← Book Riot - The Podcast
Book Riot - The Podcast
The Big 5 Are Indeed Big, First Major AI Verdict Comes In, Remembering Tom Robbins, and more.
01:06:47
Jeff offers his remembrances of reading Tom Robbins. Then, Jeff and Rebecca talk about the hardcover dominance of the Big 5, the first landmark AI fair use case, recent reading, and more.
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- [00:01]
Jeff O'Neill
Daredevil is Born again on Disney plus. Why did you stop being a vigilante? The line was crossed. Sometimes peace needs to be broken. Chaos must reign. On March 4th, the nine episode event begins. I was raised to believe in grace, but I was also raised to believe in retribution. Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again. Don't miss the two episode premiere March 4th, only on Disney Plus. This is the Book Riot podcast. I'm Jeff O'Neill.
- [00:33]
Rebecca Schinsky
And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.
- [00:34]
Jeff O'Neill
And I'm a thousand degrees below zero right now. Rebecca. It's a wintry, blustery kind of day here in Portland, Oregon. I live in an old house that doesn't like the 30 degree below. It's not that much, but it's like 30 mile per hour winds and we're below wind chill and I won't be warm for a few days. But it's okay. We're all fine. Kids are out of school. They're having a good time. They love it. Whatever.
- [00:56]
Rebecca Schinsky
We've had some winter not so wonderland stuff here as well. You know, we had lots of snow that then had freezing rain on top of it, so we didn't get any of the great like beautiful accumulation because the rain just melted everything. What we got was like limbs coming down in the yard. I've got a friend who has three big holes in her roof right now.
- [01:13]
Jeff O'Neill
I almost thought we might see our old friend Amanda Nelson on the pod today.
- [01:16]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, she was running around here this morning. She's, you know, talking to homeowners insurance people right now. But we have had some, some Book Riot alumni.
- [01:24]
Jeff O'Neill
I bet Amanda does well cooped up in a house all day.
- [01:31]
Rebecca Schinsky
Ask me tomorrow.
- [01:34]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, that's what you have the gummies for a little bit later. Programming notes busy. Newsweek for you over on First Edition went live today. You'll hear more about bibliophobia by Sarah Chahaya that I read. But I talked to her for First Edition. Really interesting. I think she thinks more complicatedly about what it means to be someone for whom books are important. Did I use for whom they're correctly organically, you can say no one knows you did.
- [02:00]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's possible.
- [02:01]
Jeff O'Neill
It sure sounds crazy, doesn't it? Yeah. Immediately sound like I'm nine times more intelligent when I use whom no matter what because no one else knows when it's right either. I encourage you to go check that out. And go check out that, that book. I'll talk more about our frontless foyer. We are recording a little bit later for Patreon next week we're going to talk Life in Three Dimensions by Professor Shigero Oishi. We have already talked about it off mic.
- [02:26]
Rebecca Schinsky
We can't stop talking about it.
- [02:28]
Jeff O'Neill
So we're excited for that. And the deals, deals, deals was over there also. Hopefully by this time next week, I'm hoping we're going to have a registration link for the March 13 event here in Pals. They're doing everything they can over there. It's a first time for us and first time for them doing something like this. This had some calls and some planning. Gonna be a good time March 13th here in Portland and then the audio will be available. I think it's gonna be a Patreon only audio I think is what we're thinking at this point. Did we talk about this yet?
- [02:57]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I think that makes sense.
- [02:59]
Jeff O'Neill
Maybe a part of it will be in the main feed, but Patreon deal there as well. Other pro what else should people know that we're working on or talking about?
- [03:07]
Rebecca Schinsky
Let's see if you want to get your pre orders ready. Our next like full Patreon book club is going to be about Death Takes Me by Christina Rivera Gar that comes out February 25th. We'll be talking about it end of that first full week of March. I think we had to do some real time zone shenanigans because we'll have a coworker working from Portugal that week. So we're doing time zones with a nine hour swing between you and where she'll be and I'll be right in the middle. But I'm really looking forward to that. We'll also be doing a main feed episode about the Antidote by Karen Russell, which comes out in early March. So get your books pre ordered friends.
- [03:45]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, off on First Edition too, if you're interested in that kind of pre ordering. Read along. I interviewed Rebecca Romney about her new book, Jane Austen's Bookshelf. That book comes out on Tuesday and then the First Edition episode comes out a week from today. So had a great time talking to her. What a charming, interesting person she is and what a cool career. Like I say on that show about book collecting that you know how you hear those stories about people that have like two beers when they're 19. They're like, Whoa, I need to go to AA. That's how I was with book collecting when I was in high school. In college too, I won two book collecting contests and I was like, this is, this is a long dark road here.
- [04:25]
Rebecca Schinsky
Gotta watch out for this one.
- [04:27]
Jeff O'Neill
And she was doing everything she could to be like, you know, you're older now, you got more time and money. I'm like, I see what you're doing.
- [04:35]
Rebecca Schinsky
That is a dangerous game. Yeah, she's got a cool job. Laura McGrath has a cool job. She isn't. We're going to talk about a piece that she wrote later in the show today, but she is an academic who research centers on the publishing industry and she's going to come talk to us in March about fascinating stats from the world of books and reading. And I think we might just like draft her into being our in house stats correspondent.
- [04:59]
Jeff O'Neill
Definitely.
- [05:01]
Rebecca Schinsky
So that'll be fun too.
- [05:02]
Jeff O'Neill
Good stuff coming up in the Good stuff coming up. And with that, let us take a sponsor break.
- [05:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
This episode is sponsored by Gentle by Courtney Carver. Stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook provided by our sponsors at Hachette Audio from an expert on simplicity and minimalism. A collection of 30 practices to overcome chronic overwhelm, cultivate self compassion, and find permission to do less. This is perfect for readers of Rest Is Resistance and Wintering. Being gentle is about being grounded in self compassion and a fierce commitment to less. Becoming the gentle you isn't about taking the easy road. Organized into three Rest, Less, and Rise, Courtney Carver's Gentle provides simple challenges and practices that will help readers radically and gently shift their pace, headspace and heart. Becoming the gentle you is a practice of real self care that over time will soothe your nervous system and strengthen your relationships. This is the Don't Do it all self help book that promotes less stress and more joy by standing in your light and honoring the person you are. Again, stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook of Gentle by Courtney Carver.
- [06:20]
Jeff O'Neill
Today's episode is brought to you by Hachette Audio, publisher of youf Didn't Hear this from me by Kelsey McKinney, and.
- [06:27]
Rebecca Schinsky
You'D didn't hear this from me.
- [06:28]
Jeff O'Neill
McKinney explores the murkiness of everyday storytelling like why is gossip considered a sin? And how can we better recognize when it's being weaponized? Also, why do we think we're entitled to every detail of a celebrity's personal life? And how do we define gossip anyway? From the host of the Normal Gossip.
- [06:46]
Rebecca Schinsky
Podcast comes a delightfully insightful exploration of.
- [06:49]
Jeff O'Neill
Our obsession with gossip that weaves together journalism, cultural criticism, and memoir. Also, the audiobook is narrated by Kelsey McKinney herself, and it's available for pre order wherever you buy. Audiobooks on sale February 11, so make.
- [07:03]
Rebecca Schinsky
Sure to check out yout Didn't Hear.
- [07:04]
Jeff O'Neill
This From me by Kelsey McKinney and thanks again to Hachette Audio for sponsoring this episode. Huddle up. It's me, Angel Reese. You can't beat the Cold Skin Burger and fries, right? Know what else you can't beat? The Angel Reese Special.
- [07:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
Let's break it down.
- [07:20]
Jeff O'Neill
My favorite barbecue sauce, American cheese, crispy.
- [07:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
Bacon, pickles, onions, and a sesame seed bun, of course.
- [07:27]
Jeff O'Neill
And don't forget the fries and a drink. It's going to be a high C for me.
- [07:30]
Rebecca Schinsky
Sound good?
