The Best-Selling Publishers of the Year, NBCC Finalists, Adapted Screenplay Oscar Noms, and more.

Summary

Book Riot – The Podcast

Episode Summary: "The Best-Selling Publishers of the Year, NBCC Finalists, Adapted Screenplay Oscar Noms, and more."
Date: January 26, 2026
Hosts: Jeff O’Neal & Rebecca Schinsky

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Episode Overview

In this news-packed episode, Jeff and Rebecca wade through blizzards—literal and figurative—to bring listeners the latest in the book world. They discuss the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) finalist announcements, deep-dive into which publishers topped the bestseller charts in 2025, analyze the cultural sway of celebrity book clubs, break down Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar nominees, and highlight notable new releases. Their discussion swerves (on purpose) from lobster hoarding during snowstorms to the existential challenges of modern reading, all while maintaining Book Riot’s characteristic blend of irreverence and industry insight.

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Weather, January Blues &… Lobster?

Casual, Cozy Banter (00:40–07:28)

• Struggle with the New Year: Both hosts comically bemoan how hard it is to mentally transition to "2026," with Jeff botching years in various contexts and Rebecca relating existentially long Januarys.
• Richmond Snow Watch: Rebecca details pre-blizzard prep in Richmond—empty stores, neighborly onion trades, and, oddly, a run on lobster.
  • "I waited... because I got a tip on the local Reddit about which grocery stores were getting restocked overnight last night." (03:03 – Rebecca)
  • "A lot of people were buying lobster, which was fascinating." (03:29 – Rebecca)
• Nostalgia & Snow Day Rituals: Sledding, hearty meals, and cozy weekends get their due as the duo reminisce about the Midwest and the joys of a well-timed snow day.
  • "I am a menace on a sled." (05:19 – Rebecca)
  • "When I was a kid, sledding was the number one thing..." (05:25 – Jeff)

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Housekeeping & Recent Episodes

(07:04–09:21)

• Zero Well Read Feed: Joy Luck Club episode highlighted for upending reader expectations about “what the book is.”
  • "Most of these books are not what people think they are if they have not read them. And the Joy Luck Club is one of those." (07:19 – Jeff)
• Upcoming Content: Jeff hints at a “patient zero” book for the “not what you think” phenomenon, likely tied to new adaptations.
• Patreon Teasers: Hot List first of the year incoming; conversation with author Gabriel Talent (about his new novel Crux) to follow—spoiler: "friendship novel and also about rock climbing." (08:43)

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The NBCC Finalists: Why This Award Matters

(11:36–21:05)

Industry Calendar Placement

• The NBCC list bridges the post–National Book Award/pre–Pulitzer lull—giving it a unique position in the awards ecosystem.
• Both hosts confess they'd like all book awards to be announced before the year ends, but NBCC's timing still brings attention.

NBCC vs. Other Awards

• "It's a more consistent voting body... professional critics in some capacity." (13:12 – Jeff)
• Unlike the pulsing, ever-changing committees of other prizes, NBCC’s consistency appeals to Jeff & Rebecca.

Standout Fiction Finalists (14:03–15:05)

• The Antidote – Karen Russell

• Audition – Katie Kitamura (hosts’ favorite; rooting for a win)

• On the Calculation of Volume, Book Three – TikTok hit, omnipresent on lists

• We Do Not Part – Han Kang

• The Wilderness – Angela Flournoy

  "Honestly, like, I would be... interested in whichever one of these wins. I would be thrilled of course to have Audition finally win something..." (14:32 – Rebecca)

Discourse Around Series Length & Adaptations

• Longing for clarity: Series that are “Schrodinger’s Volumes”—not knowing when it ends is stressful for readers like Jeff.
• Martin Watch: The hosts lament George R.R. Martin’s public statements and “Shakespearean tragedy” levels of self-sabotage.
  • “It’s almost a Shakespearean tragedy... he really is in his own way, like, he can’t let go of the adaptations enough to focus on the writing.” (17:02 – Jeff)
  • Rebecca finds Martin’s “Steampunk Santa” moniker poetic.

NBCC’s Breadth

• The awards stretch into debut (John Leonard Prize), translation, memoir, criticism, etc.
• "Citation for excellence in reviewing"—a rare prize to see. (20:32 – Rebecca)

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Libro.fm's New Annual Subscription & Audiobook Market Shifts

(21:05–24:58)

• Libro’s New Model: Now offers an annual, upfront payment option: 12 credits for $169.99/year (+ bonus credit), making it more competitive with Audible.
  • "If you're an audiobook person... you can just like set it and forget it." (22:51 – Rebecca)
• Supporting Bookstores: Upfront payments are best for indies—stores receive revenue at once.
• Both hosts consider shifting their audiobook allegiance to Libro.

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Top-Selling Publishers of 2025: Surprises, and the Big Six?

(24:58–30:55)

• Publisher Ranking by Bestseller Count (not sales):
  • Penguin Random House leads hardcover fiction with 99 titles—"feels light" given their market share. (25:19)
  • Macmillan surprisingly takes second place in hardcover fiction (50 titles), likely boosted by its genre imprints.
  • Sourcebooks takes trade paperback crown—notable for a publisher typically considered indie, hinting at its potential “Big Six” status.
    • "I'm kind of wondering, when is publishing reporting—like what Publishers Weekly does—going to... include Sourcebooks in the Big X?" (28:50 – Rebecca)
  • Debate over whether industry media should formally acknowledge a return to a “Big Six” model as Sourcebooks’ commercial performance rivals or surpasses longstanding houses.

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Celebrity Book Clubs: Curation, Not Conversation

(32:55–37:39)

• Katie Couric's Book Club? News flash: Nearly every huge substack seems to launch a “club.”
  • "We're approaching the place of, like, when everyone has a book club, no one has a book club. It's almost meaningless now." (33:44 – Rebecca)
• Real vs. ‘Book Club’ Experience: With thousands of “members,” these are plainly curated lists, not actual book clubs fostering conversation.
  • "We need a different word for it... it's namespace pollution." (34:07 – Jeff)
• Exceptions & Dynamics: Anne Helen Peterson’s Discord-based club attempts actual dialog at scale—but systemically, “book clubs” have become more like recommendation engines.

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Barnes & Noble’s Resurgence

(39:01–41:13)

• Daunt’s Paperback Push: James Daunt faces criticism for steering B&N toward more paperbacks and fewer hardcovers, aligning with UK trends and consumer price sensitivity.
  • "He wants fewer hardcovers and more paperbacks. But this is the thing. That's what the Brits do." (39:36 – Jeff)
• Footprint Expansion: Over 700 stores, record new openings in 2026, all signaling a healthy market rebound—and possibly positioning for an IPO.

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Analog Yearning & Disconnection from Social Media

(41:13–46:55)

• Noting a meaningful uptick in “bricking” phones (deliberately disabling smart features) as a backlash against aggressive advertising and AI on platforms like Instagram.
  • "Bricking your phone seems to have gone mainstream as a phrase..." (42:26 – Rebecca)
• "Not being online [is] the new status symbol," Jeff jokes, summarizing a growing trend to treat internet absence as aspirational.

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Oscars 2026: Best Adapted Screenplay Noms

(48:08–54:45)

• Nominees:
  • Hamnet (from Maggie O’Farrell’s novel)
  • Train Dreams (Denis Johnson novella)
  • Frankenstein (Mary Shelley)
  • One Battle After Another (adapted from Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland)
  • Begonia (a twist—adapted from a Korean sci-fi film, not a book)
• Hosts’ analysis:
  • Hamnet v. One Battle After Another as likely screenplay front-runners.
    • "The award is not ‘how good of an adaptation is it?’ The expectation is… the voting body is not familiar with any of the source material. It’s how good of a screenplay is it that happens to be based on [a preexisting work]." (50:13 – Rebecca)
  • “Grief porn” critique of Hamnet adaptation dismissed; both agree the book and film offer nuanced engagement with loss.

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Book Recommendations & Recent Reads

(56:37–76:55)

Rebecca’s Audiobook Picks:

• Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks

  • "It lives in [Year of Magical Thinking]'s long shadow... giving a different lens on something we're all going to deal with." (58:00 – Jeff)
  • Beautifully written reflection on grief, rituals, and the absence of communal structure for mourning.

• Homeschooled by Stefan Merrill Block

  • Memoir of a creative boy pulled into unregulated homeschooling by a well-intentioned but deeply flawed mother.

Jeff’s Recommendations:

• Palaver by Brian Washington

  • Novel about a Black man who immigrates to Japan, exploring estrangement, cultural identity, and fraught family ties.

• The Art of Spending Money by Morgan Housel

  • Philosophical look at personal finance—less “give up your lattes,” more about aligning spending with what genuinely brings fulfillment.
  • "What do I like better than [reading about] emotionally spare but close-to-the-surface books? Not a lot, Rebecca..." (68:31 – Jeff)
  • "With enough information, all behavior is explicable. If you don't understand behavior, you probably don't have enough information." (77:16 – Jeff quoting Housel, a concept from the book)

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Special Interview: Gabriel Talent on Crux

(78:59–End)

Noteworthy Moments, Quotes, and Themes

On failure, creative struggle, and meaning in art, climbing, life:

• "Throwing away entire projects because they don’t work is soul crushing." (80:12 – Gabriel)
• After writing and discarding huge failed manuscripts, Gabriel found ‘Crux’ through personal crisis and the “reawakening” that fatherhood brought during the pandemic.
• The story focuses on two working-class teens, Dan and Tama, whose passion for climbing is a metaphor for pursuing any consuming dream—writing included.

On friendship:

• "Friendship is this undermined relationship... it's just not a relationship which in literature is often given very much weight." (93:17 – Gabriel)
• Climbing (and writing) is about the process, failure, and learning together, rather than solo accomplishment.

On risk, agency, and the American dream:

• The myth of safe choices: "If you do nothing, it's a riskless situation" is a fallacy. (102:03 – Gabriel)
• For the protagonists, the real fear is not failure, but a life unlived.

On “small mistakes, big consequences”:

• Whether in climbing or in life, one minor error can have cascading effects.

On depression & hope in fiction:

• "Depression is really hard to make present for readers... impossible to understand from the outside and almost impossible to overcome from the inside." (110:54 – Gabriel)

On perseverance:

• The need to “string enough days together” of doing what one loves, not because you’re “owed” success, but because the act itself is meaningful.
  • "Doing it makes it possible in a weird way that I cannot explain, but that is my experience." (121:18 – Gabriel)

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• “Most of these books are not what people think they are if they have not read them. And the Joy Luck Club is one of those.” (07:19 – Jeff)
• “It’s almost a Shakespearean tragedy… he can’t let go of the adaptations enough to focus on the writing.” (17:02 – Jeff, on George R.R. Martin)
• "We need a different word for it... it's namespace pollution." (34:07 – Jeff, on celebrity ‘book clubs’)
• "I'm kind of wondering, when is publishing reporting... going to... include Sourcebooks in the Big X?" (28:50 – Rebecca)
• "If everyone has a book club, no one has a book club. It's almost meaningless now." (33:44 – Rebecca)
• "Doing it makes it possible in a weird way that I cannot explain, but that is my experience." (121:18 – Gabriel Talent, on climbing, writing, and life)
• "All along writing gradually worse books because you have fewer and fewer people in your life and chasing awards that when you get them, you... feel you have only satisfied the minimum of your ambition." (125:15 – Gabriel Talent)

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Segment Timestamps (Selective Reference)

• [03:03] – Lobster runs and snowstorm grocery anecdotes
• [07:04] – The Joy Luck Club isn’t what you think
• [13:12] – NBCC voting body analysis
• [21:05] – Libro annual subscription news
• [25:19] – PRH’s hardcover fiction dominance: “feels light”
• [28:50] – Sourcebooks: Is it time for the Big Six?
• [33:44] – "When everyone has a book club, no one has a book club"
• [41:13] – Rise of analog and quitting social media
• [47:58] – Oscar Best Adapted Screenplay nominees
• [56:37] – Rebecca reviews Memorial Days
• [78:59] – Gabriel Talent interview begins (Crux)

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Closing Thoughts

As always, Jeff and Rebecca combine serious industry insight with bookish banter. This episode is a microcosm of the contemporary reading landscape: uncertainty and consolidation among publishers, a push-pull between analog and digital culture, the complicated legacy of awards and celebrity influence, and the reminder that the books we love are often far more complex than their reputation or marketing. Crux (Gabriel Talent’s new novel) becomes a perfect metaphor for all of it: whether in art, love, or climbing, meaning is found not in reaching the summit but in the daily, imperfect striving.

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(You can find this and more at Book Riot – The Podcast or support their bonus content at Patreon.)

