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Book Riot - The Podcast
The Best Books of 2026 So Far
00:40:07
Jeff and Rebecca do a mid-year check-in about their favorite books of 2026 so far.
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- [00:00]
Rebecca Schinsky
This podcast is supported by Merit Beauty. I'm always trying to streamline my getting ready routine and I have to tell you, if something takes too many steps or requires me to have precise skills, I'm probably not going to do it. That's just one of the reasons that I've really been liking Merit Beauty lately. Merit is a minimalist beauty brand that makes elevated makeup and skin care minimalist and Elevated is kind of my whole philosophy in life. It's everything I aspire to. So Merit Skincare that's designed to help you look put together in minutes is perfect.
- [00:32]
Jeff O'Neill
Perfect.
- [00:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
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- [01:18]
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- [01:55]
Jeff O'Neill
This is the Book Riot Podcast. I am Jeff o' Neill and I'm Rebecca Schinsky and I come to you from the past where not yet on vacation for a couple weeks in Europe, but we wanted to get in our favorite best books of the year so far before the, you know, literal halfway point of the year. I kind of did favorite I'm not quite ready to adjudicate best quite yet because I've got land I'm still working on. I've got kin here I'm kind of saving for July when I'm back home and I can roll around in it a little bit. But these are the books that have stood out to me so far. I usually like to only record 10 recommend 10% of what I've read. I've read 60 books so far this year, which means I get six. I've got eight.
- [02:37]
Rebecca Schinsky
Deal with okay Jefferson myself to that constraint. I did I think overlap of best and favorite. Like I feel like there is a lot of overlap. This is a really good year in teaching so far and it was, it was fun to go back and make this list and be like, oh yeah, that book. Oh yeah, that one. So I actually I have 10 that I'm prepared to talk about.
- [03:00]
Jeff O'Neill
I'm guessing we're have some overlap probably. I think there's things I think you've read Ken and John of Johns, which I haven't. I think those are gonna make your list. Don't say anything now because I don't want to spoil it. I would imagine if I had read those I'd be talking about those right now. I have John of Johns in hardcover too, right next to Ken actually, for my get back from Europe and I'm gonna be fried and sitting around outside reading
- [03:21]
Rebecca Schinsky
this episode is sponsored by Eleven Reader. It's an award winning audio app with more than 100,000 premium titles. Stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from their upcoming audiobook edition of the Odyssey. You know that feeling when you're excited about a new book? You hit play on the audiobook and the narrator just kills it. And not in a good way. Maybe the voice doesn't fit the story, maybe it's flat. Sometimes the ebook doesn't even have an audio version yet. 11 reader helps with that. It's a brand new audiobook app that features over 100,000 titles from bestsellers to hidden gems, guilty pleasures, you name it, and here's what's making it different. For many of those titles, you can choose the voice. With over a thousand stunningly natural narrators, you pick the one that fits the story. They have iconic voices like Michael Caine, Burt Reynolds or Maya Angelou with voices that read to you aloud. You can set a sleep timer. You can even add background soundscapes so that thriller actually sounds tense and the romance actually sounds warm as you drift off to sleep. The best part is it starts at 8:25amonth for 20 hours of premium audiobook listening. And no limits on turning your own text like PDFs or documents into stunning audiobook quality listening. Try it for free, search 11 reader on the app Store or visit their website to get started with 10 hours. Yours for free. 11 reader. That's 11 reader in the app store to get 10 hours for free. Start today. Again, stick around after the show to hear an excerpt of the Odyssey. Their new audiobook production Foreign.
- [04:53]
Jeff O'Neill
Is brought to you by Penguin Young readers, publisher of Dough by Rebecca Barrow. Now, this is a book that I have been anticipating for this year. It's kind of unique. It's horror, but it's novel in verse. Okay. It's giving yellow jackets vibes. It's giving sinners vibes. Also, a 24 horror movie vibes. Okay, so let's get into it. So, Maris Larson is captain of the West Eaton High cheer team and coach's favorite on the mat. She can escape her troubled home life. That is, until newcomer Genevieve Ray threatens everything she's worked for. As their rivalry intensifies, Maris begins sleepwalking and dreaming of Doe. Now, Doe is a monstrous, decaying deer bound by an ancient curse. A lot going on with Doe. Okay, Doe's got a lot going on. Doe believes Maris is the last girl with a bloodline needed to set her free. Promising Maris the power to defeat Genevieve, Doe draws her deeper into a dangerous bargain where victory comes at a deadly cost and only Doe truly stands to win. Like I said, this is a horror novel in verse with that premise. Go ahead and pick that up. Go ahead and get Doe by Rebecca Barrow. Come back. Tell us how you loved it. Thanks again to Penguin Young Readers for sponsoring this episode.
- [06:11]
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- [06:15]
Rebecca Schinsky
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- [06:18]
Jeff O'Neill
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- [06:21]
Rebecca Schinsky
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- [06:41]
Jeff O'Neill
How would you like to proceed, Rebecca? I have not organized or numbered mine. These are just off the dome. Should we play the game of what do you think? What do I think's on my list? That's on your list? That's sometimes fun to do.
- [06:50]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, that's fun. Or we could do like I broke mine into fiction, nonfiction, and I have one debut to shout out.
- [06:56]
Jeff O'Neill
But let's.
- [06:56]
Rebecca Schinsky
Let's do the guessing game.
- [06:57]
Jeff O'Neill
I've only got one nonfiction, so that's gonna be easy. Well, I'm gonna assume we both have transcription by Ben Lerner.
- [07:04]
Rebecca Schinsky
We do. We do both have transcription by Ben Lerner.
- [07:07]
Jeff O'Neill
It is an unfair advantage in which we did a book club about it. Which we, as always happens. We like the book better once we get to talk about it with each other.