- [07:31]
Jeff O'Neill
All you have to do to get it is beat me in a one on one. I'm just playing get the Angel Reese special at McDonald's now. Ba da ba ba ba. I participate in restaurants for a limited time. All right, Rebecca. I don't remember. You're not a Tom Robbins person or you were a Tom Robbins person.
- [07:47]
Rebecca Schinsky
I have never read Tom Robbins and I deeply regret it. I just missed it in my education. Spent years getting him confused with Tom Wolfe. But I have resolved that.
- [07:57]
Jeff O'Neill
Not Tim Robbins. Tom Wolf.
- [07:58]
Rebecca Schinsky
Not Tim Robbins. Well, he's not a no Tom. Yes, it's the Tom Robbins. Tom Wolfe. But I know Tom Wolf is the one in the white suit. And I also know that Tom Robbins was really important to you.
- [08:08]
Jeff O'Neill
So important. Sarah Chai and actually, and I talked about Tom Robbins briefly in a different context, but Tom Robbins passed away on Monday at the age of 92 in his home up in Washington where he's lived for a long time. Tom Robbins, what to say? I wrote a little eulogy on the Instagram. I might write something more about. So there's some books that are sort of perfect for your right age and sensibility and depending on who you are, they can be the right or wrong time. Like, for example, I always think that if you're like 12 or 13 and you're kind of a nerd, Hitchhiker's Guide is like the right thing at the right time. If you're, you know, a literary person in college, get yourself some didion, right? There's some places that you hit that are kind of like perfect at the time. Tom Robbins, for me, and I think a lot of people did high school and college and seeing a lot of the comments on Facebook and Instagram and people who, like, raised their hand and say, yeah, Tom Robbins was one of my people. It felt like they encountered him later. And again, he hasn't written much over the last 10 years. He had a memoir, Tibetan Beach Pie, in 2014 that I didn't think was all that successful. But anyway, I give him the benefit of the doubt. But really the last one. Fierce envelopes Indolence Home from Hot Planets was like. Or Hot climates was like 2003. One of the great titlers of all time. Half asleep in frog pajamas. Even cowgirls another, skinny legs and all. Another roadside attraction like high school and college. When you're turning to books for a mind opening experience, like you want a different kind of intelligence, a different kind of worldview and maybe the more sheltered you were, the better. But for someone who grew up as a mild mannered rule follower in a fairly, you know, a generally religious but permissive household, Methodist in a college town, I might have been like the kind of perfect patient for this. Where his combination like I don't remember the plots hardly at all. You don't read for the plots or characters. You read for these passages and ideas and sensibilities and connections and free associations that are so fun and inspiring and give you a sense of a way of putting the world together. That sort of introduced to me a like intellectual pansexualism I guess is the only way I can kind of think about it. Like everything is, everything is interesting, everything is connected. We can take and combine and mix and match. And it can be Zen Buddhists and tequila and circuses and cowboys and brothels and church. Like it's the whole thing kind of goes all into the mix.
- [10:45]
Rebecca Schinsky
Curiosity without border.
- [10:47]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I kind of think of as Walt Whitman who had done some LSD and watched Saturday morning cartoons. Is not the worst way to describe Tom Robbins.
- [10:54]
Rebecca Schinsky
That's a hell of a pitch.
- [10:55]
Jeff O'Neill
And it's a good time just to go back. Like I went the thing I put on Instagram, I just went to Powell's and I took a picture of the bookshelf and there's a bunch of them and I don't have any in my collection now, even though I've read all of them and I can't say about many authors because I kind of shed them. I wasn't going to return to them, but they were so amazingly important. I hadn't thought about him in a while and I was, I was sort of surprised to see. I mean he lived a good long life of course, but really a special writer and you kind of under known there's one bad movie of Even Cowgirls get the Blues. I think Uma thurman started in 93, but no real literary kind of antecedents. There's no one really doing what he does now. And I think especially when I read him and his own writing in the 80s and 90s. The first one is 71, so it's hard to. That doesn't line up neatly. But there's a sort of a post 60s we can figure this out together mentality that I'm not sure holds up great in the year of our Lord 2025.
- [11:57]
Rebecca Schinsky
We might need a dose of that though.
- [11:59]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean, honestly, if I think it would be more interesting for someone to pick up another rose. Even Cowgirls get the Blues, then Handmaid's Tale. Because I ranted about this a bit. We've done the dystopian thing like, and it didn't work and like, look where it got us. Maybe some kind of big tent. Thinking about what's possible rather than what's scary. Could be. I don't know, I'm just trying to make. I'm trying to make a hash out of something.
- [12:28]
Rebecca Schinsky
Like, is that the starting point you would recommend like for having the.
- [12:32]
Jeff O'Neill
A lot of people like Jitterbug Perfume the best, honestly. Jitterbug Perfume. Even Cowgirls get the Blues or another Roadside attraction. I think any one or those three together will get you kind of the thing, but you also kind of want more. Like, what's he's going to do? He's going to do a two page soliloquy about Beats as a mystical object. What's he going to do next? I don't know. It'd be a good reading experience for someone who comes to it, like yourself as an adult with more experienced eyes. Is this a bunch of self indulgent pablum or is this exciting? I don't know. I could. I could believe both.
- [13:09]
Rebecca Schinsky
Is it like when you go back and read on the Road when you're no longer 16?
- [13:13]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. I mean the thing about on the Again, I'll fight for on the Road. I think on the Road has a caricature of itself problem.
- [13:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Yeah.
- [13:20]
Jeff O'Neill
But Robbins, I don't know, it's. He does these making this secular sacred stuff, but also silly and profane and familiar in ways that are really hard to describe. I love Tom Robbins and I'm so sad to see his go, but I'm so glad we have the books.
- [13:39]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Making the secular sacred is catnip for me. So say no more.
- [13:43]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I'd be curious to see. I wonder if there's an end of. I mean the death year is a good reason to call. Yeah. Podcastookriot.com choose the Patreon. Like if you're a Robbins person, you know what do you think? What's your feelings? Do you think it's someone who's an adult? If you come to Robbins as an adult reader at this day and age, do you think it would hold up and I'll put some in the substack or other places there I was trying to find someone actually to talk to about Tom Robbins. Agents, editors. It's been a while, I couldn't find anything. If anyone knows anything, I could use all my little birdies. I'd love to talk to an old agent or someone who's edited one of his books or a scholar. I really came up dry and usually I come find something. So anyway, podcastright.com for that. This was, you know, actual non political news. Rebecca right now is really getting buried.
- [14:29]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, it is.
- [14:30]
Jeff O'Neill
And I think this, this, this story in Reuters about the first big AI copyright case. Is this a big deal as I feel like it could be.
- [14:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think it could be. That's the feeling that I have. And maybe that's why it's getting buried is that at least for like this has to do with tech companies. It doesn't have anything to do directly with publishing. And so at least in publishing media, I haven't seen a whole lot about it. So the pieces in Wired and the like, the story here is Thomson Reuters, this big, you know, tech conglomerate company tech and media. In 2020, they filed a lawsuit against a company called Ross Intelligence, which is a legal startup. And they were claiming that Ross Intelligence illegally reproduced materials from a company that Thomson Reuters holds called Westlaw, that is a legal research company. So they're saying Ross Intelligence illegally used our copyrighted material training its AI products. The verdict came out yesterday. So this is the first major verdict in an AI copyright case in the US and the reason that I think it has real potential to be a big deal is that the decision hinges mostly on fairy use documents. Like the headline is that the judge found in favor of Thomson Reuters found that Westlaw had violated copyright and she did that with extreme prejudice. She said none of Ross's possible defenses hold water. I reject them all. Like that.
- [16:04]
Jeff O'Neill
I'm start saying that to people. None of these, none of these excuses hold water. I reject them all.
- [16:08]
Rebecca Schinsky
I reject them all. Just a real flex. This is U.S. circuit Court Judge Stephanos Beavis. Oh, Stephanos. Probably a gentleman. I had misread it as Stephanie. Yeah, well, who knows?