Transcript

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[Gabriel Tallent]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And today, you know, almost did the today is January 2, 2026 and we haven't done a date intro in like four years. So I don't know, I don't know why that got spat out on me.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Because I put 25 into the show notes when I was putting the date for today. We're, we're on a journey here.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I committed some crimes in our monthly financial call check in that we had the company yesterday, what year I was comparing to what and year over year. At one point Alex, our developer is like, jeff, I just need to ask what year are you talking about? Thank you so much because I have no idea.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Bless him.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm sorry for saying that. I've had a dilly of a time getting into the year. I still like, I'm still getting my, my engines firing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Me too. I was thinking about that this morning. Like As I wrote January 22, 2026 in my journal, it was like, okay, this is usually the point in January where I'm like, oh my God, how is it still, still January? Like January can feel seven years long. But we had a business trip that started January 4th and for some reason like since that happened before the working year really started, I feel like it never actually turned over into being 2026. So like talk to me in July, let's see how I'm doing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Then I need to check in on the weather prep in Richmond because you were getting ready for 8 inches of snow, which for Richmond, Virginia is the equivalent of 17ft. Like, I mean, how are we doing out there?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Somewhere between 8 inches and 20 inches. Is the.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You've never, have you ever had that much snow enrichment since you've been there?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Not 20. I think the most we've had since I've lived here is like 12. We had 11 several years ago, but yeah, it's a lot. Last year, this about this time of year, we got five and schools were closed for a week.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Amazing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So by the time you're hearing this podcast, I might have been snowed in for four days. I got home from a trip last night. By the time I got in, a neighbor had texted me to ask for if I had onions. But because she had gone to three grocery stores that were out of onions.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Reddit helped French onion soup. Like, what are people doing? They're gonna store em away like French peasants? I don't know.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Is everybody making chili and spaghetti sauce? I don't know. And then another friend was at Costco and was like there. Here are the empty shelves that would have had paper towels and bottled water on them. Totally gone. Milk is out everywhere. I waited until this morning because I got a tip on the local Reddit about which grocery stores were getting restocked overnight last night. So I went grocery shopping at 9am it was fine. I got everything I needed. And the checkout person told me that a lot of people were buying lobster, which was fascinating.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I know. It was like learned. When a warm place gets snow and we all live through Covid, the end times are going to be a much stranger and stupider than has been imagined here too.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, but like, first of all, we're two hours from the coast and it is January. What are people doing with lobster? And she was like, I don't know, man. I've been here for two hours this morning and I've already rung up so many lobsters.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Huh. Very strange. Are going to New York for the weekend and they're flying the day before and they're supposed to fly. I think they're again, knock on poly pressed IKEA furniture here. But I think they're going to be there like just for the storm, which is both fun and kind of annoying for them. Amy.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We'll see. This morning's report was like, there's a 60% chance that we get more than 8 inches, so I think we'll definitely have some. I'm ready to make like, we're gonna make enchiladas, we're gonna make ribollita, we're gonna eat very hearty things and, you know, deal with being adults. Who don't really get snow days.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. You like a sweater. So you're probably thrilled for this, are you? Don't have to go anywhere. Are you excited for this?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I know I'm kind. I love a snow day. Like, I. I loved living. Well, I loved that about living in the Midwest. I loved the winters. And Chicago when I lived there, partially because I lived on a college campus. I didn't have to, like, drive in it. I. I will be happy to have a cozy weekend assuming that all of the city infrastructure holds up. Like, I'm. Do I have the little mental list of, like, what are the movies we. That we want to do over a long, snowy weekend?

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, I bet you're a menace on a sled. Do you have a sledding hill around there that you can go on?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We have a golf course two blocks down, a public golf course that becomes the local sledding hill. I am a menace on a sled.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I believe that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I bought all this long underwear to go to Finland last year. I got to use it for something, right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Repurpose that stuff. Yeah. When I was a kid, sledding was the number one thing. We were hoping to get enough snow to do. And we have. We live a few blocks from a park here that the dog run turns into the sledding hill. But the dog people still bring their dog people. So it's largely dogs running alongside kids on sleds for the whole time.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is my dog's dream. I just got back from a winter beach trip, and he had the most fun. Like seven in the morning on an empty beach with freezing water and wet sand. And I was like, just wait. We're going home to snow buddy.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. You're gonna be excited for everyone. Everyone stay safe and warm out there. And I guess if you. If you have some lobsters you've been waiting to arbitrage, now's your moment. Jump on it, people.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

What are people doing?

[Jeff O'Neill]

If someone hand you a lobster, would you know what to do with it? Have you ever cooked a lobster at home?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I have not because I've always lived in pretty landlocked places, Right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I've never cooked a. I think actually I've done a lobster, like a clam bake thing. But that's pretty straightforward. I mean, I guess you just boil the thing, right? Isn't that the point of lobsters? You. I guess you do boil that bastard alive and then crack it open.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I do phone a friend for a friend in Maine and be like, tell me what to do here.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. We were at a wedding in Maine a few years ago, and the food for the the reception was a giant lobster boil. So it was like this huge mound of lobsters and aluminum foil, outdoor overside. And I've got to say, seeing a bunch of lobsters like that cooked was really, it felt like gross apocalypse. Something a demon lord would serve at their wedding.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I prefer a, like Louisiana, South Carolina, low country boil situation.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like a crawfish situation.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Crawford.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, okay, I understand that. Well, we're certainly on topic today. Let's do some housekeeping here right now in the zero well read feed. Our most recent episode is the Joy Luck Club. Had a great time returning to that and I think we found Rebecca. And this is going to be true of a couple of things coming out in the feed that we've already gotten the can. Most of these books are not what people think they are if they have not read them. And the Joy Luck Club is one of those.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It is. It is so much more complex than the, like, book club presentation of it would imply. And a fascinating story there. Like listeners of this podcast who have heard me for years be like, short stories are great, but they're impossible to sell. Would be.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What if you just lied?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, what if you just lied? Like, Amy Tan wrote it as she didn't really lie, but she wrote it as a collection of short stories. And one of the early reviews called it a novel. And the publishers were like, cool, if people think this is a novel, let's call it a novel.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They said it, not us.

[Gabriel Tallent]

They did.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They said that, not us.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, but there's a whole alternate timeline, I think, of what, what life the Joy Luck Club would have had if it hadn't been called a novel.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I think we have coming in the next couple weeks, maybe patient zero for the book is not what people think who have not read the book. It may be pegged to an upcoming movie adaptation. Who can say? But that was a lot of fun to do. They're coming up soon in the Book Riot Patreon feed. It's time for the Hot List. First one of the year. The flipping of the calendar is always an unusual time for the hot List. We're between sizes, you know, like, you know, maybe, you know, it's not quite feeling comfortable. So that's always a good conversation to have there. And then if I do, if, if technology holds, I will record my conversation with Gabrielle tonight at Powell's. It'll be appended at the end of this show. So if it's there, great. If not. I will edit this out. I hope everything goes well. Talking about his new novel Crux, which is a friendship novel and also about rock climbing and I really enjoyed it. So I did.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I did too. I talked about it on front list foyer a week or two ago. Please tell him that I said hi and thanks for sending us that book. I really liked it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, so stick around for that. And with that we will take a break and get into the rest of the show.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This episode is sponsored by Audio Bee Productions llc. Stick around after the show to hear an audiobook excerpt from Unexpected Lessons from Professor Higgins by Patti Smith. Narrated by Tara Janay Smith When Patti Smith's first child was born with down syndrome, her world changed forever. What began with fear and uncertainty, though, became a lifelong education in love, patience and the power of new perspectives. This deeply moving audiobook, narrated by the author's daughter, reveals how life's biggest challenges can become our most profound teachers. From moments of heartbreak to bursts of joy and relatable humor, Patti Smith shares how her son Christopher, affectionately known as Professor Higgins, transformed her entire family's understanding of unconditional love. This book was the winner of the Olive Woolly Burt Awards and the Global Book Awards. More than a parenting guide, it's an invitation for anyone to see the beauty in imperfection and the grace in letting go. So whether you're a caregiver, educator, parent, or anyone seeking inspiration in the face of life's detours, this book will lift your heart, open your mind, and remind you that the unexpected may be your greatest gift. Again, stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook edition of Unexpected Lessons from Professor Higgins by Patti Smith. Narrated by Tara Genae Smith.

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[Gabriel Tallent]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

So as we wait, I actually think the National Book Critics Circle Award picks An interesting spot to do their finalist and award because it's after the National Book Award but before the Pulitzer. So there's a bit of a lull here where you're not competing with a bunch of end of year lists and the Pulitzer still months away, but I think still people are. Do you think people are still doing 2025? Look back to the Oscars coming out. We're not done yet, are we? I.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's January 22nd. Like if I were the.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Which you just established was super soon or old. I can't remember what you just said.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It feels a little late. Like we've already done a complete round of Most anticipated of 2020 content and like it's now feeling late to me to get some of the. Even the sales numbers from 2025, which for reasons of the books just being closed and finalized. Like Publishers Weekly did have a lot of sort of look back at 2025 stuff lately, but that's starting to feel old to me. Like, oh, are we still about 2025? If I had my druthers, all of the book awards would be announced before the end of the calendar year in which those books were published. But this is an interesting spot. It does get some attention this way. As you were saying in between the National Book Award and the Pulitzers. I think maybe this is a sidebar, but I think maybe we made a mistake in our fantasy league by not including the NBCC as a award.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I do. I agree. I agree with you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

As one of the awards, I have it on my notes to propose for the 2026 round.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And why is that? Rebecca?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Say more about that, that it's one of the more interesting lists. When they put out the long list a couple a month or so ago, we talked about it, that it happens to be, I think the list that tends to be most aligned with what you and I are interested in.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Certainly the fiction list for this year feels very familiar.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, this will. We will both get some more points in the fantasy league next year if we peg them to the NBCC's. But they are looking. It's interesting to see what critics are paying attention to. It's a more consistent voting body, I believe, than any of the other lists that have a different prize committee each year or like the Pulitzers have a different committee that selects the things they recommend up to the governing body, but it's a much bigger voting body as well. I think this is the biggest voting body that's not the Goodreads Choice Awards.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, we got an email about that that it's not as big as we might think and I don't remember the details. It's a. It's not the. It's not the full kind of list, but it is, it's different and at the very least it's critics. That's maybe the signal. Different thing is these are professional critics in some capacity.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So the list of fiction finalists this year. The Antidote by Karen Russell. Of course the one we are the most excited to see is Audition by Katie Kitamura on the calculation of volume book three, which was on a bunch of the year end lists has been nominated for Things. Also a TikTok hit. We do Not Part by Han Kang and the Wilderness by Angela Flournoy. So several faves there. We both really loved audition 4 out.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Of 5 which is the highest matriculation rate I can remember on a list.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And honestly, like I would be. I'm just interested in whichever one of these wins. I would be thrilled of course to have Audition finally win something after last year. Hong Kong is a Nobel Prize winner. Hard to compete with. The Wilderness by Flournoy. Really wonderful. I did not love the Antidote. You didn't either. Like we liked it but didn't love it. We did a book club episode that's back in the feed from the spring if folks want to hear more about where we landed on that. So we'll see how this shakes out. But I, I mean obviously rooting for.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Audition at some past episode. I had mentioned something about being ambivalent about on the calculation of volume book 1, 2 or 3 and got a full emails. I mean just saying you would like it which is great and helpful and.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think I probably.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I need to do Occam's o' Neill's Razors. Nervous when I say that when there's aren't there like. But I don't actually. You know what? I don't care how many there are. How many are there supposed to be. If there are eight and it's done, that is way more attractive to me than they're supposed to be. Five and three are out because I will read eight books in a row. That is not a problem for me. The problem for me is the opposite which I don't know how long it's going to be. It's going to be Schrodinger's Volume 4. I can't do this, Rebecca. I'm an old man at this point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

When we talked on a recent episode about how both of us tend to cap out on things around book two or book three. Longer than that is a really long time to sustain interest in something that's repetitive or on similar themes. I don't know about calculation of volume, but in terms of authors that are sort of running back the same play or dealing with the same characters, I.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Mean, a fantasy or sci fi story. I will deal with a long epic. And I'm given to understand that there is durability between the volumes so that it makes sense. I don't know. I mean, at this point I have to try it. Just because I have to try it. Just try one. But. But we didn't get to it. I don't. Well, because Vanessa was here and then we had a different thing. But like, there's another. Because Night of the set of kingdoms out on HBO, there's another round of George R.R. martin stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I've been watching that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

George, George.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

George is his own worst PR2 series.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Now, where there's an adaptation of it where they aren't done. I mean, it's kind of. It's kind of amazing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He's like, I got plans for 15 more books with these characters.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, I mean, you can say whatever, sure, Right, Sure.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But just. I kind of just would like George to stop giving interviews. I feel like it's unhelpful.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, we are now bordering on. And it's beyond. Feel bad for him, be pissed off if you're a fan or whatever. It's beyond that to almost a Shakespearean like, tragedy of. Of. Because, like, he really is in his own way, like, he can't let go of the adaptations enough to focus on the writing. That's my. That's my best guess of what's happening.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And the writing away from him said that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, yeah. Like he won't. And then he'll get. He gets. George is a messy boy too, because, like, he doesn't like House of the Dragon. And he published a blog post about some of his concerns. Apparently HBO or someone got involved, he took it down. But apparently that was gonna be part one of six. Like about House of the Dragons.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, the blog posts. Come on. I did see there was a big profile of him recently. You linked to it in Today in Books and the author of it described him as Steampunk Santa, which has to be one of the best descriptors of an author I've seen in a long time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's really good.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Lives on a really interesting sounding compound in Santa Fe. Like, I'm more interested in the sort of universe of George R.R. martin than I personally am in his books. But this is fascinating and it feels like Sisyphean and cursed and he's really.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Staring down the barrel of his own mortality in a more obvious way at this point he talks about explicitly and it's just the case where we cannot let the TV series go, I guess. On a side note, I did watch episode one of A Night of the Seven Kingdoms. I think I talked before about. I read the novella and enjoyed it. It's quite good if you've been interested in Game of Thrones, but you're worried about the ickiness. This is a warmer, gentler, though. It's not warm or gentle, but the main character is a good person and that is different than most Game of Thrones experiences. Refreshing, you could say. And it's six episodes. It's gonna be 30ish minutes per episode, so it's not a huge lift. And you really need know nothing about Game of Thrones if you're interested in a little fantasy version there. Why were we talking about this? Oh, and the cocktails. Oh, I'm thinking nits about the NBC season calculation. And then we do not part the wilderness too. The other reason I was thinking that it would be cool to include this in our draft. Excuse me. Our fantasy league is we can pick up some points for criticism, translation. And then I think my favorite thing is their John Leonard Prize, which is for best first book of any genre. It can be poetry, it could be whatever. Nicholas Boggs, James Baldwin in that list is the one that jumped out at me. And then Lucas Schaefer's the Slip, which we've been seeing crop up as debuts. It's becoming one of the books I think people have talked about. A writer to watch there, and a bunch of other interesting stuff.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes, saw Ichikawa's novel Hunchback, which I read last year. I had it in our fantasy league all year. Really interesting debut. And translation. Glad to see that as well. For the other big categories, nonfiction America, A New History of the New World by Greg Grandin Daughters of the Bamboo Grove by Barbara Demick Empire of AI by Karen Howe King of Kings, the Iranian Revolution, A Story of Hubris, Delusion and Catastrophic Miscalculation by Scott Anderson and no More the Dark Secrets of Johnson.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And Johnson, which we've seen a lot. That book has cropped up a lot. Great title, by the way, for a Johnson Johnson.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I like how many categories the NBCC does that. You get fiction and nonfiction and biography and then also autobiography, which includes this year, Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks. Stay tuned for more on that in front list.

