The Best Gift Books of 2024

Summary

Book Riot - The Podcast: The Best Gift Books of 2024 Release Date: November 27, 2024

In the festive episode titled "The Best Gift Books of 2024", Book Riot hosts Jeff O'Neill and Rebecca Schinsky delve into an extensive exploration of the year’s standout book releases, perfect for holiday gifting. Balancing humor and insightful commentary, the duo navigates through diverse genres to curate a list that caters to various reader preferences. This summary encapsulates their key discussions, recommendations, and the underlying rationale for each selection.

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Setting the Scene for Gift Giving

The episode kicks off with light-hearted banter about holiday traditions and the nuances of gift giving. Jeff humorously references a social media trend where taller individuals lament the absence of their short friends during elf duties at the North Pole, highlighting the playful and relatable dynamic between the hosts. They emphasize the importance of sharing meaningful and thoughtful gifts during the holiday season, setting the tone for the comprehensive book recommendations to follow.

Jeff O'Neill [00:51]: "I feel forgotten because they're all like my friend who's five one, my friend who's five two and your girl here is five feet tall and is definitely due for elf duty."

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Curated Fiction Recommendations

Literary Fiction for the Discerning Reader

Jeff introduces Ina Garten's "Be Ready When the Luck Happens" as his top pick for those who appreciate warm, progressive narratives devoid of contentious themes.

Jeff O'Neill [05:42]: "There is just really not much that you can object to in there."

Rebecca complements this suggestion with Amy Tan’s "The Backyard Bird Chronicles", ideal for outdoor enthusiasts and bird watchers, reinforcing the idea of pairing books based on the recipient’s interests.

Rebecca Schinsky [06:40]: "Is your gift more of a food kitchen person or are they more of an outdoor person?"

Mystery and Thrillers

For fans of mystery and suspense, Liz Moore’s "God of the Woods" is recommended as a versatile gift suitable for various time zones and interests.

Jeff O'Neill [10:23]: "If they are a little more classics oriented lit fix oriented they want to keep up with."

Percival Everett’s "James" is another highlight, praised for its depth and recognition by awards, making it a safe yet compelling choice for literary aficionados.

Fantasy and Mythology

Rebecca and Jeff explore fantasy realms with Lev Grossman’s "The Bright Sword", a post-Arthur legend that offers a contemporary twist on classic myths, and Stephen Fry’s "Mythos". Fry’s deluxe edition provides a rich exploration of Greek myths, intertwining history with modern interpretations.

Rebecca Schinsky [41:09]: "It's long, it's immersive. It's a great wintertime read."

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Insightful Nonfiction Picks

Cultural and Political Insights

Rebecca recommends Vincent Cunningham’s "Great Expectations", a nuanced political novel that appeals to those interested in the interplay between personal ambition and political landscapes.

Rebecca Schinsky [13:29]: "It's about politics and it's also not, you know, someone in your life that lives the West Wing, for example."

Jeff adds Hanif Abdur-Rahim’s "An Ode to Basketball", a memoir that intertwines personal growth with the love of sports, suitable for readers who appreciate literary reflections on athletics.

Jeff O'Neill [43:04]: "If they have ESPN on and they read some literary fiction or something, like, they're gonna be interested in hanging with Hanif Abdurraqib voice."

Historical and Social Commentary

Rebecca highlights "We Carry" by Rebecca Nagle and "Bone of the Bone" by Sarah Smarsh, both of which offer deep dives into American history and social issues, making them thoughtful gifts for those keen on understanding the roots of contemporary societal challenges.

Rebecca Schinsky [15:06]: "These are for the more serious nonfiction. Let's think about our country and how we got, how we arrived in this place and what some of the enduring problems are."

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Children’s and Young Adult Recommendations

Jeff introduces Mark Bittman’s "Kids Cook Everything", a practical and engaging cookbook designed for young chefs, perfect for families looking to involve children in the culinary arts.

Jeff O'Neill [19:53]: "If you're looking for a cookbook that you can use with your kids, I totally trust Bittman to do that."

Rebecca echoes the importance of inclusive and educational gifts with "Vanishing Treasures" and "Beautiful Creatures" by Katherine Rundell, which cater to middle-grade readers with a penchant for fantasy and nature.

Rebecca Schinsky [23:34]: "If you have someone in your life that is, I don't know, a sacredly spiritual kind of person, wonder of nature and just interested in other ways of engaging with the world and thinking about our connectedness to each other, the natural worlds..."

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Unique and Wildcard Selections

Puzzle and Interactive Books

Rebecca shares the intriguing phenomenon of "Kane's Jawbone", a puzzle mystery that became a TikTok sensation. This unique gift is ideal for those who enjoy interactive and challenging reads.

Rebecca Schinsky [48:54]: "It's a puzzle book that was solved by hiring the person who cracked it to write the sequel. It has its own twist on the same idea, but it sounds really cool."

Self-Help and Philosophical Reads

Jeff recommends Oliver Burkeman’s "Meditations for Mortals" for the self-help enthusiasts seeking philosophical insights on time management and personal growth.

Jeff O'Neill [46:22]: "This is how to think about your life and your limited time in a different way that allows you to enjoy your time, to feel like it is maximally meaningful to you in your life."

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Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Throughout the episode, Jeff and Rebecca emphasize the importance of selecting gifts that resonate with the recipient’s interests and personalities. Their thoughtful analysis ensures that each recommendation not only entertains but also enriches the reader’s experience, making the holiday gifting season truly special.

Rebecca Schinsky [52:41]: "Happy break to all of you that get some time off and for those of you don't, I hope you can find a moment to yourself and for those you care about, to eat something irresponsible."

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Notable Quotes

• Jeff O'Neill [05:42]: "There is just really not much that you can object to in there."
• Rebecca Schinsky [15:06]: "These are for the more serious nonfiction. Let's think about our country and how we got, how we arrived in this place and what some of the enduring problems are."
• Jeff O'Neill [46:22]: "This is how to think about your life and your limited time in a different way that allows you to enjoy your time, to feel like it is maximally meaningful to you in your life."

