The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2024, Goodreads Choice Winners, Spotify's Most-Listened Audiobooks, and more.

Summary

Podcast Summary: Book Riot - The Podcast Episode Title: The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2024, Goodreads Choice Winners, Spotify's Most-Listened Audiobooks, and more
Hosts: Jeff O'Neill & Rebecca Schinsky
Release Date: December 9, 2024

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I. Navigating Personal Challenges

Timestamp: 01:00 - 07:58

Jeff and Rebecca kick off the episode with candid discussions about personal hardships. Jeff shares his recent battle with kidney stones, describing the excruciating pain and the daunting experience of hospital visits:

Jeff O'Neill [03:24]: "Kidney stones are the worst... I had something Thursday morning... this is the most uncomfortable I've ever been in."

Rebecca contributes with her own coping mechanisms, highlighting marijuana and meditation as her tools for managing stress:

Rebecca Schinsky [01:34]: "Marijuana and meditation. That's what I'm doing."

II. Cormac McCarthy's Controversial Legacy

Timestamp: 10:46 - 18:33

The hosts delve into the unsettling revelations surrounding acclaimed author Cormac McCarthy. Rebecca discusses a Vanity Fair article revealing McCarthy's inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old, sparking a deep conversation about separating art from the artist:

Rebecca Schinsky [11:37]: "McCarthy was exercising terrible judgment as a 42-year-old who initiates this relationship and keeps it secret for decades."

Jeff expresses his conflicted feelings, acknowledging McCarthy's literary significance while grappling with the moral implications:

Jeff O'Neill [15:32]: "I'm really struggling with how to figure this out, to be honest with you."

They explore the broader societal shifts in understanding such relationships and the ongoing debate about McCarthy's place in literary canon. Rebecca emphasizes the complexity of individual experiences and the evolving cultural perspectives:

Rebecca Schinsky [13:25]: "She saw this as a way out of a difficult situation... It doesn't make it okay."

III. Costco's Year-Round Book Sales Decision

Timestamp: 23:56 - 31:01

Jeff and Rebecca analyze Costco's strategic move to maintain year-round book sales in 100 of its 600 locations. They discuss the logistical challenges, such as labor intensity and inventory management:

Jeff O'Neill [26:08]: "Books come in cartons of 12 or 24 and they have to be unloaded one at a time and stacked up on tables."

Rebecca adds that this decision aims to gather data on year-round sales viability, mirroring the practices of independent bookstores:

Rebecca Schinsky [26:34]: "They will keep them in a hundred stores... to provide helpful data to Costco about what the year-round sales can look like."

The conversation touches on the potential financial implications for both Costco and the publishing industry, pondering whether this limited expansion will lead to broader adoption or eventual retraction.

IV. Goodreads Choice Awards 2024

Timestamp: 34:26 - 38:46

The hosts review the latest Goodreads Choice Winners, expressing mixed reactions to the selections. Jeff critiques the list for its lack of diversity and prevalence of mainstream titles:

Jeff O'Neill [34:26]: "This list is an anomaly... it's almost entirely white."

Rebecca echoes concerns about representation, noting the disconnect between publishing efforts to diversify and the voting outcomes:

Rebecca Schinsky [38:12]: "The Goodreads Choice Awards is the sharpest reminder... that publishing is working hard to put out books by people from marginalized backgrounds."

They discuss specific winners, such as Emily Henry's Funny Story, highlighting its appeal among romance readers despite not aligning with their personal preferences.

V. Spotify's Most-Listened Audiobooks

Timestamp: 31:01 - 34:32

Jeff shares his observations on Spotify's top audiobooks, remarking on the dominance of romance and mainstream titles. He expresses disappointment over the lack of diverse and niche genres:

Jeff O'Neill [34:32]: "It's just a flattened list... the least interesting, lowest common denominator versions of things are the ones that get elevated."

Rebecca concurs, suggesting that algorithm-driven recommendations favor widely appealing content, limiting exposure to more varied literary works.