[Jeff O'Neill]

FOIA yeah, I'm excited to hear Mother.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy, Paper Girl by Beth Macy, Shattered by Hanif Qureshi and A Truce that Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews, which I also read. So I've got three out of five in the autobiography. They've also got poetry, they've got criticism, and then they have this John Leonard Prize for the best first book. But that's such a great category to see. Also books in translation and in excellence. They do a citation for excellence in reviewing, which is interesting as well.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Very cool to see. Maybe you want to listen to some of these books and if so you could sign up, which is new. This is news. I'm glad you put this in there that Libro now has a membership which if you don't know, you couldn't. You would buy per credit and Audible, I would assume their primary competitor, though maybe it's probably Spotify at this point is Audible's main competitor. But Libro is certainly positioned yourself to be in as a alternative to Audible and other places you can support your local bookstore or not just buy it straight up. But this credit system that auto renews and gets people on a subscription base and I think Rebecca, I'm making the move to Libro finally from Audible for this reason alone.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. Yeah. You can get one credit a month for 1499, two credits a month for 2399 and that's paying month by month. Or you can get an annual membership at 12 credits a year. This is the new part, being able to just pay upfront for the whole year for 169.99 you get 12 audiobook credits that go to your account immediately. So you can portion out over the course of your subscription year. However you want 30% off of additional audiobooks if you need to buy additional ones. There are also member exclusive sales. Your credits never expire and easy you can also return stuff and you support local bookstores. But now as they're promoting this annual subscription for the first time, you get a free bonus credit as well when you start your membership. So if you're an audiobook person, I've been doing all of my audiobook listening on Spotify since I've already got Spotify Premium. But sometimes I bump up against the or I'm. Or I don't listen to something cause I'm going to bump up against the 15 hours a month limit and I'm not going to top it up. Like I'm just not that big of an audiobook person. But I think I will pivot my extra listening to Libro as well. Really glad to see that you can just like set it and forget it. Get your credits for the year.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I have a few Audible credits to burn through. I think it was a year and a half ago they made some kind of offer where you you. I think I bought 24 credits and it came out to be like $11 a pop like it was a special deal so I jumped on that. So I have to burn through those. But I'm ready to move over. I am. I do quite a bit of review copy listing through audiobooks. I think 12. That's not true. I need to look at this because if there's a high if There were a 36 credit per year Libro I for sure would move over. I think maybe Audible has a higher one. And it's not so much about the money though. It's a little bit a few dollars per really adds up. It's about not having to worry about do I have enough month because then if you don't have the credit you got to pay full sticker price. You might as well give them one of your eyeballs for a full priced audiobook for somebody even with a discount.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, that's still really glad to see.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I use my Spotify for a shorter book there but I'm glad to see this be if not feature parody at least the cost of supporting something you like to support is not as dear as it was.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And for the folks who you're thinking about Libro or you have been using it on the month to month basis. The information that I received from Libro did take pains to note that the annual subscription that you pay up front is the best way to support your local bookstore with your Libro subscription because they get the revenue upfront. And of course having upfront revenue helps any business be able to plan for how they're going to cover their expenses and really have a better sense sense of what's going to be coming in.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Also better for Libro too because they get the money up front. But you know what, that's neither there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Smart of them to connect it to their business model and they are a certified B corp. So if you want to dig into sort of the back end of how how much of Libro supports other businesses, you can do that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This next one I'm not sure I would have gotten this anywhere correct. So these are the the top ranking the best selling adult publishers by not sales but the number of bestsellers per Format per group. So hardcover fiction, hardcover nonfiction, trade paperback and our five if you don't remember right now are Simon Schuster, Penguin, Rittenhouse, macmillan, Harper Collins and Shet though source books. There's a note here and trade paperback especially to note that. So I'm going to give our listeners just a moment to think. Hachette, Harper Collins, McMillan, Penguin, Ranheuser, Simon Schuster. Which of them? What's our AAA category? Hardcover fiction. Think to yourself how many titles the number one house had on the list and which house it is. Just think to yourself of all the books that are out there. Do you have a second? I. I don't think we have rights to the Jeopardy. Music. Let me check. We have rights to the. No, that was a no. Sony just sent me a cease of desist preemptively before I even thought that. Thanks AI. So Rebecca, in the hardcover fiction which is probably our most covered format, it's Penguin random house with 99 titles which I think people who follow books and know how many books there are for the largest publisher in the US feels light. That doesn't feel like it's that many.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's not that many. But it also really does illustrates the thing that we say constantly here, which is that most books don't go bad heads anywhere. And these are the. Let's see, is this just the Publisher's Weekly? Yeah, this is the Publisher's Weekly publisher seller list which is powered by Circana. So this isn't like many more PRH titles made or many more titles from all of these publishers made. I would guess the New York Times bestseller lists, like.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Things move off and on those a lot more fluidly. But the reporting for them is also a lot wigglier than the straight up sales data from Circana. So I trust this more. It's interesting that 99 titles in 330 held 336 positions across the lists for the year and that that's the highest PRH would have been my guess because they're the biggest publisher. They put out like more than 50% of the trade books in a given year from mainstream publishing. Next after them in hardcover fiction though is Macmillan with 50 titles which that surprises me that it was Macmillan and not either Harper or his show.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I wonder what that was. We didn't break down there, but I wonder if they had a couple of. They had spate of things that really hit the list.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And also McMillan has. Well, they have Tor, which has a lot of the genre.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, they have flat iron and yeah, that does a lot of Commercial fiction sales and book club things over there. The thing I think that would surprise the most people is the winner for the number of trade paperback placements is not one of the big five. In fact, it is sourcebooks, with 67 titles on the trade paperback bestseller. Now, that's weighted a little bit because Sourcebooks does a lot of trade paperback originals. Right? Things that don't go to hardcover, but still. Penguin Random House only 41. Trade paperback. McMillan only 11. Hachette only 19.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Technically, Sourcebooks is in the big five in terms of revenue. Last year they topped. I can't remember which one of the. I think it was existing. Yeah, Last year they topped in salesman, maybe.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I can't remember.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I believe it was Hachette. And we just have not started talking either about moving source books into having a big six, or are we going to insist on the big five and houses move in and out of it? But I'm kind of wondering, when is publishing reporting, like, what Publishers Weekly does? Are we going to. How does this decision get made?

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's kind of like, why do we still pay attention to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, though? Everyone knows it's the s and P500 that matters. These things have momentum and weight of their own, so that can be hard to see.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We went from the big Six to the big five, naturally, when Penguin and Random House merged. But the Big six had been that way for as long as I had been in publishing. I don't think it had been forever, but for quite a long time it was the big six. And then they condensed. But like, someone needs to decide that if size is actually associated with revenue, Sourcebooks belongs in that top list.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know what, Rebecca? If only we knew someone with a book related podcast that covered industry news.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But like, do we have as much? Maybe we should just decide that. We have enough authority.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We can decide it for us. It's true for us.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The big six. We're talking about the big Six now. And Sourcebooks is in there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Big six from Sourcebooks. Fascinating to see. You can break this down and see, like. And they break it to how many positions? So how many times those titles stuck on the list, Right? So, for example, Penguin Random House had 132 hardcover nonfiction, which is the largest of any of these categories, for a total of 463 positions. So. So I guess the average hardcover nonfiction bestseller stayed on for four days, three and a half. Three and a half weeks. Pardon me, on that list. I would guess that a lot of that is weighted towards the let them theory, which was on every day. That was 52 positions for hardcover fiction. But if you get nonfiction especially can be durable. The only thing more durable is a Dr. Seuss or a kids book because that can last 80 years, as we've learned. But if you get a hardcover fiction book that sticks around, it can stick around. Which sounds like it's tautology, but I think you understand what I'm saying, I.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Think Also notable just from the independent and non big five winners of the year, Entangled Publishing, which has Red Tower and a ton of Romantasy, had 16 hardcover fiction titles that made the bestseller list last year. Interesting to see that as well. Hey, it's Brooklyn Adams and I'm partnering with Abercrombie to tell you about the newest drop from their Active brand. Your personal best YPB leggings are made with buttery soft fabrics that hug you in all the right places and common Abercrombie's viral curve love fit designed to eliminate waist gap. Paired with sports bras and super soft sweatshirts. It's activewear that supports every part of my busy lifestyle and gives me my best butt ever. Head into the new year feeling your personal best. Shop Active by Abercrombie in the app, online and in stores right now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Get up to 20% off select online storage solutions put heavy duty HDX totes to good use, protecting what's important to you. The solid impact resistant design prevents cracking and the clear base and sides make items easy to find even when the totes are stacked. Find select online shelving and tote storage up to 20% off at the Home Depot. To organize every room in your home from your garage to your attic, visit homedepot.com how doers get more done the world moves fast. Your workday even faster. Pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing data. Microsoft 365 Copilot is your AI assistant for work built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint and other Microsoft 365 apps you use, helping you quickly write, analyze, create and summarize so you can cut through clutter and clear a path to your best work. Learn [e-mail] M365 copilot One of the books that was a late riser and I don't know if we know that the correspondent Was a TikTok book or is it like Remarkably Bright Creatures or one of those where is it Indie Bookstore book?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think it was Indie bookstore.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Choose email podcastookriot.com if you have a better sense of it it but it apparently well, I assume you went to the meeting of the Katie Couric Book club on the 19th. You took notes. Like, did you. Did you do a live feed? What did you. What's your re. So Katie Couric is starting a book club?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I'm insulted that Katie Couric hasn't called me yet.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You're insulted? Well, she's not going to call you now. You said that you can't cross Casey like that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, listen, I like Katie Couric as much as anybody. She's got a popular substack. It seems now like a foregone conclusion that if you have a substack of a certain size, you're going to have a book club, which is a good thing for books, I think. But as we are approaching the place of, like, when everyone has a book club, no one has a book club. It's almost meaningless now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right? I mean, and these are book clubs in name only. They're like, they're book selections that maybe we'll have a conversation that you can then live sleep name. We've talked about this a lot. There is no book club for thousands of people. It's a different thing. We need a different word for it. It's namespace, pollution. I don't know. It's a book pick with some other stuff that goes around it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And the largest scale, one that I have seen that is actually trying to be a conversation is Anne. Helen Peterson also just launched a book club for her culture study newsletter that had been on substack and now has gone to Patreon. And I think she's doing two picks a month. They're focusing on romance. There's going to be one historical and one contemporary each month to choose from. And then I believe it's discord channels that will be associated to them. But like, that can. Who knows how.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I just blacked out when you were talking.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, couldn't be me in a Discord book club, but go with God, I hope everybody's having a good time out there. It's hard. It's just hard to create a real sense of conversation around a book at scale. And most of what we call book club today in terms of celebrity book club are really just curation and recommendation, which is great.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Which is wonderful. And has a place. Yes, yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. But it's not a book club.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, even in a teaching mode, the difference between 8, 12 and 25 is different. So, like you get outside about 10 or 12 people. I found it becomes a different dynamic. And I think what people want from a book club club is 10 or 12 people. And I think also people just want curation. That's fine. Is Katie Couric. She's just independent now. She's running a substack and living her life.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And, you know, she like produces news features and does, I think documentaries and some other stuff.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But she's in the Katie Couric business.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

She's in the Katie Couric business. She's not working for one of the networks now. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Fascinating to see. I wonder what the median number of selections a famous person saying they're doing a book club is like.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like in the long run.

[Jeff O'Neill]

In the long run. Because, like, I think we have survivor survivorship bias against like the Reese's and the Oprah's and the whoever's of the world. But I feel like we get this from time to time because, like, I know Dakota Johnson still has one she's doing and Dua Lipa is really good at it. And then you get into sort of the more author kind of celebrity people like Roxane Gay. But I'd be curious to see do these things actually what happened to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right. I was just going to say there's some sports figures that they announce a book club and I would guess for those it's like somewhere between 6 and 12 before they lose interest or they forget or they have other priority.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, it makes a ton of sense to me for someone who's doing a substack or they're in the insert name here business, because what it gives you is content. And one of the hardest things about making content is finding what content to write about. Especially if you're not a news organization or frankly kind of COVID a regular beat. Right. A lot of these people, like, they kind of COVID the world, which is everything and nothing. But for Anne Helen Peterson or Katie Couric, like a book club, a month gives you a couple episodes, gives you a newsletter series. You could take one off the box there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Totally, totally understand it as a content hook for other people. For other celebrities who just have large platforms and happen to like books, I think it would actually benefit the books more if instead of pegging themselves to like, we're gonna have to do one pick a month forever. If a celebrity just talked about a great book that they loved occasionally and used the platform for that, like Jacob Lord, he puts a book in his back pocket and just walks around. And it does more than other, you know, like replacement value celebrity having to pick something every single month. And then like, as we know, if you go even to Rhys or Oprah or Jenna, the High profile ones. If you go back and look at a couple years worth of their selections, still, most of those books don't become huge phenomena.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I meant to send it to you, and I just didn't. Because I didn't. John Turturro talking about how he likes to read, and I was like, okay, what is this gonna be? He's like, oh, this year I spent a. I read a bunch of Percival Everett books and I about fell out.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

John Turturro in a Percival Everett adaptation. Like, I might leave my body.

[Jeff O'Neill]

John Turturro, just what a fascinating guy. Yeah. And he's like, I read a bunch of Italian writers and I read the sellout, which I think is a super hilarious, underrated book. Turturro, come sit with us, man. Maybe if we got John Turturro, referred them to the Big Six, that would take him. You think he can do that?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It is funny. I realized even as I was saying, like, who's going to decide that? That I think we all in the industry have a sense that there are these, like, invisible grownups who get to decide.