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Conclusion

"The Best Gift Books of 2024" episode of Book Riot’s podcast serves as a comprehensive guide for holiday book shoppers, offering a blend of humor, insightful recommendations, and personal anecdotes. Jeff O'Neill and Rebecca Schinsky adeptly navigate through a variety of genres, ensuring that every listener can find the perfect literary gift for their loved ones this holiday season. Whether you’re seeking thought-provoking nonfiction, enchanting fantasy, or engaging children’s literature, this episode provides a treasure trove of options to inspire your gift-giving.

For more details and links to the recommended books, visit Book Riot and explore their Patreon for additional content and exclusive recommendations.

Transcript

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The holidays are about spending time with your loved ones and creating magical memories that will last a lifetime. So whether it's family and friends you haven't seen in a while, or those who you see all the time, share holiday magic this season with an ice cold Coca Cola. Copyright 2024 the Coca Cola Company.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This episode is brought to you by AWS. Amazon Q Business is the generative AI assistant that can securely understand your business data, summarize results and streamline tasks. Learn what Amazon Q Business can do for [e-mail] learnmore.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is the Book Riot podcast.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm Jeff O'Neill and I'm Rebecca Schinsky.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And we are donning our elf hats. Our non denominational gift giving attire.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't know if you have seen but there is a social media trend of people who are of average or above average height making videos about how sad they are that their short friend is going to be missing for the next two months because they have to report for duty at the North Pole. I was just telling Bob the other night that I feel forgotten because they're all like my friend who's five one, my friend who's five two and your girl here is five feet tall and is definitely due for elf duty.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I did notice you took some PTO I wasn't expecting.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Lord I wish it was to go see Santa. What great dissociation that would be. Maybe next time you'll open up Zoom and I'll be in like a full on Will Ferrell El I used to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Put the holiday lights on the podcast logo. May have to break that out.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh yeah, we need that. I do love the holiday season. I tend to be very corny this time of year. I'm happy to be doing elf work with you. This is a fun show.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, so we have some bleed from show to show and gag to gag here. Over the last we have our favorite books of the year. The books of the Year. Then we're going to be looking back at our picks for it. Books of the Year. So there's. There's. You're going to see some cross pollination I think would be the charitable horticultural metaphor. To use their self plagiarism is not a thing. But sometimes it feels like it's a thing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

How about let's spin it the other way. The average person needs to hear of a thing like eight times before they decide to do that thing or buy it. And we are trying to give you lots of reinforcement for the books that are worth your dollars. Whether for your own reading or for your gift giving this holiday season. So you're gonna hear some repeats.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So today is G books and I'm picking only things that came out this year. I haven't gone back into the whole this is not everything that might be a fun but exercise. But this is best gift books coming out this year. I have 14, 16 ideas and some of them are grouped and they're kind of for a archetypal person, sometimes a mood or an interest. But we're going to go back and forth. Go check out the Patreon. Patreon.com Book Riot podcast. Stuff popping over there. We just talked about interior Chinatown and I did a little say nothing review recommending or not, as the case may be. Let's see what else is coming up on the Patreon for the rest of you, do you have anything else?

[Jeff O'Neill]

We're going to do a rundown of the big end of year book lists in a week or two after the New York Times releases theirs. We do the best of the rest, which is I think kind of under the radar fan favorite at the end of December, which is our favorite non book items of the year. Famously, you talked about underwear one time. So anything can happen on that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

People wear it every day.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It gets all kinds of weird. There's a few more. It's going to be a fun end.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Of the year over I've been collecting, I've done a better job of like noting stuff down.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Me too.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I really don't like what it says about me as a person. The stuff I've written down that I get excited about. Not, not that I'm evil, but, you know, you don't like to be the human embodiment of khaki sometimes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was going to ask, is it like the middle age of it all?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. When your aura is cargo shorts, you're. You're in trouble. All right, let's do our first sponsor.

[Sponsor]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

This year, Santa's bringing the power of Energizer into his workshop. Whoa.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The Energizer Bunny's got so much power. Wait, he's powered up all the toys. I think that means we're done for the year. I love this bunny.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He's the hardest working helper the North Pole has ever seen and he wants all your gifts to have the power of the number one longest lasting AA battery. So this holiday season stock up on Santa's and the elves favorite battery, Energizer Ultimate Lithium.

[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think what we've done in the past is we kind of read each other's putts. So if you go first, I'll try to find something that pairs with it and sometimes it works. Sometimes. Rebecca, what's your first if not best, but your first idea?

[Jeff O'Neill]

My best Swiss army pick of the year for the hard to shop for person who is likely to want books or to be like receptive to books is Be Ready when the Luck Happens by Ina Garten. This is what I think we're going to call this the Ann Patchett spot. Historically, in a year where there's an Ann Patchett book, this is the spot that the Ann Patchett book occupies of like it's good, it's interesting and you can safely give it to your mom, your mother in law, that mother shaped person in your life, your favorite teacher, you still send a holiday gift to whatever tough to shop for in my experience for folks who like books and fit that profile. And Ina Gartens is like it's warm. It's funny, she was very forward thinking for her time and progressive, but it's not spiky at all. It's inspiring. There is just really not much that you can object to in there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I had this on my list too and I paired it with the Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tant and it's sort of a choose your own adventure. Both of them are successful, interesting, thoughtful women. Is your gift e more of a food kitchen person or are they more of an outdoor person? If they're more of an outdoor backyard gardening bird watch, I mean of course if they're bird watcher but if they're a little more outdoor focused like Backyard Bird Chronicles is a better fit for my mother. Be ready when the luck happens. Probably better fit for my mother in law. That's because of their interest. So I had them paired. That's a good pick too in that regard. Unfortunately. Be ready when the luck happens. The canonical experience is audio, but these are gifts. You can always say, hey, and if you get on Libby too, or if you just. If you want to gift recommendations to people, you gift them a recommendation or.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like a Libro FM gift card and a personalized list of suggestions. You know, it's not a bad gift.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Is to show your mother in law how to get their use their Spotify credit for when the luck happens. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes. Yeah. One of my brothers in law, I think I've mentioned on the show, has kind of asked me to be his audiobook concierge. And I thought like, well, why are we not doing this as gifts? People are down on gift cards as gifts because it's like, that's the easy thing. It comes across maybe as not super thoughtful. But what if you paired your gift card with. And here are some books I think you would enjoy listening to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And a Pomodoro timer. This is how much tech support I'll give. You can start at 15 and if only takes two minutes, you've got 13 minutes left you can use for some other idea.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A coupon for your aging parents about how much tech support time they get from you in a given year is also great.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