VI. The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2024

Timestamp: 40:40 - 50:09

Jeff and Rebecca assess their predictions against the New York Times' list of 100 Notable Books. They reveal that out of 15 predictions, 11 made the cut, with 5 additional accurate selections from their secondary tier:

Jeff O'Neill [41:01]: "Five of those we did almost as well, actually. We did a higher hit rate on the B tier as percentage goes."

The hosts critique the list's structure, pointing out limitations such as the alphabetical ordering of the top 10 and the inclusion of books they deemed unworthy, like All Fours by Dolly Alderton:

Rebecca Schinsky [50:09]: "I just spent the whole season clicking on links to top books of the year lists from tons of publications and every one of them starts with all fours because that's the damn Alphabet."

They advocate for a more nuanced categorization, allowing for a clearer representation of the year's literary achievements.

VII. Featured Book Discussions

Timestamp: 55:39 - 73:12

Rental House by Wakey Wang

Jeff and Rebecca share their experiences reading Wakey Wang's Rental House, praising its dry humor and sharp commentary on marital dynamics:

Rebecca Schinsky [59:46]: "It's driven all... There's like a rage under it as well."

They discuss the novel's exploration of a couple navigating complex family interactions during rental stays, resonating with listeners who have experienced similar familial tensions.

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder

Rebecca highlights Nightbitch as a standout, appreciating its bold narrative about motherhood and identity:

Rebecca Schinsky [56:15]: "It's a righteously ragey book about what happens to women in our society and especially in heterosexual relationships once they become mothers."

Jeff humorously compares the protagonist's metamorphosis into a dog to the titular All Fours:

Jeff O'Neill [56:10]: "Do you feel like you're turning into a dog?"

The West Wing Book by Mary McCormick and Melissa Fitzgerald

Jeff reviews The West Wing Book, expressing a desire for more in-depth discussions about the show's conclusion:

Jeff O'Neill [65:06]: "Why did the show end the way it did?"

Rebecca agrees, suggesting an oral history approach to better capture the show's legacy and behind-the-scenes insights.

VIII. Concluding Thoughts

Timestamp: 73:53 - 74:09

Jeff and Rebecca wrap up the episode by reflecting on the chaotic yet insightful conversations, acknowledging their tangents as part of the show's charm:

Jeff O'Neill [73:53]: "What are we doing here with our podcast if we're not occasionally going off tangent."

Rebecca encourages listeners to explore the discussed books, emphasizing the value of varied perspectives in literature.

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Notable Quotes:

• Jeff O'Neill [03:24]: "Kidney stones are the worst... I had something Thursday morning... this is the most uncomfortable I've ever been in."

• Rebecca Schinsky [11:37]: "McCarthy was exercising terrible judgment as a 42-year-old who initiates this relationship and keeps it secret for decades."

• Jeff O'Neill [34:26]: "This list is an anomaly... it's almost entirely white."

• Rebecca Schinsky [56:15]: "It's a righteously ragey book about what happens to women in our society and especially in heterosexual relationships once they become mothers."

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This episode of Book Riot - The Podcast offers a blend of personal anecdotes, critical literary discussions, and industry analysis, providing listeners with a comprehensive overview of the year's notable happenings in the literary world. Jeff and Rebecca's candid dialogue and thoughtful insights make the episode a valuable resource for avid readers and industry enthusiasts alike.

Transcript

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This episode is brought to you by Google Gemini.

[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

And by the way, this script was.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Actually read by Gemini. Download the Gemini app for iOS and Android today. Must be 18 to use Gemini Live. This episode is brought to you by Dutch Bros. Big smiles, rocking tunes and epic drinks. Dutch Bros. Is all about you. Choose from a variety of customizable handcrafted beverages like our rebel energy drinks, coffees, teas and more. Download the Dutch Bros app for a free medium drink. Plus find your nearest shop, order ahead and start earning rewards offer valid for.