[Jeff O'Neill]

If only we knew someone at Circana that categorized things differently.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right. Or does there need to be some meeting of, like, the New York Times book team and the Washington Post book team and us and other people who.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Congratulations to us. Okay, thank you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We're leading the charge to call it the Big Six Again. You heard it here first.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Be the media you want to see in the world. I think Toni Morrison said that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Listen, sourcebooks deserves to have recognition. You should not be out earning someone in the big Five and not be able to be calling yourself in the big Five. Come on.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I agree. You're right. You know, I agree with you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Justice for sourcebooks, Jack.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Whoa. Okay. I just agreed with you. I just agreed with you. I don't know if James Daunt would say that sourcebooks in the Big Five, but he has certainly benefited from the rise of, I guess, really the commercial paperback. It seems to me, I walk into Barnes and Noble and I'm presented with a Penelope of commercial paperbacks to choose from.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He talks about that in this Publisher's Weekly piece with Jim Miliot that he's taken criticism for the fact that he wants fewer hardcovers and more paperbacks. But this is the thing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's what the Brits do. That's what the Brits do. I think I've talked about that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's also price conscious. Like, book clubs tend to wait for paperback. The price point is better, especially as current paperbacks are almost as expensive as hardcovers five years ago were. Come on. It makes sense. It's smart for their consumer.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Barnes and Noble is opening a bunch of stores. They just crossed the 700 milestone. I saw some reports they were going to open up like 66 new stores in 2026 though. I don't know, I think some. There's some attrition too. So it's not exactly one for one, but it's growing and I would expect to get a lot of James Daunt talk because they're looking to spin these puppies off. So we got to talk about how Barnes and Noble is right now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Nobody's working harder than the James Daunt Barnes and Noble PR team. Yes, they are out there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

He's available and I think we've talked before that an IPO of some sort seems the most likely. Private equity tends to not sell to other private equity, but I don't know. And when you're doing this, you want to pump up the stock and maybe do some short term things to make the spreadsheet look better. I think it would be wise for them to strike while the iron is at least warm. So this makes total no shade for Don and Bina. This is what you should be doing and wherever to find myself in a lucky position to have a property that was IPO eligible and our balance sheet was improving. I would be giving all the information, all the interviews I could, anywhere that would listen to me. So I didn't learn much more about this, I don't think.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, no. But I'm happy to see Barnes and Noble stay on the upswing. This is a good turnaround. It's good for books and publishing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This made me think of a story I saw about like, you know, people returning to analog and blah, blah, blah. Can we get a temperature check on how much people are interested in analog and getting offline? Do you think we are? Is it really different this year than it has been the last two years? I feel like we've had the same story. But then this is can be recency bias or whatever selection bias I'm looking for. But like I feel like I'm seeing a little bit more of it. What is your sense of it?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I also feel like I'm seeing a little bit more of it. There was more in the like podcast landscape at the start of the year of people talking about that intention. I think it's just 2025 was so awful in the world and the Internet that and Instagram especially tipped over into being so ad heavy that AI stuff the AI stuff. And the AI stuff. Yeah. That more casual users realized that their experience.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, wait, I hate this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And they're trying to get off of it in like a great. You tell me if it's ironic or not, but I've seen a lot of people posting screenshots of their brick stats to Instagram.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, you got only the master's tools can take down the master's house.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But like, good on that. Bricking your phone seems to have gone mainstream as a phrase that people talk about. There was a piece, I think in Vox about.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

About what's going on with brick. I don't know if they got a big investment that they're advertising has also been all over the place. And it's one of those moments where I want to be like, I already have two of these. Don't waste your money advertising them.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think my speaker must have heard me talking to you about brick, because I'm getting brick ads on Instagram and to my first approximation, I don't know what I could have done. Maybe they're just spending a bunch as there's New Year's Revolution, Revolution, New Year's Revolutions, Freudian slip. Maybe I'm hoping for something else right now. Resolutions that they. Maybe they're doing a bunch of spend around the first of the year.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It does feel different to me and I think maybe we'll have less of a sense of it than in previous eras of social media. If people are leaving, I think people will just leave or their use will just peter out. It used to be especially in like the heyday of Twitter, goodbye to all.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That kind of post. Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. That you felt like you had to. People felt like they had to announce like, I am leaving this place and here is why, and here's where you can reach me. And I. We're all hopefully over that and. And we don't need to announce that we're going off of Instagram or taking a break or whatever. But I think if you have the sense that you're on social media and you're seeing less content from the people that you follow that you want to be seeing, you're seeing more ads and more AI stuff. That's not wrong. That is what's happening and it's not what it is not actually what people want.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I read a half baked substack post which is basically redundant at this point about not being online, being the new status symbol, which I also thought was interesting to some degree to think about, you know, not posting your images and selfies as being a kind of counter. Counter current to extreme onlineness and brand awareness and individual brands and things like that. I thought it was fascinating to think about that kind of idea. I think that's all they said there was no data or anything for us. Like, I could see that, especially around the AI likeness stuff like you can clone people and some real dystopian garbage.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, there's been that trend of like, post all your images from 2026. And then as that started happening, there was also a big analysis piece that I read that was like, this is an AI training tool. Like at that. At Mass, an AI tool can take all of these 2026 images and compare them to what people look like now and then do all kinds of stuff about how images change and how. Yes, sorry, 2016-2026. How images change and how style changes and, you know, all sorts of stuff.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I don't know, I'll be curious to see. I. I do think if the metric was easier to track for people about screen time, whatever that looks like, that, you know, what gets measured gets managed. And I don't think we have a good measuring tool. I know there's some stuff you can do on your phone, but it's not as simple as the number like a step tracker. It's not as simple as that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, this is like real evidence to me that Apple doesn't actually want you to be able to manage your screen time. Is how much of a lie the Apple screen time is?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, you know, I'm not sure what that measures exactly.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, if I just open Spotify, I don't watch any videos on Spotify. I listen to podcasts and I'll check my screen time periodically. And it's like, you had 23 minutes of Spotify screen time today. I'm like, I guarantee you I did guarantee you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I did not. Yeah, right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I promise you I did not. The only thing that has worked for me for getting any accurate sense of it is setting app time limits and then combining it with brick so that like, you can't overrun the time limit. And then I know how I know that. I only spent 15 minutes on Instagram yesterday.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, speaking of data, we can't know what percentage of people hit the, whatever the, the snooze button equivalent of that you've been on whatever for X number. Like, oh my God, how many. How much do people actually obey that thing? Because you can have all the things that you want. I mean, hence the brick.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. Yeah, hence the brick. Brick. If you need like, no free ads.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, too late. Why would they. Why would they give us money? Why?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Because they should. Because people have to hear about a thing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's one thing we've learned doing this for 15 years is people give you money because they should. The prime directive.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. Yeah. Apple certainly could, like, allow me to tell it don't count Spotify in my screen time, but it doesn't allow me to do that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So, I mean, it knows what my face looks like if just when my face is in front of it. I'm sure that's what I want. Want telling them more about.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, maybe not that. Don't give them that idea.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, if you're. They're doing it anyway though, right? So it's not like it. Just show me the number. Anyway. New year, same extra value. Meals at McDonald's. So now get two snack wraps plus fries and a medium soft drink for just $8 for a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California. And for delivery, well, the holidays have.

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

But if you've forgotten to get that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

So here's the idea.

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[Jeff O'Neill]

Disney wants to know, are you ready? Yes. For Marvel Studios Thunderbolts, the New Avengers. Now streaming on Disney plus.

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[Jeff O'Neill]

One of the best Marvel movies of all time is now streaming on Disney plus.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Hey, you weren't listening to me.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I said Thunderbolts. The New Avengers is now streaming on Disney plus.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Meet the New Avengers. That's cool, man.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Marvel Studios Thunderbolts, the New Avengers. Rated PG 13. Now streaming on. You guessed it, Disney Plus. The big, big book news broke this morning. Nominees for best best adapted screenplay for the Oscars, Begonia Hamnet. One Battle After Another. Frankenstein and Train Dreams, I think. No surprises here to me. Except I didn't know Begonia was based on a book. This is me writing it for the first time. Oh, that's right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's a South Korean science fiction film called Save the Green Planet.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, so not a book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yorgos.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Lanthimos.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So not a book, but adapted from a movie from a different country. Hamnet, of course, adapted from Maggie Ofarrell's book Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Train Dreams from the novella by Denis Johnson. And one battle after another adapted from Vineland by Thomas Pynchon.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And should you be interested in knowing more about Hamnet or Vineland, I've got good news for you. We did episodes about both of those over on zero to already. You might have to scroll back because we did them one after another. Excuse me. Vineland was early on. Hamnet was in December. But they're there for you. Good call us.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, good call us. And there is an episode farther back in this feed right before Christmas of Hamlet. Hamnet. Vanessa and I both went to see the movie. We talked about it with each other. We might be doing some one battle after another movie conversation here or in zero to. Well read sometime soon. But really interesting. I've seen all of these except Frankenstein. I've really been dragging my feet on a three hour Frankenstein adaptation.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, you're just gonna watch Laurie putting books on his butt and you're not gonna watch Frankenstein? Come on.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm gonna. Well, I will now. Like, I watch all of the best picture nominees every year and all of the best adapted screenplay nominees. So I will watch Frankenstein.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Train dreams, folks. If you just like a beautiful kind of movie. It's so. Oh, you saw it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I did see it. I watched on a plane like an animal and you know, crying.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Oh, that will give you an existential crisis at 30,000ft.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Jesus Lord. Do we. My understanding is that this is Hamnet versus one battle after another for this award. Is that your sense of it?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Yes. And like, for listeners of the show who care about book, really have to remember, the award is not how good of an adaptation is it? The expectation is that the voting body is not familiar with any of the source material. It's how good of a screenplay is it that happens to be based on.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That happens to be an adaptation? Yeah, yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, from through that lens, I think that one battle after another has a pretty strong edge for screenplay. Sharifa pointed out in her today in books analysis of this this morning that Hamnet is an interesting adaptation. Challeng. But again, the voting body of the Oscars is not gonna be comparing the book to the screenplay. They largely won't know what was adapted or what the source material looked like. So it's really just an award for the screenplay that happens to be based on a book or on another existing work. It can be based on a movie like Begonia. It can be based on an album or a play or whatever.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's weird how these things. I mean we follow this a little bit. We like to follow movies. Sometimes the screenplay awards is where the award gets for the movie that didn't get the top line awards and in which case one battle of another is competing in a lot of places with sinners, which got 16 nominations, which is incredible. It's wonderful to see there's really only one more award they were even eligible for that they could have gotten, but there wasn't really a lead actress there. So that they're topping out. I think one battle to another may win this award for two reasons. This would be my favorite for two reasons. One is I think it feels like a lot more of a screenplay than Hamnet. Like there's just a lot going on. It's very screenplay and I think it might be ding because of Shakespeare. Because you're just using Shakespeare stuff maybe.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like I think Jesse Buckley is going to get the Hamnet award. Have like that'll be the Oscar this year. She'll probably win for best actress. Sinners will be is the front runner for best original screenplay and probably should win it. That's. I mean a fantastic movie. Best picture will be very interesting. Like the best picture showdown between Sinners. Marty supreme in one battle after another is really where it's at. Like it would be kind of surprising for anything else to take that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And the way these things tend to go, if you one of these will win most of them. Like you tend not to have two front runners like split them down the middle. Like one of them will have momentum and kind of run the table. It's very interesting. Fascinating.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I mean Hamnet Shakespeare can go either way. Like the Academy does love and Hollywood does love a movie that does the kinds of things that Hamnet does and that is about overtly about art in the way that Hamnet is overtly about art. Shakespeare. There's a lot of press this year about comparing the Shakespeare in Love year to the Hamnet year, which I don't think is really a fair comparison.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, they're doing very different things. It's dumb.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They are doing very different things. But I mean it'll be very interesting. That's one battle after another. You're right. Is like the most screenplay screenplay of ever. And I loved it and I'd be happy to see it when this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I have not seen the Hamnet adaptation yet. I will by the time the Oscars Roll around. There's a lot of, like, this is grief porn. From certain. I will say this. The book Hamnet is not grief porn. Whatever grief porn is, it is not this. That's the judges ruling.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I agree. And, you know, know, Vanessa and I talked about that question when we talked about the adaptation. And I didn't find the film to be grief porn. Like, it lingers in the moment of death in a way that we don't do in Western culture anymore. But I didn't find it to be excessive.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The other thing about that is this actually. I mean, the kid's name was Hamnet and he actually died. And there was a play named Hamnet or, excuse me, Hamlet that came out later. Like, it's hard to call it grief porn. Like, there's enough substrate there. And then like, well, this simplifies, you know, grief turns into art. I don't think the book suggests that grief made the great art. Shakespeare was already Shakespeare before Hamlet. Like, this is just. They were processing these two characters processing in different ways. And Agnes is sort of seeing that he was also processing, even as she didn't think that he was. And I think it's much more complicated than this is sad on purpose. And it says that you have to have your kid die to write Hamlet. If that's what you got out of Hamnet, you read the book. Not at all. And understood it even less.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

If that's what you got out of Hamnet, then we really are dumber now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, we are dumber now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't know.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We should all be the March sisters performing Hamlet, learning swords play.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And he dies on the page in the book, and he dies on screen.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And he died in life, in the flesh.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. He dies at home surrounded by his family, with his mother holding him and crying. And you see Jessie Buckley do that. And as. As I walked away from the film, I just really thought people are uncomfortable with this because this is not a closeness to death that we are good at today in Western culture. And also because someone dies and you immediately call the funeral home or you call 911 and the body is taken away, but his body is at home and his family cares for it. And this is what we used to do not that long ago.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Has SNL done a Hamnet sketch, do you know?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, I don't think so. But maybe as the Oscars get closer.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I would like to see one where Agnes is like. Like, she walks up to Shakespeare after she sees the play, and she's like, dude, what was that? Okay, Frontless foyer Time brought to you by Thriftbooks. Do you know what Thrift books, you know we've had the 19 million titles. I bet we're up to 19.1 million titles now. I think we've done it. We did it.

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Congratulations everyone.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A lot of new books coming out last. Now you can buy all the news and used books plus DVDs and Blu Rays. It's also the year of physical media. That's part of we've thrown DVD into analog and I don't want to be persnickety, but DVDs are not analog. That's just how that works at all. But I hear what you're saying spirit, if not truth about that old out of print favorites. Maybe you want to get an old copy of Vineland or maybe you want to get one of other movies are coming out. I'm sure you can find a Frankenstein there. And every purchase gets you closer to a free book. Redemption. Read more Spend less with Thriftbook. All right. Was I right that Memorial Days was not a snot bomb or was I wrong?

