The It Books of January 2026

Summary

Book Riot – The Podcast

Episode: The It Books of January 2026

Date: January 7, 2026
Hosts: Jeff O’Neal and Rebecca Schinsky

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Overview

In this lively start-of-the-year episode, Jeff and Rebecca break down January’s “It Books”—the buzziest, most promising, and potentially zeitgeist-defining releases for January 2026. Their signature “knockout” format pits ten finalists head-to-head, weighing critical, commercial, and book club potential. Along the way, they discuss what makes a book an “It Book,” genre trends, and what to expect from George Saunders’ much-anticipated new novel.
Spoiler alert: It’s a great spring for fiction, with notable debuts and heavy-hitters.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Technology & Recording Woes

• The hosts open with humor about AV issues and remote work (00:44–01:55), joking:

  "Our computers are trying to kill us... Color me skeptical of Skynet when my Bluetooth connectivity can thwart me." — Jeff (01:21)

Programming Notes

• Vanessa Diaz will guest-host the next news feed episode—first time the regular show goes solo without Jeff or Rebecca (01:55–02:58).
• Winter New Release Draft and more special Patron content teased (01:55–02:58).

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Main Topic: The “It Books” Knockout Bracket

What is an It Book?

• A book with "je ne sais quoi"—combining excitement, acclaim, sales potential, buzz, and quality (06:58–08:38).
• Process: Jeff picks 10 finalists, and he and Rebecca pitch them head-to-head, advancing the winner each round (07:55–08:44).

1. How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder by Nina McGonagli

• Pub: Pantheon, Jan 20
• South Asian American sisters in ‘80s Wyoming; metafictional, possibly satirical, blurb from Celeste Ng.
• “It’s in the vein of My Sister the Serial Killer... If this is anywhere in that constellation, I will be very happy.” — Rebecca (11:21)
• Advances past first round for originality, length, and strong blurbs (10:32–11:44).

2. Burn Down Master’s House by Clay Cane

• Pub: Dafina, Jan 27
• Civil War–era debut; blurb says, “Inglorious Basterds but on a plantation,” comps to Whitehead and Ward.
• “Those are bold claims.” — Rebecca (12:34)
• Ultimately, “How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder” moves forward, partially on book club potential (14:03–15:14).

3. Graceless Heart by Isabella Banyaz

• Pub: Saturday Books, Jan 13

• Adult debut, historical romantasy set in Florence. A nod to the booming romantasy genre (17:02–17:38).

• Hosts discuss genre’s critical reception vs. popularity, with Rebecca emphasizing:

  “…Most romanticies… have not been written in the way that I prefer books to be written. The craft of the writing is not the thing that is the draw…” (18:55)

• “We missed the point is almost the right analogy… We just don’t care about that point as much.” — Jeff (20:33)

• “How to Commit a Postcolonial Murder” still outpaces for freshness/originality.

4. Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven

• Pub: Flatiron, Jan 6
• Family TV cast in 1964 after show ends; murder and a meta last-episode plot. Comps: Lessons in Chemistry, Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (24:32–24:33).
• “Flatiron knows how to do this... Also smart to drop this early in the year.” — Rebecca (24:52)
• Advances as more mainstream, book club–friendly, less politically divisive (25:17–25:52).

5. Two Women Living Together by Kim Hana & Hwang Soon Woo (trans. Jean Ping)

• Pub: Ecco, Jan 20
• South Korean memoir of two friends choosing non-nuclear family life in their 40s.
• “There's a lot of interest in alternative choices for partnership… outside the conventional structures of a romantic nuclear family.” — Rebecca (27:39)
• Interesting and relevant, but lack of translation/book club synergy keeps “Meet the Newmans” in front.

6. Missing Sam by Thrity Umrigar

• Pub: Algonquin, Jan 27
• Domestic thriller: Woman disappears, her wife both searches & tries to clear herself.
• “Umrigar’s a great example of an author who works within the constraints of genre and elevates the form...” — Rebecca (31:09)
• Advances due to name recognition and probable book club pick.

7. Just Watch Me by Liora Torenberg

• Pub: Debut
• “Fleabag meets Big Swiss”: Woman streams her life for a week to save her comatose sister—which Jeff calls “a tragicomedy about Internet economy and the terror of being seen” (33:40).
• “Margot’s Got Money Troubles is a great comp, but also a really high bar to set.” — Rebecca (34:52)
• Umrigar’s book (“Missing Sam”) has the edge for quality and clubbing potential.

8. Football by Chuck Klosterman

• Pub: —
• Klosterman's wide-ranging meditation on American football and its meaning. Will be a commercial hit, “the Bill Bryson for Gen X” (35:41).
• “A lot of IT bookiness is driven by women readers... this is not that.” — Rebecca (37:00)
• Admired but doesn’t advance; sits outside “It Book” demographics.

9. Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy

• Pub: —
• McCurdy’s fiction debut after “I’m Glad My Mom Died.” Student-teacher affair premise (which both hosts strongly dislike as a trope).
• “There are three writers I would entertain this story from, and Jeanette McCurdy is not one of them.” — Rebecca (41:20)
• Despite anticipated buzz, rejected for subject matter and personal taste.