An emotional invoice of how much tech support I've. I've comped you your invoice for tech support.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It needs to be tiered according to, like, how stressful the tech support experience is. Because I've, you know, there are versions where it's like five minutes, but you really want to walk into the sea after those five minutes. And then there's like 30. And it's not too bad.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I manage the. So Michelle and I have become the cell phone bill hub for our families. I mean, not everyone, but we have like nine lines and iPads and watches and everything on that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Everybody's on families.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Everyone gets a better deal. It's like being on the dole. And it's usually fine, like, everyone's cool, but when it's time to upgrade phones.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, God. Like, didn't y'all have some weird glitch a couple years ago where, like your icloud accounts got linked? So you were both. You and Michelle were like, both.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is an ongoing issue. Michelle and I use the same. Both the same Apple id. I mean, this is when they didn't have any sharing. So like we had the first iPhones and we've never disambiguated it and I've got nothing to hide. I mean there, there's. I'm. None of us are like, oh my God, you saw my. But it's more confusing than anything. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And if you, if that ever happens for the nine people that are on your family plan.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, and, and we share, I mean the real thing for us. Again, we're. We're not talking about anyone but myself right now. Which you know, it's been that kind of a day. But there are. It's our photo libraries. Like we want to share the same. And it's again, at some point I'm counting down the days till Ames hands me a Pomodoro. Pomodoro Timer of tech support.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And he's like dad, it's time.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I can be. I don't no longer have to be the cream filling in the Oreo sandwich generation. I can be one of the chocolate wafers.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Delicious. I love that for you. It's next on your gift giving list.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Let's see. So I'm going to mark those up. So I have a troika of Swiss army novel recommendations and they have slightly different flavors. Some of these may appear on your list. So people that will read commercial literary fiction. Right. You know the it's like book club plus kind of stuff or aspirate a little beyond some of the book club plus.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's a nice way to describe it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So if they're a little more mystery thriller based, the pick is God of the woods by Liz Moore. Also I think, I think probably if you said you have to give someone that you have to buy them a book tomorrow for a holiday and you know nothing about them and has to be a 2024 release. I think I'm going with God of the woods right now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It plays in most time zones.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think it's a pretty good time zones. Yeah. If they are. If they are a little more classics oriented lit fix oriented they want to keep up with. I think you're James by Percival Everett is absolutely. You're not. It's not a big lift. They're going to enjoy it and they're going to see it in awards and you can say that's the person that wrote American fiction. And I think he's going to be the next like you could take all the talking points. I'm also giving you that for free.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You can also tell them this podcast I listened to and they know what they're talking about. Said you don't need to reread Huck.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Finn first And you don't need to reread it. And then my third one, and it's kind of splitting the difference a little bit, is if you don't like either of those two, you want literary fiction, but you don't want to give a book about slavery, for example, which I can understand if you're a little. They're a little nervous. I think Beauty Land by Marie Helene Martino is the third. Like it's a little stranger, but not too strange. They're going to. It's going to feel like they're probably not good. I think there's a chance that we'll see like God of the woods at like, you know, the bookstore or something. Like it sold a lot of copies. I think way fewer people will have heard of Beauty Land. And the nice thing about Beauty Land, and it's more true of. I think it's easier to find a Liz Moore comp. Than is to find a Marie Helene Bertino comp. You can do Parakeet because she writes these really interesting books. If you like this, go check out 2am at the Cat's Pajamas. I always like the follow on rec too. It's like, if you turn out to like this, you can read this other one they write as well.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I have Beauty Land on my list as well. And I think it is great for like anyone who will read literary fiction. And the synopsis is weirder than the book is, which doesn't happen often. Usually it goes the other way or the synopsis of a book will get kind of watered down and then you get in and discover that it's weirder than you thought it was or the format is more experimental or something. But Beauty Land, there's nothing difficult about Beauty Land to hang with. And it does have such a nice warmth and a sense of humor about it. It's a great pick.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