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

You were right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You were right.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. So both of mine are actually audiobooks this week because I've been reading for zero to well read in print and listening to audio on the road trip I was on. So I listened to Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks, which is about the loss of her husband of more than 30 years. She was married to the writer Tony Horowitz. She of course also a well known and award winning writer and journalist in her own right. And the narrative moves between the day of his death and then like basically the week after and then a more present day years later when she realizes that she had not properly grieved him, that she had moved from his death right into handling, you know, all the things you have to do after somebody dies. And then into the publication of her next novel and needed to spend some time sitting with it. So she has got, she's taken herself. She's Australian. She's taken herself to a small island in Australia and she, she's like living in a beach shack just reading his old journals and really sitting with the memory of him and thinking about their life together and that sort of tick tock of being with her as she navigates the very fresh first days after he died. And then a few years later as she reflects on it. I just found the whole thing to be really beautiful. I know you read this and really loved it. I would put it right up there with Didion with the Year of Magical Fading.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I agree with you. You I agree with you. I think it lives in its long shadow. And I don't know if we get Memorial days without year of magical thinking. I can only imagine Gerald Jean Brooks has read that book. I think the structure, as you say, the sort of minute by minute accounting of the actual reality of getting the phone call and going to the hospital and calling your son and doing all the things shown in relief against the long grief, the long memory, the long reflection was a really clever. It's better than clever, I would say a borderline genius structure for how to give some. I don't know how to. How to give some lines around it that aren't just wallowing because then it's just sad, right? Like, maybe this is how you get around the. You can beat the grief porn rap by coming up with artistic forms that give a different. Different lens on something we're all going to deal with at some time or another in various ways.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I found it to just be very wise, you know, in her recognition. Yeah, it's gorgeously written. It's very wise. But her recognition that she's not okay, that it's been three years since he died, and that she hasn't actually done the stages of grief, she hasn't actually processed it. She needs to do something. And she writes about. I was kind of connecting back to what we were saying with Hamnet. She writes about how if you're not a religious person today, we don't have.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Rituals and got nothing, baby.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And protocol for handling grief and loss. And that those. Those function not just for the immediate days after the death, but also for how you introduce yourself back into the world. And when you introduce yourself back into sort of regular life after the loss of someone, and without that, without that kind of anchor or guide, most of us are at sea. And that she. She just determines the thing she needs to do is go somewhere where she's not occup any of the other stuff of regular life, where her phone can be on airplane mode, where she doesn't have anything on the calendar, and her only job is to get up in the morning and do whatever she needs to do that day to be with his memory, to think about their life, to swim in the ocean, to take long walks until her body tells her okay, like we've processed, we've metabolized this enough, you can go back. It's also the kind of approach to a big emotional problem that I can see myself taking. Like, I could imagine, well, you'll go.

[Jeff O'Neill]

To a beach house by yourself at the drop of a Hat right, you say, yeah, someone looks at your own like, I gotta get to the beach house, man. I gotta get out of here.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But I could imagine you don't like.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Me with a solitary time.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I was listening to this on the drive back.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I wondered if that's what you were doing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I do this like solo retreat at the beach every winter just for some time away. Like sit, just sit with myself and. And what? Like what's going on in my brain without all of the inputs of daily life. But the way that she wrote about it I just thought was really beautiful and so wise. It's one of those books that I'm grateful to the author for having written because I do feel like, whether it's a moment of grief or something else, like some other big life transition, I imagine that I will go back to, if not a full reread of the book, to the ideas of the book. Yeah, really, really wonderful.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I like that idea of thinking as wisdom because, you know, I think in. Well, I'll just speak for myself. My own modern sensibility, the idea of like an, I don't know, like an old kind of old man on the mountain wisdom of like, this is what you should do and this, what should be is off putting and doesn't generally apply to most people. But something like your magical thinking, something like Memorial Days, even something like Hamnet, to bring it full circle gives offers sort of a shape, shape to a possible experience or a possible way of being that feels like wisdom, even if it doesn't like, you know, walk like a traditional fortune cookie kind of wisdom. But it offers a way of being in a moment or way being in the world that is something beyond wisdom almost, which is super fascinating. So I agree with you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It was really so glad I read.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Even as I was shocked that she was Australian when I started the audiobook. I'm still not going to get over.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And then on the new like real front list side of things, I listened to Homeschooled by Stefan Merrill Block on the Other side of My Drive, which is a brand new memoir, just came out a few weeks ago when he was in, I believe fourth grade, his mom decided that public school was not right for him. He was having a hard time. He was an artistic kid, but also his mom was having a hard time with the. That he and his older brother were growing up. She was just. She couldn't.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh. Huh.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, he figures this out later, this is what's going on. But she takes him out of school. She decides she's going to Homeschool him. He's about, like. He's in our age bracket where this.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Is like the 35.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Yes. He's 27 and he looks great. It's like the mid-80s when Texas has just made homeschooling leave legal. And his mom takes advantage of this, and it's also wildly unregulated. And so she's just like, well, I'll figure it out. I will homeschool him. She is completely unqualified. And for the most part, there is not schooling happening. There's some really, eyebrow raising.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, really? In a memoir about homeschooling that someone published.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I mean, like, her wanting to treat him as a much smaller child. They have a pool, and they go out in the pool in the afternoons and she, like, rocks him in her arms in the pool while she's teaching him stuff. She develops this cockamamie theory that his handwriting will improve for some reason if he crawls instead of walks. So she gets him to crawl on his hands and knees through their house. On doing his daily. Living his daily life. She makes him crawl and then is like twisting his.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Rebecca, we really do need to get all the books out of the libraries, because what if they didn't learn all this stuff about how you need to crawl to be able to write? Well, do we ever think about this? Are we sure we're okay with this?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And she's just like this. I think this book is probably being marketed for fans of educated. It felt closer to me to the Glass Castle. Like a parent. There's clear, like, clearly mental illness happening with her, but a parent who has these big ideas about themselves and always a theory about something that's based on being a walking illustration of the Dunning Kruger effect.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. It's all. It's like, my name is Melanie Confirmation bias block. And here's what I believe about parenting.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. But just this turns into a horrible experience for him. His older brother escapes it and is allowed to continue going to public school. But his mother is just convinced that Stefan also is going to be the next da Vinci, and she is the only one who can nurture that artistic talent out of him. And as so many memoirs like this, and also cult memoirs, tend to have the same thing happen for people in this age group. He gets access to the Internet. Internet. And it starts to open up his eyes about what might be possible, what the world is like that he's missing out on. And starts to think about, how am I going to tell my mom that I want to go back to public school for high school and then ultimately grow up and move away and have a life away from her. Even though the older he gets, the more she overtly articulates that it kills her that he doesn't want to be with her, that she says, I feel neglected and harassed and abused and all of these things like, how dare you move away from me. What do you mean you don't want me to come live down the block from you where you and your wife live with your new baby. It's a really brave memoir, and one of those. Like his mother is now dead and he can tell this story, but just well written, fascinating, astonishing. Like I kind of. I cringed a lot for oh my God. Of course people have these experiences, but the specificity of it, of how it was manifested for him is horrifying and very compelling. And I found him to be a very generous, thoughtful teller of his story.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That transitions both into one of my picks and something we're recording for zero tomorrow about how seemingly it seems to me the most difficult existential work one has to do is to try to figure out how to relate to your family when it's not gone great. Maybe even if it has gone great. But that's a subject for a whole different podcast series that we'll be publishing privately for no 1 Palaver by Brian Washington, which he read I there haven't been so many great 20 or interesting to me 2026 releases. I still am getting to mop up some 2025 and that's when I did a little auto fiction here. Brian Washington writes this novel of a black man who has immigrated to Japan, has been there for many years, I think eight at the time, like a decade. Almost, almost picking up. And his mother has come to visit him for the first time uninvited and unannounced. And as you might expect, that goes great because they were essentially estranged anyway. And I think she is trying to communicate to him something not dissimilar than what Stefan Merrill Block's mother was trying to it's like I want you back, I want you to come back. I want to be closer to you. She does not have any of the right tools to articulate that in a way that that is supportive, helpful or welcome. And he also does not have a lot of tools to deal with her not having tools. No one has tools. So we're all just slap fighting each other with a heart back and forth for a while. I found it to be quite moving, quite honest, quite spare and beautiful. Made me want to go To Tokyo. Weirdly. I don't know if I've ever read a book where I didn't really have a. We were talking about this other day. I'd love to go to Tokyo, but I wouldn't know really what to do when I got off the plane. But I got a sense of the city, which was fascinating. I think I read this in one day. I was just very, very enamored with and very compelled with. It's an emotionally spare but distant, but also really close to the surface at the same time. And, boy, what do I like better than that to read about? Not a lot, Rebecca. To be honest.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I found the structure of it to be a really pleasant surprise. Like how it's structured and how the story is told up against what I thought I was getting from the synopsis. Synopsis. Where it was really nice.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And a really good portrait of someone making a life for themselves almost out of whole cloth. Like going to a foreign place. We don't know anyone. And you're learning the language and you have, you know, you're gay and you're black in a country that's not a lot of black people there. And there's people from all over the world. And finds a group and forges unusual kinds of romantic and friend attachments that I think seem strange to his family and almost unintelligible to his. His mother. And frankly, he's finding his own way, but finding there's ways to make life that doesn't have to reject or replicate what you know, but could find this third way, which is to make something new kind of a creative way of being in the world that I found quite lovely.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm glad you got to that one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And then the Art of Spending Money by Morgan Housel the follow up to his very, very popular book called the Psychology of Money, which was a book that's kind of. You know, there's a lot of. This is what you should do. Like, you know, give up. Give up your latte for every day for 10,000 years. You might be able to afford a new cash couch kind of talk.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's only the avocado toast.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's only the avocado toast. But really getting down to the emotional underpinnings, this one's more about the emotional underpinnings. The other one, there's the psychological underpinnings. Using a lot of the applied psychology that we talk about, behavioral economics and stuff. Here's why you think. Here's why your brain does this versus this. And the distinction. I remember Most distinctly from there that I've carried forward is there's the reasonable choice and the rational choice. When you spend money, the rational choice is what you would do to maximize the amount of money you might have when you retire higher. Right. Well, then there's the reasonable choice, which it may not be super optimized, but you understand it and you can live with it and you can sustain it over time. Right. This one is much more about how you might use what resources you have to be happy and what people try to do and how it fails. Giving yourself a lot of grace. But I thought the most interesting part about this book was trying to encourage people to withhold judgment about other people, how other people spend. Spend their money. Because we are all built differently. And if what we are trying to do is buy happiness and we're not all happy in the same way, then we're going to spend money differently. Right. I mean, that just sort of logically makes sense. But on the other hand, there are ways of spending money that you think might make you happy, probably won't for most people because what they're trying to do is acquire status, and that's not unimportant. It can matter. But buying status is expensive and you have to do it over and over again because it's not really durable. I thought it was great. I think this is the kind of book I think I might make my kids read it, which is terrifying to them. It's not very long, but I think there's a lot of, you know, to use wisdom here, but very practical. Money is the resource we have to shape our ways. Our primary resource is a way to shape the way we want to live it. And weirdly, we don't think about it in those terms. And we should.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm glad that that book is out there. That's something that like, you know, Bob for New Wonders, my husband. Bob's a financial advisor. And one of the things that comes up with clients a lot is this idea that, like, of money as a tool that you get to decide what your values are and what's important to you. And then we want to help you spend your money in a way that supports pursuit of those goals and pursuit of those values. Values. And so like the thing that you're saying the book does about people have different values, they're trying to achieve different things with their money, trying to hold it in a more neutral way. Like unless you are spending your money on things that are evil.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Then. Then money is pretty morally neutral. Like Just the exist the fact of it can be pretty morally neutral and that I think that's very empowering for like what is important to you and how do you you get aligned with it. I heard Lori Santos, who's a happiness researcher on a podcast also at the top of the year talking about how like once you hit a certain income bracket, the data shows that really the only thing that will change that you can spend money on to improve your happiness is spending money to get yourself time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Listen, that's something that he says and I've known that for a long time. The really only thing I want to buy is independence and that comes in the form of time and time is money and all that thing that goes on. I read it shortly after. I also watched the. Sorry, I get it wrong. It's just Materialist. Not the materialist. I watched that on the plane. That was my back to back with train drees.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Fascinating. That's a really interesting double headed.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It was a very interesting double feature. But the most fascinating scene in Materialist. Have you seen it, Rebecca? Yeah, I saw it where Dakota Johnson is a high end matchmaker essentially and she's also a therapist. And I think it's the opening scene where one of her match, one of her clients is getting married as an outcome of her machinations and she's having a bit of a breakdown, a bit of cold feet. And Dakota Johnson does this fascinating differential of like, you know, getting to the core of why she's upset but also getting core of why she wants to be married. And the thing she comes down to is like this guy makes my sister crazy and that makes me feel valuable. And I was like oh my God. And that wasn't a moment of I should run away. It turned into a moment of running toward which I thought was fascinating. And I was like, oh, that's. And then I was reading this like she's trying to buy feeling valuable with her life essentially, right? And I was like knowing what I know about life, that's not going to last very long. You might get that for a little while, but that kind of thing doesn't last very long. And a lot of people try to feel, they try to buy feeling valued and respected and, and the simplest way to do that is buy expensive scrap. It's not the most durable, it's not the most last thing. It's the most meaningful, but it's something you can buy. Most of the ways people really want to be valued and respected are not buyable. And that's the central conundrum of having money to spend on being val. Feeling respected and valuable is that you really can't buy it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You can't. It kind of sounds like the art of spending money would be an interesting read along or like pairing with life in three dimensions that maybe you do life in three dimensions first and you really hone, hone in on what's important to you about life and then you take that and figure out how to spend your money on it. Like my one, two punch there would be like novelty and experiences of things are really important to me and I spend money on those. Like I spend money on travel. I spend money to go see the northern lights because that's a, that's an experience that I know will be meaningful to me. And in like that trip I could have bought an Hermes handbag in some instead.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And a lot of what I buy is sort of like opportunity cost of like I don't. I'm not like an 80 hour week kind of person and I buy time to watch movies with my kids and read books and go for walks and listen to audiobooks and you know, do that. Like it shows up in a bunch of ways and you know, it doesn't hurt that this person's philosophy aligns pretty neatly with my own. Like that's always the confirmation bias, know thyself. But I thought it was, it was really good and it's, it's nice to read a book that's affirming in that way and give some language. I. It's funny you say the oishi because I think he uses the term psychological in like richness or variety of experience. Like in close proximity. And I want to like hit a buzzer or something like do you know about this? Shoot it through the Internet and make sure you know about this because can.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We get dovetail authors? Like can we get them all to talk to each other like the avengers.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Of self help offers. Like they come together and form the infinity gauntlet happiness.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We should do the offenders of self help. It sounds like this in addition to being good for like your kids would be really good for like folks graduating from college or entering.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was going to say I think we need to add it to our list of I'm graduating high school, I'm graduating college, I'm having a quarter lice price, you know, one of those kinds of things.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And maybe also people at an inflection point in what they in. In their financial life in some way. Like I remember a friend getting a new job that they were going to make a lot more money than they had in the past. And the friend was like, how many pairs of pants do you have? I was like, what do you mean, how many pairs of pants do I have? And they were. They were coming from a background who are. Money had been very limited and they were asking like, well, how many pairs of pants is reasonable for a person to have? Because I need more than I have now and now I'm going to be able to buy.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But I don't want overshoot. Is 7 too many or am I crazy?