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10. Vigil by George Saunders

• Pub: —
• Saunders’ new novel: A “grim reaper” figure tasked with escorting an oil CEO into the afterlife, described as a “companion but not a sequel” to Lincoln in the Bardo.
• “He can do anything and he has done many things. He just hits on a different level.” — Rebecca (42:21)
• “One of the few writers where it doesn’t matter what the topic is... It’s going to be some other experience.” — Jeff (43:41)
• “There’s nothing ever proclamationy or preachy about Saunders. Just a master... I don’t know if he’s peaked yet.” — Rebecca (45:40)
• Unanimously declared the It Book of January 2026.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Romantasy’s Critical Reception:

  “Our assumption is any one you pull out of the stack has not been written with [craft as] its highest goal. And again, I don’t care what your highest goal as a reader is; it’s just not my highest goal.” — Rebecca (18:55)

• On Book Club Dynamics:

  “Book clubs anymore don’t really make books... but they can move it up the staircase and get it closer to opening the door that escapes the dark basement that most books find themselves in.” — Jeff (21:59)

• On George Saunders:

  “Why is George Saunders not a household name? I really need to know... There will also be many other things that happen, many other things that [Vigil] is about.” — Rebecca (43:12)
  “It’s so much stranger than most people want to deal with, Rebecca.” — Jeff (48:21)

• On Their Own Tastes:

  “We missed the point is almost the right analogy... We just don’t care about that point as much.” — Jeff, addressing fans of BookTok romantasy (20:33)

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Final Ranking: “It Book” of January 2026

1. Vigil by George Saunders — unanimous pick; the rare event that eclipses even mega-celebrity memoirs and buzzy debuts.
2. Runners-up and Notables discussed:
   • Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy (for likely publisher/book club focus)
   • Football by Chuck Klosterman (commercial/gift book)
   • Missing Sam by Thrity Umrigar (book club suspense)
   • Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven (mainstream book club contender)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:55 – Show intro/programming notes
• 06:58 – What makes an “It Book,” method explained
• 09:08 – Knockout bracket begins
• 11:44 – Satirical murder debut advances
• 17:02 – Romantasy genre debate
• 24:32 – “Meet the Newmans” overview
• 31:09 – “Missing Sam” and book club suspense
• 35:40 – Chuck Klosterman and “Dad books”
• 39:14 – Jennette McCurdy’s fiction debut assessed
• 42:21 – George Saunders deep dive, crowned “It Book”

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Overall Tone

Clever, candid, and eclectic; the hosts balance literary expertise with humor and critical transparency, never shying from personal reading tastes. Their “knockout” process offers a satisfying mix of objective criteria and subjective excitement, giving listeners dozens of titles for their TBRs and unique insights into how books seize cultural attention.

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For the full list of titles and ongoing It Book picks, subscribe to Book Riot’s Patreon.
Have thoughts or suggestions? Email: [e-mail]

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“Happy New year!” — Jeff & Rebecca (50:40)

Transcript

[A]

Clearly, you have excellent taste in podcasts, so let me tell you about another one that you'll love. If you've been trying to do it all, have it all, and be everything to everyone, and you're exhausted, annoyed, and ready to burn it all down, this is woman's Work is for you. Done, pleasing, proving, and performing well. Welcome to the show where we're shedding expectations, setting aside the shoulds, giving our finger to the supposed tos. We are torching the old playbook and writing our own rules. You can find us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Who runs the world? You decide, because this is woman's work.

[B]

This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff o'. Neill.

[C]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.

[B]

And Rebecca, our computers are trying to kill us. They're not letting us get out of 2025. We're here on Monday, the ass end of the year, trying to get our stuff done ahead of time. And stupid Google and stupid mics and stupid headphones and. And it's all stupid.

[C]

It is all stupid. This is what we get. We're going to be traveling for business next week, so we are trying to record a bunch of podcasts in advance. And here we are on December 29 being thwarted by technology. I don't know what is in retrograde, but something must be. I don't think the universe wants us to be doing this, but here we are. I definitely know what day it is.

[B]

Yes, totally do. I know when this is coming out. I know when everything. I know that everything we've recorded and when it's coming out. Let me just say this. I don't know if any of you out there work remotely or use AV remotely as part of your workflows, but I will just sprinkle into all of our. The AI overlords are going to take us out skepticism because Google can't get my headphones to work right. Just it just can't do it. It's impossible. So color me skeptical of Skynet when my Bluetooth connectivity can thwart me in the system I'm working with in the.

[C]

I think we're gonna be okay, at least for a little while longer here. We are confused about the calendar, but our spreadsheet is not confused about the calendar. So you all are hearing this on Wednesday, January 7th. Welcome to the new year. We're gonna talk about the IT books of January today, next week on Monday in the news feed. Vanessa Diaz, who you know from many guest appearances, will be here on the show she is going to be anchoring the Book Riot podcast that week while we are traveling is just impossible given what we're going to be working on for us to get a news show in or for one of us to even be here. So Vanessa will be sitting in with one of our editors. A little bit of a milestone for us. I think it's the first time that we have turned the show over to someone else from BR without one of us. @ least in the sidecar. Vanessa is eminently qualified, so we're happy to be doing that. And by the time also that you hear that our winter new release draft will be in the Patreon and we'll have a bunch of fun new things for you in the zero to well read.

[B]

Feed. Yeah, with that today is it books of January 2026. Always an exciting time to flip the calendar to do the research for January and the winter draft beyond. And the winner for us is January through April. It's a little bit fun to play with Edelweiss to see when those new releases are coming out. I'm sure I missed some things, but that's part of the game there as well. I guess. With that you can find shownotes bookright.com listen or just the show notes in the little podcast player you're probably listening to in the palm of your hand or your pocket or wherever else you might be with Reka. With that, let's take our first sponsor break and get into the.

[C]