- [16:21]
Jeff O'Neill
Who knows.
- [16:22]
Rebecca Schinsky
So that is the statement there. The decision hinged on the fair use doctrine, which if you followed the case a couple summers ago when the Atlantic was revealing the 200 or 200,000 or so books that were in that books 3 data set that a lot of the tech companies use to train their LLMs. Tech companies are trying to argue that they did that under fair use that they could it was legally permissible because didn't infringe on copyright. It wasn't going to change the market value of the items that they that they were using. But the judge here found that the product that Westlaw was producing using material illegally From Thomson Reuters Co. Was a market substitute and would, you know, infringe on and change the value. So it's good I think good news for publishing, bad news for AI folks that we now have a decision about fair use. This will certainly get appealed. So we'll see what happens as it runs up the chain and into an administration that seems very friendly to AI and to the move fast break things, do what you gotta do to get ahead sort of approach. I think the core question of it and again like neither of us is a legal scholar will be would they could they have the same finding that like using Lauren Grof's novels to train your large language model, does it ultimately change the market value of Lauren Grof's novels? What is the goal of those large language models? Models. So we will see how that holds up as it goes forward. Early, early days yet the law remains well behind where the technology is. And these, you know, these cases are going to keep on coming. We haven't really had any decisions in the ones that are specifically related to books and publishing. But this is an interesting first shot.
- [18:13]
Jeff O'Neill
I think both a scholar at Cornell, James Grimmelman, he says if this decision is followed elsewhere, it's really bad for generative A. And then a private sector person, a lawyer, Chris Mammon, who is a partner at a law firm I can only assume was named by Roald Dahl, Womble Bond Dickinson. Womble says yeah, if this is this puts the finger on the scale towards holding that fair use doesn't apply. I think in this particular case the business matters because in the Grof example let's use Tom Robbins very singular style. If Tom Robbins books go into an AI and then one of the uses of that is to make Tom Robbins look alikes which you can because it might. And I when we first heard about chat GPT the first thing we did is made up Dr. Seuss like poems using names from people in their lives. Yep. Does that compete? There's an argument made that it could. Yeah, it's. It's really interesting to see what this, I'm assuming this many of these cases of various flavors will end up at the desk of the Supreme Court.
- [19:16]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yes.
- [19:17]
Jeff O'Neill
Interestingly, I don't know what a more conservative court are they going to. A more lowercase C conservative court would not be in favor of these disruptive kind of technology. It'd be more of a conservative lowercase C. But is there a sympathy for big tech that seems to be ascendant in the Republican Party or a sympathy.
- [19:37]
Rebecca Schinsky
For a president who has a sympathy for Big tech?
- [19:40]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, yeah. And it'll be maybe different kinds of material will be fairly or unfairly used differently. Is it the whole batch or is it some of the sectors? I don't think we covered this story for whatever reason. And I'm going to do off the top of my dome. But did you see that story about Meta having disclosed or someone found out that a lot of the books used were actually pirated? So they were. And then they seeded them as part of how we do file sharing. And I wrote in Today in Books that one of my assumptions about even giving these kinds of arguments a fair shot was that someone at least bought the book. Right. That you, you paid the $14.99 for the Kindle or whatever.
- [20:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [20:20]
Jeff O'Neill
And you load it in here. But that you pirated the books is fascinating. Now that could just be Meta's problem if someone decides, yeah, it's a. It's fair use only if you obtained it legally. That doesn't solve. That would still mean that legally you could still use it fairly. But it's. It was a wild case and I'm sure it's going to cost them a lot of money, somebody on their laptop deciding to do it that way.
- [20:41]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [20:43]
Jeff O'Neill
So anyway, I guess round one goes towards it is not fair use. And you and I have been. I guess I don't really have a dog in the fight. If I had my druthers, I would prefer that novels were not on these models. If I had my druthers, I think I prefer that. But I also can see the other side of.
- [21:03]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [21:04]
Jeff O'Neill
You know, a well reasoned court decision. I'm not going to throw out the whole thing just because I don't like the political environment we're in. Like I could believe either way something. It'll be curious to see what other scholars say about those decisions if it seems within or outside their own possibility. But I'm prepared to live happily or at least willingly in a world that says either this is or not fair use. Either way.
- [21:28]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. I mean I think it's I'm personally less concerned with our novels in these models or not than with do the people who wrote the novels get paid for it or do they have the.
- [21:38]
Jeff O'Neill
Right to say no?
- [21:39]
Rebecca Schinsky
Do they have it right? Like, can they say no? Is there some. I would like to see a licensing process developed. I think that's ultimately probably where we're headed is some sort of licensing and paid model. That's my primary concern there. I think frankly, anything that is well written going into these things only improves the technology and this technology is here to stay. So I would just like to see folks be paid and have the right have the option to say no or to negotiate a contract or whatever it is, but let there be a process rather than having their work, their copyrighted work used without their knowledge or permission.
- [22:15]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, it turns out the big five are big. Rebecca, I've heard this and I think this this is in Publishers Weekly from Jim Milliott, who we should have on the show just to talk about book news at some point. I don't know anything about him. He writes really good pieces that I find interesting and talk about all the time. Oh, though I did interview Sophia Stewart who writes the Spirit, the seasonal previews for the millions.
- [22:37]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh nice.
- [22:38]
Jeff O'Neill
In text. We're going to have a Q and A sometime at the site so we can talk about that. But this graphic about 2024 hardcover fiction, nonfiction bestseller positions is as simple of a way to understand publishing as anything you can get in one graphic. Right?
- [22:55]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yes, yes, I agree.
- [22:57]
Jeff O'Neill
And what is the story it tells?
- [22:59]
Rebecca Schinsky
Well, the story it tells is that as you said, the big five are big in hardcover fiction. PRH dominates. So the kind of top line availability here is that there are 20 spots each on hardcover fiction, hardcover nonfiction and trade paperback each week. 52 weeks in a year. That means there's 1040 spots on each list. Penguin Random House held 386. This image is really small. Yeah, yeah, 386 positions and 83 titles on the hardcover fiction list. Four hundred and eighty three positions on the hardcover non fiction list. Like PRH just is the biggest of the big five and that is reflected in their hardcover sales last year. The more like the most interesting little tidbit about the adult hardcovers is that Macmillan, which is the smallest of the big five and is typically in last place on these sales, moved up into third place thanks in large part to the Women by Kristin Hannah. So they're on the come up. And then in paperback and trade paperback bestsellers, the number one spot goes to Sourcebooks Very interesting. Not the first time Sourcebooks held this position last year, but they had 31% of all of the trade paperback positions in 2024, many of those due to Freedom McFadden. Sourcebooks was the one who. They won the bidding. They got Frieda McFadden's extensive 206 positions.
- [24:26]
Jeff O'Neill
Were Freedom McFadden by herself.
- [24:28]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. 40 titles from Poisoned Pen or 40 titles from Sourcebooks, Bloom's books imprint. And then Frida McFadden is with Poison Pen Press, which held 206 of those 10, 40 positions. So, like, Freda McFadden had about 20% of the trade paperback list by herself.
- [24:46]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean, it shows up in the 10 bestselling books. You get three or four spots. That's how it shows up there. And it complicating matters with Sourcebook specifically is they're either 49 or 51% owned by random House. So what do you do with that? And that's not reflected in this chart at all. I'm not sure how you.
- [25:01]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, there's a note about it in the piece that though they're majority owned by prh, they're structurally and operationally separate. So Publishers Weekly treats them as separate.
- [25:12]
Jeff O'Neill
But yeah, I mean, if you follow the money, to quote the great Hal Holbrook in All the president's men, it's 49 or 51% of the dollars are flowing back to the big PRH on the top. And if you just squint your eyes, PRH on the hardcover fiction hardcover list, they themselves are about as big in these position rankings as the other four of the big five combined. Yes.
