be fair a lot of readers.
- [40:18]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah well I was thinking it because one thing we have seen over time and shout out book riot deals newsletters you can sign up if you want where we curate we it's really Vanessa and some of the other editors we used to do it I used to do it a long time ago what the available you know kind of the best of the days down priced ebooks are and you can get really good books for $1.99 in most of the ebook places you want to get it you have to find it there. We link to Amazon because that's where 90% of the people do and our technology is set up to do that and then you can find it other places. But one reason they do that sometimes is if there's a new book about by that author coming out or there's a new thing in that series or some sometimes they use that down bricing thing not just to make money but to get people to pay attention to that author or that series so they'll go buy the new one. So I could very much imagine say the New York Times for September Pachinko by Min Jin Lee is available to New York Times subscribers and that's really promoting American Hagwon coming out or something like that.
- [41:18]
Rebecca Schinsky
Or yeah, James Percival Everett. Like that's coming out in paperback next month. Maybe you do some promotion around it in the New York Times in the run up or some of the other Percival Everett titles that are a good companion read. I like this idea.
- [41:32]
Jeff O'Neill
Yes. So I know a good business practice is to give people you compete with both for mindshare and dollars ideas that only they can enact. So that's why they call me Jeff Zu. The Art of the Art of War by Jeff sue okay, let's move along. What to say about the Audie Award winners?
- [41:53]
Rebecca Schinsky
Anything, mostly I think just to shout out the they happened. The audio awards were given out this week for audiobooks that came out in 2025. The audiobook of the year was Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins, narrated by Jefferson White. Other finalists included the Devil, Reach Toward the Sky by Garrett M. Graff, King of Ashes by SA Cosby, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, narrated by Lulu Raschka, Shield of Sparrows, book one by Devney Perry and Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaughey. And then there are a ton of other categories so you can look at adaptations and original work. Autobiography, memoir. Matriarch by Tina Knowles won that one. We didn't see a lot of action around Matriarch in print, but the audiobook did sound quite good. Best Fiction Narrator Then you get, you know, a bunch of finalists. Best nonfiction narrator Blair Underwood narrated Lionel Richie's memoir called Truly Unbelievable. Yeah, that's got to be a great experience you had, you know, business and personal development, ensemble performance, which we love, a full cast audio book. And this went to the Correspondent by Virginia Evans. And there are like 15 narrators listed. So if you have not picked up the Correspondent yet, as I haven't, I think that might be the way to do it, especially the epistolary structure. What do you think? I know you just recently read it.
- [43:18]
Jeff O'Neill
I think it could be cool. Cool. Very cool. I. I find myself drawn to I was just looking at the production and sound design winners and finalists. Like what besides a good narration by one or even multiple people would get me to try something? Like, I am unmoved by all of these audio awards. Have you ever picked up something because it won an audio award? Rebecca?
- [43:38]
Rebecca Schinsky
I have not. But I don't listen to that many audiobooks. The reason I'm picking up an audiobook is usually it's nonfiction. And that's how I. That's one of the ways I really like to engage with nonfiction. Or it's a like, celebrity memoir and I want to hear them doing it right.
- [43:53]
Jeff O'Neill
So I find myself interested that. But I also have never picked up something just because it was here. But I was looking at the production and sound design winner. And this goes back to an old Jeff hobby horse, which is how much do people get paid for this? Because the winner in the production sound design was a book called Dragon Day by Bob Prohl, which is an audible original, which looks like some sort of paranoia Game of Thrones. But it's also Grand Theft Auto, which is a good idea for a book. I hope that's what it is and everyone enjoys it. But it's narrated by Greta Lee and Haley Atwell and Michael Chiklis. Like, what is happening?
- [44:28]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, there's. We still don't know what the celebrities get paid to narrate it. Like several months ago, and we even talked about it on the show. Anne Helen Peterson interviewed an audiobook narrator for her culture study podcast and newsletter. And that person was a free freelancer. And she broke down like a week in the life of an audiobook narrator and how much time she spends preparing and how much time she spends recording. Sort of roughly what the economics were. But that's a different. I. I would assume a different business model for a production company than you're bringing celebrities in to narrate. And we still have no idea what that is. Or like Tom Hanks narrating Ann Patchett novels. What? Like, just tell us, please.
- [45:08]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, that one seems. Seems to be like a friend network. I don't.
- [45:11]
Rebecca Schinsky
But surely he got paid for it.