Show. This episode is sponsored by Cozy Earth. This year I'm getting really intentional about resetting my home, especially my evening routine, because that five to nine window is the part of the day that really matters to me. I've been building this little nightly ritual with Cozy Earth and honestly, it's becoming my favorite part of the day. I start with a bubble bath. Obviously I'm reading a great book, and then I wrap up in one of their luxe bath towels, which are so unbelievably soft, but they also dry you off really quickly. After that, I slip into Cozy Earth's bamboo stretch knit pajamas, which are the kind of comfort that feels effortless and still looks put together. And then there's the bedding. Climbing into fresh, luxurious sheets at the end of the night makes my entire space feel calmer. It's the easiest way to signal to my body that it's time to slow down, to rest deeply, and to reset for the next. Cozy Earth also makes it easy to try. There's a 100 night sleep trial and a 10 year warranty which says a lot about their quality. If you're ready to start the new year with a true reset, head to cozyearth.com and use code BOOKRIOT for up to 20% off. And if you get a post purchase survey, be sure to mention you heard about Cozy Earth right here. That's cozyearth.com using code bookriot for 20% off cozyearth.com code bookriot. This podcast is supported by Quince Cold weather is when you really find out which pieces in your closet are doing the work and which ones aren't. That's why I always come back to Quince. I've been a customer for years and this fall I gave my husband one of their Mongolian cashmere Henley sweaters. It's one of those pieces that immediately earns its keep warm without being bulky, soft without feeling delicate and polished enough that he can wear it anywhere. Months later, it still looks brand new. Quince makes winter staples that actually hold up wool coats, leather and suede outerwear designed for real everyday use, and yes, a bunch of different men's Mongolian cashmere sweaters. Their outerwear lineup is especially strong down jackets, structured wool coats, and Italian leather pieces that keep you warm when it's actually cold, not just technically winter. Everything is made with premium materials by trusted factories that meet rigorous standards for craftsmanship and ethical production. And because Quince cuts out traditional retail markups, you're getting luxury level quality at a price that make sense. These are classic, well made pieces that don't chase trends and that's exactly why they last year after year. And if you're doing a full seasonal reset, Quince also has beautifully made options for home bath, kitchen and travel. Refresh your winter wardrobe with quint. Go to quince.com bookriot for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com bookriot free shipping 365 day returns quince.com.

[D]

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[B]

Here. It's a pretty cool spring for books. I will say it's a good January is a little funky. There's there's several things I'm very excited for and not a lot of middle and there's a lot of debut kinds of things I'm interested in. So if this is your first time playing along with us, this is how we roll. I have selected 10 finalists to be the it to contend for the it book of the month. It book being a je ne sais quoi zeitgeist, that special something that combines excitement, critical acclaim, possible sales, timeliness, high profile, buzz, quality, the whole shoot and match. I have not read any of these books. I very rarely have when I do this and that's part of the fun.

[C]

Here. Yes. Yeah, I have not started reading for January yet.

[B]

Either. I haven't either. I have. I have hidden one. Not hidden. I put it at the end because. Okay, how this works is we have a knockout situation where we go one by one and it's king of the king of the list. So the first one automatically gets through, but then it gets pit to head to head with the second choice. One of those goes ahead to find the third one. Usually I kind of random.org it but sometimes in a month where I have a strong suspicion you and I will agree on the same thing. I save it for last. Just to keep a little bit of the suspense though. What, what what we think will be and what will be are different things, Rebecca. And we are, we're batting what, 66% when we did the 75% when we did the postmortem for.

[C]

2025. I think we got like seven out of 12 for 2025, which I feel pretty good.

[B]

About. Pretty.

[C]

Good. Not a bad list. I will also say we keep a running list of all of the it looks contenders and the winner for each month that's available to Patreon subscribers. We're not going to put the list of books in the regular old show notes because that's what the podcast is for. But if you want to keep a running list, you that is something One of the additional benefits that you can [e-mail] bookriotpodcast so with that we.

[B]

Will get through this here. First up, how to Commit a Postcolonial murder by Nina McGonagli, I believe is how you say that name. January 20th coming out from Edelweiss. You're killing me here. Where I here's the thing. When I look at the detail page, it doesn't tell me the imprint. It's just not there. Not there. I've got to go back out and then go back in it's Pantheon. So you're going to hear a lot of grinching about the specifics of how these things are put together. Really good audio. I know everyone cares about this. A debut novel, Two Sisters in the summer of 1986. This is fiction. Welcome some family from India into their house in rural Wyoming where they'll be living together. I'm sure it's fine, no culture shock until the sisters decide that it's time for their uncle to die. It sounds like there's sort of a metafictional thing where they break the fourth wall and tell the audience they did it. And I am not sure if this is going to be funny. I think it's. It's funny. If you look at the COVID it's giving some satire, ironical vibes is there's like, there's like a painted fingernail hand grasping onto a jug of some chemical that I'm sure is really good for you. If you pour on someone or make them ingest.

[C]

It. It sounds like it's in the vein of my sister the serial.

[B]

Killer. Yes, I think it's very much in that vein. This is McGonagall's debut novel. Blurbs from Celeste Ng and Megha Majumdar. Ng says, I've been waiting for Nean McGonaghy's debut novel for years and it's even better than I could have imagined. We like Celeste. This is someone I think that's been on the come up short stories. McGonagalli was born in Singapore but raised in Wyoming. There is a lot of multicultural things going on here. 224.

[C]

Pages. Oh, you love to see that.

[B]

From a debut which I really, really, really like to see. So it automatically will advance. I'm quite excited for this. Yeah, that sounds great. Really good track record. I'm curious, Rebecca. I'm.

[C]

Curious. I missed this one in my own catalog combing. So I'm extra delighted to learn about this. It sounds super fun and I love my sister the serial killer and Oyinka and Braithwaite's vibe. So if this is in that vein or kind of anywhere in that, you know, constellation, I will be very happy to see it. And Celeste Ng not out there blurbing a whole lot of things so I'm inclined to pay attention.

[B]

To. I had a similar response. Maybe we just missed it. And she's been, she's run silent, run deep on blurbs for a while. I don't know. But it did strike me as well. I could just be wish casting here, but a combination. So we have Indian American people coming over to the upper Midwest. And then there's murder. Could I get this? American Woman meets Cursed Daughters. Is that what I'm looking for.

[C]

Here? That's impossible. That's a beautiful.

[B]

Dream. So anyway, very interested to see that. All right. Automatically advances to face another debut. Another one. That seems very interesting to me. If a blurb got me with our first choice, the comp got me with the second one. Because look, for readers of Colson Whitehead, Jesmyn Ward and Percival Everett, you are the queen of let's settle.

[C]

Down. Those are bold.

[B]

Claims. Very tough here. This is Burned Down Master's House by Clay Kane, coming out January 27th from an imprint I do not believe I've heard of. Dafina. Do you know.