My warning about Beautyland, though, is if you give it to someone and they read it, they're going to want to talk to you about it. So if you haven't read it, just be ready for that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And then you have to start sending each other all text caps about our all caps texts about the faxes that she's sending to the aliens. That's right on the tip of like pretty, you know, Swiss Army Knife. I had historical fiction that is not World War II lady librarian spies. I think Wandering Stars, Tommy Orange did not get as much love this year as I wanted to see it get. It is a tougher read than some of the other books that we're going to talk about. You could pair it with They're There. If you don't think they have read They're There. That's out in a nice paperback edition. But you don't need to have read They're There to get Wandering Stars. Even though Wandering Stars is positioned as like something of a prequel, you should read both of them if there are litfic people in your life. I think that's a great pick, but I want to sell some more. Let's move some more units of Tommy Orange here at the end.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's a good one. I guess. While I'm. Let's see, I've got a couple other novels. Let me think about a frame them. So if you've got someone who's interested in politics in your life, I guess especially if they are of the as you were persuasion, I think they may be ready by Christmas Time for Great Expectations by Vincent Cunningham. I think you can say this was an Obama staffer release. They write for the New Yorker. It is about politics and it's also not, you know, someone in your life that lives the West Wing, for example. This would be a good. Very good. So it can. It's just. It's a little more of a targeted novelistic recommendation. I think if you generally like literary fiction, you'll find something interested there. But if you've got a hashtag resistance user in your life, this might be a way of like bringing them back into a world of a little more nuance and subtly and historical vision and things.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And the novel itself is not really political because we're with he's such a junior member of the campaign. He's doing mostly fundraising. The relationship I was thinking about this recently. The relationship the main character, the Vincent Cunningham avatar of Great Expectations has with some of the senior fundraisers who like give him entree into a really exclusive wealthy world. Feels kind of like what Rumaan Alam was doing in Entitlement. But maybe I thought the Cunningham version of it is sharper. So if you're thinking about that as.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, that's a good point. We haven't really talked about in those frames. I like that framing Rebecca. That's interesting to think about many of the same or homologous concerns in that book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So I'll pick up your My note for this Is America contains multitudes. The reader for that so by the Fire We Carry by Rebecca Nagle, which is this is heavy, but this is for your nonfiction reader who is looking for a deeper understanding of American history, especially Native American history and the ways that women White colonists have treated Native Americans over the centuries. Really sharp, really good. I think it's one of those things that, like, should be taught in all of our history courses as we're coming up. But this current administration coming in isn't going to do it. And also Bone of the Bone by Sarah Smarsh. That's the one that I would give to, like, your more moderate folks. She is, you know, from the heartland, from Kansas as we are. These are essays about sort of working class, you know, middle America life. And she writes from a politically conscious, progressive place. But it's not argumentative or like trying to persuade you to be any certain kind of, you know, political person. But I think she lets the facts speak for themselves really well. So those are for the, like, more serious nonfiction. Let's think about our country and how we got, how we arrived in this place and what some of the enduring problems are like. That's in the wake of the election. One of the things that's been grounded for me is looking at like, these are not new problems. Like none of the things that we are facing right now are really new problems. They are rooted often in things that have been with us for hundreds of years. And both Rebecca Nagle and Sarah Smarsh are good at capturing some of those things.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I guess I don't have too many nonfictions, so if you want something affirmative, but also not a live laugh. Love Pillow. I flipped through the ServiceBerry at Powell's Day.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I haven't seen it yet.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I think it's a good gift. And I think they did exactly what they hope to do with it. Now is it what I want myself? Not necessarily, but it's an expanded. It's expansion of a magazine piece that Kimmerer wrote. It has wonderful illustrations. And it's also the ServiceBerry kind of looks like a holly situation. So it has like a Christmas vibe to the design. But it's about. I try. I think it's called gift economies. But it's a kind of way of mutual, like ecological metaphor. Not just metaphors, but ecological examples of mutual aid and symbiotic rather than parasitic relationships. And I think it does. It doesn't look. And I kind of flip to the end. It doesn't look like there's a lot of and this is why Enron is bad kind of things. It's not that heavy handed, but it doesn't need to be. If you know at all what's going on and have any sense of the world, you can see how sort of humanly quietly and elegantly radical these kinds of ideas are. Braiding sweetgrass is a similar, is similar in that way. But if you know someone like braiding sweetgrass, it's a no brainer. But I think if you have someone in your life that is, I don't know, a sacredly spiritual kind of person, wonder of nature and just interested in other ways of engaging with the world and thinking about our connectedness to each other, the natural worlds and other metaphors for interconnectedness. I think it gets the job done very, very ably and extremely giftably. I think it's no mistake. It's this long and it looks like this and it's coming up this time of year. And all I've got to say for the packagers over there, mission accomplished from this observer's point of view. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Let's see, I've got, for the food people, I have a pairing here. A food writing is Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts by Crystal Wilkinson, which is about five generations of black cooks in her family and looking at the broader history of black cooking in Appalachia and the south especially. It includes some recip peas, but this is more, you know, sort of her family history memoir and grounded in a broader cultural history. If you're looking for a cookbook, what Goes with what by Julia Tershen is just phenomenal. Like, if there's no Julia Tertian in your cookbook collection, I would get thee to Julia Tershen quickly. But what Goes with what is exactly what it sounds like. She's like, there are straightforward recipes, but she also helps you do pairings of things. She does these great charts for, like, let's make a salad. And then she'll give you a bunch of different greens and like, an option for crunch and an option for acid and an option for like, the different components that you want in your salad or the different components you want when you're throwing a pasta together in the kitchen. And for a cook like me, who is good at following a recipe but not good at the, like, alchemical magic of just look at the ingredients in the kitchen and know what to put together, right? It's so useful to have a formula. And she's like, here is the, here's the language, here's the grammar of making a salad. Here is the grammar of throwing a pasta together. And you can pick and choose from the elements that you like or what you have in your kitchen. Currently, it is so, so, so useful.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Cool. I have one cookbook on my list. I've talked before about the centrality such as it is to how to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman in My Own Cooking. This year he has his first kids cookbook. It's called Kids Cook Everything just came out in October. And I like Bittman. It's straightforward. I like also how this one's organized. It's not by like cuisine or anything. It's. There's like breakfast anytime. So it's like the breakfast stuff sips and spoonfuls. So just soups, edible color. So things that are super colorful and then big stuff, like bigger, bigger things so you can, you can kind of flip through based on what you want. 320 pages, hardcover. I think there's going to be one of these under the tree for either my kids together or for one of them. But it looks like I haven't looked for a lot of good kids cookbooks. I've never really found one I liked. It's either too, you know, grape jelly and cupcakes or too complicated. So how to make a quesadilla is actually a really good idea. I mean, yeah, stuff that kids or even picky kids will eat is important to have in one of these.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We've gotten that question a couple of times in holiday rec shows looking for like a cookbook that you can use with your kids. And it's always really challenging. I totally trust Bittman to do that. Well, let's see. How about the book for the best friend you dream of rebooting the Golden Girls with? Okay, this is the Other Significant Others by Raina Cohen, came out at the top of the year and is about building. The subtitle is something like Building a Life Around Friendships. It is not a rejection of romantic relationships. It's more of a. For most of us, I think a yes. And what if the romantic relationships in our lives weren't such a big center? What if we had broader community investments? We asked more of our friends, we invited them into more parts of our experience. Cohen and her husband have had a few different sets of their friends be housemates with them over time, some of whom have kids, some of whom don't. She got interested in what is. What can like cooperative co living look like that isn't just, this is my romantic partner and our dog and maybe our kids. And then she went and interviewed people who have made their lives this way. They're, you know, two friends who, one of them decided to have a child independently rather than wait for a partner to show up. And over time, a partner never arrived, but the other friend became really attached to and invested in the child and wanted to be a co parent and they became the first like non romantic partners who are legal co parents in Canada. Those kinds of things. Friendships, people who like, do choose a friend to be their life partner and to make their end of life medical decisions for them. That kind of stuff. It's really expansive, I think. Very grounding, very encouraging of like, there are many, many ways to have a life that is full of connection and community and just a piece of a conversation that we really need to be having more of while we have a loneliness epidemic, while we have people that are trying to think differently about the shape of their lives and not be so just boxed into this notion of a romantic partner and that's it. Or the romantic partner should always be the most important relationship in your life. But what if we could think more broadly about it? Great, wonderful examples. It'll definitely have you being like, yeah, no. So how do we do that? How do we get like a house or a duplex where we can just hang out all the time and grow old together and have support especially like, for, for people like myself who don't have kids. And you are starting to think about like, as I get older, what will community support look like? Who am I going to care for and who will care for me? The Significant Others is. Other Significant Others is really excellent.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I've got two books from the same author that are for different people. I don't know if we've talked about Katherine Rundell on the show very often, but two books I could recommend for different people. Vanishing Treasures, which I just listened to on audio over the weekend. I had a. I had a day on Saturday, so I got my Covid and flu shots on Friday.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, buddy.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And kind of, I. I kind of have to plan for a day to be down and I kind of look forward to it. Kind of like phantom thread, a little bit like eating the mushrooms. So you have to be flat out and open and outside of your normal.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I have to do that with those shots as well. It's like, what, am I going to marathon on TV this Saturday after.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I didn't have a TV show, but I audiobooked it like the whole night of Friday night and then all like 12 hours Saturday. So I like finished something off and I got through a couple of things. And one of the things I got through is Vanishing Treasures by Katherine Rundell herself. She's an, she's an Oxford academic, extremely interesting person. And I think when we do have our eventual patreon of the most interesting authors out There I have to remember her because she does all kinds of stuff, which I'll get to in a minute. But each chapter is about an animal and how it's threatened, but also how it's amazing at its own kind. And it's the wombat and the hare, the bat and the pangolin. Like, some of them are more, I guess, to someone like me, exotics and others. Some of them are more familiar, but it has a erudition and adept, like a scholar's ability to go find an interesting anecdote from like Mesopotamia about the golden mole or something else.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Love it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That. Right. So, for example, the golden mole, I think, is the penultimate example here. It's an African, I believe African, or maybe Middle Eastern. But it lives in the desert and it's completely nocturnal and its eyes are sealed shut. But it's the only iridescent mammal. Its spines are iridescent. And so there's no. No, it doesn't do it for mating or communication because all the other golden mole things out. It's completely a byproduct of the hair. Well, at least evolutionary thinking is it's a byproduct of having the hair be as aerodynamic as possible. So it's going through the sand. It's no friction. So it's the secondary effect of being iridescent. There's like stories and metaphors, historical backward and forward. The chapters are short, beautifully illustrated. Would make a wonderful book. I did on audio, which was also terrific. But if you've got. If you've got an animal love, you're in your life. There's a little bit of. More of a literary historical bent. I got it for Ames as a pre. You know, I. I just feed them books. And he's reading it right now. It's already every morning when he's doing his morning reading, I wake up or the first thing he does is dad, dad, dad. So that's always a good time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I have a friend who's listening to it right now, and I'm getting voice notes from them when they're in the car. That's like they have paused. Caused the audiobook to send me a voice note. Like, did you know this about hermit crabs?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Hedgehogs. Alone, there were 30 million hedgehogs in England only 50 years ago.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's wild.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's a lot of hedgehogs.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That is a lot of hedgehogs.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Anyway, so that's really great. And then she also highly anticipated on the stateside because the reviews were so wonderful in the uk. I'm Gonna. I'm reading it slowly with my kids. Beautiful Creatures. It's her first foray into young adult middle grade fantasy. But it's more of the lineage of like the Tolkien's and Lewis's of like the Oxford academic fantasy.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Interesting.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It just feels a little more learned. So there's an archipelago of 34 islands, sort of the middle of the sea. Don't ask too many questions about it. And a lot of the magical creatures you've heard of have existed there. But I'm sorry to say things aren't going great as you might imagine in this kind of world and why that is. It's beautiful and evocative. I'm not sure it holds up great if you're a 46 year old person like me just reading it on its own sake, but as a read along as something for a middle grader with an imagination or a sense of wonder if they've got any soul left in them, not the dried out corn husk that resides in my rib cage, then even I. If I, if it doesn't actually flicker, I remember the flame of what this kind of story can do for you. So that's something I got for, for Rowan recently. I think it'd be a really good fit for. You know, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to say the kind of reader it's a good fit for, but you know what I'm saying, if you hear what I'm saying. If someone's looking for that kind of book, this would be a really cool one to point them to. That's Vanishing Treasures and Beautiful Creatures by Katherine Rundle.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Nice. I've got some wild card fiction. I thought about these as like lit fic. For somebody who is willing to get like a little weird or just like a little edgy, a little slight. There's more edge to these than the Ann Patchett Award. Margot's Got Money Trouble by Rufi Thorpe. One of my faves of the year. I mean it's just such a good time. It's one of the best times I had reading a novel this year where you're like, this is just fun and I want there to be more of it. And same for Colored Television by Danzy Senna. A really good time. It's really sharp. She is hilarious. The Washington Post put out their 10 best books of the year list yesterday. It's five fiction, five nonfiction. Dancy Senna is on there for color television. Percival Everett on there for James. The two of them are married. To each other. And I don't know if it's the first time that both members of a couple have made like 40%.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, how many candidates can there even be?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right? I was trying to think of it. I was like, okay, I think Jonathan Saffron, 4, is married to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Was married to Nicole Krause.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. They never. Yeah. And I don't think I remember her.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