- [45:13]
Jeff O'Neill
Sure. Scale, union. I don't know. Are these unionized too, by the way? I don't know how that works. So I guess this is the free thing I want the New York Times to do. Elizabeth Harris, Alexandra Alter. Can you do a. What does. What's going on with these? What's going on with these? Because I know there's a lot of money being made. I still do not understand how this happens. This is also circling back to. I think the first time this really struck me like a bolt of lightning is seeing that Rosario Dawson. Rosario Dawson was doing the narration for Andy Weir's Artemis. So it's been a while. But that was the first like what. What does one get paid for something like.
- [45:49]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [45:50]
Jeff O'Neill
And there was like pencil.
- [45:51]
Rebecca Schinsky
Kate Winslet did what Pride and Prejudice or one of Kate Winslet did one of the big classics a few years back. Yeah.
- [45:58]
Jeff O'Neill
I also have a question of does it matter for the sales? Oh, like what's the marginal value of this?
- [46:06]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Where the like the die hard audiobook people, they know the names of their narrators that they're into. I just did a piece in our flagship newsletter a couple of weeks ago about sort of narrator, the Audible Narrator hall of Fame. And one of the people being inducted into it had narrated like 800 audiobooks, which is just incredible. And those they have followers like these folks who aren't celebrities or they don't start off as celebrities, become celebrities within the audiobook community for their performances. And I think in those cases it's kind of like you're a deadhead. You're going to go to whatever show there are. There are people picking up audiobooks that they wouldn't have ordinarily picked up because there's a narrator that they know and like. But I don't know how much that transfers from a celebrity.
- [46:52]
Jeff O'Neill
I wonder what percent shoot us an email podcast book riot.com if you're the kind of person that has a it will move the needle for you that why is narrating something over Z. Oh, you know what? Follow the narrator.
- [47:06]
Rebecca Schinsky
I have one example that I can think of. I was going to read the Britney Spears memoir no matter what, but finding out that Michelle Williams was narrating it pushed me into I will definitely do this on audio.
- [47:19]
Jeff O'Neill
So if it would have been generic good audiobook reader that you didn't recognize, you would have just done it in print.
- [47:24]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, if Britney had read it herself, I would have done it on audio. And if it had been like a voice that I recognized like Michelle Williams, I would have done it on audio. But otherwise I was gonna do it it in print like that. Like the point of the audio experience for me in a celebrity well, in a celebrity memoir, like is to either hear directly from the celebrity or have like a big performance.
- [47:45]
Jeff O'Neill
And I think this is more compounding from the publisher's point of view because what you're saying is you are going to buy the book anyway. It's just so do they care?
- [47:53]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, maybe they don't.
- [47:55]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, I also know that some audio departments and print departments have separate P and L. So, like, they could have won the business from the other part of the company and it showed up on one person's panel versus the other. And they went to the expense of hiring Michelle Williams, where the company would have gotten the same number of dollars anyway. That's a whole other.
- [48:10]
Rebecca Schinsky
From me.
- [48:11]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, from you, yeah. But I just. I don't know. And books are so different. We've talked about this a million times. Each individual book is so hard to put into a data set because the data is not. It's all lumpy. Right. There are. No, they're not. A thousand Britney Spears memoirs we could put into a double blind study and
- [48:26]
Rebecca Schinsky
see if there were.
- [48:29]
Jeff O'Neill
She. I think she's got another. She's got another volume in her. Did you see the news today about Britney Spears?
- [48:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
Is there Britney Spears news today?
- [48:35]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, she got arrested on the highway.
- [48:37]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh, no.
- [48:38]
Jeff O'Neill
And one of her representatives, like, I hope this begins the chapter of some needed changes. Like, oh, there's still Britney. There's still some shelves written there. Yeah, I hope so too. We have a troika of. No, I guess only two of them are really related, but Utah's banned additional four more books from all public schools. I don't know. Do you want to list the. I guess maybe we'll list the titles for people there. And. And this is just something that's been happening across the country. But Utah seems to be more unilateral than others.
- [49:03]
Rebecca Schinsky
You know what, Kelly? I think just Kelly Jensen, who wrote this piece. It contains the list of all 27 titles. The four. No, the four new ones are Bag of Bones by Stephen King. Breathless by Jennifer Niven. The Carnival at Bray by Jesse Ann Foley. The Handmaid's Tale, the graphic novel edition.
- [49:22]
Jeff O'Neill
You gotta get all the editions. All the editions of the Handmaid gots to go.