[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

See Dutchbros.com this is the Book Riot podcast. I'm Jeff O'Neill.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And we come to you from the suburbs of chaos town.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We're not yet.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's a walkable city. It's a short commute, you know, but you know, Rebecca's got things going on. My. My family is completely sick. You're getting this late because I was in the hospital with kidney stones and we're just. I'm not even sure. Tape and glue and gum. What are we holding this together? Willpower, privilege. Like what is. How are we even here today?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Marijuana and meditation. That's what I'm doing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think mine is Schedule 2 Narcotics and Chex mix is largely.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I've. I'm a longtime fan of the National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. That's my favorite holiday movie. And I am just silently chanting to myself, look around you, Ellen. We're standing at the threshold of hell.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We both read Rental House. I looked in frontless foyer foyer and I'm like, you know, that's not too bad.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Close to home, baby. I got aging in laws and we got some close to home business happening with.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Boy oh boy, I tell you what. So anyway, we're. We're kind of. We're kind of operating without a net here a little bit. Let me just tell you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Can we even say we're being held together by anything? I don't think so.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't know. I don't know. I. Let me just. I'll tell you my quick story. So if a lot of people out there maybe have heard that kidney stones are the worst. I had an episode seven years ago. And about 10% of people will get a kidney stone. Well, or will notice a kidney stone. I guess that's a whole different thing. And then 70% of those will get another one. And I was like, it was a few years. I was like, maybe it was a one off kind of a thing. Hasn't become chronic. I'm luckily not one of those people that's going to get. I mean, like Michelle De Montan, like, famously had this and like, people get it and that sucks. And I literally don't know how you all survive dayto day, but I had something Thursday morning. I was like, oh, this feels familiar because once you have one, it's ptsd. I mean, I'm not, I'm kind of not kidding. I'm not a doctor or anything, but like, oh, this is familiar. And it hurts really bad. And the first time was more scary because, like, it hurts so bad. Like, do I have pancreatic cancer? Did I swallow a ninja star? Like, what is happening here? This time I was a little more. Oh, yes, I know.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Apparently hospitals are like reworking their pain scale and kidney stones is right next to a birth giving birth without any anesthetic.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, it's pretty rough. Michelle tells the story. The first time I went in with kidney stones and they ask you and they said, what's on your pants? I said 8 out of 10. And I'm doubled over in pain, like sweating.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, what's a 10, man?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Why do you say 10? Like, well, I, I kind of imagine if you like you got your arm cut off in a car wreck, that probably hurts more. So even then I'm being Jeff calibrating.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Myself Midwesterners on the.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I haven't been at that point completely undone. But there, there does come a time, at least for me and how mine present where I'm not really myself anymore. Like, I kind of become rude and this is not how I operate at all. Altering in that regard. And I didn't know this, but the threshold for something a kidney stone that you can pass without a surgical or they've got some sonic stuff where they shake that little bastard. Sounds like a lot of fun. Also is like 5 millimeters. And on my CT scan, this one was 6.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Of course it was.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And it was actually moving. I don't want to get into the Gory Details, though. We're very, very close to them. The Gory Gory Details is a strip mall in Chaos Town.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Hello and welcome. This podcast is not what you were expecting today, but we'll get there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And so I'm like, so I'm asking the doctor. So do I need to have surgery? Like, I don't like to be bigger than the thing for passing the rock through my guts. And he's like, well, the nice thing is that you're tall. You're big, and so you've got a little more plumbing. Right. Oh, the old saying. Big feet, wide urethra.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, my God. That's the sentence you just said.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So anyway, it was extremely painful and it sucked real bad. And, And I've got to say, I may have to go full influencer here to get a Stanley cup the size of a, like a garbage can. I'll wear the big dumb gray. I'll make my floors gray. I'll turn everything beige. I'll do whatever it takes not to do this again. So I'm mostly going to be spending my time in the bathroom from now until I die.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Just to avoid this happening again.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Let me show you my enormous 64 ounce.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm going to have to do that. I'm going to have to do.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They sell them in pairs of two at Costco.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I mean, one for. I'm twice your size.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm gonna need like those beer can helmets just with Pedialyte, a foam dome.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But just for staying hydrated.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Just a banana. I'm just to hook myself up to a banana bag every night when I go to bed in a catheter because all I'm gonna do, I'm, I'm only, I'm only gonna be a meat vessel to service my kidneys so that I do not get kidney stones anymore.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There was a woman in my yoga training who had a water bottle. She, she had chronic migraines, partially because she was always dehydrated, and she had a water bottle that had bluetoot, an app that would harass you on your apple watch to drink water on a regular basis.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Is there a black. Is Black Friday over? Can I still get one?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm sure we can find one for you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Whoa. So, so miserable. And we'll move on in a moment. I was like. I had the second worst moment of my life over the last weekend. My first worst moment is for me and maybe for Rebecca. Off. I think I told you about this before. Anyway, so I, I, I. So the, the other thing is, went to the er. It was a three and a half hour wait by the time I checked in till I got in to see a doctor. And in that time, they have you go do blood work. And there was a moment when I think probably in hindsight, the stone was moving through the worst part of whatever it was, and I'm just absolutely miserable. My body also thinks any medication or anything really happening is poison. So I get nauseous about everything. So I'm always, you know, any medication you give me or whatever. So I'm getting ready to throw up. And the only worse thing than throwing up is the three minutes before you throw up. Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So I'm doing that, and the woman is trying to take my blood and I'm dehydrated and I'm old, so my veins are moving around. It's like trying. It's like. It's like trying to stick a fish out of water. And I thought to myself, and I said to Michelle, oh, this is the worst. This is actually the most pain. This is the most uncomfortable I've ever been in. Number one was not about my own physical pain. I'll keep that private there. But anyway, so I come to you on the other side of the worst nine minute of my life.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Glad you survived.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And the only thing I'd rather talk about less is Cormac McCarthy's past.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There's that segue.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There we go. But we're gonna get into all the news of the week after our first sponsor break. The holidays are about spending time with your loved ones and creating magical memories.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That will last a lifetime.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So whether it's family and friends you haven't seen in a while, or those who you see all the time, share holiday magic this season with an ice cold Coca Cola. Copyright 2024 the Coca Cola Company this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Episode is brought to you by AWS.