- [07:13]
Narrator (Audiobook Excerpt)
Yeah.
- [07:14]
Rebecca Schinsky
It doesn't always mean that the book is going to end up on our favor, but Ben Lerner had a strong case going in. And spoiler, this is a book about art and writing.
- [07:23]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. Family and memory and identity and what you do and don't know.
- [07:27]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. The setup is interesting. An academic, a reporter goes to interview an older man who had been his mentor at some point and is stressed out because he drops his phone in water right before the interview and he has no way to record the interview. And so then how are we going to have a record of this conversation that we're having? And it spins out into being really a meditation on having written records of things and the ways that we interpret conversation and art. Yeah. Identity and family and all that technology
- [07:58]
Jeff O'Neill
and eating disorders and all kinds of interesting things.
- [08:01]
Rebecca Schinsky
All kinds of things happen.
- [08:02]
Jeff O'Neill
Not for nothing. And I think this matters. And one of the reasons I. I like Ben Lerner specifically. But reader writers like Ben Lerner is this different. This is not a plug and play that could be written by any number of really good upmarket commercial fiction novelists. Which sometimes I think there's a bit of a. Not a disease of that. But this feels like a Ben Lerner book in a way that it cannot be a Ben Lerner. No one else could do this book. Like write about like fake flowers. And does it matter than they're fake or how much does it matter Our own. The reality of our own existence. And done in what, 144 pages? Not for nothing.
- [08:33]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. And that you read it twice in a row. Like you finished it and then immediately started it back over. Which has to count for something.
- [08:39]
Jeff O'Neill
Has to count for something. Maybe my obsessive compulsive inclination comes to try to understand what I'm reading. And it's interesting to see it make things like the Amazon's best books of the year so far. Listen, it's in the mix. People are not pigeonholing this as being art book. People are saying this is a book that I'm getting something out of it. I see it on the little social media that I do when I open Instagram and people. I'm not following. There's some people. Like this transcription book is pretty interesting over here. So I love to see that at the same time.
- [09:05]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Really delighted to see it. I think we will see Ben Lerner on end of the year lists. I expect to see him on some award nomination lists. Like, that's a thing that happens when you're Ben Lerner and you write a book. And this one deserves that kind of conversation.
- [09:17]
Jeff O'Neill
All right, what do you want to. What do you think's on my board? That's on your board?
- [09:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
Okay. On both of our boards. In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man. 1.
- [09:24]
Jeff O'Neill
Nonfiction. Yes.
- [09:24]
Rebecca Schinsky
By Tom Jenaude.
- [09:27]
Jeff O'Neill
Which. Let's see. You did the setup for the last one. I'll do this. This is nonfiction and memoir of his own father, who I think would be fair to say it's a character. He's a character. He is a raconteur. He is an athlete. He's a narcissist, and he's a handbag salesperson who has in the back of his closet a briefcase full of vibrators and other sex toys, which is a real shock to. Would be a shock to most kids, I think, less so now than certainly in like, 1966.
- [09:58]
Rebecca Schinsky
In the 70s. Yeah.
- [09:59]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, 70s. And it's trying to understand his father, who he both loves and is confounded by, who may have done some very bad things. He certainly did some unfaithful things. He may have done some things that were even worse than that. And I'll leave that to the reader. And it's Junaud's own wondering about what's actually happening there. It's a family history. It's a book about inheritance. What did I didn't. What did I not inherit from my father? And what did I. And what of that was intentional? And which of that is not intentional? There's one moment where we get sort of a sidelong admission of an affair that I think do not includes just to let us know that he knows that we know that he knows that he is not a paragon of virtue and is judging his own father. But is it different? It is different by degree, but by kind. Like, what is this? How do I understand this person? That was important to me that I think we can say he loved, but also knew that he had warts. Maybe his whole body was a wart. That is so fascinating. And then the writing is wonderful. And then I said to you, not unfortunately, you did on print, what I'm sure has his virtues.
- [11:10]
Rebecca Schinsky
I should have done it on.
- [11:11]
Jeff O'Neill
Jenad's performance as his father is one of my favorite audiobook things of all time, bar none, hands down. So I think it just ticked a lot of boxes.
- [11:20]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. It's fathers and sons, man. It's. What do you do when you have a parent that you idolize but is a complicated figure to say the least? And, like, I was just. We just recorded an episode that y' all will have heard two weeks ago now, but I was just ranting about men being allowed to get away with really bad behavior in Strangers by Bell Burden. And this is a different way of telling those kinds of stories, but still of talking about them and sort of dragging some family dynamics into the light. It was so compelling. And this was one of those cases that, like, it took everything I had not to just, like, live text you my reading of it because you had finished it before I had. And I wanted to be like, oh, my God, the briefcase of dildos. Oh, my God, this thing. What do you think is happening here?
- [12:00]
Narrator (Audiobook Excerpt)
Yeah.
- [12:00]
Rebecca Schinsky
So good.
- [12:01]
Jeff O'Neill
It's really good. I'm next to.
- [12:03]
Rebecca Schinsky
I don't know how many more of ours are going to overlap, but let's.
- [12:06]
Jeff O'Neill
No, go gentle for you. No, go gentle. Oh, no.
- [12:08]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Oh, yes. Yes. Definitely go gentle. Yeah.
- [12:10]
Jeff O'Neill
This being our. No, this is your setup, I guess.
- [12:12]
Narrator (Audiobook Excerpt)
Yeah.