- [49:25]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Oh, and Red Hood by Ilana K. Arnold. So those are the new ones related to Margaret Atwood. The trailer for Hulu's adaptation of the Testaments is out today. The show premieres next month. And Chase Infinity, from One Battle After Another is one of the stars. I'm not gonna watch this, but if I were going to, it would solely be because of Chase Infinity.
- [49:50]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, so there's that. Lee and Low, which has for a long time published a diversity survey. This has been an important. We've. We've talked about this survey for 10 years. It comes out. We've talked about A lot really. It came out in 2015, right when we're getting the show kind of started and we're the COVID The beats we were interested in, we realized we were shared, you know, concerns were going forward and they have, you know, they have limited resources and they are taking the resources that usually go to that baseline survey towards fighting, covering book bans and censorship. They are a large multicultural children's book publisher. So they are, as you might imagine, extremely interested in book bands in schools because so much of them have been around diversity of all kinds. Racial, gender, national, religious, experiential of all kinds. I am sad they have to do this. I will miss that diversity baseline report. But I totally understand it probably makes. I want them to exist. So whatever they think they need to do to stick around, they should be doing.
- [50:53]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. In the statement from Jason Lowe, he says that as far as books for children go, the diversity movement is by and large in limbo in the face of extreme censorship that targets diverse authors and titles. Our first priority as publishers must shift toward continuing to publish and sell diverse books for children in contentious times. The second priority is to redirect the time and effort that we spent on the diversity baseline study and channel it toward the fight of book bans. Makes a lot of sense to me. And you just do have limited time and resources and like we cannot focus on like there does need to be a hierarchy of like a hierarchy of needs at some point. And we've got to make sure that we maintain the right to read and share ideas so that we can have a publishing industry that we can worry about, about making it diverse enough.
- [51:42]
Jeff O'Neill
Yep. Speaking of diversity, we're not going to spend a lot of time on this, but we wanted to point this out to listeners. This is a survey on the state of black owned bookstores in the United States. How many there are, what states have them, which don't. I encourage you to look through this. This is brought to us by.
- [52:01]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh, I just navigated the national association of Black Bookstores.
- [52:05]
Jeff O'Neill
That would be a reasonable organization to gather and promote and distribute this information there. At the same time, they note a couple of interesting things in the highlights. Sales of books by Black authors declined 14%. I don't have a time unit described there. I'm sure that's put somewhere else. Lower 14 states currently have no black owned bookstores. Major geographic gaps across the country. 90% of these stores report annual revenue of under $250,000. So meaning these are not doing huge numbers. It's a PDF that you have to down that you get to download if you would like to download it that way just makes it a little harder to navigate on the web. Really beautiful presentation though.
- [52:51]
Rebecca Schinsky
Great information. Yeah. I was happy to see 306 black owned bookstores in the US which still only accounts for about 8% of independent bookstores. We have a lot of independent bookstores and. And the national association of Black Bookstores is relatively new. It's cool to see data collection, activism and advocacy coming out for them. So do check it out. You can really go on a much deeper dive into the data.
- [53:18]
Jeff O'Neill
We look forward to seeing that. Good job. Check it out. Send that along. It's time for Frontless foia. We both have a couple of picks here. Why don't you kick us off, Rebecca Okay.
- [53:28]
Rebecca Schinsky
I am so delighted to talk about On Morrison by Namwali Serpell. I will say I haven't read all of it it but it is organized by Morrison's novels and I have read a few of the big pieces. But then I had this realization of like, oh, what I actually want to do is go on a Toni Morrison rereading project.
- [53:48]
Jeff O'Neill
You've already done this. You're doing this again.
- [53:50]
Rebecca Schinsky
But it's been like 10 years.
- [53:53]
Jeff O'Neill
It'll be 10 years.
- [53:53]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's been like a decade since I did my big Morrison reread. I don't know how realistic it is to do it in a compressed time period given the professional commitments that we have right now. But the the opening essay that Serpell writes is called On Difficulty or On Being Difficult, I can't remember which. And it's about both the difficulty of Morrison's work but her willingness to be a difficult person and to exist like she was known as being kind of haughty or salty at times. Some of that is fair. Some of it is the kind of criticism that's leveled at black women who take up space in cultural places.
- [54:30]
Jeff O'Neill
Whereas Norma Millie could just punch you in the face. And that was cool back in the day. Right?