[C]

Dafina?

[B]

No. It's distributed by Random House. I was putting this together this list this morning. I'd actually put together the list of titles last week but I was putting together my link. So I'm all ready to go. And I didn't have enough time to research what the hell exactly Dafina is. But having said that, this is Clay Kane's debut novel. It is set, see and reconstruction and people are trying to escape from these fires and things that are going on. So I don't really. It feels to me in reading it. I don't want to say bog standard because that's not fair, but a lot of Civil War, post Civil War, immediately following stories I just. I read how to Dodge a Cannonball by Donald Doyle, which I really liked last year. Is it going to be in that vein? Because I kind of feel like I did that already. On the other hand, the blurbs are really interesting. It's 288 pages. I don't really know. I don't really know. And then burn down the Master's house. There's rebellion, revenge, inglorious bastards but on a plantation vibes that this thing is giving off. Pretty interested 288 page if I didn't say it. So it's not a huge time.

[C]

Commitment. Those are. This is an interesting head to.

[B]

Head.

[C]

Yeah. Very tough novels. So I think what I'm going to do is pull one of the levers that we pull for it books which is will it get picked for a big book club or does it have a chance to get picked for a big book club? Because that is important for what kind of zeitgeist buzz will a title get? But it can really move the needle for a debut and I don't have a sales history. I haven't read either of these Books. I don't know anything about these authors, so this is as hard as books head to head can get. So I think I'm gonna advance how to Commit a Postcolonial Murder because that sort of funny satire angle can land. Well, Oyink and Braithwaite's books did get picked for big book clubs. And so I think you're right. Writing in that sort of same zone. And a female author generally stands a better chance when we're talking about Jenna. Definitely when we're talking about Rhys. Although burned down Masters House has Oprah Book Club potential. So, like, that's the kind of thing that Oprah often picks. But I think I'm going to give the edge to how to Commit a Post Colonial.

[B]

Murder. I will also say this. That's a good title. That's an interesting title. And sometimes that does you well, and sometimes it doesn't. But I think it's pretty. It's pretty interesting there. Okay. I have to not have to. I feel an obligation and an interest to include something from the Romantasy romance commercial. Things that are appearing in the top 20 Goodreads most anticipated, even though that's not really where we inhabit ourselves. But I like to. I like to visit and see what's going on over there and pick something to bring to you. Rebecca Schinsky as an emissary from the other land in which most of the books are sold right now. But that's a conversation that is in the background of everything we say here. So I looked around and I picked one that I thought it sounded interesting. It's. The author is Isabella Banyaz. She is moving up in age group to adult. This is her adult debut. It's called Graceless Heart. It's a historical romantic fantasy set in Florence. And the main character is a sculptress to Florence's most feared family. They may be immortal, who knows, but magic is forbidden. And I'm going to guess magic comes out and other things happen. Include some stuff about like, internecine Catholic battles and the Pope gets involved. Sounds kind of fun. Really beautiful. This comes out January 13th from Saturday Books. It is 488 pages. We don't know. Rebecca, tell the people we don't know what to do with these books. We don't know what to do. They sell a bunch of. Most of them don't get talked about outside of the Romantasy fans, but then they do all of a.

[C]

Sudden. Yeah. I mean, well, they sell a bunch with an asterisk. Like they sell a bunch collectively. Romantasy as a category is selling a bunch. But individual titles outside of Sarah J. Maas and the Rebecca Yarrows books and like Quicksilver have not been selling a ton to rise to the level of big national book buying conversation or to hit the bestselling books of the year list from Publishers Weekly. So I had a process question there. So many of these and they all look the same to me. How, when you go to pick the Romantasy book to put on the IT books for January, how did you pick this one? What made it stand.

[B]

Out? It just felt different. It didn't feel like it looks a little bit different. The hook was a little bit different. Again, not, not wildly so, but it just stuck out enough. That's like, okay, this is the one that I'm going to to single out because it feels now maybe I should have gone the other way. Which is the most. I don't know. Representative. Yeah. Which is the. Which is the median result? I'm not really sure. I think we didn't really talk about this as we were doing the best of the books of the year and the awards. These things fail miserably in one of the quadrants for it Books, which is critical acclaim, award season things we think could be read in 5, 10, or 20 years, they just don't get picked up. Now. There's some genre snobbery. I think that's always a part of the conversations that we have to be aware of. But I also think these don't rise to the level of what people who read books sort of professionally and think about them as a, as a profession from critical list making, curating kinds of folks. Not what we're interested Time could prove us horribly wrong. You and I have done some of the reading we've said, we've read a couple of the book talk phenomenon things, and our experience has been such that we're not super interested in wading into those waters very often. So those are our tastes and those are biases and do with them what you.

[C]

Will. Yeah. My broad brush that I'm painting with is that on a craft level, most. Most. Not all right, hashtag not all romanticies, but most romanticies that I've encountered or like even read some samples of have not been written in the way that I prefer books to be written. Like, the craft of the writing is not the thing that is the draw for most of those. And that's just the thing that is most important to me in a reading experience. You know, when we read 4th Wing, we got plenty of feedback from folks who were like you're total missing the point. No one cares if the craft is high level. This is about other things. And I totally get that. That's just not how I read. It's not how you read. I'm sure that there are some beautifully crafted romanticies and also that I as a reader am not invested in going out to find those. But my assumption is going to be that any one that you pull out of the stack has not been written with that as its highest goal. And again, I don't care what your highest goal as a reader is. It's just not min my highest goal as a reader. I'm going to pass through how to Commit a Postcolonial Murder once again because it sounds like it might be doing something newer and more original. The thing that or one of the things that I really want from a book and that I think it books value or part of the value system of these shows is something that is fresh, something that maybe is trying to do something that we haven't seen before. And I'm going to pass that one forward. And also I know that what we're talking about in these top three is probably not going to be the book that we're carrying through to the end of the episode. But I'm going to give that one one more vote of.