- [12:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
This is Maria Semple, equal parts smart and funny, which is such a rare gift. She's, of course, the author of where'd you go, Bernadette? Which was a huge, like, hugely acclaimed, humorous novel in its day as well. But this is about a mid-50s woman who is a stoic philosopher. She's a divorcee. She works as the tutor for the young sons of a wealthy family. She's supposed to be teaching them moral philosophy, basically, like, how to be a good person. And she gets involved with a man that she meets in line at the opera one night who turns out to be involved in what she thinks is an international arms deal.
- [12:53]
Jeff O'Neill
Who among us?
- [12:54]
Rebecca Schinsky
Right? And there's, like, a midlife romance, and there are capers and there are really great jokes about philosophy. And she lives on the same floor of the apartment building with a bunch of other single lady friends, and they call themselves the coven. And, like, I just want to be friends with this character and Maria Semple so badly. Bye.
- [13:14]
Narrator (Audiobook Excerpt)
Bye.
- [13:15]
Jeff O'Neill
You love the voice. It's just fun, zany. It's not afraid to be cracked. It's also not afraid to be smart. It's not afraid to reference stoic philosophy and. And not take the air out of it. Like, Semple herself, like, cares about that stuff. Like, I read some interviews with her. You just don't. Again, I'm going to be largely mentioning books where you don't, like, see them, like, this much. Anymore or not anymore. I don't want to be. But like, this is different. Like, it's a rare book. Who can do this? Who can do this?
- [13:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's like only Maria Semple does it this way. I was just talking to a friend about this book over the weekend and the friend was like, oh, I'm so glad to hear that. It's good because. Where'd you go? Bernadette was so important to me. And funny and smart in literary fiction is such a rare combination. It's really, really hard to be funny on the page. And Maria Semple pulls it off in a way that looks effort. Just a great hang, I think. I read it in like a day and a half and it's one of those, like, if this sounds good to you at all and you have a vacation or a pool you're going to go sit by, or a couch you don't want to get off of for the weekend, go. Gentle is perfect.
- [14:13]
Jeff O'Neill
It's so good. It's one of the rare books that's fun, that also makes you feel smart. And it is smart. Like, you just don't get that. And I want that every day of the week.
- [14:20]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's such a gift.
- [14:21]
Jeff O'Neill
The only one I feel at all confident about they may have is London Falling by Patrick Radden.
- [14:25]
Rebecca Schinsky
Keefe.
- [14:25]
Jeff O'Neill
Do you have Lyndon falling? Did you?
- [14:27]
Rebecca Schinsky
Didn't quite make my top 10.
- [14:28]
Jeff O'Neill
All right. Yeah, we talked about here before PKR. Always worth a read. A individual true crime story that blossoms, unfolds, expands into a story of London and wealth and our modern times that is equal parts who done it, but also, are we sure it wasn't the environment? Are we sure about this? This what we want? Is there anything. Do you feel the same way about how things are going to. Especially as on the eve of maybe having the first trillionaire to ever exist in a few days with an ipo. What is to be done about the kinds of money we have not seen in individuals hands and how it shapes not just individual lives in industries, but entire cities, entire world cities. That's the implication of London falling, is that London itself has been, I don't think it's too far, say, corrupted by the amount of money and what the police are not willing to do to follow up on. And it's not the obvious stuff really. It's the where they could go the extra mile or go down this particular path that maybe they're just exploring. There's a lot of like socioeconomic bouncers around the kind of money we're talking about Here. And it makes it very difficult for them. They're under resourced. They're completely outgunned in terms of clout. And then what happens? And the implication is some very, very bad things. I found it enthralling, chilling, and then researched. The extra piece that makes it especially interesting and different is the involvement of the family of the person who died and their relationship with Keith and how they came to him and how he's been incorporated them. And then PKR's own writing himself into the book as the book progresses. Because at some point he has to talk about. I'm now investigating this. This is beyond the purview of just reporting on stuff that's like, was in the London papers 10 years ago. Which I find interesting as well. I'm sure it will make for a compelling series. Whenever.
- [16:23]
Narrator (Audiobook Excerpt)
Oh, yeah.
- [16:24]
Jeff O'Neill
At the same time. All right. So we're kind of off each other's boards. Which is fine.
- [16:28]
Narrator (Audiobook Excerpt)
Which is fine.
- [16:28]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Did you have Virgil by Virgil Vigil, George Saunders?
- [16:31]
Jeff O'Neill
Just off. Just off my list. Just off.
- [16:33]
Rebecca Schinsky
Okay. I loved this. We did a book club episode about it for the Patreon about a dying oil tycoon on his deathbed and the spirit that comes to visit him. The multiple spirits, actually, it's pretty Dickensian, who are in the room with him. Whether he's aware of them or not, we don't know. But we are with one of them primarily, who narrates the story, really, as she is trying to figure out for herself what does she owe this person. It's supposed to be her job to help him cross over from death into the afterlife, but he did some really bad things. And should she be forcing him to reckon with those things and trying to get some kind of apology from him? Should she just give him comfort because he's dying and hope that he's in the last moments of his life, will realize the harm that he's caused? Or like, what else? And it's just George. So it's also unruly and funny and smart and just everything is unexpected. And he wrestles with morality and mortality in a way that I find to be really wise. It's not often that we read books, I think. I think we even used the word wisdom when we were talking about it. Like, I just don't encounter that in fiction very often. And it gave us a lot to talk about. And I continue to think about it. Also, I continue to be mad at Dwight Garner for his review of it in the Times.
- [17:55]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, you've got more of a bone to Pick, I guess.
- [17:57]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I'm just going to ride for George Saunders and vigil this year.