- [54:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
But Morrison did like insist on taking up space in a way that was really admirable and inspiring. And Serpell writes about that and how it's connected to her willingness to let her work be difficult and to let it not be self explanatory sometimes. And Serpell ties it to her own experiences in both in Arts and letters and in the Academy. The essay on the Bluest Eye is just stunning. The essay on Sula, like they're all these are such wonderful, deep readings. This is exactly what I want Literary Criticism to be. And I think if more literary criticism were like this book, people would be less afraid of it. Like, that's. I kind of just wanted to go like high fiving Namwali Serpell for threading a really difficult needle of like, Morrison's a hard author to read. There's a huge org aura around how we think of her work. And then to. To go into these books that are hard and talk about the things that are hard and talk about the things that aren't perfect about them. Like, there's been a real surge in Toni Morrison. I don't know, nostalgia and admiration.
- [55:39]
Jeff O'Neill
Saint Morrison. Yes.
- [55:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yes. Yeah. As the book has come out, Wesley Morris has a great piece for the New York Times about not making a saint out of. To Toni Morrison. Like she was not and never wanted to be seen that way. But I just. I appreciated the setup that Serpell brings, the framing that she's offering for this book, the spirit in which she engages in this criticism, and then she just executes it like nobody's business. This is going to be like. I will look forward to getting to come back to these essays, which is really high. Like the highest praise that I can offer for literary criticism.
- [56:11]
Jeff O'Neill
I read the first essay. I have a copy and I. You will give. Get to. In. In due course, I think I maybe will read Morrison again over the course of my life and pick it back up as I approach each one. But I really did appreciate that first one on difficulty. I. I may. I've told you this story. I'm not going to tell the details of it, but I had a personal interaction with Toni Morrison that I wouldn't categorize as negative. But it's in line with the Morrison presented here. And I find it refreshing, useful, and frankly, kind of liberating that the specificity of these great authors and iconic people. We retain their idiosyncrasicity and humanity. I think that's good for art. I think that's good for our understanding. It's good for our own empathy to realize that these are not saints. They're not perfect people where they shouldn't be perfect. And even in their goodness, they are specific and difficult to understand, as anyone you know is. Right. Why would Morrison be easier to understand than like your aunt?
- [57:02]
Rebecca Schinsky
Right?
- [57:02]
Jeff O'Neill
Right. There's no. There's no reason that would be the case. And maybe you and I are also both in the. Let's us. Let's hold some space for the reader being asking something of the reader, the reader contributing something to a discourse. I'M thrilled by that proposition. I think it was a welcome corrective to the sainting of Morrison because she, I mean, Serpell knows better than I. She's had, you know, much more. I just had one. But of the reading experience, I've known people who have known her and I like the word formidable, and I think that's a useful versus nice versus not nice. Formidable is its own kind of word and it's sort of beyond good and evil in that particular way. That's cool. You can find. If you wanted all Morrison's back catalog on thriftbooks.com you can find it 19 million other new and used books in addition to books, games. Any of the things you can find there. Rebecca probably there are. We did this for zero. There's a Bunch of Bluest Eyes. Beloved has the most editions. I looked at this quite a bit recently. You know, it's funny as the Bluest Eye and Beloved have become, I think because one is shorter. And I don't want to say it's approachable, but it's more approachable than some of the others. And then Beloved is the. The apex. I find it interesting that Song of Solomon, which when I was a teenager, that stood right next to Beloved on Morrison Mountain. And I feel like it's. And you can tell by the number of editions, the number available. That's not the. The case anymore. So that kind of fun stuff you can do on thriftbooks.com free shipping on orders of over $15. I just interleave that in there. I mixed it up a little bit. Not rather than the top.
- [58:35]
Rebecca Schinsky
Nice little segue there. I did like it. My next front list, Foyer, is a newer book. They probably also have it at Thrift Books. So Old, so Young by Grant Ginder. This is pitched as the Big Chill meets Four Weddings in a few hours.
- [58:49]
Jeff O'Neill
I remember this. Yes.
- [58:50]
Rebecca Schinsky
And Jeff o', Neill, I'm so happy to tell you it delivers.
- [58:54]
Jeff O'Neill
We're back. We. I'm so excited.
- [58:57]
Rebecca Schinsky
Are back. This is a group of friends that we see across. Like it opens in present day. We know one of them is traveling on her way to a funeral. We don't know who has died. And then we rewind Back to like 30 years prior when they're all in college. They haven't even all met each other yet. And it's New Year's Eve and we go to a New Year's Eve party and we start to get to know people. And then we hop up like 10 years later to another big event. And then 10 years after that, to another big event. And then we see them all getting together at somebody's house, like on Long island one summer. And they're. They have struggled through early adulthood. Some people are established in their careers. Some of them are having kids, some of them are having affairs. It's messy as hell. It is like, I read this on a plane. It is the perfect vacation book. And it really did deliver on Big Chill. But for the millennials generation, it's. It was wonderful. And this was my first experience with Grant Kinder. I know you enjoyed his previous novel.