[B]

Confidence. Yeah. And I think we missed the point is almost the right analogy or the right cliche. It's not that we missed the point, we just don't care about that point as much. Right. And everything. I know that that's the point but it doesn't do other things and some of it is I imagine difficult. If you are writing a 600 page first in a five book series and you've got to do one every other year, that's just a different writing experience than someone who writes a book every and is doing something else with.

[C]

It. I finally got to Ali Hazelwood over the holiday break. I read the Love Hypothesis on the recommendation of many people but most especially your beloved Michelle. And that was. It's been a little while since I read a romance. I got burned by a couple romances earlier in the season where I started them and was like I wanna read a romance but the writing just isn't there. And Hazelwood is so great and the writing is high quality and like it can be done. And I love and she's got some, you know, supernatural sorts romances as well. I'm not sure that I'm going to be picking up Bride or Mate that's not my flavor, but Ali Hazelwood is doing it. It can be done, just not what I'm generally going for. It has to have the good writing for me to be.

[B]

There. And some of them will rise. Like we picked Onyx Storm for the it book of. Was it January? February.

[C]

Early. It was January last.

[B]

25. Because some of them are just undeniable. No matter what we think of them or whatever, they're going to be the book of the month. But there's not as many of those as you think for a transformative sort of genre. All right, moving along. Sometimes a book that hits book clubs and then breaks out. Right. The book clubs anymore don't really make books. That phrase, if you don't know that is basically make the book into a success sort of of its own accord. But they can move it up the staircase and get it closer to opening the door that escapes the dark basement of most. That books. Most books find themselves in. And so I picked one that I think has a pretty cool book club possibility and frankly, I'm interested. It has a good cover design and a cool setup. And that is Meet the Newman's by Jennifer.

[C]

Niven. I've been seeing this.

[B]

Everywhere. January, you have seen it everywhere. Mm. Oh, interesting. Okay, good. Well, at least for this particular exercise, this will be out by the time you are listening. This is January 6th and it is from. Come on. It is from Flatiron 300,000 print run. Grain of Salt. Grain of Salt. Grain of salt. And the setup here is it's set in the late 50s into early 60s. And there is a beloved family television show, I think, sort of like Leave it to Beaver, like. And the cast is finding themselves at the end of their run into the mid-60s. I don't know if you follow them through most of it or you pick them at the end, but this, the main action here picks up in 1964 as the worm is sort of turning on 50s, leave it to Beaver, Soda shop. Everything's hunky dory, post war black and white happiness. And then their own lives of the cast is becoming more complicated. And then the person who is making the show, we'd call him executive producer today, gets killed without the final episode being written. And so then they get together. One of the characters take something into her own hands. She hires a private investigator, I'm sorry, a private reporter to help her write the final.

[C]

Episode. Oh.

[B]

Interesting. Which is then going to be, I don't know, a much different experience than most people are used to who are fans of the show for the last 10 years. And there's stuff going on beside the point. I think this has a lot of potential to break out the comps here are Lessons in Chemistry and Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, which feels like the right kind of comp.

[C]

Stories. Hard to do better than.

[B]

That. Yeah. And those, those are ones of ones. But if you're gonna swim in this water, you might as well compare yourself to Michael Phelps, I think at this point. So I think this is a really good chance to be one of the early book club commercial fiction into literary fiction titles of the.

[C]

Year. I think that's a great call. And Flatiron knows how to do.

[B]

This. Yes, they.

[C]

Do. They are very good at marketing a book. They are no strangers to having books, books picked by the big book clubs. I think it's also smart to be dropping one of these early in the year where if you start selling well in January, you have year long momentum for book of the year. And we've seen novels do that before. I think Lessons in Chemistry came out pretty early in the year that it came.

[B]

Out. It.

[C]

Did. So that's also an interesting comp in that direction. And this sounds a little more mainstream and the title of it is a little more mainstream, which also helps. So I've put myself in an interesting corner now because I had how to Commit a Post Colonial Murder as a book club contender. But this is a book club contender and Meet the Newmans is just more straightforward and doesn't have a political angle to the, to the title at all, which is also part of trying to reach mainstream audiences. And it won't scare off like Good Morning America. So we're gonna go with Meet the Newmans here, knocking out how to commit a postcolonial.

[B]

Murder. I think that makes sense. Next on my list, this is something I remembered from a Deals, Deals, Deals episode a while.

[C]

Ago. Coming all the way.

[B]

Around. This might be, you know, I might be the first one out here talking about two women living together by Kim Hanna and Hwang Soon Woo, coming out January 26th. January 20th from Echo. Maybe you'll remember this too, Rebecca, but this was a South Korean memoir co written by two best friends who move in.

[C]

Together.

[B]

Yes. Yeah. And live together in their 40s and they were lonely and like, why don't we just live in together? And they do. And this is the memoir of what happens. And I've got to say, I'm going to be listening to this with extreme prejudice very soon. I'm very excited now. Am I just interested in putting on the list because I want to talk about it. Possibly. Is there a chance that this gets some pickup, that this becomes a thing? I think there's a little bit of a chance that the, the. If this were. If these were American people, it would be easier. I don't, you know, can they do the talk show circuits and kind of stuff? Can we. I don't know. I think that would really help. It's very unusual for the big book clubs to pick things in translation. Extremely unusual. I think there's a version of this that is more, I don't know. Friendly is the right word. I think it's going to be plenty fun and cozy, but just getting the people on, like, podcast clips and stuff and that ecosystem, I think, is just gonna be tougher. So that would be a demerit. But having said that, you know, we've seen these cozy fantasy mysteries from Japan and Korea really take.

[C]

Action.

[B]

Yeah. And I think there's a chance this does something. Rebecca. So I don't know. I bring it before you. What do you think? Am I nuts.