- [18:00]
Jeff O'Neill
You know, it's funny, I mean, it easily could have made mine. I found when I was thinking about it that I had less specific memory of it than some of these other books. And so that's kind of the demerit. And I actually think it fought. It fell weirdly between transcription and Go Gentle for me, which where if Go gentle is more fun and then transcription, I'm sort of more impressed by how much he was doing with so little. Where Saunders this is pretty high concept where if you look at what Leonard's doing, it's like, like a couple of conversations and that's it. So maybe, maybe just by comparison, I didn't have quite the right chair. I get that I was kind of ranged, but I really like the vigil as well.
- [18:36]
Rebecca Schinsky
What's next for you?
- [18:38]
Jeff O'Neill
I did include Seek Immediate Shelter by Vincent Yu, which I was just talking about on the other show. I think the premise of finding this moment in a lot of lives in the specific community. If you don't remember my summary, but I heard about it, it's a link short story collection where at some afternoon everyone gets on their phone, an alert says there's an incoming missile, seek immediate shelter. Then 10 minutes later, false alarm. And the ramifications of that both specifically things people do, but then also causes people to think about what if you were the person that accidentally sent the message they're involved here at the end, that becomes part of the story. But like a short story can often does, it gives you a frozen moment. But to take the same frozen moment and then work through several experiences gave it a connectivity that some of the characters showed up orthogonally or more or less importantly, but it was more. There is a moment of shared realization of mortality, of uncertainty and of fear. And then what each person does with that, given their own personality and life situation, may as well be a random effect generator. Because lives are so different, right? Some people have brought them towards and something brought them away from and some people sort of did nothing for and that meant something. They're like, wow, isn't it weird that you had no reaction? Or you had this reaction. That boy didn't include me. And that is a lot of interesting stuff and I thought it was really good and I look forward to what Vincent Yu is going to do in the future, but I just hadn't seen this. And you're going to hear that a lot from me. I hadn't seen this. That gets points Love that.
- [20:13]
Rebecca Schinsky
Love that. I'm going to do Kin by Tayari Jones, which if you had read it, I do believe would be on this list for you.
- [20:20]
Jeff O'Neill
I believe that too.
- [20:21]
Rebecca Schinsky
About two girls becoming women. They're both mothers motherless in the Jim Crow South. One's mother died. The other's mother left when she was very young. And as they graduate from high school, their paths are diverging. One of them is going off to college at an hbcu. The other one has decided she's going to go with friends to Memphis and try to find her mother. And we move with them through the years and decades that follow as they are uncovering different aspects of their identity. Each of them making sense in their own ways of what this absence of mother has meant in their lives and what kind of person they want to be in the world. And also so just navigating these different spaces as black women. One of them is queer and is navigating that additional aspect of her identity as well. It is. I think Tayari Jones was already great. I think it's a real level up for her. It's also a move. She moved from Algonquin over to Penguin Random House for this book and has benefited from that platform and publicity. That's so, so well deserved. It's also really funny. I don't remember seeing like it's not Maria Semple funny. But there's humor in the book and I don't remember a in past Tayari Jones. So it felt to me like she was allowing herself to show more of the things that she can do on the page. And that was the part of this reading experience that was the. I haven't seen this before. It was. I haven't seen this before from her. And it's exciting to see Tayari Jones. I was already in the bag especially
- [21:48]
Jeff O'Neill
for what she was doing. Sometimes you kind of feel like you have a sense of who they are.
- [21:51]
By the.
- [21:52]
Well, Third Silver Sparrow, American Marriage. Was there one before that?
- [21:54]
Narrator (Audiobook Excerpt)
Yes, there was.
- [21:55]
Rebecca Schinsky
I didn't read it.
- [21:56]
Narrator (Audiobook Excerpt)
Yeah.
- [21:56]
Rebecca Schinsky
And just. I was already in the bag. But like to see that there's more there and that she's allowing herself to show more of what she's capable of doing was really exciting. And it lives in that really rare zone of literary and commercial hit. Like a true crossover. I think that is on all these best of lists. I do think we're gonna see it in awards contention as well. Like one of the ittiest IT books of the year.
- [22:23]
Jeff O'Neill
Kind of. Similarly, in terms of a different side of Someone I had not done Louise Erdrich short stories before.
- [22:28]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh yeah.
- [22:29]
Jeff O'Neill
And so Python's Kiss. I got a real. There's a moment, there's a. There's a twin sci fi premise short stories that go together in the middle which I, if you had given to me blank and asked me what author there was, I think Louise Erick would have been like number 40. And that's exciting to me. We got to talk with her about it which as always, you know it's going to color my. But I was like speaking of being in the bag four, I enjoyed I think every story in that and I was like, man, she really knows what she's doing. I mean she's won multiple Pulitzer prizes. I don't know what I was expecting but that I had a realization about my own understanding of her and I needed to sort of change my. I need to open the aperture of my understanding of her. Is exciting thing to do. And there's still Erdrick I haven't read because there's a lot.
- [23:09]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I have so many left. Like I don't know, maybe we can do like a summer of Erdrick at some point that would be. Try to get to completion. If, if I had thought to just pull out that pairing those two stories and talk about those like that one two punch was among my favorite reading experiences.
- [23:27]
Narrator (Audiobook Excerpt)
Yeah.
- [23:27]
Jeff O'Neill
One of the most memorable reading moments of the year for me too. Yeah, I agree with you.
- [23:29]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, there were the other stories. I mean it's Louise Erdrich so I enjoyed the experience. But variable amounts of memory standing out for particular things happening there. But those.
- [23:40]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I remembered it better than Vigil. I mean I don't know if that's just me, but I like had remember specificity more than vigil, which is kind of odd, but I don't have a good answer for that.
- [23:48]
Rebecca Schinsky
I'm glad that that made your list. This summer. Serve up the cookout classics craft mayo and dressing. Toss green salads with delicious ranch dressing or zesty Italian. Serve smooth, craveably creamy potato salads with mayo. We all know it's not a cookout without craft. I see you.