- [25:36]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. And the big five altogether held 86% of all positions on the hardcover fiction and nonfiction lists combined. It gets interesting, though, that paperback list where sourcebooks held 31% of the spots by themselves, the big five combined held 39% of the spots. So a lot more diversity in the trade paperback bestsellers in terms of which publishers are getting those spots outside of the big Five than there are in hardcover titles.
- [26:05]
Jeff O'Neill
It's weird, though, because is it really. I mean, yes, but is it really quote, unquote diversity if 206 of those 325 positions were one?
- [26:13]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yes, but like 86% of the hardcover spots were taken up by the big five, and only 39% of the trade paperback spots were taken up by the big five, with another 31 going to sourcebooks. So there's still like 28, 25ish percent left there that are other publishers that are able to make a bigger showing. They're able to compete more effectively in the trade paperback space.
- [26:37]
Jeff O'Neill
And if you broke PRH into Knopf, Doubleday broke it out. I wonder what they would look like for fiction, because they had Knopf double had James, James and Martyr, and those were on the bestseller list for hardcover fiction almost all of last year.
- [26:52]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh, and they had all fours. Well, no River. That's Riverheads, but that's a pride.
- [26:56]
Jeff O'Neill
But I'm saying just Knoff Double day by itself. And I think Knoff Doubleday may have had the anxious generation that was on all year.
- [27:02]
Rebecca Schinsky
Right.
- [27:03]
Jeff O'Neill
So probably, I think in my mind, Knoff Doubleday is like, maybe as big as Simon and Schuster by itself when it comes to these hardcover bestseller lists. I don't know about Backlist and the things like that, but I would believe that, yeah, some of those groups are quite significant. Really interesting to see. Xando. There's a breakout there. Like, you have five titles, but one of them had 41 weeks. So, like, one big hit can make or break. This the one I was surprised to see not on here more. They didn't break out Bloomsbury, which has all the Sarah J. Maas stuff, but I think that's because this is front list.
- [27:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Oh, and point of order. We learned this week, thanks to a Patreon person, that she pronounces it Mass.
- [27:47]
Jeff O'Neill
I'm so glad someone said that. The chances of me retaining that are. They're. They asymptotically approach zero.
- [27:53]
Rebecca Schinsky
Listen, I've put it on the record. Proceed to do what you need to do.
- [27:57]
Jeff O'Neill
Mass. Mass. Sarah J. Maas. Could we change her name? Like Roald Dahl? We need to turn into Ron Doll for all of our sakes. Can we turn her name into M A S S? That would be a public service.
- [28:09]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, there's not on here. I'm really interested in what this is going to look like next year because we did not have a new Empyrean book this year. Red Tower is independent.
- [28:19]
Jeff O'Neill
Oh, in 2025. Yeah.
- [28:20]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. And so in 2025, with Onyx Storm coming out of the gate, selling more than any adult hardcover fiction title has sold in 20 years, will the number one spot go to someone who's not in the big five on the hardcover fiction list?
- [28:36]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean, there was a new Mass book out this year, but it just didn't stick around on the list too long. I mean, it was there for a while, but I think it just didn't. It didn't. It didn't have legs to suck up a bunch of those positions there. We were talking about this somewhere in terms of the rest of the year. Oh, I know what it was. I think you saw you put in the company slack the Kwong's new book cover reveal.
- [29:00]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yes.
- [29:01]
Jeff O'Neill
And I put it on social and people are very excited. And I was like, great. I knew people are excited. But it's probably the most anticipated book of the rest of the year right now.
- [29:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
Right now. It is. Yeah. Like the big fall titles other than dan brown on September 9th have not been like, have not been rolled out yet. And the RF Kwong Katabasis, I think it is I'm Going to Learn to Speak Greek comes out August 26th. So, like, I kind of feel like we are going to be starting fall book season on August 26th when that happens.
- [29:36]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. So it's, I don't know. Yellowface sold pretty well. It feels like we're maybe we've gone up a level between Yellowface and Babel. And this is Dark Academia Commercial Fico now. I don't know. I'm in my head about Katabasis. It's mass.
- [29:59]
Rebecca Schinsky
They're doing a big, beautiful special edition of it, like positioning it, I think, as a, you know, if you like some of these other fantasy books that are getting sprayed edges and stencils and all that stuff, come try RF Kuang. Like, I mean, I would love to see that happen for readers. I also think if you've just been reading, you know, like Fourth Wing, you're going to get your mind blown by RF Kuang in the best possible way.
- [30:22]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, looking forward to that. So check that out. Shownotesbookriot.com Listen, whenever you're looking for that, let's do another sponsor break.
- [30:33]
Rebecca Schinsky
My dad works in B2B marketing. He came by my school for career day and said he was a big roas man. Then he told everyone how much he loved calculating his return on ad spend. My friends still laugh at me to this day. Not everyone gets B2B, but with LinkedIn you'll be able to reach people who do get $100 credit on your next ad campaign. Go to LinkedIn.com results to claim your credit. That's LinkedIn.com results. Terms and conditions apply. LinkedIn, the place to be. To be.
- [31:03]
Jeff O'Neill
This is just a cool thing from this little author you have. No one's heard of Barbara Kingsolver, who.
- [31:08]
Rebecca Schinsky
Has the most underrated author we've ever discussed.
- [31:11]
Jeff O'Neill
Authority has put royalties from her from Demon Copperhead to start a home for women Recovery. Alexandra Alter and the Times. I don't want to recount this, but this is darn cool.
- [31:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's very cool. Yeah. I think the big note here is that when she was researching demon copperhead and the opioid epidemic, she spent a lot of time in Lee County, Virginia, and interviewing people who were directly impacted by it. And one of the things that she heard most, most often was that recovering addicts often don't have somewhere to live, and often they don't have access to job prospects or career coaching or anything to help them, you know, get back on their feet and stay on the recovery road. So when the book came out of the gate as hot as it did, she went back to Lee County, Virginia, and was like, I'm going to have all this money. How can I help? And so they have opened a rehab center that will house between eight and 12 women for up to two years, which is really incredible.
- [32:05]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I was. What was I looking at? Oh, I was doing some research for a future list that we have to make. Painfully. People love this book. You know, not just a lot of people read it, but we always joke about the, oh, you know, wake me up when, oh, you got 3.7 stars. Should we invite Dua Lipa to the party? Kind of stuff. Like, we're looking at four and a half. And that's meaningfully outside of the, you know, 25 to 75 percentile.
- [32:30]
Rebecca Schinsky
Like, people love that book. And people in, like, civilians in my life are still telling me, I just picked up Demon Copperhead and how great it is. I'm gonna read it someday. I love myself.
- [32:41]
Jeff O'Neill
It's very good. It's very long, but it's very good.
- [32:44]
Rebecca Schinsky
That's. I think that's why I missed it. Last year was like. Or when the year it came out was just like, this is so long. And I just didn't pick it up right in time and never got there.
- [32:51]
Jeff O'Neill
Margaret Atwood write a memoir. Will write Book of Lives colon as memoir of sorts, out in November. She looks great on the COVID here, wearing some red napkins around her neck. I don't know. What are those things going on?
- [33:07]
Rebecca Schinsky
A little haute couture from.
- [33:09]
Jeff O'Neill
Okay, yeah, so I don't. It sounds like a memoir, except not, because. What are we talking about here?
- [33:15]
Rebecca Schinsky
I'm curious.
- [33:16]
Jeff O'Neill
I'm surprised she doesn't have a memoir. Big memoir.
- [33:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
Me too. It's interesting. She's 85. I think maybe she's just gotten to the point of, like, it's time to tell the story and. Yeah. Book of Lives. A memoir of sorts. Like, all we know is it sounds like a pretty traditional memoir. It's going to explore her life from her childhood, where she spent, like, a lot of time running wild, alone in the forest, pretty unattended, up through her work in the Handmaid's Tale, her marriage.
- [33:42]
Jeff O'Neill
She does love a forest. Margaret Atwood. Love.