His like emails to Natalie Portman. You remember that whole thing. Yeah. That wasn't, that wasn't pretty. Shabin, you got it. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Shaven and Waldman, they have had books out at the same time, but Shaban.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Had a book out though.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's been a long time.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And Waldman tends to write nonfiction, but I guess they could appear on the same list. This doesn't happen very often if it has ever happened before. And I was just looking at it like 40% of the top five novels of the year came from one household, according to the Washington Post. So sharp. I would love to hang out at their dinner table and just get skewered because I'm sure that's how it would go. So both of those I think are your good picks for like or somebody who's read the stuff that's at the top of the bestseller list. Maybe they've read a lot of the book club fiction. Colored Television did get picked for one of the book clubs, but I think there's just a lot of ceiling left. There's a lot more readers that I think would enjoy that book. And an introduction to Danzy Senna.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Let's see, where do I want to go? I guess this maybe fall into the realm of if you've read a bunch of them or maybe you read in this category, maybe you haven't heard of this one. It's Smoke Kings by Jamal Mayfield. This is I think a tin house joint. He said. I'm gonna look that up while I'm talking about it. Melville House. Pardon me. So it has big social issues going on here. And what happens here is, let's see how best to do this without give it away. Reparations as vigilante justice, I guess is the. This interesting way of putting it together. A little more hard edged than some things. This is not a cozy mystery or thriller by any stretch of the imaginations. Yeah, crazy ass Reparations is the quote, provocative to say the least. Yeah, I think I've said enough. But you can. It's 400 pages. I think it could have been 50 or 60 page shorter, but I'm not going to quibble I thought it was interesting. And Eye Opening came out in February. I haven't heard much about it. I think it was on a couple of. It was on a. I think it was on the Publisher's Weekly. Best Mystery Thrillers of the Year. And that's why I picked it up, because it was a recent read for me. But I went through it quick. I went for a very interesting writer.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Provocative was the word I had next to Knife by Salman Rushdie.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay, who are you recommending this for?