[C]

Here? I mean, there's really interesting. Yeah. I think since we don't know about the authors directly or, like, what the press tour might be like, it is hard to guess. But this subject matter does have a lot of hooks for, like, profiles, interviews. It's the kind of thing NPR might want to talk about. It's also, I think, relevant to another big ongoing news story about, like, the men are not okay. Like, I don't know what these women's, like, their whole backstories were yet, but I'm gonna. Because I will also be listening to this very quickly. But there has been an increasing conversation among women, at least here in the US it's been all over op EDS of like, dating is mise miserable. Women are achieving and building the lives that they want and kind of looking at the structures of compulsory heterosexuality. And more of them are opting out. Fewer women in their twenties now than men say that they want to get married at some point. Straight people. So there's a lot of, I think, interest in alternative choices that you could make about how to set up a life and have support and partnership and companionship and community outside of the conventional structures of a romantic nuclear family. The translation stuff and what the press tour will be like here, if there will be a press tour are really big questions. So I don't think this can knock out Meet the Newmans, but I do like it as a book that we're talking about this month because it has it book potential and it could do something really.

[B]

Interesting. I should also say this is being published by Echo, which is a big commercial into literary imprint. They also know how to do these kinds of books. So that's. That's pretty interesting to me. So for those of you listening along, write this one down. Two Women Living Together by Kim Hana and Huang Sun Wo Translated by Jean Ping Just so everyone gets that but two women living together. Quick Google will do that for you. Moving on into the could get picked up a book club but also does something interesting. Thirti Umragar's honor was a Reese pick. Her new book is coming out January 27th. It's called Missing Sam. A woman goes missing on her morning run and her wife is trying to go find her but also exonerate herself from being implicated. The kind of psychological thriller we get. I feel like this is the long overcoat of of Gone Girl is continuing to have things crawl out from under there and new spins and new kinds of perspective. Yeah right. And new perspectives. I find them all pretty interesting. If this wasn't 3D Umragar, I may have just sort of passed over this by another one. But I really like what she's done in the past. I believe this is Grove Sorry, Algonquin, which is tends to mean it's going to be more literary, but Algonquin has had plenty of hits. Their new home over at Hachette. This is all insider baseball, but they're they're part of the Hachette publishing group now. 320 pages, 40K announced print run. Not a huge one, but an early season domestic thriller with a little bit of a twist. These are two women where one of them is accused essentially of making the other one go away. A little bit different maybe. I can only imagine the danger. Politics. That could be quite interesting. And then Umragar is a good writer and there's a high floor to what she can do with this book. So that's what I'm.

[C]

Saying. This is a, I think extension of the conversation we were having about romantasy and genre. Umragar's a great example of an author who works within the constraints of genre and elevates the form and makes it more interesting by complicating the typical domestic suspense kind of story. And her writing is of a higher level. She's also got an established name and reputation. Rhys is no stranger to repeat pics as well like it pays to be friends with Reese or to have been picked in the past. So I'm going to go with missing Sam by 3D. Umragar. We're going to knock out Meet the.

[B]

Newmans. The next one here is a debut and I maybe should have put it in our earlier scrum of debut because it's kind of hard now to. To compete with folks with some track record. I put it here for this, Rebecca, for this couple of reasons. Rebecca. 1 the comp, which I'll tell you in just a second, which is quite amazing. I also think that Margo's got money troubles, maybe spinning off some related kinds of things or maybe I'm just looking at through those lens. I know that that that adaptation is in production. I've seen some early publicity from that. This one is called Just Watch me. The author is Liora Torenberg. It's her debut. The comp is Fleabag meets Big Switch, which I think is a very big Swiss, which I think is extremely interesting as a.

[C]

Computer. Yes.

[B]

Okay. Fleabag meets anything gets my attention. I'll just put that out there right now. An unusual experience and I think something that a lot of people would like to try to be able to write and.

[C]

Watch. Women being dirt.

[B]

Bags. Yeah. And the meta ness of that. I can, I can imagine a lot of writers being like, ooh, I would like to. I would like to perform that trick. Spoiler alert. It's harder than it looks. Anyway, this is the debut novel of Torrenberg and it is about a woman who livestreams her life for seven days to raise money to save her comatose system. So you see what I'm getting kind of like with Margo's got Money Trouble Capitalist hellscape meets digital money making schemes. And let me just tell you that Del Danvers, the main character is not going great for her. And that's. This is the kind of thing you do when you have no other kinds of options. Each chapter is one day of the week, which I think is a very cool structure. So it's a taught, seven chapters. Let me just say this publicist, if you put taught and it's 280 pages, I respect you, I see you and I will give you a more than average shake at reading you a tragic comedy about Internet economy and the terror of being seen. Rebecca, I just think this sounds cool. Just Watch Me by Lior.

[C]

Torrenburg. I'm torn about this choice because umragar has that established name and we know that the book is likely to be good. The writing will be high quality. She's gotten picked in the past, but this is a very zeitgeisty kind of Topic for a lot of reasons. Like, what is a capitalist hellscape that we're in? How bad is the Internet? Can you use the bad parts of the Internet in your own favor? What is that? Like, how complex can it be? Margot's Got Money Trouble is a great comp, but also a really high bar to set. Like, that's a wonderful book and the best version of that story that I've seen so far. I think it will be hard for another title to sort of equal that in my estimation, but a lot of folks are going to try. I could see a book club doing something like this. It really depends on how spicy the things are that end up on screen in those seven days and whether the complexity of it is more in her interpersonal and family life or if it's like kind of sexy. If it verges on being sexy, that's going to make it harder for a book.

[B]

Club. It doesn't sound that way. It sounds maybe a little more quotidian but mundane. But it could be wrong. Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Yeah. And I know there are like, there are some live streamers who have been streaming 24 hours for like years at this point. And frankly, I'm ready for your memoir. Like the actual what that's been like. I don't want to watch your live stream, but I want to hear about the experience. I think I'm going to give 3D Umragar the edge here. It's just a feeling that I.