- [33:45]
Rebecca Schinsky
She does. Lady Loves a Tree.
- [33:47]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. And where's Margaret? She's at Wood. Is that something? I don't know.
- [33:53]
Rebecca Schinsky
I don't think that's not something. We'll leave that one here.
- [33:56]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah.
- [33:57]
Rebecca Schinsky
So I'm curious about, like, the qualifier, the memoir of sorts. Like, she's Margaret Atwood, so is she playing with the form? Is some of it fiction? Are we improvising some things? Who knows?
- [34:09]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah.
- [34:10]
Rebecca Schinsky
But that'll be interesting to see it come out.
- [34:12]
Jeff O'Neill
We're starting to get some false stuff. I guess I could. You said the PRH stuff was out. I couldn't find it, but maybe I was clicking. I mean, I know in Edelweiss, everything's so obvious and intuitive to where to find everything, but I was looking around there.
- [34:24]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [34:24]
Jeff O'Neill
That will be a big book for November. Interesting. November as a release date. I would have thought September, October. But these things go that way. Graphic novels are booming.
- [34:35]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. In a big way.
- [34:36]
Jeff O'Neill
Very big way. Special for middle grade. What I have seen in my own household, and again, anecdote is what I've got on this is that my kids went from middle grade graphic novels to YA Adult pretty quick. They kind of skipped over middle grade chapter books mostly, and even some of the early kinds of YA stuff that was more popular 10 years ago, I guess.
- [35:00]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. And that's the trajectory that this piece is supporting. So this is a great long piece in Fast by Elizabeth Seagrin, who is talking about how, like, first off, for the numbers, sales of graphic novels have doubled since 2019 in the US it's up to 35 million books a year. That puts graphic novels behind only genre fiction and romance, or, sorry, general fiction and romance. It's like it. This is a big, big deal. The other big number is that interest in graphic novels among elementary school children has increased in popularity by 69% in the last couple of years. So it's like this trend is really being driven by kids. And there are a lot of parents and teachers who are still holding some, like, stigma and concerns. Some are graphic novels, real books. Will my kids ever move on to, like, traditional prose literature? More than half of school librarians here have reported that they see parents and teachers be skeptical or concerned about, like, really the Legitimacy of the graphic novel as a reading medium. And there is now data that indicates that this is great, that kids who read graphic novels grow into readers who first of all stay readers are more likely to report as they age into high school that they enjoy reading and that they spend their leisure time reading. So that story that you're telling about your kids when they were in that elementary school zone reading graphic novels and then bumping right into YA now that they're middle school aged is kind of an exact, you know, microcosm of the pieces here. But I was really glad to finally see numbers for this because it feels like we do a few rounds of like, oh my God, should we be worried? The kids are reading graphic novels every year or two. And it was nice for someone to be like, everybody be cool. This is going to be fine.
- [36:46]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I think it's interesting to think of these kinds of graphic novels. I'm sure they do compete with chapter books at some level, but I do think they more compete with video games and screens than we give them credit for competing with. I got a good email in follow up from a teacher. I'm sorry I forgot your name. Though I did write back to this person. Kind of bridging off the conversation Brent and I were having about reading up like YA readers reading up into like Empyrean stuff and Romantasy. He was saying he was seeing the same things in middle schoolers reading up into ya. They didn't have phones necessarily, but their teenage peer, like their, you know, older brothers and people they knew, they were kind of getting pulled up because, you know, the average person is sort of like, what, in their 30s, right. So if you think of the algorithm as bringing us or told the middle, it's breeding older people, younger and younger people older. Interesting phenomenon to see there though. You don't see like there was 10 years ago. I think we did it in the 2015 power rankings. Look back, there were just their lumberjanes in the sagas, the adult graphic novel stuff that seems largely gone from a mainstream readership. I'm sure in the comics industry that's still apart. But you and I are not picking up graphic novels, I guess to call ourselves a canary in the bookstore when it comes to trends like that. Interesting to see. Okay, all right, we're not going to do all this and it's a conflicting part because this is serious book. This is big time book news in the book world. We don't want to talk about it and maybe we'll put a pin in it now. But John Lithgow got cast as Dumbledore in the new Harry Potter series. So we're not going to do all the casting. But this one is notable even for us who don't want to give Rowling's Empire one minute of. I didn't think it was going to go this way. I thought we were going to get a bunch of people I didn't know.
- [38:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [38:34]
Jeff O'Neill
But that's not what they're going to do. So we should expect big stars to get the McGonagalls and the Snapes and the everythings of the world.
- [38:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, this is a signal that they are going for heavy hitters. They're going to drop a big money. They want this to be a signal adaptation that could, I think, live as fully in the lives and imaginations and maybe newer Harry Potter fans as the original adaptations did. I thought the same thing. I thought like, you know, surely they will cast like newcomers who some British.
- [39:03]
Jeff O'Neill
Guy I've never heard of or you.
- [39:04]
Rebecca Schinsky
Know, something like that who aren't competing with those established images. But they're gonna. This is a signal that they're gonna go the other way. Maybe there will be a few newcomers, maybe some of the kids will be actors we haven't seen before. But this is gonna be heavy hitters.
- [39:18]
Jeff O'Neill
And we're still wrestling with how to cover this at all. Harry Potter, the series itself has become a part of the, you know, paperback part of the bookstore firmament with Tolkien and Narnia. Other Things was not in the news that much except when Rowling decides to be super transphobic in public, which is regrettable, painful and hurtful. But this is going to be a decade long situation and this franchise is poised now that Marvel has weakened and nothing else has really come to take its place to be the most popular important franchise in the world. And it has a serious books component to it. We don't cover adaptations regularly. I prefer not to cover this. I don't know how to do it responsibly. And we're going to leave this alone for a while until there's another equivalent big news. But we're going to cover it as news and see how the cookie crumbles from there on out. But I, I was genuinely surprised in Lithgow.
- [40:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
Me too.
- [40:13]
Jeff O'Neill
I've always liked Lithgow. I liked him.
- [40:14]
Rebecca Schinsky
Everything he does.
- [40:15]
Jeff O'Neill
He's terrific and he is in conclave. So he's hot ish right now. I mean, he's always been. I don't. I'm not sure. I think he's a Little more famous than a. That guy. Like a Kevin Pollock kind of a situation.
- [40:25]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. Because we know his name.
- [40:26]
Jeff O'Neill
We know his name. Well, I know Kevin Pollock's name. But like that's because he's like there's some other people that are real that guys. But right now he is, you know, maybe the third lead of a best picture contender. And he was on third rock. I mean Lithgow, he's, he's Litzco.
- [40:42]
Rebecca Schinsky
I mean he did a season of Dexter. Like, he's done, he's Man's got Range. He's done Prestige tv. This is just a signal that this is the direction that HBO is going in this. And like part of what we're struggling with here is that like J.K. rowling statements are obviously completely like in opposition to our values, to Book Riot's values. And this is a huge story for casual book readers, for entire generations of readers who have cared about Harry Potter. And as I continue to be reminded in my life off the Internet, most people don't either don't know about this with J.K. rowling or don't care about it enough to stop engaging with Harry Potter. And I'm not sure what to do about that either. But this is going to be like if you have been holding yourself in the like, maybe no one will watch this on hbo. I think it's time to like buckle up and be prepared for it to be a very big deal. And either you're going to be having some conversations with folks in your life about why this is so hurtful and maybe hoping that they come to some awareness around it, or you're just going to be seeing, you know, we're going to be, we're going to. People are going to love this. Very likely. And it's something to be prepared for.
- [41:53]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. And I mean, kind of where I am is in thinking about is like the books themselves I've read and enjoyed with my family, especially the Jim Dale narrations. The books themselves are open and big hearted, which is one of the, one of the real pain points I think is that it seems inimical to so many the messages of insensibilities of the book. Is there a way to engage with the text as text and take from it what you will? And I don't know, people have, we've talked about this. People are going different. We're struggling. Well, yeah, we don't cover ongoing adaptation, so it's not like a real big problem.