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Jeff O'Neill
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- [24:40]
Jeff O'Neill
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- [25:08]
Rebecca Schinsky
I'm going to shout out on Morrison by Namwali Serpell My favorite nonfiction of the year so far and just a book I'm so glad to have in the world. We needed this. We needed a critic and scholar who has been reading and studying Morrison for years to give her the praise and analysis that she's due and that readers this book is a huge service to readers that Serpell lays out how we understand Morrison, maybe how we can understand Morrison better. And then chapter by chapter is Morrison book by book. So you can just read the Bluest Eye and then have Nirmali Serpel hold your hand as you go to understand it. Or like I've read all of Morrison a couple times through, so being able to just like take what I remember of those books and read the chapters that she's written about each of them, it reminded me of things and it also lit up. Oh, I had never considered this piece of it before. Just at top of her game, you know, we got to speak with her for a zero to well read episode and she really just knows her stuff so well and I'm just delighted that this book is out there. It's the kind of thing that if I hadn't gotten to take a class on Morrison, but were a reader just wanting to approach her work, I would be so glad to have it available. It's an incredible resource and I also think we're gonna see it on awards contention. It's on some of the best of lists. Like a good year for people who care about that kind of fiction to see that kind of criticism getting real attention.
- [26:40]
Jeff O'Neill
My last one might be recency bias, but I just talked about it. It's this is where the Serpent Lives by Danielle Mu Yi Nuddin, which I don't think is right. I went to the Wikipedia page and the pronunciation guide's in Urdu, which doesn't help me a lot, but that's okay. This is where the Serpent lives. I will be happy to embarrass myself in mispronouncing this because I'm going to be talking about this book for the rest of the year. There is something to be said I Think for a book that you don't quite get at the beginning and then it kind of comes into focus. Afterlives by Abdul Razat Gurn is another one that came came to mind for me is which by the end you start to feel the payoff of the lattice work, the scaffolding that has been built to support the feeling and the revelation of various kinds, I should say. And I think for me the rarest of things in writing and the kinds of books I like, which is it's felt, I don't know that I could point to it. Maybe I could if you gave me a highlighter in a couple weeks in a seminar classroom of a restraint and a control and a perspective all woven together that is like Ishuguro is the best example of this. But he's got the juice. He can do some of the same things now he's interested in different things. He really is interested in the specific cultural world here. There's no speculative fiction. But then also so kind of like with Transcription versus Vigil a little bit that you care about the plight of a cucumber farm and the stakes are more familiar or. I mean, I don't know how your cucumber farm is doing, Rebecca. Mine's just sort of middling on the whole. I'm in a bit of a pickle about actually God.
- [28:20]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [28:20]
Jeff O'Neill
I shouldn't say that anyway, but it's just more grounded. Right. Even if I haven't been to this place. It's not robots, right. It's not, you know, archangels or sort of divine beings who've been drafted into ushering people into the afterlife. And it goes over several decades. It comes into different understandings of who these people are. And it's not just surprising to me. But I think some of the characters find it surprising what happens that they didn't understand each other the way they thought they did. The stakes are really interesting. I was ensourceful. It feels old fashioned in a way because there isn't spec fic. But man, it was nice. Rebecca is.
- [29:00]
Rebecca Schinsky
I mean you did not name drop is she grew when you talked about this for Frontless Foyer. So I'm sitting up now.
- [29:06]
Jeff O'Neill
I want to be careful there because what Ishiro can do, especially in the spec fic like Claire in the sun or Never Let Me Go, is make something that is so far from our understanding feel more possible or more emotionally proximal because of his control, because of his understanding of interpersonal dynamic. And so I think some of what is magical at issue Go was kind of that our knowledge of that. Look what he can do with this kind of weird thing. What's different here is these are real situations. Like this feels like these could be real people to me. I wouldn't be surprised. I haven't read anything about him or anything about the book. I have no idea if these are based on his actual experiences other than he's educated in the US and been back and forth to Pakistan. Like some of the characters of various classes here. But the control is really remarkable. But a kind of control that does feel a little old fashioned, which Ishukara's really doesn't. This feels old fashioned. Like Garner said check out. Or like a Henry James or something like that. Like it's a little buttoned up. And one of Garner's. I don't know if it's critiques but observations. Like he doesn't let his character sort of unwind, like unfurl. Like they are pretty buttoned up. But I think the social world they're in requires that. Like, I don't know that they have a lot of latitude to do it. So I think it is a. Anyway, you can hear in my voice and my gestures that I really engage with this book in a various way. I don't know how much recommending I'm going to be I'm going to be doing because it's still pretty new. I need to sit with it a little bit more.
- [30:30]
Rebecca Schinsky
But you've said in Source Old, which is like a Jeff Verbal exclamation point.
- [30:34]
Jeff O'Neill
It's like, it's kind of what I want Covenant Water to be. Like, it's a little less shaggy and like all over the place. It's like six characters bouncing off of each other. Yeah, I'll be curious to see what you say with a caveat. Now maybe you have a different experience, but the first 50 or 60 pages, like I lost track of character names. Like it's a language I don't know which. Like that's on me, that's not on the book. But like it just took me a little while to find purchase in it. But by. And it's broken up into sections in a weird way. I wasn't sure if this was a novella than a long one. But then you can see you're moving around a little bit. Just give yourself a little time. It's okay to be like, I don't know what this is. I don't know how this is all gonna pan out. Get to the midway point in the last section and let it play. Out, and then we'll see. And maybe I'm wrong. I don't think I am. For me, at least, but I could be wrong for other people.