[B]

Have. Okay, I don't disagree. We're into the top three now. And before we get to the top two, I'm not sure what to do with this one because the dads have all this. Have pre ordered this. And Chuck Klosterman has now entered into. He's the Bill Bryson for Gen X as far as I can.

[C]

Tell. I think that's.

[B]

Right. He's not doing exactly the same thing like Bill Bryson, but he's very much writing about things that adult people, especially men, are interested in. I think the 90s was a crossover hit. But Football by Chuck Klosterman is. And it's got this like leather looking cover with two old timey football, football players on it. It is Closerman's great meditation on what football is and what it means. He's a huge college football fan. A sports fan. He's a regular guest on the Bill Simmons podcast, which is the largest sports podcast in the world. And this comes out in January. And Rebecca, what the hell do you do with this? Because it's gonna sell like hotcakes. It's gonna do great, I.

[C]

Think. Why is it not coming.

[B]

Out? Or why did not come out in.

[C]

October? Yeah. Or. Yeah, May before Father's Day. Would have been my pick if I were.

[B]

Marketing. But here's the other thing. The dads don't care, Rebecca. And the. And the. And the daughters who buy books for their dads. This is going to be on tables Dad's gifts for the next million years. I'm very much looking forward to it as someone who's interested in football, but actually maybe more interested in hearing about someone write about football. So what do you. What do you do with this, Rebecca? Because it's sort of outside the ecosystem. It's like kind of a weird stray.

[C]

Radical. I'm so happy for you that this book is coming out. I love Closer Men, but it has to be topically interesting to me. So, like the 90s was a crossover. Because I'm gonna go there. The only person whose philosophy of sports I'm interested in at this point is Hanif Abdurakiv. And we got that already with. There's always this year. Um, so I don't know about the kind of crossover potential that is required for an IT book out of something called Football by Chuck Klosterman. Yes, it will sell. It will probably be good. It will probably show up on some best of lists at the end of the year if it sells and is good. He tends to do that. A lot of gifting potential. But, like, you're not going to get a book club pick out of it. A lot of IT bookiness is driven by women readers because women are driving the economy of publishing. And this is not that there are not women who like football, but this is pretty squarely marketed to the dads, both literal and spiritual. So I'm going to keep going with 3D Oomregar. But I think Closterman deserves a spot on the IT books list today and should be in the conversation. Just unlikely that it was going to win the.

[B]

Month. Yeah. If Stephen Jay Gould care about linebackers more than he cared about dinosaurs. If Steve Martin played quarterback instead of a banjo, it would be nothing like this. And the blurb. They had a great time doing the publicity for Football by Chuck Klosterman. I'm very interested and unhappy about this next one. And I'll tell. I'll tell you why. First of all, I'm extraordinarily interested to see what the next act in Jeanette McCurdy's writing career is. And we're going to find out on January 20, when she moves from memoir into the realm of fiction. I would have bet and lost quite a bit of money that her next book would be another memoir. Would have been a sort of later adult actress in the business, but who's also fallen out of it. Maybe even meta about having one of the. I'm not going to do off the top of my dome, but of memoirs of the last 10 years, would you put anything above I'm glad my mom died in terms of it bookiness evaluation, I don't think we could. Good. How.

[C]

Cool. I don't think so. Yeah, it's just a four. Basically a four quadrant hit in publishing.

[B]

Yeah. So I'm excited about all that. The thing I don't like About Half his age by Jeanette McCurdy is It's My least favorite trope in all of writing, which is a student teacher affair. This one at the very least seems to be coming from the point of view of the. The young woman student towards a. A paunch having nuclear family. Kind of middle of the road teacher figure. Yeah. I don't know, Rebecca. I'm very torn. You got to help me.

[C]

Here. I have seen this, you know, floating across the.

[B]

Catalogs. Of course you have. It's a huge. This is a huge deal for.

[C]

Just like, read those synopsis through my fingers of like. Like just makes me nervous. This is a hard thing to do well for like, for established, very skilled fiction writers. And I don't know anything about Jennette McCurdy's fiction skills. We know that the memoir was very compelling, but this is a huge question mark for me also. Like, what's the flavor? Is this a sort of me too inflected or is this student, like, into.

[B]

It? Here, here. It just sounds like the main character's name is Waldo. Right. And here's the description. Waldo is ravenous, horny, blunt, naive, wise, impulsive, lonely, angry, false for hurting, perceptive, endlessly wanting in the thing she wants most of all. Mr. Corgi, her creative writing teacher. And the white and the wife and the.

[C]

Kid. Creative.

[B]

Writing. Yeah, I know. Which is also your favorite because we get to talk about writing. She doesn't know why, but she does. So it's like from her point of view. She's 17, which again, look, I don't know. I don't know how good the reviews are gonna have to be for to get me to pick this up because I just. I've done this story a billion times. It's gonna have to be kind of amazing for me to even Consider reading.

[C]

This. Three writers that I would entertain this story from and Jeanette McCurdy is not one of them. Yeah, at least not off the dome. This makes me so NER for so many reasons. And I'm just going to leave it there and we're going to carry 3D Umragar through to face off against the 10th.

[B]

Book. Well, this is all moot because in the, in the. In the killer spot, in the hammer spot, we have Vigil by George Saunders, which yes, we do, lets us get out of this very uncomfortable reality which is without it, it would be only our qualms films choosing us leading us away from the McCurdy because I think that is going to be very much the book of the month. But I think Saunders. What can we say about George Saunders before we even talk about. I tell people what this book is supposed to be about. Maybe the number one thing is what the topic of the book. He's one of the few writers where it doesn't matter. It just doesn't.

[C]

Matter. He can do anything and he has done many things. He's on this run of books that. That consider death. And this is pitched as a companion but not a sequel to Lincoln and the Bardo which I'm currently rereading. And just like George Saunders, man just hits on a different level. He might be taking over the Barbara Kingsolver most underappreciated author spot for me. Like can win the Man Booker Prize, but we still talk about him as like your favorite writer's favorite writer. Why is George Saunders not a household name? I really need to know. All I know about Vigil is this has something to do with contemplating mortality and then therefore like what our lives mean in the context of the fact that we will die. I don't need to know anything.