- [42:25]
Rebecca Schinsky
Right.
- [42:26]
Jeff O'Neill
If this is.
- [42:26]
Rebecca Schinsky
But this is not just an ongoing adaptation.
- [42:29]
Jeff O'Neill
The one Reason that we would have to as a news. What's cool, what, what's new cool. And we're talking about. I don't say that in the intro anymore, but that's what we do is going to continue to be a real concern from, from us and we're going to try to do it responsibly. I don't want to amplify her one bit. I'm not really interested in amplifying the series, but I am interested in talking about the news and giving it context and consideration as a new story.
- [42:59]
Rebecca Schinsky
Like HBO has not helped them. Like they have not helped the arguments about this at all. Because they've not only doubled down on the series, they have doubled down on like a commitment to supporting Rowling. And when the series was first announced like a year or two ago, David Zaslav, the CEO of HBO had made some like pretty vague statements about it, but he came out in a much more full throated way a couple of weeks, weeks ago. Now they probably feel like they have to say these things if they're going to be able to continue doing this. And she is going, she is going to be deeply involved in the creation of the series. So like the internal politics of HBO getting this done functionally prevent them from making a full throated statement, even if they wanted to, against the remarks that she has made or trying to separate art from artists. But as far as we can tell from public statements, they're not interested in separating the art from the artist or condemning it in any way. So this is going to be full court press. Yay Harry Potter. Yay J.K. rowling from HBO.
- [44:00]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. And in the current political climate, they in HBO caught a real break with how the election went because the political atmosphere is much less friendly than it was. I remember when Hogwarts Legacy, the video game came out, they really did distance themselves from. She didn't have any, she didn't have any control. And I think there was even a trans character in the game and the studio seemed very interested in doing what they could to say, yeah, we know we're not in that we. This world, yes, her, no.
- [44:29]
Rebecca Schinsky
Right.
- [44:29]
Jeff O'Neill
But the nature of the deal or whatever happened here, that's not going to be the case. And I would very much like to be in on this. I'm not going to be in on this myself. Parts of it are going to be news. I mean when it comes out, we see the trailer, we're going to see what reactions are, but we will not be doing a special episode on episode one. Of the.
- [44:49]
Rebecca Schinsky
And it's, you know, it's hbo, it's private. So we're not going to get like, ratings data about this. I guess if it goes a season.
- [44:56]
Jeff O'Neill
We'Ll be able to tell.
- [44:57]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, if. Yeah, you'll be able to. You can read the tea leaves. Like, if they go a season or two and then it gets canceled all of a sudden, we will know that, like, it's not performing very well, but we'll see how this goes. I think if you've been holding out hope that, like, maybe it just won't be anything, it's time to start just getting our heads around this. It's going to be a thing.
- [45:14]
Jeff O'Neill
I will be interested to see the. The kinds of outlets, like the Vultures of the World that just like, has like a recap industry, how they're going to handle that, because I think a lot of those people are sympathetic, are in a position like we are, which we serve.
- [45:25]
Rebecca Schinsky
They wouldn't want to promote it, amplify.
- [45:26]
Jeff O'Neill
This in any way that we. Beyond, you know, doing the responsible thing of saying that it exists or at least the reporters thing and saying it resists, but recapping and devoting coverage to it every week in a week out is a different kind of commitment to it being a thing.
- [45:39]
Rebecca Schinsky
Sure. Like, are they going to do it on House of R on the Ringer? It'd be interesting to see.
- [45:43]
Jeff O'Neill
I can only imagine what they're thinking over there. It'd be very difficult conversation to have. This was late breaking news this morning. I don't even if you saw this this morning. Simon schuster. Excuse me. HarperCollins announced. And I think the Instagram caption I put on. Go check out the book Riot podcast. Instagram. I'll put a link in the show notes. There was. I wouldn't have guessed this team up in a thousand guesses, but incredible. Pretty cool. So here's the. Here's the game. Hansel and Gretel exists. It's in the public domain. Rebecca, I don't know if you've heard. I can suck all that up. Meta Go crazy. Didn't need to pirate that. And apparently in 1997, Maurice Sendak of Where the Wild Things Are fame had done drawings in costumes for an opera, the Humperdinck Opera. They said that. Like I'm supposed to understand that. That feels made up. Like, is that Prince Humperdinck from Princess Bride? Which Humperdink? Humperdinck doesn't seem like it should be a real name.
- [46:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
So the Humperdinck is The opera. And he did them for an opera of Hansel.
- [46:38]
Jeff O'Neill
I don't know if they existed or maybe it was going to happen. But he did a bunch of illustrations and drawings and costumes. So there's art by Sendak that was available.
- [46:48]
Rebecca Schinsky
Spin on Hansel and Gretel.
- [46:49]
Jeff O'Neill
Yes. And the Marie Sendak Estate, I think, is distributed by HarperCollins. Anyway, someone said we should make this into a book. Who could we get to write this? And Stephen King apparently was like, saw a couple of the illustrations, like, I'm game. Cool. And kudos to Harper for shooting their shot, like, starting at the top.
- [47:06]
Rebecca Schinsky
Uncle Steve.
- [47:08]
Jeff O'Neill
And he sounds like. It's like he said something at the end of this piece that I linked to. I think it's a variety piece. I don't remember. It's in the show notes there. In a lot of ways, I've been writing versions of the Hounslow and Gretel story my whole life. Which when you think about it's a couple of kids in the woods with something creepy happening. Yeah, that's kind of what he's been doing. So I'm. My other question, though is who is this for? Because it's not going to be for kids, I don't think.
- [47:35]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. This is like a coffee table picture book, I think.
- [47:38]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. Yeah. So pretty cool to see, actually. The art looks interesting. And also, how much spin is there to. I mean, you could do it like, how dark, how much darker can King make Hansel and Gretel than all these? Because I got to tell you, the original one is not the one you read in the Golden Books when you were 11 years or 4 years old. All right, with that, let's do. Oh, it's frontless foyer. Our favorite time of the show. Sponsored by ThriftBooks. ThriftBooks.com I just bought some books from Thriftbooks the other day. History of advertising. Rebecca. Oh, are you intrigued? No.
- [48:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
You don't need to be thinking about buying some Tom Robbins from Thrift.
- [48:15]
Jeff O'Neill
Oh, you. You can get them. I guarantee you can. I also have had some people forward me. It's now. Jeff Core is now happening. It's happening in the email inbox. I appreciate you sending me things and Jeff Core. It turns out if things are four or five years old and they're Jeff Core, I can go on thriftbooks.com and find them in all conditions at this point. But new used books, of course, DVDs, games, movies as well. Also gifts, gift cards. Also very. An excellent gift card for book lover in your life. Maybe a Little late for Valentine's Day, but I don't know. Now we have moms, dads and grads coming up. We're going to do the recommendation show. Go check out Thriftbooks to look for a great selection, competitively priced, new and used. 19 million different kinds of. 19 million books there. I have to admit after talking to Rebecca Romney and doing a little I wonder if I got into book collecting. My fingers wandered over to Thrift Books.
- [49:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
The pull of the dopamine is strong.
- [49:14]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I'll say more about that book to hype people to first edition, but it was actually a more sane. Sane's not the way of putting it. It felt like I could using Romney's kind of collecting. What she did in Jane Austen's bookshelf would not cost you. I'm not looking for first editions of, you know, where the Wild Things Are, for example. Like you could do different kinds of collecting but thriftbooks.com would be a wonderful place to start. Rebecca, what have you been reading?
- [49:39]
Rebecca Schinsky
Well, you're doing Jeff Kaur. I am doing Shinsky Corps Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood.
- [49:45]
Jeff O'Neill
Just showed up today in the, in.
- [49:46]
Rebecca Schinsky
The mail for me. As the kids would say, extremely my shit. Oh yeah, it is.