[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

For [e-mail] learnmore this year, Santa's bringing the power of Energizer into his workshop.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Whoa.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The Energizer Bunny's got so much power. Wait, he's powered up all the toys? I think that means we're done for the. I love this bunny. He's the hardest working helper the North Pole has ever seen.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And he wants all your gifts to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Have the power of the number one.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Longest lasting AA battery.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So this holiday season, stock up on.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Santa's and the elves favorite battery, Energizer Ultimate Lithium. Before we do that, you can do a couple things for us if you want, if you like to. We've done holiday recommendations. We One thing I've been doing the last few days I've been on my laptop because I couldn't stand up or eat or really enjoy any of life's pleasures is I have been answering emails from listeners if they've had link breaking recommendation requests. So you can get those in there. But if you want to return the favor and follow the POD on Apple or Spotify, wherever you listen and then share the show, give a rating. A nice review Rebecca sent along. I'm going to put on the BR Instagram our Spotify number is very nice things to say there's that'd be very nice too. Also, if you're looking for a gift, we've already done our gifting Books of the year. We're getting to our favorites of the year for on Thursday, I guess, or later in the week. But MyTBR Co, that's Book Riot's own book recommendation service, you can give a gift for as little as $15. You can also give up to a year's worth of hardbacks that come right to the door for someone in your life who likes to read or maybe they want to get into reading more or they really love to read and they like specific kind of books. They can fill out a personalized profile of what kind of books they're looking for. And expert team of bibliologists have called them the real humans will give recommendations, explain why there's a recommendation to it, and then they can get at their library or as a hard cover there Mytbr Co right now. It's been a while since we have a regular news show, Rebecca, so it feels like it's potpourri. I don't know what to say about this, McCarthy. I mean I really don't know at this point. People emailed us and they like did you see this? Like yes, we saw it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We did.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Thank you for the none of this Here is that Cormac McCarthy entered into a sexual relationship with a young woman when she was 16 and he was in his early 40s, I think that is correct.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