[Gabriel Tallent]

Exactly.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I remember being like, I don't think there's a. No, there's not a number. That's a one size fits all. How many pairs of pants do you like? How do you. What are the use cases? How many pairs of pants do you need? But something like this book that untamed angles, you can spend your money on anything. And what, like what's important to you. That sounds really helpful.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A siloable line that I'll think about for a long time is with enough information, all behavior is explicable. And if you don't understand behavior, you probably don't have enough information. Doesn't mean that's reasonable. Doesn't mean it's excusable, but it could be understandable. So I guess that's if someone is saying how many pants you have in vacuum, like that makes absolutely no sense. You're a main maniac. But the information you don't have there is like, this is someone that didn't come from a lot. So they don't know what a reasonable, expected, kind of like responsible, even number of pants.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Is it okay if I want a second pair of jeans? You know, that kind of. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. So anyway, the artist Spending Money by Morgan Housel there. I think that brings us to the end of our fine show today. Thanks for ThriftBooks.com for sponsoring the show. Go check it out. You can find shownotbookriot.com listen or just a podcast player there. You can look for zero to red. You can join the patreon patreon.com bookriotpodcast where you'll find the winner draft is still there. Is that eligible to vote on still Rebecca? How long do they have?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, the voting is still open till.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The end of January. I'm guessing something like that. And hot list check in and you know, you sign up today, you get access to everything we've ever put over.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There, which is years worth of bonus.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's a lot at this point right now. Anything else? I'm sure. Forgetting Rebecca. Oh, I'm assuming everything went fine tonight. I'm kind of wild Stalin myself. I'm going to the future instead. I learned how to play guitar. Everything went fine. And now Gabriel Talent is here, and Gabriel Talent is joining me to talk about his fun, terrific new novel, Crux. Thanks, Rebecca.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Oh, man. Thanks everyone for coming out. I appreciate you being here. It's lonely without you guys.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I am going to ask for a question, so you start thinking now. It could be anything, really. Gabriel's entertaining. The book is entertaining. And we're all gonna have questions about rock climbing. Should we start there?

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I want you to understand that you want to do a rock climb, you want to do a climbing book. That's kind of where this book.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, I did. I did want to. I wanted to do a climbing book. Like, immediately after I finished my first novel. I dreamed of doing a climbing book and really, really thought a lot about it and hoped for it and was a little unsure how to start.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I may be telling tales out of school, but your first crack at that is not what this book turned into.

[Gabriel Tallent]

No, no, no, that's totally true. I wrote an enormous novel. I wrote a couple enormous novels that didn't work and I ended up throwing a. Away. So, yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What was that like, to throw away a couple? What is your relationship to words you've already read? Because I remember, even now I'm loath to get rid of 50 words because then I have to write another 50 words. Gabriel, that, that's not what I'm trying to do here. So was that difficult to do? What was the experience of that?

[Gabriel Tallent]

Oh, yeah, it was horrible. No, it's horrible. I'm, I'm, I'm not averse to throwing away words. Like all, typically I'll write like 30, 40 pages of dialogue and cut it down to like three or four pages. So I, I like. But like, throwing away entire projects because they don't work is soul crushing. Right. And, and, and, and after my first book, my first book was difficult to tour. It was emotional. It was about confronting material. And I sort of came back in a profound depression just because of like, you know, I traveled and everyone told me their incest stories. And it was, it was, it was, it was brutal. Right. So I came back in sort of a profound depression and I wasn't, I wasn't like, having a high functioning moment and felt really, really lost in it and was really doubting whether I would be able to. To pull together another story. And so writing books and having them fail Seemed like the confirmation of that. Like, see, it seemed like maybe I wasn't a writer, you know, and there was a weird way where, like, my first book just sort of came, you know, and so I was uncertain how to write the next book, and it didn't. It didn't look like I was going to be able to. So, yeah, it was.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It was especially offered some resistance. You're like, wait a minute, that's not how this went. The first time signed up must mean.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and, and, and so it was, it was, it was. It was terrifying to feel utterly lost in how to undertake a story I badly wanted to tell.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And when you said it didn't work, what does that mean? And then how did you get from there to what, this book?

[Gabriel Tallent]

Oh, man. I mean. I mean, a number of things. It was. It was boring. But, like, you know, you love James Salter, so I don't want to, like. I don't want to want to, like, throw on solo. Okay, but, like, I know, but, but that book. Has anyone read Solo Faces? It's a rare. Okay, okay, so it's just us here. It's just us here. But it's a. It's a highly masculine book about a guy who, like, leaves women and children behind to discover himself in the mountains. And there are loving descriptions of, you know, the sweat dripping down his masculine body. Body as he cuts wood. And, like, to really. To really be the perfect climber, he has to be doing it not for glory, but just because he thirsts for death. And it's like, to me, the reading experience of Solo Faces is nihilistic. Like, I don't care. I don't care about that guy. Like, he leaves that woman and the child at the beginning of the book, and I'm like, well, he's a shirt, you know, like, and then I have to be alone with, like. Like someone who doesn't care about other people. And when I wrote those, that. Those first big books about climbing, I just, like, I didn't know. Like, I had this sense that climbing matters, but I couldn't make it matter on the page. And there's. There's like, a problem with climbing where it's hard to express. And you go, there's this really hard climb. And then they climbed it. And, you know, like, it just. It doesn't hold together. And the reader, like, the reader's like, I. I don't know what this climb is. I don't. I don't care whether or not they climb it. Like, they're not you're not involved in the drama. And if you get on the outside at all with climbers, they just look like losers. You're like, the story just becomes like, oh, like a kind of a person who wants to do something risky, goes out, does something risky, almost dies, doesn't die. Like, you'd lose his tension. And so. So I was lost at how to give it the urgency that I experienced in my personal life.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Because very much the book becomes about recognizing the two characters. We'll talk about them in a minute. That what matters is trying. Right. That whether or not you send the climb or you get to the top, the thing that ultimately matters is you try. Now is that something. Was that hard earned wisdom from trying the book or is that from climbing or where does that come from?

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, it's hard earned wisdom from climbing. It's hard earned wisdom from parenthood. It's hard earned wisdom from writing. And I was writing about people who have a dream. Like Dan and Tam have this dream of being climbers and they're pursuing it. And I was doing this at a time when it looked like maybe I wasn't an author. And, you know, I don't know if you notice it, but, like, it's brutal out there for debut authors. Like, you come out with your first book. And I have this, like, cohort of wonderful, talented, artistic people that I know, many of whom are failing out of their profession. They're just like, I can't write. I'm giving up on it. So, you know, I was undertaking it at a time that I was seeing people fail out of their, like, life's ambition. And there's weird when you tell people you're an author, like, a lot of people aspired at some point to being an author. So everyone tells you, oh, you know, I wanted to be an author. And then everyone, you know who's an author is like, despairing about. About it. So it. It's. I wanted to write a book that is also sneakily about art.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. So let's go back to Dan and Tama for a second. So we meet them on their first day of their last year of high school. A real transitional moment. It's there in the title. Transitional moments.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

How did you get to this setup of characters from you want to write a climbing novel. You're trying to figure out how it matters. What did you get through to get to this pairing and their stories?

[Gabriel Tallent]

Well, Yeah, I mean, I had written an enormous, Like, I'd written thousands of climbing scenes. Right. And explored. Explored different characters and Then this, this thing happened where my son Hayden, my first son was born. When. Now we have two year old twins, so we have three boys. But when Hayden was born born, it was, it was the depths of the pandemic. And the pregnancy was a little touch and go. He lost his heartbeat and had an amer. An emergency C section, you know, and so, and I had this experience of holding him, which like authors can be very saucy about, like kids. Like you're, you're gonna have a kid. And the other authors are like, don't have kids. They ruin your profession. Every kid costs you a, a book. Like the kids are not as good as books. Don't like, don't do it. Like you're gonna, you're gonna ruin things.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Have you guys heard that one? Every kid costs you a book. That's like a saying amongst writers.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Oh man. And they are intense. So they'll get like sauced, lean in, like, lean in, you know, to you. And they're like, they're like, don't do it, don't do it. Every kid cost you, but, you know, like some 50 year old unhappy guy, you know, who's in the midst of a MeToo crisis, you know, and he's just like, couldn't have been the eight.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Gin and tonics every day that cost him the book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Gabriel Tallent]

You know, so. Except for one, one writer, Benjamin Whitmer, who writes noir. He was like, you'll have this experience of, of love such as you've never had in your life. And he was right. Benjamin Whitmer was right. Everyone else was wrong. And. But like, I had this realization that I didn't give a. Like I'd written the first books. As if it mattered whether these climbers climbed 5:14. Like they were taking on cutting edge climbs. And I'd written the book as if that was a matter of urgency. And I like looked at him and I was like, I don't care. You know, and this is like in part because, you know, he lost his heartbeat and there was the possibility of like real problems. And it didn't, it didn't diminish my love. You know, I was like, I was like, I as, like, I was like, I don't care what he accomplishes. Like, I don't care if he climbs fight 14. I care about something else. Like, I care that he tries, I care that he has dreams, but it doesn't hinge on that. And so I realized that I'd written, written these books about climbing as if these things mattered when they didn't matter. And so I really wanted to chase what I thought was of meaning and as of substance. And this was in the depths of the pandemic when people were losing their way, man. Like, I don't know if you remember it, but, like, you know, I had to keep my phone on because, like, why? It's suicidal. Friends, you know, and they'd call you in the middle of the night, like, having crises, like people were losing the sense of meaning and purpose in their lives. And I was full of it because I just had a baby and I wanted to, like, write powerfully towards that sense of meaning at a time when it was being extinguished for many of the people closest to me.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And for Dan and Tama, who are friends and a bit of friends since they were eight or nine, I can't remember.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Like, like babies, like, bathed in the same.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Beyond the pale of their memory.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah. Like their mothers are best friends. So they're, they're, they're, they're, they're. They grow up their entire lives together.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So we start with them out there climbing. Right. What does climbing mean to these two characters? Is it the same thing it meant to you? Because I think they learned something, that they're sort of naive and romantic about climbing at the beginning. Right.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Climbing is for them, like. Right. Writing is for me, I think. Is that. Yeah, yeah. And you believe it can change the world, you know, like, I, I, I, I, I'm a passionate climber, but, you know, I, I'm a writer first in some way, you know, and so that's what it, like they, they dream of climbing the way I dreamed as a young person of writing. And so what is it for them? So, so Dan's MOT has been sort of locked in her bedroom for years. Like, succumbed to a crushing major depression. And Dan can, like, just feel the sort of creeping beginning of major depression in himself and sort of like fears this fate. And Tamma is sort of like a burnout. Like, she's not good at school, she's smart. I would argue that she's smart, she's voluble, she's funny, she's dynamic, but she's not smart in, in the way that helps her succeed at school. She's despised by her teachers, which is like me as a young person. Like, people are like, he'll never learn to read. He's not doing well. You know, she's, she's just not, she's not successful in the institutions and not, not highly regarded. So if she doesn't find some way out, she's just going to become her mom. Like a burned out diner waitress in a place that she has hates, trapped in a life that she doesn't love. So that's what she's in. Climbing represents this way out, like a dream of like ambition and meaning where she could pursue a sport. And it's the, it's the only thing she's good at. Like if she doesn't have climbing, she has nothing else. So for both characters, climbing represents a world of meaning. A way out of dead end lives that they see coming for them and they're sort of surrounded by adults with failed lives. And so I'm trying to like press this idea of like real consequences.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They don't have a lot of models for, you know, that life looks pretty great. No, you know, that's, that's not only great, but possible for me.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Or they have it but it's wealthier people, right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, but possible for them.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, but like they're working class kids and they can look at like trust fund kids who are funded to climb and feel jealous of the, of that but they feel totally on the outside.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And they're running away from something and also towards something at the same time. Like they're running towards this idea of freedom of autonomy and their friendship. Right. I mean this book is about climbing, about friendship. It seems to me fair to say they stand alongside each other in terms of importance.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So was it when did the idea of this thing about a couple of friends come in? Like how did that happen? Help you put them on the rock and get them to do something together?