- [49:53]
Jeff O'Neill
So. So you're done? You finished it or are you in the middle of it?
- [49:55]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I'm done. It's about a middle aged woman in Australia who when the, when the story opens, she has just gone on like a weekend long, maybe week long retreat just to get away from things. She goes to on a retreat at a monastery where a bunch of Catholic nuns live kind of in the middle of nowhere in Australia. We see her spending some time there. She goes back to her life and then it jumps to four years later, she's living there full time. She doesn't believe in God. She has not become one of the sisters in a significant sense, but she's living there. We don't ever really know.
- [50:33]
Jeff O'Neill
Non adjacent.
- [50:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, she's non adjacent. We don't ever really know like exactly why she made this change, why she left her life out in, you know, regular society and came here and we're just kind of, we're just. With her it's quiet. There's a third section of the book as well where some surprise things happen but it's like you're just in the daily life and reflections. It's written as if it's her journal. Not in a. Not in an epistolary sense, but she's writing in the first person as if she is recording her Own memories, really just speaking to herself. She's not really trying to speak to an audience. And it has that quality that journaling can have. And I think that especially a place like being in a monastery can. Can put you in that headspace of there's not a whole lot of outside stimulation. She's not scrolling TikTok, so she's, like, reflecting on her daily life and then having, like, this thing she remembers that happened in her childhood she's thinking about. And then really mundane things like, there is a mouse plague, Australia. And the mice are all over, everywhere around the convent. And just, like, the details of all the traps and how they're trying to catch them, and the pits they have to keep digging to put the dead mice in. There is a former sister who passed away whose bones are being returned to the convent. And like, maybe she's just gonna go and spend some time sitting in a quiet room where this former sister's bones are while they're awaiting their burial. It just has this, like, lovely meditative quality, but there are some teeth to it. Like, a person shows up at the monastery that our main character had some connection to in a past life, and that is a sticky relationship that holds a lot of. Is the source of a lot of angst for her. Like, the writing is gorgeous. This is, like, exactly what I want from a literary fiction. Like, people just mostly sitting around thinking about things. It's. It's. It is so wonderful. I totally understand why folks in the UK who got to read it before us. Cool. Yeah. Loved it. Wyatt was a Booker finalist. It's great. I'm. I'm deeply here for Charlotte Wood and Stonyard Devotional. And then because the Internet has been insisting that I do it, I'm reading On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, who is a historian. The subtitle is 20 Lessons from the 20th Century, maybe 21st Century. And it's like. It's like 92 pages, so you'll love to see that. It's very short. Each lesson it opens. Probably the one that folks have seen going around Instagram or TikTok, which is don't obey in advance. Like when someone who seems to be seeking tyrannical power or maybe seems to be a fascist, is coming into position. You don't have to obey in advance out of fear, or obeying in advance out of fear for what they might do in the future just increases their power. But it's a bunch of little snippets like that. There's some interesting stuff about language. And he does a really nice thing of when he's talking about historical figures, he's using the historical figures names. When he's talking about kind of what's going on. Much more recently he talks about like the candidate who in 2020 lost. And I think that distancing of the language, it's been helpful for me at least. I think it's a smart move to take us out of those particulars and say like, this is how history would describe this person. And if you were reading about what's happening here in the US from another country, we might have stronger interpretations than our headlines are currently giving us from our publication. So that was, that was the first ebook I bought on bookshop.org oh, nice.
- [54:05]
Jeff O'Neill
How was that experience?
- [54:07]
Rebecca Schinsky
That's great. It's like really simple. I'm trying to take spend less time on social media on my phone. So I added the Bookshop app to my phone and I don't typically read on my phone, but I had a little like I'm in a waiting room and I would normally scroll Instagram for five minutes but I'm going to read a little section of Timothy Snyder. It's been really great.
- [54:26]
Jeff O'Neill
Cool. I got a few things to talk about today. I've mentioned bibliophobia before. Let me say a few more words about it. Never anything like this. We even talk in my conversation with Sarah about the it's an antidote or a counter narrative to the Yay books phenomenon.
- [54:41]
Rebecca Schinsky
Tell me more about.
- [54:44]
Jeff O'Neill
And I think the phrase I said on the interview was like, it's not that so much that it's not Yay books, but that books are powerful and that can be deployed and, or received in multiple different ways. And in Sarah's case, it always hasn't. It always hasn't been completely and totally positive. And some of that was because the assumption was it could be or should be completely and totally positive. And so for example, she talks about the idea of the life ruin. Her book, right. And so she, her, she writes about it in then in Bibliophobia. And then I gave her mine on the interview. Both by the same author as it would turn out. I'm not going to spoil here, I'll tell you off here. Other people have to go listen to the show. And it's not that your life is ruined, but that it is because it changed something fundamental about how you understood yourself in the world. And it wasn't necessarily pleasant, let's put it that way. So you know, one thing that a ruin does is it tears something down that exists now, is that bad necessarily? Can be. Is it necessary? Sometimes, yes. Is it pleasant? Almost never at the same time. And she. Her own story of mental health is in here. I should mention there are quite a few. Extensive depiction of being in a facility for your mental health and then suicide ideation and then attempts. But her own reckoning with her identity as a reader, scholar, critic, in person in a variety of ways. I don't want to spoil these things. It's only 205 pages. I did a combination of print and audio kind of back and forth interesting, which is cool. Yeah. It's erudite, it's sophisticated. She's super smart and sharp and a wonderful writer of sentences. We get a little blurb because blurbs don't matter. But here we go anyway. From Hua Shu, which we both loved. His Stay True. Oh, something got me with a blurb. I was gonna tell the story. What was it? I don't know that it got me, but I'm listening to how to Talk. Talk to Me, Talk to Me by Rich Benjamin on audio. I think I told you about it. It'll be in a forthcoming. But I was, I was circling. I was like, maybe. And there's an awesome blurb from Rushdie on it.
- [56:49]
Rebecca Schinsky
Nice.
- [56:49]
Jeff O'Neill
And I, I can't quantify, but it mattered Rebecca Shinsky to me, picking up the book also, you.
- [56:56]
Rebecca Schinsky
You don't see a Rushdie blur.
- [56:57]
Jeff O'Neill
That's the thing. Right?
- [56:58]
Rebecca Schinsky
That's part of the equation. That's a real signal. I got my hardcover in advance of the Karen Russell novel Antidote. It just came today and it's got a nice Lauren Groff blurb on the front that like, if I didn't already know what to expect from Karen Russell, having Lauren Groff say aching gorgeous, as profound as it is, wonderfully strange. Like Lauren Groff, she knows from Wonderfully Strange.
- [57:22]
Jeff O'Neill
That's like Willy Wonka saying, this candy is good, yo. Yeah, that's real.
- [57:26]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, that's real. So I'm, I'm, I'm. I'm here for blurbs. Still mean things. Sometimes they don't mean anything except for when they do.
- [57:33]
Jeff O'Neill
What about a blurb quota? You can. An author can only blur X number a year. So if they use it, you know it. That's something.
- [57:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I saw somebody propose that, like, maybe if you're a really big author, you shouldn't get blurbs. Blurbs should only be used on like mid list.
- [57:48]
Jeff O'Neill
Oh, it's like the NFL draft. If you're way. If you're great, you have to pick Last right. Interesting. All right, so that's Bibliophilia by Sarah Cha. Really great. I'm so glad to read it. And yeah, for people who care, if yay books is your vibe, you might be like, what's. What is this? But if you are in the camp that I am, like, it is more complicated than that. Then I. It's a welcome piece of the puzzle. Raising Hair by Chloe Dalton, which I think we mentioned in some. I think. I think we timed out with Jason either on the show or off. Doesn't matter. A memoir of a woman living in the jolly old England. And during COVID she's living back on a farm. I'm not sure whose farm it is. Is it hers? Her parents? It's not clear. But she just had a farm to retreat to. And one day she finds a young hare in distress. She takes it in and it's the story of her living with this hair for the next few years. And the things that happen, it's very low stakes. This is not a secret of Nim situation where they all get murdered or something like the hair lives happy ever after. I tried to do something. My puns are just not working. Happy was happy ever after. Happy for now. Really happy for now. Thank you, Rebecca, for picking the slack up on that.