- [59:58]
Jeff O'Neill
I did enjoy.
- [59:58]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. But this is like get the Gang Back Together, just Apex Mountain. It's great.
- [60:06]
Jeff O'Neill
I've got a thought for you. I know, you know, a lot of people play the game of, like, what would you do if you won the lottery and had a whole bunch of money? I think I would be amenable to the following. I would buy some giant house on Long island in Montauk or the Hampton somewhere. And I would make it available to groups of friends who haven't seen each other in 20 years. And I don't need to be there. I just want to be there the Monday after with one person who's delegated to sit over with a cup of coffee and just tell me what the. What?
- [60:30]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, just get the debrief.
- [60:31]
Jeff O'Neill
They're just. I just want to hear all the stories, all the micro dramas. I just. I don't need, like, to actually see. I don't need a relational glory hole in the thing. I just want an after action report about what's going on.
- [60:43]
Rebecca Schinsky
Relational glory.
- [60:44]
Jeff O'Neill
I find these dynamics, as you and I both find these dynamics extraordinary. Interesting.
- [60:49]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yes. Yeah. And interesting. Like I rolled off of that into Brawler by Lauren Groff, which we're going to talk about in detail for the Patreon.
- [60:56]
Jeff O'Neill
We should sit at the top of the show, but, yeah, we're gonna do.
- [60:58]
Rebecca Schinsky
But there is a story in there as well about, you know, women who haven't seen each other since high school getting back together. Like, I'm. I am so here for this. I'm glad our generation are getting these stories. I will read every one of them that gets good reviews. But so old, so young. Set the bar high.
- [61:13]
Jeff O'Neill
That's cool. I'm very excited about that. That might be a summer read for me at this point. I've got a couple to talk about. I'm very excited to tell you about both of them, I have to say.
- [61:21]
Rebecca Schinsky
Okay.
- [61:22]
Jeff O'Neill
I read Heart the Lover by Lily King. You know, I love a college book And I love a long term relation book and I really like writers and lovers and this one went down like a hot steaming cup of chamomile tea.
- [61:37]
Rebecca Schinsky
I'm so glad to hear it.
- [61:38]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. So for those of you who don't know, it's a young point of view from a young woman starting when she goes to college, kind of a loner, arty loner at a private liberal arts school or. No, it's. I think it's Wake Forest actually. It's hardy. I'm getting my. I think it's supposed to be Wake Forest context clues about universities in the ACC that have a Catholic bent. Anyway, she gets involved with a guy and that doesn't go super well though. I mean it's not abusive or anything. It just ends kind of ugly. But in the course of the relationship with that person, she meets this other person, Yash, who they have the kind of relationship you want to see in a book like this where it feels affirming and they're friends to lovers and they don't really know they like each other until they do. But then I don't want to spoil it. Life intervenes and we flash forward to quite a. Quite a long time later in which they have the opportunity to reckon, reconnect, reconcile and sort of triage their lives and what's happened to them. I thought it was quite beautiful and lovely and moving and I think the kind of story about relationship and love I'm interested in reading, it doesn't have to be a romance. I'm not going to say if it happened, if it ends happily or not. Which means it's not a romance. Right. That's the weird sort of feedback loop of that. But I like to read stories about relationships and I didn't know necessarily where this was going to go and it wasn't like a. It wasn't surprising, but it felt. Felt true and tender from the heart.
- [63:06]
Rebecca Schinsky
Maybe not surprising, but I also didn't find it to be predictable.
- [63:09]
Jeff O'Neill
No, I don't want it to be predictable. But by the end it wasn't like. And then he turned out to be a werewolf or something, an alien or something. Very strange.
- [63:16]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's very grounded. Yeah.
- [63:17]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. So, yeah, I really recommend Heart the Lover as I try to. I try to mop up some of these books like people like this book of commercial upmarket literary fiction. It turns out I will like it too.
- [63:28]
Rebecca Schinsky
People. And people are still liking Heart the Lover and talking about it. Someone I know. Sorry, I'm about to tell you a thing. I saw on the Internet. But someone that I follow who is not in books asked for book recommendations this week and then started reposting all of the recommendations that their pretty large audience was giving them and heart the lover showed up a bunch of times
- [63:48]
Jeff O'Neill
and I mean it has this many people have read that.