[Gabriel Tallent]

I just. Oh, okay. So like many people's truth, like stress, I think when they want to talk about climbing, stress the, like this, the solo aspect. But like for me it's always been a sport that I go out and I do with your. With my friends. And there is something incredible about going out and trusting your life to someone. And the sort of, the ways that you open, open up. Like there's, it's all, it's, it's that and it's also being like way out there. You know, like people lose their filter. Like you take people far enough away from like their schools and their friends and their sort of ordinary life and they'll just, they'll just tell you the real, the real stuff about their life. And I love that. You know, like they're just out there to be weird and themselves and I just feel like friendship is this undermined relationship. Like, like it's just not a really relationship which in literature is often given very much weight. And yet I just feel like it is a way that other people can be luminously real to us because they're our friends and yet we're not like tied together. It's voluntary, you know. And so I think it's this important relationship that many people pretend as if it doesn't matter, which is sort of like adventure. Like that's how people sort of treat it. As if, if like, you know, you don't, you don't need adventure in your life, you don't need climbing, you don't need any of this stuff, you know, and you don't, you don't need friends. You can sort of rise and grind and you, you have your girlfriend and you have your co workers, but these, there are these things that, that, that other people tell us are not of value, that I feel have value.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And part of it for them is they're doing something together they don't have to, to do like this freedom for them, but they don't actually have to be there for each other. Like they've chosen to be there for each other and they're both at this time feeding a lot of claims on them from people in their life.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, yeah, I. You nailed it. So I almost don't know what to say. Well, in my, my first book, you know, had this theme of like other people not being entirely real. Like is. Is I think an element of, of abuse, a especially abusive parental relationships. The other person doesn't have total reality to you, you know, that's why cruelty is sort of possible. Yeah. And I wanted to write in this book the, the sort of tremendous life changing importance that other people in other lives and other consciousnesses have to us when we recognize them. So that friendship is, is central as a thing that keeps them both going.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And it's hard to navigate.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

If you have parents or kids or a romantic partner, whatever. We kind of understand the economy of care that happens in that sometimes it's toxic and sometimes doesn't work. One thing they're figuring out together is like, what do I owe my friend and what do they owe me? Or is even about owing is about something like at least one point, Tama wants something, wants Dan to do something and he doesn't do it. And she steps back and says, don't say the thing. Right? Don't, don't be a burden. You just want him to be happy. And none of them have had that before. None of them has sort of had someone refrain from making a claim on them when they kind of could make a claim on them.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, yeah, I, I think that's.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Think, I think that that's true. And I, I wanted to drive this like central and important and almost unshakable friendship. But like friendships are also riven with like little tensions and misunderstandings and, and, and, and moments when you realize you see things differently, that you have irreconcilable worldviews and those can trouble some of our most fundamental relationships. And so that's something that I like wanted to get at and explore and show. You know.

[Jeff O'Neill]

One other thing that there's, there's many things that I can go. One thing I found fascinating was this idea of little mistakes having big consequences. Right on the rock you can make a mistake and it cost you your life or your partner's life, maybe even worse. For a lot of climbers, they do something wrong that kills their partner or seriously injures them. But there are other characters in this book that make a little mistake that has huge compliment. They forget to sign up for Obamacare. They don't accept, they don't accept the gift of the rope because they're too proud. Right?

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And how unforgiving the world can be. And yet you've got to try like these little moments that they're trying to navigate and they see the consequence in their own families like that at one point their moms did or didn't say something to them that caused a rupture that lasted for forever. And I think they're aware of that. Is that something that was intentional to you? Is that something you were thinking overtly about, is like these little mistakes that are like over leveraged and how they can impact how you're going to live into the future.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, I really wanted to. So there is a way in which, in climbing, like a serious climb sort of demands maximal attention. And I wanted to write, I wanted to write so that, that's sort of the reading experience. Experience. You have this experience of being thrown in and attentive to the moves that can be kind of dizzying. So I think a lot of climbing fiction leans on generalization to sort of escape the difficulty of that. But I really wanted to lean into it because that's really the experience. And I also wanted to lean into that, into their lives like that their lives are demanding maximum attention. The, the, the. There's a parallelism between the climbing and, and their life where, where small mistakes, especially mistakes of carelessness or of cowardice really add up.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So this is a passage, this is Dan thinking To himself mostly that what he felt was that everything was fine, everything was doable as long as he did not make a mistake, never stumbled, hesitated, or flinched, as long as he spent his night with Tam and his dating, doing exactly what he, his parents asked him to do. Dan feels that pressure exactly.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Like, yeah, he.

[Jeff O'Neill]

He sees a path. He's very gifted, and he's on the road to get a scholarship to scholars. But he realized that he cannot make a misstep because that way lies debt, that way lies screwing this up, that way lies death in a lot of different places. And he feels that pressure intensely. Tama doesn't. Because she doesn't really feel like there's much to lose at that point. That seems like a critical difference between them.

[Gabriel Tallent]

I mean, Tamif Tam of, like, Tama feels it, but Tama is also entirely committed. And whereas Dan is under tremendous pressure from his parents to pursue college. There is something that I was trying to get at, which is, I think that in the discourse, like in. In the big discourse in books and movies, we have this American discourse, like, just pursue your dreams and everything will be open. Okay? And that isn't actually reflected in, like, my experience of how Americans talk. You know, Like, I was a young writer, like, scrubbing toilets at Target in order to, like, make enough money to keep writing. And people are like, you gotta stop. Like, don't. Don't do it. Like, you'll never be a writer. Like, that's like, hoping to be in the NBA or something. Like, it's just not gonna come true for you. Like, look at the writing on the wall and, and pick a real job. You know, people argue against your dreams, you know, and so something like, I wanted to convey is this, like, hope, this ambition. You want so much for your life. You want to pursue a dream, but the consequences are there. The problem is not like, oh, do I just follow my dreams and everything works out. It's like, I want to chase my dreams, but if I misstep, I'm going to end up broken, alone, which. Which is, I think, many people's actual experience. And in a weird, In a perverse way, it makes it scarier and harder. It makes it so much harder to have the confidence to really embark upon a writing project when. When you're scared about. About your insecurities. So that's something I'm trying to capture.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And they come to. People are going to read the book and get. Get to the critical moments and what they. How they diverge and how they come together, but from there they're working towards a different understanding of what their lives to be like. This is what happens when you're a senior in high school. Right. It's like the first major inflection, the first major crux in a lot of people's lives and they're coming upon it and they're thinking about it overtly even as like, do, do you think they thought there was a real world in which they were going to get a van and go live in Utah and just climb mountain forever?

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, people do it, man.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, people, people, people do it. Then they make it work.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And so that wasn't.

[Gabriel Tallent]

It's harder. Like it's, it's easier if you have the support of your parents to fall back on. It's really treacherous to undertake if you don't have a safety net.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They keep looking for proof that they can make it. Like if we climb this boulder, if we do such and such an accomplice at a con competition that will prove that we have the, the stuff that we can go, go out and do it. Is it chops, what do you call it among climbers that you have the goods or whatever to be a climber? Is there a word for it?

[Gabriel Tallent]

Oh man, I, I, I'm not sure. Okay. The gift.

[Jeff O'Neill]

If you don't know what the word for it. No one knows what the word for it is.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. And so they're trying to find like they want proof that they should go do the thing. So that made me wonder like in their heart of hearts that they think it was actually a possibility.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, but people do that. You're like tearing, tearing leaves off the daisy he loves.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, right. Okay, I see what you're saying.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Like we all long for that proof. And I mean, and I, it's like a longing after security. Right. The book is about risk. And really what you're trying to do there is forebode risk. You want to know that you are so talented that you're not going to fail. And it's like it is a lot, right? Like I have seen the most talented writers I know fail to be writers, writers from the get go because of fear of getting like crushed alive, you know, like, like, like, like talent. Doesn't it just, like it just isn't enough. And so this thing of trying to erase all the risk is, is soul crushing. And we have this, we have this idea, I think as Americans that if you do nothing, it's a riskless situation. Like if you never go climbing, you are not imp. Embarking upon risk. Right. Like You've chosen not to risk something. So there's. There's a dream of a safe life, but it's. It's not true. It's not there. If you never go climbing, you can end up backed into a life you don't want.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And that's. They're more afraid of that than anything.

[Gabriel Tallent]

They're more afraid of that than of anything. Yeah. So they're. They're trying to chase the dream, they're trying to pursue it, and at the same time they're terribly scared.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What was the most fun part of the book?

[Gabriel Tallent]

Tama's dialogue?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I wondered.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, yeah, I know. Like, like, everyone, like a lot of the early readers hated it, you know, and they were like, she's.

[Jeff O'Neill]

She got a potty mouth, I think is what we would have said when I was a Midwestern kid in Kansas. Potty mouth. She is a virgin, but hypersexual language. And she's not afraid to twist the knife.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah. So I reached out to some of my friends who are athletes, you know, and I was like. I was like, what is the. What is the things you, like, you really want to see in, like, a female climber character, you know? And this was early on, and like, the sex thing, the sexiness thing was part of it because people are like. People are like, look, you're an athlete. You're very embodied. You can have a sort.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And really on display, right? Like you're up on the rock or.

[Gabriel Tallent]

The wall, but at the same time, you can't do the thing where it's like. Like female sexuality can be so, like, infantilizing. So, like, you kind of gotta like, walk this line where she can't be, like, asexual, but, like, the sexuality of it can't be passive, you know, so that was part of it. And the other part is, like, is, you know, people are like, this is less gendered because one of my climbing partners is a dude and, and, and extremely emotional. Weepy, you know, cries all the time. But, like, there are climbers who are very emotional climbers who, Who. Who cry under the stress and stuff like that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm.

[Gabriel Tallent]

I'm not usually like. Like my, like, I'm just. I'm just sort of a dude about it. But, like. But a lot of climbers feel like, as if that's not acceptable because the ideal is this sort of like, heroic, stoic climbing monk. Climbing monk, yeah. Yeah. But there are all these climbers who actually, like, extremely emotional. That was the other thing, you know, is like. And that is like, a lot of my climbing partners are that way. It is a little gendered, but not. It doesn't entice entirely break down along gendered lives.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's a lot. There's several scenes of super technical descriptions of the actual climbing. Was that difficult? Was that easier for you? That was clearly a choice that you wanted to not shy away from. The specificity of this is what a serious climber is thinking when they're doing a serious climb.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Okay. It's mortifying because, like, I passionately love climbing and I climb a lot, but I don't like some climbers. I have, like, this eidetic memory for moves. And so it's also terrifying because, like, a lot of the. Like, a lot of the climbs are real climbs. Like, people can check your notes, you know. And so I, like, was writing from my experience of climbing these Joshua Tree climbs. And so a lot of time, like, I. I went. I went, I went back, but it's like, I just had a kid, and so my major climbing partner had to watch Hayden, and, you know, it was the pandemic, so it was, like, hard to get anyone else. So I, like, hired a guide to go out and do some of these things, but, like, a lot of them are risky, you know, So I had to call the guide company and I was like, listen, do you have anyone fucked up? He's like, go do some gnarly stuff with me. Because I want to, like, I want to get into some of these run outs. And so it was very helpful. I went. I, like, I wrote all these scenes and then I went back and I climbed them. And I sort of. I really wanted to make sure that the moves matched up. So, yeah, it was challenging. And you're under tremendous pressure to take it out. Yeah, because people, you know, people latch on to that sort of thing, and they're like, this is going to be a source of difficulty. But personally, I love being welcomed into the world of a book and learning about something else.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I love the jargon of any subfield I don't know anything about. That's just me. It's all real, that's all. I could go look all that up. I didn't go look up.

[Gabriel Tallent]

All the times are made.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, no. But, like, the moves or the description of a specific kind of rock or a specific feature on a rock that's all legit.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Oh, that's all. That's all. That's all.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Climbing magazine wouldn't let you get away.

[Gabriel Tallent]

With regional differences, you know, like. Like, you know, I think you never want to speak for all climbers. Like, like, like, like grit is a thing climbers say. And some climbers mean that they're climbing along and like their forearms are pumped out and they can no longer hold and they're gripped. And some climbers mean I'm terrified, I'm in the grip of terror. Like it's like I'm emotionally gripped and you know, so that, so there are these like subtle differences. Or sporty technically means that the climb is run out and terrible, terrifying and sporty.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, sporty's bad. Or sporty scary.

[Gabriel Tallent]

It's just like a fun word we've given. Oh, it's a bit sporty.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, it's kind of the giant bouncer tiny or something like that.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, but like, but, but I don't know where it comes from. I think it's because for like someone told me that it's because a sport model of a car has all the minimum features. It's a sporty climb has the minimum member of both. But many people colloquially think sporty and a climb should mean oh, it's fun, it's sporty, it's like a sport. You know, we're not out here fighting for our lives, it's sporty. This has spawned some miscommunications. So there are regional differences and I have written how my friends talk and I'm sure that there are things that are wrong because like, like everyone will tell you like Lynn Hill quotes in my friend group and Lynn Hill probably said none of that stuff.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, she's probably like the Mark Twain of climbing the next thing.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, but I was like, I got, you know, you want to be true to how your friends are talking.

[Jeff O'Neill]

One effect of having these extended passages where specific moves are described in sequence is you realize it's an accrual of moves. Any climb, any, you know, any life is an accrual of decisions. Any climb is accrual. And you. And there's. I, I don't remember who said this, but accidents and climbing were rarely the result of a single error. They were usually the result of a cascading series of fuck ups. But it would be all fine if Dan didn't fall. I guess it was Tama then if Dan just hung onto the wall, everything would hold together. But this idea like you kind of have to do all of them right in a row or you can't, you can't screw, you can't screw them too many up in a row or they.

[Gabriel Tallent]

They'Re going to accrue too many in a row like if you make one, like, like. Like climbing has like a Swiss cheese model of safety where nothing you do is perfect. You know, like, your first sort of line of safety is you don't fall off the wall. Right? Like, your hands, like, that's your first, and then your second is, you know, is the protection you're playing. But nothing you're doing is perfect. And so typically, typically, multiple, like, for really awful accidents to happen, multiple things go wrong at once.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What was the hardest part of the book to write?

[Gabriel Tallent]

The hardest part of the book was depression.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This yours personally or to capture depression or both?

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, I mean, like, depression is, I think, really hard to make present for readers. And it's because it's impossible to. Like. One of the reasons I want to. Wanted to write the book is I had a friend who was going through a serious. A serious depression and, you know, destroying her life because of it. And you have this question, like, can she not get out of bed or is she not getting out of bed? Because when you're in bed, it feels like you could at any moment just make the decision to get out of bed. And you can watch something moment after moment, like, not make that decision. And so I really wanted to get at depression. Like, how it is impossible to understand from the outside and almost impossible to overcome from the inside, but it's, like, elusive.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Gabriel Tallent]

And so I tried a bunch of different things, and I, like, really hope I got there. But, like, that is. You know, there are certain things like, that fiction does really well, but the emotional reality of depression is hard to narrativize because it is beyond narrative.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So totalizing that it doesn't really blend.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Itself is the same way. Like, if you have a character who just undergoes a great happy period, you're like, what the fuck do I do? Like, if there's no narrative here, she's just enjoying her life. Right. Like, certain emotional states are beyond narrative. They're static. And that is part of the process problem with them.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And for a reader, like, it kind of. The story comes to a halt if a character doesn't seem to have the ability to make a choice. Like, if they seem stuck. That's a hard read. Like, what am I supposed to do with that?