[Jeff O'Neill]

This one is more challenging. But I had, like, the provocative thinker or like, the person who wants to maybe do to be pushed a little bit. Like, I know when we read it and discussed it for the Patreon, we both felt challenged by it in some surprising ways. Like, Rushdie is probably closer to, like, the true definition of a free speech absolutist than any of the people currently on the Internet who call themselves free speech absolutists and has as much bona.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Fides to say so as anyone you can imagine. Right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And he's coming from a position of such experience and a perspective that is deeper and broader than most of us will ever encounter. Because of the things that he's experienced for the. The kind of work and writing that he does where he makes arguments for allowing harmful kinds of speech that we on the left have tended to really step away from wanting to allow in the last decade. Especially his version of, like, content moderation on Twitter would be really different from the kinds of rules that we would hope Twitter would have, for example. And I found it to, like, that is the enduring thing that I think about when I think about Knife, like, all the memoir stuff around the experience of being stabbed and Rushdie processing what that means and thinking about what his art means and what it is to be attacked for your art, all of that is great. I mean, this is Salman Rushdie writing stuff like, it's a good. It's a good reading experience. But Salman Rushdie pondering the implications of speech and the implications of more expression versus what happens when we try to stifle expression was challenging in a way that, as I was reading it, I felt like I needed to be challenged. It's kind of like when you sit in class with a really good professor and they're trying to get you to entertain an idea that's really unworthy, uncomfortable, and you just know that you're going to grow if you entertain it. I don't know that my priors really updated in response to reading Knife. I don't know that we're going to run content moderation at Book Riot any differently than we have. But the arguments that he makes and the place he makes them from have much more validity to me. And I'm more willing to entertain those than some of the other versions of a let everybody say what the hell they want to say argument that gets made on the Internet. So I don't know. That's a long way of saying, like, you're going to think about some stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I mean, the, the first pass reading metaphor of the book is that he would give his own eye for his right for free speech. But I think the actual message is he would give his eye for your right to free speech, which is remarkable. And I found it, I found it challenging, affirming. I mean, I think it moved the needle to some degree for me. And again, he's talking differently about free speech than sometimes get bandied about. Like, you know, banning people and parts of the world where you get thrown in jail for what you say. But also cancel culture is not really at question here. But you can see how you start to wonder because he also thinks in the marketplace of ideas or just in conversation and talking, that he enlightened rather than further burial or ostracization is best. Now, I don't know how so much Salman Rushdie knows about algorithms, to be honest with you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, that's a good point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But it certainly is welcome to have. And if you're ever going to give someone the benefit of the doubt to rattle your cage a little bit, Salman Rushdie is, is way up there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I'm glad you described it that way. I think. I mean, we read it so early in the year. I think it did make me a warmer audience going into like election season for. No, just let them say the thing. Let them say it. Let's put it on Front street. Sunshine is the best disinfectant.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, that's right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

He makes a very full throated argument for that though.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Much like some, you know, hydrogen peroxide doesn't solve the bubonic plague, but.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. And it's not necessarily immediate, but in a, like, I think Rushdie would come down on a, like the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice. It just takes a while longer than you might think it should.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I have one eye, but I'm not in jail.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You know, that kind of a situation. Okay. Where do I want to go from there? Let's see. So I read, I, I kept one in the holster because I talked about reading healing fiction before the coffee gets Cold didn't work that great for me. But one that I liked better that I can recommend, especially if you've got a book lover in your life, is welcome to the Hyunam Dong Bookshop by Huang Bo Rum. It falls in the same category. It's a young woman is not a happy place in her life, opens a bookstore, and it kind of becomes a center of community and healing. And you can see with my hands, this is what I say when I'm saying woo woo. Feeling things to Rebecca.