- [31:21]
Rebecca Schinsky
All right, I gotta talk about John of John by Douglas Stewart. My favorite. My favorite novel of the year so far. I don't know if it'll stand up against, like, I don't know if he'll survive in the number one spot against all the big novels we have coming out this fall. But it's good. The competition is going to be tough. You get fathers and sons, man. You get multiple generations of people wrestling with their identities. You get this cloistered community out on an island in the Hebrides. Everybody has sores on their fingers from knitting or from. Yeah, knitting wool. They've. They're. Everybody's got a loom out in their shed, Jeff. And, like, the weather is bad and it's the late 90s and the feelings are high. And it was just so evocative and just emotionally rich. Like, I think I told you on that front list foyer episode that it reminded me of Gilead in the way it felt to be in the world of the book. And then I was simultaneously excited and disappointed to see that someone who had blurbed the book had said the same thing. Cause I was like, boy, I'm on one. It's like Gilead. But I'm not the only person who thought that. But that's a rare feeling. Gilead is just not a book I've ever had a comp for, and it's a sacred text here at the Book Riot Podcast.
- [32:35]
Jeff O'Neill
It is indeed.
- [32:35]
Rebecca Schinsky
So I. I don't say it lightly. The book is narrated differently. It's not an old man, you know, writing his letters at the end of life, but it just wrestles with the big questions of faith and family identity, what it is to know yourself, what it is to take the risk of letting other people know you. How high that cost can be sometimes just. It just knocked my socks. I'm really glad to have read it. And it makes me want to go back. Like, can I just carve out a magical amount of time and go back and read Douglas Stewart's first read, Shuggie
- [33:06]
Jeff O'Neill
Bane and Young Mungo? I mean, I told you, I read Young Mungo off the Strength of Shuggie Bain, which is one that really announced him. Like, that came out of at least stateside kind of nowhere. We were surprised to see it win the awards. And it hasn't taken him a million years. Like, these have come in short order. So I don't know how far they fell. One thing I was going to say about where the Serpent lives, like it was 10 years since the short. And I could feel in the book the level of care that was invested in that. And it's interesting. I think there may be an interesting conversation between John of John's and this is where the serpent lives. Because this sounds like John and John's. Like, there's like explicitly people talking about whether or not they understand each other and like some unraveling of what people understand eventually.
- [33:41]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's a lot of internal angst about.
- [33:43]
Jeff O'Neill
And this is what happens if you try to understand other people, but you don't have an avenue to actually check if you do by, like having honest and open conversations about it.
- [33:51]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yes, that does sound like they could be in conversation with you.
- [33:54]
Jeff O'Neill
So there's a. There's something there about. About which is maybe the only interesting thing there is is how do humans talk to each other about what they're thinking and feeling, what they want?
- [34:00]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. John of John is, am I going to tell him who I am? Is he going to tell me who he is? How are we going to do this?
- [34:06]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, interesting. All right, well, we did a quick check in. I think we did it. Do you have anything else, honorable mentions, Anything else to shout out?
- [34:11]
Rebecca Schinsky
I do in my top so in my top eight. And then I have a couple other debuts to shout so in my top eight. The Flower Bearers by Rachel Eliza Griffith. A wonderful memoir. She is a poet. She's also married to Salman Rushdie. But that is the least interesting thing about this. Still quite interesting, but least interesting about the book. She and Salman were getting married sort of mid Covid period. And on the night before her wedding, her best friend was supposed to arrive in town and didn't make it and turned out to have died suddenly. And the book opens with like, the history of their friendship, the decades that they had known each other, this really important bond that she had with this other woman who was like a sister to her, and then she's just not there the night before the wedding. Griffiths doesn't find out until after the wedding what has happened. Her friends and family shield her from that, that day, and she shields us as readers from it for a while in the book, we just know that something has happened to her friend. And then we move off into the story of how she met Rushdie and what their love story was. And so the construction of it, I thought was really smart, really intelligent for how to bring us into her life. But then Also keep us on the hook for what was going to come next. She's a poet writing a memo. This is like the best thing that happened.
- [35:29]
Jeff O'Neill
Very good stuff. Very good stuff.
- [35:31]
Rebecca Schinsky
The sentences are beautiful. Her way of talking about these incredibly difficult experiences and that like the most beautiful day of her life and the most painful day of her life happened at the same time. And then of course later on we get to see through her eyes the day that Rushdie was attacked and lost one of his eyes. And what riding through that, caring for her spouse and partner through that kind of life threatening attack and injury, very near death was like and how she has processed it. It's just gorgeous writing. Just like really gorgeous writing. If she wants to write 17 more memoirs that are just about like what she bought at the grocery store that day, I would be on board. It's so good.
- [36:18]
Jeff O'Neill
My similar honorable mention is I'll listen to Dave Sedaris talk about anything that happens in his life. I knew that to be true, especially true in the most recent the Land and Its People, which as I said, each of the essays was recorded in front of a live audience. So you get him doing his thing, which I think is sort of his natural environment at this point. But the inclusion of his partner Hugh into the mix and a little more older, wiser, there's a little more somberness to Sedaris, which I think can not lighten, but shade in the character he's playing. Like he knows he's playing a character. Like Dave Sedaris is writing a character named Dave Sedaris. But the reality of where Dave Sedaris is in his life can't help but be a factor. And so I think that gives it a little more depth than which I enjoy the Stephen and Pal and all this stuff, but I think I appreciate this stuff even more. Anything else, Rebecca?
- [37:07]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, My two debut novel, Shout Outs that I want to make. One Leg on Earth by Pemi Aguda.
- [37:12]
Jeff O'Neill
Ah, I need to get to that.