[Gabriel Tallent]

But I think it. I think it's important to try and do justice to it. But I. I feel like that was like having. Having been myself in crushing depression and written out my way out of a crushing depression with this book, but, like, trying to convey it. Very elusive.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Did you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Does the book do what you wanted to do? Here as you're on tour talking about it and hearing people talk about it.

[Gabriel Tallent]

I hope so. You know, like what I want to do is speak solace to people in dark moments like that. That's, that's my hope for the book. Book. That's, that's my, that's my ambition. And I get a little of that reflected back from readers and so I really hope so.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Is it unreasonable to say the bad guy is the American healthcare system? Gravity in the American healthcare system. Those are the two bad guys.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, yeah. The, the, the, the lack of safety nets, the sense, the sense of that, that Dan and Tama are growing up in an economy that is so unforgiving of pursuing dreams. I think that it is safe to say, like, you know, they joke about late stage capitalism, but like, in some ways that's what they're fighting against is there is their entrapment in their social and emotional, like social class and emotional. How pretty. Commence.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's a lot of parents and kid stuff here in the book in your life while you're writing this book. And a lot of Dan and Tam is looking at their parents and trying to understand what the hell happened to them and how to avoid that.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah. Oh man, you're not always helping me with question marks here. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think because, because like when I'm writing characters, I, I don't know what you guys want from characters, but like when I'm writing characters, I want to destroy them so that you see their guts. Like, let's take them to their hardest moments. Because that happens to people. It does. It happens to people. People will pick up your book from the waiting room of hospital.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Everyone has the worst day of their life.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right.

[Gabriel Tallent]

They'll pick it up from bed rooms from which they can't escape. They like, people go through it. I'm not, you know, not like. But, but many people go through it. And so you want to honor that experience in a book. And so if you're writing a book about hope, you want to take characters to their darkest moments and show them crawling out. Right. Like, hope doesn't consist of the denial of those bad days. It consists with a real reckoning with those bad days. So I want to take care of characters and just, just put them under so much pressure that they're destroyed. And part of how I want to accomplish that is by, by having the spectacle of other lives that have ended in disaster. Because I think you, I think as a young person growing up, you see that, you look around and you're like, you can make wrong choices and end up in a, in a life that you don't want. Like, you can abandon the people close to you and end up alone. You can abandon your dreams and end up stuck in a place that has no aliveness for you. And so you need those characters as a spectacle of that, because otherwise it's not otherwise, it's a hypothetical. Right. If everyone is succeeding, if the system works, then it's not a high pressure situation.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And the reality is, it is a high pressure situation.

[Gabriel Tallent]

I mean, I believe so, you know, I guess that that amounts to a personal belief that I have and one could contest it. You know, I know people who will say everyone ends up all right. It's not the thing I see in the world. And when I talk to readers, if it doesn't.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Ultimately, for climbers, some kind of climbers, these kind of climbers, your kind of climber, being about doing the gnarliest end, what is it about that?

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, what is it about? Because people get very focused on, like, people can get messed up about this. Like, if I'm not going to be the best climber, I don't want to.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Climb at all or anything in life, really.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

If I'm not the best whatever, why am I even doing it?

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, Yeah. I mean, people, people, you know, talk to me all, you know, I, oh, you know, I, I, I, I wish I could write, but I'll never be, you know, a professional writer. I wish I could paint, but I'll never be a professional painter. And then you just end up wiling away your life on Netflix, wishing that you have the natural talent to, like, be the best at something. And I, I, I think that that's, I think that's, I think that that's, I'm sorry, you know, I think that it's horrified, it's terrifying. And sometimes you have to, like, go after the things you want in life, surrendering a little bit. That drowning feeling of incompetence.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I mean, and so many people say, like, it's not the journey, it's. Or not the destination is the journey. But so few people, like, believe that. And I feel like these characters are trying to believe some version of that for themselves.

[Gabriel Tallent]

But there's, like, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a twist to it. And the twist is, I think you, I think anyone can be a great writer, but it's a, it's a matter of perseverance. And in order to really do it, you have to give up the idea that you're just gonna have good days, right? Like, people get too pinned on whether or not they're going to be great and it, it, and they just don't write enough. Like Stephen King, that guy just didn't stop. Right, right. He just, like, he, you know, you, it was just, it was just unstoppable. Like, you know, he just, he just got, it was just the accrual of work. Right? But like, but if, if it all hinges on, oh, you know, if I have some setback and I'm not going to be great at this, I'm not going to do it. You never get there. And so, and so the two things are entwined. Like, I think in order to get to become a great climber, you have to a little bit surrender the idea that that is owed to you. Like, you don't just deserve to climb better than other people or to write.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Better just because you want to.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Just because you want to. You don't deserve it. It's you. Climbing is a privilege. You go out there and you have a great time. And if you go out there and you have a great time, you know, enough days and you string enough days like that, maybe you accomplish in your life something really special.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And that seems to be a tension of the book between what a person has the agents to do of their own volition, of their own sort of ability, and then what their circumstance, their life, the economy, the situation they put, they find themselves, themselves in. Where, where does their agency begin and end? Seems a constant negotiation. What can I control? What can I do? Am I limited? Am I not limited? How is that something you were thinking about? Is that something you've seen from climbers and riders of like, trying to figure out, is it just me or is it the world?

[Gabriel Tallent]

Is it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Where is those two things?

[Gabriel Tallent]

Meet my wife and I just, just talk about this all this time, all the time. But like climbs, many climbs, just from the bottom, they look impossible, they look impossible. And you start doing them and they're still impossible. And then you work on them. You work on them and you work on them and then you find some hole that like has to have been there the whole time. But like, your brain cannot take in a wall of rock. And I don't mean a huge wall, I mean your brain cannot take in like a 10 by 10 chunk of like face of granite. You are looking and you are, you are telling yourself that you are seeing all the holds and you are not. And you spend time on it and you find holds that like, weren't there before. And, and it's like, only through the sort of like loving labor of it does a way forward emerge. And that's why I think you can't do the thing where you just stand at the base of a climb and, and guess about whether, like, guess about whether you're going to be able to do it or not. Because doing, doing it makes it possible in like a weird way that I cannot explain, but that is my experience.

[Jeff O'Neill]

End of writing too. Like, it doesn't seem possible to write a book.

[Gabriel Tallent]

You get a messed up plot situation and it seems, it seems unsolvable and you work at it and then there's some dumb solution and you're like, duh. You know, like. But if you are in the game of giving up because it doesn't look like you, like, if you, if you just, if you just map it out all in your mind and you assess whether you're going to be able to do it, like you will, you will never attempt any of the important things in your life because all the important things in your life are going to ask so much more of you than you would ever expect at the onset.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm going to do a couple more quotes and there will be, we're almost. Well, we need to do in just a minute. You have three minutes to come up with questions. There'll be no questions on these, Gabriel, so you better be ready to find, find some way to respond to these. No question marks for you.

[Gabriel Tallent]

I'm just like, you're doing, you're doing a quote and I'm doing like, yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, who said it? No, no, no, just I am suspicious of the well accepted answers. I want to go out there into the desert and see for myself. Where's that one come from?

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, that's Dan talking to his counselor. And his, his counselor is telling him, you belong in school. Which like, I, I, I belong to a generation where everyone was like, you just need to go to college. College. There's no other answer. I was under tremendous pressure to go to graduate school and did not. And people thought I was making a mistake and that in retrospect, did not pan out. People took on enormous student debt and now they wish they were plumbers, right? But at that moment, everyone was being pressured into it. And if you had some other dream that didn't look possible, people thought you, you were nuts. Like, people thought that was, that was insane and risky. And they're like, the only way forward is like this sort of institutional system that, where we can clearly see the.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Steps the mortarboard factory line.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, exactly. And you know it wasn't true. Like, my friends who were, like, gambled on taking the risk and exploring and on finding possibilities, found more of them.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, one more. This one. One's for me. And then we'll let do Q and A. What happened, Danny, is that I chased a dream and then I caught it. I discovered what maybe everyone else already knew, that meaning and purpose are not real things. That there was no secret to be discovered in life. Nothing beyond the reality we see the rugs, coffee cups and typewriters with which we furnish our everyday lives. That's life.

[Gabriel Tallent]

This is Dan's mom giving to him the argument that he shouldn't, like, have dreams because your dreams fail and desert you. And that the way.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Thanks, Mom.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, yeah, but, like, people say that people said that to me, you know, and that the sort of way to be happy in life is. Is. Is security. Did you have this when you were starting out with Book Riot? People like, you should not do this. You should be.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No one thought it would work. I didn't really think it would work. I thought it would be interesting. That's as far as I got. Yeah, I think she represents sort of that the nihilism of just nothing matters because I didn't get what I wanted. So nothing matters for anybody.

[Gabriel Tallent]

I see so much of that in writing. I just, you know, I just remember having fundamental experiences with writers who are at the pinnacle of their careers and they were unhappy, you know, and you would. I would be talking to them and like, they would. They would just highly awarded authors just, you know, complaining that they didn't get the award earlier. And I. I saw that and I was like, there's just that you can't fill that hole.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They got a hole in the middle of them that can't get filled up.

[Gabriel Tallent]

Yeah, it's. It's just like, it will never be enough. Like, you. You were hungering for something and you chased it. And now you are just hunger for the rest of your life. Like, it's like a weird Greek curse. Like, this person is homeless.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Sisyphus. But literary awards just keep falling on over and over again.

[Gabriel Tallent]

You're like all along writing gradually worse books because you have fewer and fewer people in your life and chasing awards that when you get them, you. You feel that you have only satisfied the minimum of your ambition.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this audiobook. Excerpt from Unexpected Lessons from Professor Higgins by Patti Smith. Narrated by Tara Genae Smith thanks to our sponsors at Audio bee Productions LA LLC.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Lesson 7 Joy in Surrendering who the BLEEP Is Dennis over the years, my parents, uncles, and aunts occasionally expressed their admiration to me for the way I raised Chris. They praised how I helped him fit into a normal life or the way our family just seemed normal. However, their attempts to complement the way I parent my child with down syndrome never landed well with with me. Unsure how to reply, I politely thanked them with a feigned smile and simply changed the subject. Their comments left me feeling empty, and I wondered what they meant. What was normal? Was it a genuine standard for success? In truth, there was no normalcy about my family. In many respects, our way of life was far better than than normal, and I was puzzled why my extended family members couldn't readily see it. One day, when Chris was about 10 years old, we ran across an old friend of mine whom I hadn't seen since high school. After exchanging pleasant greetings, I put my arm around Chris and proudly introduced him. This is my oldest child, Chris. Dennis, chris promptly and boldly corrected me as he confidently extended his arm for a hand handshake. My friend's face looked quizzical as she gingerly shook his hand. I was momentarily flabbergasted by Chris's announcement and amused by my friend's surprised reaction, but rolled with it. Oh, excuse me, I said with a faked grimace. I meant Dennis, apparently. Although he's 10, we're still up in the air about his name. I laughed at my own joke because I enjoyed the times when Chris would surprise me and truth is, the situation was funny. I was surprised by Chris's new name but embraced the entertainment. Since Chris had watched the movie Dennis the Menace maybe a hundred times, we all immediately knew why he picked his new name. Initially, we thought his taking on the Persona of this cheeky character was cute. Until it was not. One dreadful day, all entertainment from Chris's fantasy identity exploded when I lost him in a store at the mall. He was almost 12 years old. After several frantic minutes of darting through the aisles yelling for Chris, I begged a clerk for help. I tried to stay calm and collected when describing what he was wearing, but broke down as I explained his inability to speak clearly and that because he had down syndrome, he appeared and acted much younger. The clerk was sympathetic and responded immediately by summoning mall security and enrolling another clerk to watch the door. As she helped me search the store again, he was nowhere in sight. The longer we looked, the more terrified I became that my vulnerable child had been kidnapped. The mall security officer finally arrived and asked me to retrace my steps with him to the spot where I last saw my my son. Approximately 20 minutes had passed, but it felt like an hour to me. After writing down Chris's identifying information, he pulled out his radio. Hearing him broadcast my son's description somehow snapped my mind back to reality. As soon as I heard him say, the child's name is Chris Higgins, it clicked. Dennis. I yelled. No, wait, Officer. He goes by the name of Dennis. Dennis. The officer lowered his head and eyed me curiously. Immediately, Chris popped out from behind a line of clothes hanging against the wall and swaggered toward me. Triumphant over his successful prank, he he flaunted a mischievous grin. Nobody else was amused. I gasped with relief, fell to my knees, and hugged Chris. I didn't know whether to squeeze him tighter or yell at him, but I couldn't speak through my tears. After proffering my sincere thanks and apologies, I left the store, tightly grasping Chris's hand. Buddy, your name is not Dennis. I scolded Chris as soon as I felt calm enough to speak. Once we reached the parking lot, I knelt next to him. Before getting into the the car, I looked him squarely in the eyes and said, you can never hide from me in stores. It will never be funny. I was so scared I lost you for forever. I started to cry again. He frowned, touched my face with his small hand, and wiped away my tears. He got it. A short time later, and without explanation, he started to use the name Chris again. Dennis had enjoyed a good run, but I was happy for the season of the Dennis years to end. I pondered why Chris's decision to become Dennis was so tough for me to fully give into. Other than being embarrassed by how eccentric it was, his fanciful decision wasn't that big of a a deal. Since Chris's birth, nothing had gone as I'd planned, at least not the way I'd expected. The ability to surrender was continuing to be a difficult concept for me to master, courtesy of my military father who constantly taught me to never give up or give in, except on issues he wanted to control in my life. That was it. I didn't want to give up control over what was clearly a parent's personal prerogative, choosing a child's name. I wondered if I needed to learn this lesson at an entirely new level. My young son's choice to assume a different name symbolized his desire to make life choices independent of what I wanted. My annoyance shifted to joy and laughter as I saw Chris revel in the liberty of picking his own name. I noticed how the freedom I gave him facilitated more confidence. Confidence and an opportunity for him to blossom into a jokester. Choosing to be someone who makes our world a happier place was unexpected, but a better outcome than any of the goals I had previously set for him. It took having a great teacher like Professor Higgins to teach me that I didn't always have to win or be in control of situations. Refusing to surrender is appropriate for war, but not for everyday life and especially not for fostering loving, supportive relationships. I needed to learn that surrendering did not always mean failure.