[Jeff O'Neill]

He's waving his hands.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It looks like I'm doing a cat's cradle or something. I'm not really sure what's happening there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, there does look like there's an invisible yard, invisible yarn.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Because, like, it's like knitting for the soul. Right. It's crocheting for the. For the. For the soul.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's your shelf talker.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I really. And I. And I did enjoy it. I'm not sure this is a genre for me, but this one I had, I circled as well. I was like, I'm gonna give two of these a shot and see. And again, the book lover thing. Rebecca doesn't like to be pandered to. I would absolutely never recommend it for you, but if you have a yay. Burke's. How much books? Books Burks. How much people like books.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, my good. Burks.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And they like.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Can.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They like tea. And they want to sit down and be cozy. They will sure get a kick out of this and find it. Affirmative. And the sales and placement I'm seeing in bookstores, talk about having to see it five to seven times. I walked past this thing like 30 times in pals. Like, huh, huh. There you are again. Boy, do you look like a frontal lobotomy. And it's sort of like that, but it is nice. And you need some of that. And I kind of wish I had it to finish reading tonight. It's one of those days going on today.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But I think you'll. If you hear what I'm saying, you might find someone that you're trying to give something to that will find it. Affirmative.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We should do the thing sometime where we like. You get 20 bucks. You have to go to the. Use a bookstore and pick something out for each other. That'll be surprising.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I thought about this. So Pals has one of the great remainder sections. And I'm like, what if I had 50 bucks to make a basket to troll you? Not. Not the. I went the other way.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's just 15 copies of all fours.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. We can though not going to be remaindered.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Even worse, just really drive it in there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Wow. Let's do our last saucer break and we'll finish up.

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

All right. With that, Rebecca, the ball has been returned of service into your course.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right. I think for the TV media sociology person likes to think about how things get made and what happens in Pop. Cue the sun by Emily Nussbaum, which is a cultural history of reality television. And she takes it back to early reality entertainment, which was radio shows. The very beginning is about some of these competition shows that happened on the radio. How those became Candid Camera. Candid Camera was first Candid Radio, something where everything was just verbally described and you could hear people's reactions and then moves it up through the real world road rules into how we get the Bachelor. And then how those things evolve into all the Housewives and Love is Blind and Temptation island or whatever the hell those are all called. And not just the role that these play in society, but also the things about our society and culture that reality television reflect and how there's sort of in Nussbaum's reading at least sort of because of the way reality TV works, an inevitable arc towards like meanness, cruelty and competition that if you look at the first season of the Real World and it is kind of these just like wide eyed strangers trying to figure out how to live together. And then you trace what happens as reality TV evolves. It moves in a direction that's like not the best of us. And she has Nussbaum is a great TV critic. She has some broad theories about what is happening there as reality TV evolves. And you will Just learn all kinds of things. It's also really great on audio. It's long on audio, so take that for what you will. And I'm not even a big reality TV fan. I had not watched most of the reality shows that she talks about, but she does a good job describing what's happening on this show, how it was created, what they were thinking. And for the ones that are, like, really central to how other shows have spun off or have inspired other things, she really grounds it in, like. And then from here, this was a turning point and here is where that took us in the history of reality tv. It's a really fun one.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'll do a two for a twofer for lovers of fantasy and myth. I talked earlier this year about the Bright Sword by Lev Grossman.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Which is Grossman's take on the Arthur, the end of the Arthur legend. Post and post Arthur. Witty, charming, fun, contemporary, challenging in a good old, good time. Not really for kids. There's some spiciness, you know. Well, again, choose your own adventure and you know what you're comfortable with. They're not. Not erotic or anything like that, but people are attracted to each other and sometimes act on it, I guess is the best way.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I want your shelf talker for romance. It's just like people are attracted to each other.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Euphemism with Jeff. Jeff Ems for have fun out there, kids. Yeah, Just be careful. But it's. It's long, it's immersive. It's a great wintertime read. So if you got someone in your life that likes fantasy or legend, that's especially good. The other one is. I think this is new this year. It's. This edition is new, but Mythos by Stephen Fry has been out for a while. It's his versions of Greek myths. But it's. There's this really beautiful deluxe edition again, something I bought for Ames that has the history, you know, stuff about Greek mythology and then contemporary versions of these myths. Those are ways of experience, wit, witty, elegant, quick to read, quite beautiful. It's thick, it's chunky. It's like 65 bucks retail. So it's very giftable, the kind of thing people might like having yourself. So you have a history, mythology, legend kind of person. But middle grade on up for that as well. He burned through that one as well. But I. Those two were very sink him into and you're burning through them until you're done. So that's the Bright Sword by Lev Grossman and Mythos by Stephen Fry for the Fantasy folks.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right. I needed a way to recommend this one, so I have constructed a way. And it is fine. The sports fan who has big feelings or the person who just likes good writing. And it's Hanif Abdurakiv's.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There's always I wonder. I didn't. I couldn't figure it out. Okay, good.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Which is an ode to basketball and also an ode to his beloved hometown of Columbus, Ohio. And also a memoir about his life there, his family, the role that sports have played in his development as a person, but also about becoming a writer. Abdurraqib is always, both overtly and subtly about what it is to be an artist. And this is no different, I do think. I mean, it's elevated writing. So this is not like your favorite basketball player's memoir. So I wouldn't give it to just like the friend that constantly has ESPN on, but if they have ESPN on and they read some literary fiction or something, like, they're gonna be interested in hanging with Hanif Abdurraqib voice. And I think it's a good. Just trust me. Like, just trust me. Even if this sounds like something that you don't think you're interested in. Like, I've said it every time we've talked about this book. I do not care about basketball. I care that Hanif Abdurraqib cares about it, and that's enough.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Cool. Got two more. I'll take him one. How many do you have left? Do you have any left?

[Jeff O'Neill]

3, but I can kind of lump some together.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, that's okay. These don't really go together, so I'll take them one at a time. This one, I have to admit, I haven't seen in person. There was an excerpt of it in the New Yorker in March, and I've been looking for a reason for someone to give it to me. Maybe I should just buy it for myself, because I'm not. It's. It's. Let's see, where's the name here? I lost it. An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children by Jamaica Kincaid and Carol Walker.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, I have seen this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Have you seen this?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Beautiful.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It looks really great. So Jamaica Kincaid, the great essayist and novelist. And then Kara Walker, a titan of contemporary art world. You probably know her Silhouettes, which she was famous for. So Walker has provided illustrations, and it's A through Z of fruits and vegetables and, you know, comestible, organic comestibles. And each. It's like a paragraph and a half for each one that says what it is, where it came from, you know, is it what where does exist in myth and legend in the west and other places. And often it'll be a colonial or other kind of imported, emigrated, enslaved, co opted, repressed history and use of that thing. And I'm maybe it is for kids. It could be for kids, great. It could be interesting for adults. But poetical, elusive, thoughtful. It is. It feels radical in its own way without kind of being able to put your finger on it to some degree, but it seems really interesting. So I don't know if you can find it in a bookstore to flip through and see because I don't think it's a kind of maybe read alouds for parents and younger kids or for Grant or you know, nieces and nephews and aunts and uncles if you're interested in these early A to Z encyclopedia books. But has a more expansive worldview I guess is a way to put that. It's pretty cool. I'm glad it exists and I wish I had seen it to flip through, but I haven't been able to find one in person without just buying it outright. So I thought I'd mention that exists because it seems like it could be a cool gift idea for someone.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I've got one for I don't know, the self helpy practical friend. Meditations for Mortals.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