[B]

Else. No, yeah, the setup is here is that there's some version of a kind of grim reaper or. Oh no, I've forgotten the name of my. The boatman Chiron that ushers people from this life into the next. But this one's name is Jill Dahl Blaine. And the person, I don't know if this person they're using gender. She is needing to shepherd into the afterlife is an oil company.

[C]

CEO.

[B]

Interesting. And that also doesn't matter really. It's indicative. But it's by no means determine of what this book is going to be about. It also sounds like like this main character or that this, this Chiron is someone who died and has done 343 passages with other people. And maybe you get to pass on the mantle at some point. I'm not really sure. Again, I'm saying all these things because I feel like it's my duty. At least tell you something about the book description. As a Sonderite, I assure you that that will be meaningful. But that's like reviewing a restaurant based on the Forks. It's just not going to be the thing. It's going to be some other experience of.

[C]

It. I've been about so much as I'm rereading Lincoln and the Bardo is how much, how insufficient any synopsis is for Saunders. Because the synopsis of Lincoln and the Bardo is Abraham Lincoln's young son has died. And after they put him in the crypt, Lincoln goes back to the cemetery at night to visit his young son and like to hold the body. And that's the pitch. But it's like it's written from the perspectives of the souls of other people that are in this sort of in between space. And also this, like, masterful collage of real quotes from historical documents about Lincoln and that time of his presidency. It's a year into the Civil War. It also manages to be about morality and race because the Civil War is happening, turns out. And it's really funny. And like, we've talked recently about how literary fiction. One of the hallmarks, I think, is that it's impossible to give an elevator pitch for like a real literary novel because it's never about the thing that is, or it's not just about the thing that happens. But all of those words you just said about Vigil I'm sure will be true. And there will also be many other things that happen, many other things that it is about. When the book was announced and we were both like, yeah, we're getting another Saunders in 2026, he gave this great quote about basically hoping that he writes the kind of fiction that lingers in the questions and considers morality and what it's all about without trying to declare any answers. There's nothing ever, like, proclamationy or preachy about Sanders. Just a master, I think, really. I don't know if he's peaked yet. And to have as many books under his belt as somebody like Sanders does and to have, like, won the prizes and gotten the recognition. But I feel like he just continues to surprise me and to get better and better. Absolutely. Number one with a.

[B]

Bullet.

[C]

It. Book of the.

[B]

Month. Not particularly. Close. Close. One of the few writers had a new book out and I went to go see what the tour stops were. Unfortunately not coming to Portland. Or even to Seattle. I think I would have traveled up to Seattle to maybe even see. Closest to me is San Francisco. I also think it matters that he has over time one of the more significant newsletters. I think it's called Storycraft. I don't know. I subscribe to. I don't read it every time because I'm not a short story writer, but I will dive into it. And the last book of his, we both really liked Liberation Day, but it was a collection of short stories. It's been a while since a novel. And this one's 192 pages, which is extremely rare of a length of a book. Like usually it's a novella. Novella or like 192 is very strange. And there's been a lot of people reading Saunders and he's gotten a more of a platform form. I wonder if this could be a breakout. I thought it was gonna be Lincoln the Bardo and it was to some degree put him into a different kinds of conversation, I think. But I wonder about this one. I do, I do.

[C]

Wonder. Yeah, in the last couple years I've bumped into George Saunders on like a couple mainstream.

[B]

Podcasts. Like what's that like, I don't think I've ever listened to him.

[C]

Talk. Yeah, I mean lovely and just thoughtful, contemplative. Kind of like he showed up on a meditation podcast and then also on one of the big pop culture interview show. Like real range on Saunders. Just an interesting, thoughtful guy. But there is, I think, real platform breakout potential for him just to finally be more widely recognized and read. Because one of the things you get with Saunders is usually award nominations, best books of the year lists, but not a popularity, not huge.

[B]

Sales.

[C]

And. And we got to get over that. Like this is great writing and it's not intimidating. It's not hard writing. George Saunders does.

[B]

Not. It's so much stranger than most people want to deal with Rebecca. And I think that's where we forget that our tolerance, nay excitement connoisseurship for genre bending in a way that we really mean genre bending. Like it's not just like I'm mixing mystery with romance. It's like I'm doing things that we don't even know what the words for these things are are. But yeah, won the Man Booker Prize. His. His favorite genre is the short story. His favorite mode is the short story. He wrote a whole book about just like reading Russian writers a swim in a pond in the rain, which is terrific. But like he. He's got this substack with a lot of subscribers and he teaches us in Syracuse. Like he he's really in the catbird seat of doing what he wants to do in a way that so few other people are far and not for nothing, there are a phalanx of writers he has taught and mentored over the years. I think if we were to power rank beloved literary elder states people.

[C]

Sanders is way up there at this point, way up there and he will draw out praise from the folks. Also at the highest level, like my paperback of Lincoln in the Bardo has an incredible quote from Colson Whitehead's review of it in the New York Times Book.

[B]

Review. CW getting out to review in the Gray Lady. It's like Saunders and I don't know what the rest of the list is. So Vigil by George Saunders. I think if that book didn't come out or maybe if we were different people, if we're the publishing industry, I think the eyes of the publishing industry are probably looking pretty hard at Half his age by Jeanette.

[C]

McCurdy. Oh yes.

[B]

Yeah. All right. Thank you so much. You can find the show notes book riot.com listen but know that the list of books are not there. You got to listen in or sign up for the patreon. Go to patreon.com bookriotpodcast you can find it there. Shoot us an email podcastbookriot.com go check out zero to well read. You can see over there we've done some non book things sort of in the interregnum period between Christmas and New Year's and then waiting for you A Deep Dive into Little Wisdom Women by Louisa May Alcott. Rebecca, thank you so much. We did.

[C]

It. Happy New.