- [59:01]
Rebecca Schinsky
I learned from the best.
- [59:02]
Jeff O'Neill
As gentle and as ruminative. It's just. It's just well written enough that I'm not like this is just talking about a rabbit for a long time.
- [59:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
It crosses the meridian.
- [59:14]
Jeff O'Neill
It crossed the. Okay, there's something else here going on. Hares are different than rabbits. I know. I read the books. Thank you for don't eat.
- [59:20]
Rebecca Schinsky
Was that in the dictionary of fine Distinctions?
- [59:22]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, well, no, it's in this book. We're very careful that they're not rabbits. I'm not sure it rises at it. It does not rise to the level of an H. And the hog for my animal husbandry hall of fame.
- [59:33]
Rebecca Schinsky
That's a thing now?
- [59:35]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, apparently. Okay. Level hierarchies and distinctions matter. But I really enjoyed it. I listened to it. But I picked up the book. It'd be a very good springtime read though. Like she finds there. Did you know that you can name hairs differently but by the time the year of their born? This is not something I knew. Yeah, spring hairs are different than fall hairs and summer hairs. It's great. It's terrific. It's cute and sweet and also we're doing bad things to environment. I don't know if you've heard. And the Hairs are taking on the chin. So that's, that's tough. That's a tough look for the hairs. But it sounds like maybe it was good. It really was.
- [60:13]
Rebecca Schinsky
It sounds like you maybe had a healing experience after your surprisingly traumatic animal husbandry read.
- [60:18]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I don't like, I didn't like that, but it was pretty, it was pretty great. The whole time I was like, it's like a warm bath for me. It can't be too, we can't be too perfumey, you know, I'm saying, like it needs to have something else going on. But really wonderful writer. I think that's the thing that ultimately made it.
- [60:37]
Rebecca Schinsky
That'll do it.
- [60:38]
Jeff O'Neill
Good as a good listen. And then my last one is called how to Share an Egg by Bonnie Weickert, I believe is how you say it. I'm not even sure this book is out yet. I can't. I'll look it up here in a minute. Memoir, food memoir, but a little more complicated because it starts out telling her father's story of the day he was liberated by the American army in Germany. He was a nine year old Jew who had sort of had been told by German soldiers at the, I don't remember which concentration camp it was. I think it was, I don't think it was Birkenau. Anyway, it doesn't matter for the purpose of this, but like he's out there and the people say go Run. Because the Americans are about to liberate us and you don't know what the German soldiers are going to do here at the very end. So go run. Spends a few days out scavenging for food, eating like potato peels and coffee grounds, and encounters a military. He's hiding in a barn with his cousin and he hears these people say, raus, raus. He assumes these German soldiers, but eventually after like the second day goes, takes a peek and sees that big white star on the jeep and they have a, they have a big old bowl or a jar of green relish and he and his cousin just eat it because they haven't had anything to eat. And then we, we sort of go forward in time for Bonnie Weicker to. It's a story of her reckoning with her family's history and also telling her own story of food as a memoir. So as you know, we've and I talked about this before to do a food memoir anymore. You kind of need a Uber for X situation. Like, I'm not, I don't need Uber or Lyft. We've done those. But what is that X thing?
- [62:17]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [62:18]
Jeff O'Neill
And her trying to reckon with generational trauma and their family's relationship to food and her and her own fathers in her family system. It was really different. I don't ultimately know. I think she wanted to write the book of her father's story, but in order to do that, like the last half is a little bit more about him directly. In order to do that, she had to tell her own story to get to a place where she could explain how she even got to a place where she felt comfortable writing that. Not comfortable is the wrong word. Able to write it at all. Really fascinating book. I have never read anything like this before. I don't remember the how to Sharing an Egg. Honestly, I don't. I usually am on the lookout for where the title is. Maybe it's the beginning and I wasn't ready, but I was expecting a little bit more of a Rykelian food memoir. It was not that.
- [63:07]
Rebecca Schinsky
Okay.
- [63:08]
Jeff O'Neill
And I'm glad. Ultimately, I'm glad. I'm glad it was complicated, different. Take it. So those are mine. Raising Hair by Chloe Dalton, Bibliophobia by Sarah Jahaya and How to Share an Egg by Bonnie. Yeah.
- [63:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
And these and all of our front list foyer picks, past and present are@thriftbooks.com BRpodcast indeed.
- [63:26]
Jeff O'Neill
And with that, we're going to say our fond farewells for the day. Show notes are bookright.com listen. You can send an email to podcastookriot.com you can check out the substack. We have a link there. You can check out the Patreon. You can. If you want the news we might talk about on Instagram, like say, Maurice Sendak or Kwong cover reveals. Check out the Book Riot podcast Instagram. All the links will be there. You can just. You can search in any of those places for us. You can search on Patreon, substack or Instagram and find the Book Riot podcast. Rebecca, we'll talk to you later, guys.
- [63:56]
Rebecca Schinsky
Have a good one. Thanks so much for listening today. Please enjoy this audiobook excerpt of Rest More Stress Less and Live the Life youe Actually Want by Courtney Carver. Thanks to our sponsors at Hachette Audio.
- [64:16]
C
To tell you that putting rest first is hard for me is an understatement. I even had trouble making rest the first season of this audiobook. My brain really wanted it to be the last. You know, save it for after we get the other stuff done. You may feel the same way because rest is often positioned as something we deem ourselves worthy or unworthy. Of it's the carrot or the prize after we finish doing everything else. The problem with this equation is that there is always one more thing to do right? Is it ever all done? As I struggled to start with rest, I remembered my commitment to changing the way we change, taking the gentle way and prioritizing what we need most Right now. That happens to be rest. What if we started resting right now? This second? I know that feels weird because you may be thinking, but we haven't even finished the chapter. I know. Let's rebel and shake things up. Make a comfy spot somewhere, set the tone and create a restful space. Turn on soft music or enjoy the sound of rain or sweet silence in the background. Put on your softest clothing and collect your favorite blankets and pillows. Anything to create an inviting, calm, cozy environment. Set a timer for 10 minutes, pause this audiobook and rest before you listen, before you learn, before you self help, before you take one more look at your to do list or take care of one more thing. Seriously, stop doing one more thing. Rest comes first right now. Oh hi. Welcome back. How did that feel? 10 minutes may not be enough time to feel completely rested or to recover from the exhaustion you've been working with, but perhaps it was enough time to reset and come back to you. Or at least to give you a taste of what it feels like to rest. If you decided not to put rest first and continued listening, check in. Was it because you feel fully rested already? Or because you have too much to do? Or maybe, like me, you need to understand why putting rest first is a good idea before you try it for yourself. I understand. Part of being gentle and getting to know yourself better is being thoughtful and curious about why you do the things you do and don't do. Whatever you chose, remember that you can come back to this suggestion anytime to rest and reset for 10 minutes. When I said the exhaustion you've been working with, that might have resonated with you. Or maybe it didn't. You might have thought I feel fine. Is that because you typically prioritize rest and doing less and actually feel fine? Or because you're in a bit of denial about the baseline exhaustion you live with on a day to day basis? This level of exhaustion can come from everything you have going on and also from a lack of consistent rest and quality sleep. I've heard from many people who say they need only five or six hours of sleep, but science says otherwise. According to the Mayo Clinic and other health experts, adults should be Getting at least 7 hours of sleep per night Sleeping less than 7 hours per night on a regular basis is associated with adverse health outcomes. It's important to consider not only the time you sleep, but your quality of sleep. Here's another opportunity to check in. And please do it without judgment. You are just taking note of what's going on. There is no judgment coming from me. We are in this together because we deserve to feel good. I want the best for you, for us.