- [63:51]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's great.
- [63:52]
Jeff O'Neill
This next one was a complete dart board throw. I had occasion to drive up to Seattle and back and that is a. It's like a seven hour to eight hour drive there and back. And I often I do that enough where it's like I want to do one audiobook there and back. So I find something that's seven or eight hours long and something that I know I wouldn't necessarily pick up otherwise because I'm. I'm trapped. I've trapped myself. It's the audiobook version of bricking myself. Like I'm going to listen to this audiobook. And the book I picked up is called Liturgies of the Wild, which is an unbelievable name. The Myths that make Us by Martin Shaw. It's out from one of the Random House imprints. Good job Random House. And your display pages where I can't tell people where it is because I have to go through other menus. Martin Shaw, I don't know what to call him. A mythographer and storyteller who has spent his life making a career out of getting people to connect to nature. It sounds like. And this one is about going into nature, having relationship with nature and myth that are sustaining and then how those myths are to put together. And it detoured more than I was expecting into Christian stuff which is not. It wasn't evangelical but he had a later in life return to the church, but an older version of the church. And it's very expansive in its understanding of this. But I, you know, drawing they call, he calls them ancient technologies of myth, ritual and initiation rites. I found it transporting, incantatory and strange. And I don't think in no small part as I was driving through fog. I'm not kidding, Rebecca. Yeah, I was driving through Pacific Northwest fog most of the way there and back. But I found it very, very fascinating. Like he does stuff like spends 101 nights in this particular forest just like by himself.
- [65:48]
Rebecca Schinsky
The dream it just.
- [65:50]
Jeff O'Neill
And then taking groups and teaching classes and thinking about myths and his own relationships and deaths in his own life. Connecting to stories about death and transition. I am not sure I believed a minute of it like in any particular way, but I found existing for a little while in this mode to do something to me. So I. Is that a recommendation, Rebecca? I don't know, but I'm beyond ready made boundaries here.
- [66:15]
Rebecca Schinsky
It makes me want to listen to it. Like if I win the lottery, I won't tell anyone, but there will be signs and the sign will be she
- [66:23]
Jeff O'Neill
just went and spent that. You're wearing a moss robe, coming out with a crow on your shoulder.
- [66:29]
Rebecca Schinsky
100% percent liturgies of the Wild Sounds like a Mary Oliver title. Like I was in from the title.
- [66:35]
Jeff O'Neill
I would. I'm not going to wreck it to you directly because as you can tell, I'm feeling some kind of fuzziness about my own relationship to it. But I will say this. I would find your own relationship to it fascinating. I would love to know what you think of this book. And was I high on gas that was getting put back into my car
- [66:54]
Rebecca Schinsky
somehow that I didn't realize or just high on nature? That's a thing.
- [66:58]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. Was I, was I Kia boxing myself with carbon monoxide all the way because it was really cool, but by the end of it I was like, that could all be garbage because it's like essentially his own close readings of myths, which is cool, but presented as being the quote unquote true. Yeah, I don't know, Rebecca. I don't know.
- [67:21]
Rebecca Schinsky
That raises a little skepticism from us here. But I'm. I'm interested. Interested.
- [67:25]
Jeff O'Neill
But what I took from it is I can be skeptical and also got something out of it. And I was totally locked in and thinking about it the whole time. So I think that's worth saying.
- [67:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
I love to hear that. Liturgies of the Wild. What a good book title.
- [67:35]
Jeff O'Neill
It's an unbelievable title. Good job. Martin Shaw and the the marketing folks over there at some imprint of PRH that shall remain nameless. With that we come to the end of our show. Rebecca, you can find the shownotes@bookriot.com listen or in the podcast player right there in the episode information. Check us out on zero to well read. Project Hail Mary is out now. There'll be another one coming next week. Quite a bit different than Project Hail Mary, but a contemporary classic in its own regard. The Patreon. This week we're doing a bonus episode and we're going to discuss Brawler by Lauren Groff, her new book and it's a collection of short stories. There's a lot to talk about there. You can choose email podcast@bookriot.com thanks to ThriftBooks.com for sponsoring frontless Void and be a good partner for many things. We do over here at Book Riot. And as always, Book Riot's a proud member of the Airwave Podcast Network. Rebecca, thank you so much.
- [68:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
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