All right, we're doing this Oliver Burkman. Okay, I hear you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, we're gonna bust this out. You've got to know the person relatively well, I think to give them Oliver Berkman. But the pitch I've sort of arrived at for him is rather than here's another self help about how to do things differently. This is how to think about things differently. And Meditations for Mortals is divvied up into 28 short essays that he intends to be read one per day over the course of four weeks that are exactly about that. How to think about your life and your limited time in a different way that allows you to enjoy your time, to feel like it is maximally meaningful to you in your life. And there's stuff like I was just talking to a friend yesterday who was like, ah, the Oliver Berkman section on scruffy hospitality was so liberating. Like she's getting ready to host Thanksgiving. Normally she would think she has to clean as if the queen is coming, but Berkman has a nice like what? Have you thought about this differently? Like we can have a scruffy kind of hospitality where the people we love are welcome in our homes and that means they're gonna See the way that we live. And this is part of, like, being in it together, because you only have so many hours in a day, a week of life. His other book, 4000 Weeks, is excellent. Been, like, even more confronting than Meditations for Mortals is. So, like, why are we gonna spend our limited time trying to get the house shining for the people who should be most willing to see our warts and that we should be most willing to let them see those, like, scruffier parts of our lives? It's that kind of thing. It's accept, like, radical acceptance that there will always be more emails to send. And at some point you have to decide that the thing you're gonna do with your time is not send more of those emails. It's spend that time with your kids or take a walk with your dog or whatever. I did not succeed in meeting it out to myself, one essay a day. I know you did not succeed meting it out to yourself, one essay a day. We both kind of took them down in a couple big gulps, but it can be read a bunch of ways. It's still living on my coffee table for, like, dipping in and out of. Great for the midlife conversations, but it's also kind of a kind of philosophy of thinking about your adult life that I wish I had come to earlier.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

My last one is, if we still did annotated, we would have done an episode about this. I find it massively fascinating, this whole phenomenon, and it's not for me, but it might be for someone in your life. So some of you out there may have heard of. This is not the recommendation, but I'd give you a little backstory.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. Like, what is this going to be.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This puzzle mystery thing called Kane's Jawbone that was a TikTok phenomenon a couple years ago. So let me give you the backstory.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Rebecca's shaking her head, so I really have to explain this to you is so exciting. So this puzzle book thing was first published in 1934, right. And it's a mystery of these, like, interconnected. Well, it's 100 page PO prose narratives, and its pages are in the wrong order. Oh, and it's a mystery and there's like an answer. Right. And initially when it was published, it was off. There was a 15 pound prize offered to the first six people that could submit the answer.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Only two people submitted the correct answer.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I remember, like, a New Yorker piece about this or something years ago. Okay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Which is. This is all amazing to me. And so in 2019, it was reissued With a challenge for the first person to solve. It would get a thousand pound prize. And one person did. Or maybe someone won the prize named John Finnemore. John Finnemore was contracted to write a spiritual sequel called the Researcher's First Murder, which is also this super complicated puzzle that also has a prize associate.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, so the guy who solved it is contracted to write the sequel.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes, it's called the Researcher's First Murder. That came out this year. Right. So it's out now. So if you've got. I love this story. So you might read a little bit more about. If you. I think it's just kind of a fun story to tell someone about. I don't know if they're actually going to. But like, the object is really interesting. I think the first time I heard about it, actually, we were talking with Thriftbooks about some of their, like, pandemic bestsellers and this thing became a phenomenon. I'm sure someone posted the answer and the Internet ruins everything. But I love this idea that it got solved and they did enough. They hired the guy who solved it to write the next one. And it has its own twist on the same idea, but it sounds really cool. Very meta in its own way.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. It's like for the person who was excited that the hardcover design of Angel Maker by Nick Harkaway had a puzzle in the COVID Yeah. Do you remember that? Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. My last one is for the person who wishes that there were more Bill Bryson books about taking long walks in difficult places. It's A Walk in the park by Kevin Fedarko. Not as funny as Bill Bryson is because, like, who is? But Fedarko and a good friend of his were woefully unprepared for a rim to rim hike of the Grand Canyon when they decided to go on one Anyway. And this is a memoir about not just that adventure, but some of the experiences that led up to it. Notably, the friend that he does this with is a renowned nature photographer. So, like, if you are in nature Instagram at all, you've come across that person's work and that plays a role in some of the book. But it's really fun on audio. I saw it out on a gifty hardcover table at Barnes and Noble yesterday. This is a good time. This is maybe your multipurpose dad, like dad vibes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Non fiction, spiritual or biological or legal dads.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's the companion for the Ina Garten memoir Gotcha, I think.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

All right, that's our show. The links to the books will be in the show notes. Go check them out there. Thanks to Thriftbooks.com for sponsoring the show notes. You can find the the links to everything we talked about at the link to Thriftbooks over there. We've got. Yeah, end of year stuff come up. Patreon, go check it out. The let's see, this is going out. You are in the middle of our holiday recommendation extravaganza at this point. The second part is coming out next week. Happy break to all of you that get some time off and for those of you don't, I hope you can find a moment to yourself and for those you care about, to eat something irresponsible. Podcastookriot.com shoot us an email bookriot.com listen for show notes. We'll talk to you all later.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Have a good one, y'all.