- [37:14]
Rebecca Schinsky
Really good and Half his age by Jennette McCurdy, which I've been surprised not to see on some of these lists. And I don't know if it's like the subject matter is thorny. There are a lot of ways to. There are just a lot of ways to read it. And I think that it is. I found it to be really bold and sometimes being that bold doesn't land well with everyone. But about a teenage girl who initiates a relationship with her high school teacher, he of course goes along with it, but we're in her perspective through that, through all of the things that she is hungry for, through the way that she sees how her mom engages in romantic relationships, but we can see, but she can't see that she's doing the same thing. She's using men the same ways and engaging with them the same ways. And then ultimately the anger that she comes to about how unsatisfying her relationships with boys her own age have been and ultimately how disappointing this man turns out to be as well. It's sharp and McCurdy is angry and there's not a. There's not like a really happy redemption arc or anything. But this is. I think it lands in that realm of novels that I'm really glad have been told where young women wrestling with sexuality, with what they want, with not being satisfied with the odds, like the age appropriate options that are available to them, but that also then the inappropriate and illegal options are not great either. How are you supposed to make sense of this and of being a young person who just has. Who wants all the things that a young person wants and who wants to feel powerful and who wants to feel desired and that sometimes the answers that most readily present themselves are not the ones that we're supposed to seek. And like it's. It doesn't. It doesn't make anybody look good, but it also doesn't hang any one character up as being like. It just complicates the way that we talk about these things. And I think that's a narrative that is complicated in many situations and that it was really bold of McCurdy to have done that.
- [39:16]
Jeff O'Neill
I had a theory about. I'm glad you mentioned that book because I know it was one that you really liked and I don't know that I'll get to it. And I wonder for the same reasons that maybe other people aren't as well, which is. Did we have room for three discourse heavy books like Yesteryear, Strangers and Half His Age, where half his age McCurdy, like. I think she was wrestling with a real issue. But it doesn't feel as fresh as, like the yesteryear trad wife. Things like the age gap relationship is kind of. We know that it's fraught. Like I guess. I guess we get it to some degree. Her own perspective matters. But for book clubs, like they've got strangers and yesteryear to pick from, those have had more juice for whatever reason. Maybe she's the bronze medal of that kind of space for the first half of the year.
- [39:56]
Rebecca Schinsky
I'm glad you mentioned book clubs. I think that. I think it's too thorny for most book clubs, and it will make you uncomfortable. And that that discomfort is an intentional thing that McCurdy is doing. But it also works against the book being. Against any book being super popular. And that she transgresses what the socially acceptable narrative about that kind of relationship is. Especially on the political left, we are supposed to say, and I do believe adult people should not have sexual relationships with teenagers. You should not do that. That's bad and wrong. And that the adults are always responsible for being the ones who don't let it happen. And when they do let it happen, they're the ones who need to face the consequences for it. And it is true that sometimes the young person is the one who pursues or initiates that. And that McCurdy gives us a character who puts herself in that situation. And then McCurdy is not willing either exonerate the character or hang her out to dry. It's just way more tangly than I think you're gonna get, like, a stereotypical suburban book club to want to hang for.
- [41:08]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. Cause even I'm glad my mom died. Like, it was dishy, but the ending wasn't, as the title wrote, a check, that the book didn't really follow through on. Like, how glad she was her mom died. Like, it wasn't. As she wasn't dancing on her grave. Like, they had a different kind of understanding. She had some sympathy for. Like, her mom did some stuff that was pretty bad, but it wasn't kind of whatever complication there was. It feels like McCurdy got to the other side of it by the end, is what I'm trying to say about that book. And it sounds like this one. It doesn't. It doesn't surprise. Like, and here is the answer to this. And he was the problem, and she was the victim. Or it should be cool, because she was. Whatever. It's like. Well, it's messy. And it's both true that when you turn 18, you are not a materially different person. But at some point, you've got to say, that's not cool. And it's a huge mess to try to sort that out in any individual relationship or personhood. So I think you're right. I think maybe it was. Because the thing about yesteryear that I think is happening on either side of the discourse. And now I'm talking about a book we haven't read at this point is that.
- [42:07]
Rebecca Schinsky
But we're gonna.
- [42:08]
Jeff O'Neill
The actual book itself is not complicated.
- [42:11]
Rebecca Schinsky
Right.
- [42:11]
Jeff O'Neill
But then how are people are reading it and what they're taking from it. They're having some. They're feeling some kind of ways about what the book is. Actually.
- [42:18]
Rebecca Schinsky
That's the situation with strangers, now that I've read that is interesting. The story is pretty straightforward. You project your own stuff onto it.
- [42:26]
Jeff O'Neill
No one's like, well, you know, he had some points. I can see why he left. No one's doing one of those.
- [42:31]
Narrator (Audiobook Excerpt)
Right.
- [42:31]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. I just think like, you're. McCurdy is willing to ruffle feathers and like it is uncomfortable and you are gonna squirm through portions of it and that's going to lower the potential readership for any book that does those kinds of.
- [42:46]
Jeff O'Neill
Of things.
- [42:47]
All right, good year so far. And I did internally, I did a list of the 100 notable books I'm looking forward to in the fall, just September through the end of the year. And there's a bunch of books coming. I mean we've got Van Dahl and we've got Whitehead and we've got D. Like there's a.
- [42:59]
Just.
- [42:59]
There's a sting guard. Like there's stuff all over the place.
- [43:01]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. I don't even know how to rank what I'm excited about.
- [43:03]
Jeff O'Neill
No, it's. It's a disaster. It's actually kind of a disaster.
- [43:06]
Rebecca Schinsky
Such an embarrassment of riches.
- [43:08]
Jeff O'Neill
It really is. So. All right, well, happy mid year everybody. Rebecca, thank you. You and I'll be back at some point in the future in this feed. I don't know where I am right now.
- [43:24]
Rebecca Schinsky
Thanks so much for listening today. Hope you enjoy this audiobook excerpt from the Odyssey by Homer, of course, produced by our sponsors at 11.
- [43:31]
Narrator (Audiobook Excerpt)
Reader Book 1 Visit of Athena to Telemachus Tell me, O Muse, of that sagacious man who, having overthrown the sacred town of Ilium, wandered far and visited the capitals of many nations, learned the customs of their dwellers, and endured great suffering on the deep. His life was oft in peril, as he labored to bring back his comrades to their homes. He saved them not, though earnestly he strove. They perished all through their own folly, for they banqueted madmen upon the oxen of the sun, the all o' er looking son, who cut them off from their return. O Goddess, virgin child of Zeus, relate some part of this to me now. All the rest, as many as escaped the cruel doom of death, were at their homes, safe from the perils of the war and sea, while him alone, who pined to see his home and wife again, Calypso queenly nymph, great among goddesses detained within her spacious grot in hope that he might yet become her husband. Even when the years brought round, the time in which the gods detained decreed that he should reach again his dwelling place in Ithaca. Though he was with his friends, his toils were not yet ended. Of the gods all pitied him, save Poseidon, who pursued with wrath implacable the godlike chief Odysseus, even to his native land among the Ethiopians was the God far off the Ethiopians most remote of men, two tribes there are, one dwells beneath the rising, one beneath the setting he went to grace a hecatomb of beeves and lambs, and sat delighted at the feast, While in the palace of Olympian Zeus the other gods assembled, and to them the father of immortals and of men was speaking. To his mind arose the thought of that Aegisthus, whom the famous son of Agamemnon, prince Orestes, slew of him, he thought, and thus bespake the gods.
- [45:27]
How strange it is that mortals blame the gods and say that we inflict the ills they bear, when they, by their own folly, and against the will of fate, bring sorrow on themselves. As late Aegisthus, unconstrained by fate, married the queen of Atreus son and slew the husband just returned from war. Yet well he knew the bitter penalty, for we warned him. We sent the herald, Hermes, bidding him neither slay the chief nor woo his queen, for that Orestes, when he came to manhood and might claim his heritage, would take due vengeance for Atreides slain. So Hermes said. His prudent words moved not the purpose of Aegisthus, who now pays the forfeit of his many crimes at once once
- [46:25]
Athena, the blue eyed goddess, thus replied,
- [46:29]
O father, son of Kronos, king of kings, well he deserved his death. So perish all guilty of deeds like his. But I am grieved for sage Odysseus, that most wretched man, so long detained, repining and afar from those he loves, upon a distant isle, girt by the waters of the central deep, a forest isle, where dwells a deity, the daughter of wise Atlas, him who knows the ocean to its utmost depths, and holds upright the lofty columns which divide the earth from heaven. The daughter there detains the unhappy chieftain, and with flattering words would win him to forget his Ithaca. Meanwhile, impatient to behold the smokes that rise from hearths in his own land, he pines, unwilling would die. Is not thy heart, Olympian touched by this? And did he not pay grateful sacrifice to thee beside the argive Fleet in the broad realm of Troy. Why then, O Zeus, art thou so wroth with him?
- [47:33]
Then answered cloud, compelling Zeus, My child,
- [47:37]
what words have passed thy lips can I forget? Godlike Odyssey. Odysseus, who in gifts of mind excels all other men, and who has brought large offerings to the gods that dwell in heaven. Yet he who holds the earth in his embrace, Poseidon, pursues him with perpetual hate. Because of Polypheme the Cyclops, strong beyond all others of his giant race, whose eye Odysseus had put out. The nymph Thoosa brought him forth a daughter, she of forces ruling in the barren deep, and in the COVID of o' erhanging rocks she met with Poseidon. For this cause the God who shakes the shores, although he slay him, not sends forth Odysseus, wandering far away from his own country. Let us now consult together and provide for his return. And Poseidon will lay by his wrath for vain it were for one like him to strive alone against the might of all the immortal gods.
- [48:48]
And then the blue eyed Athena spake again.
- [48:51]
O father, son of Kronos, king of kings. If such the pleasure of the blessed gods, that now the wise Odysseus shall return to his own land, let us at once dispatch Hermes, our messenger, down to Ogygia to the bright haired nymph, and make our steadfast purpose known to bring the sufferer Odysseus to his home. And I will haste to Ithaca and move his son, that with a resolute heart he call the long haired Greeks together, and forbid the excesses of the suitor train who slay his flocks and slow paste beeves with crooked horns to Sparta. I will send him and the sands of Pylos to inquire for the return of his dear father. So a glorious fame shall gather round him in the eyes of men.
- [49:38]
She spake and fastened underneath her feet the fair ambrosial golden sandals worn to bear her over ocean like the wind. And o' er the boundless land in hand she took, well tipped with trenchant brass, the mighty spear, heavy and huge and strong, with which she bears whole phalanxes of heroes to the earth when she, the daughter of a mighty sire, is angered. From the Olympian heights she plunged and stood among the men of Ithaca, just at the porch and threshold of their chief Odysseus. In her hand she bore the spear and seemed the stranger Mentes, he who led the Taphians. There before the gate she found the haughty suitors, some beguiled the time with with draughts, while sitting on the hides of beeves which they had slaughtered. Heralds were with them, and busy menials, some who in the bowls tempered the wine with water, some who cleansed the tables with light sponges, and who set the banquet forth and carved the meats for all. Telemachus the godlike was the first to see the goddess as he sat among the crowd of suitors, sad at heart, and thought of his illustrious father, who might come and scatter those who filled his palace halls and win new honor and regain the rule over his own.