He was 42. She was 16.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Unfortunately, I read this once and the details are now forever emblazoned on my mind. There's nothing I can do with it that there. There's some secondary stuff about how this piece was actually presented, which I don't think is that interesting. A super badly written piece that was all over the place seems like an interesting woman. Thank the stars that she seems to have come through it okay. This was not a situation where she was, look, you shouldn't do this. I'm not. I'm not. But, like, there are scales and there are spectrums of these kinds of things on the spectrum of outcomes. This sounds like about as went as well as this could for this young woman, and I'm so grateful for that. Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think the public's reading of what McCarthy's behavior is, you know, from a criminal perspective, which certainly this is criminal behavior. But the woman, Augusta Britt, who had the relationship with him for decades, they were still in some form of a relationship right up until his death, does not talk about her own experience as that of, you know, being victimized or preyed upon. The piece in Vanity Fair that broke the story is by Vincenzo Barney. As you were saying, it does have a really weird tone that like, opens with this is the weirdest love story in literary history and just completely elides the abusive nature of the relationship. It comes out later that Vincenzo Barney is writing a book about this relationship that Augusta Britt and Cormac McCarthy had. There's been a lot of ink spilled about this, and the New York Times has done some follow ups. Alexandra Alter and Elizabeth Harris. Harris, yes. Have been following up and sort of offering a more objective perspective on it. So if you want to get into that. But the headline is, we got some questions to ask about Cormac McCarthy. And I think anybody who encounters this and is like, how could this woman have this response to what's clearly what looks from the outside to be clearly a predatory relationship? I would her Jill Clements memoir, Consent, that came out earlier this year. She had a similar kind of relationship when she was in her late teens with a man who was middle aged, was her art teacher at the time. She found it to be very romantic and exciting. They were married to each other for decades. And after he passed and metoo happened, she began to ask questions about the relationship. She hasn't fully reframed it, but it's a short book, it's interesting on audio, and I did find it to be both challenging and expansive about how we understand these kinds of things. So reexamining Cormac McCarthy on our bookshelves, I guess, is where we're.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't really know. I mean, I don't know what to do with this myself. Like, I literally don't because I've talked before about how McCarthy is important to me. I had one of his books on my ballot. I talked to. I've. Look, I love the work. It's super meaningful to me. And this is not amazing. It's also not the worst kind of news. This is not an Alice Monroe secretly harbor. You know, it's not that, but it's also not nothing we are coming into. And you and I have talked about this before. We've talked about this internally, like what to do with these kinds of stories and people and a decision tree. And you, you wait like McCarthy's dead. She seems okay. Luckily still not great. So you don't want to sweep it on the rug. But it's also something where you put a black x through Cormac McCarthy forever and ever. Amen. Maybe I'm kind of in a maybe, but I think the. I didn't read the clone, but in hearing you talk about I read some reviews it got. It didn't do quite the same thing that knife did for me about free speech, but it did make me wonder a little bit about. Okay. And this is an exercise I used to do with my students when I taught this class called America's Idea. It doesn't really matter, but one of the logic exercises we did is like, when do you become an adult? According to the laws and everything else, when are you an adult? And basically they came with sometime between 16 and 35, right? Because 16, you can smoke cigarettes, you can't buy them, which is weird.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You can drive 18, you can vote.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You can drive in most places at 18, you get another set of things at 21. But then you can't be President of the United states till you're 35, right? That's sort of the last shoe to drop. So somewhere in there begins. And the other thing is like, is it if you're some 16 year olds are more mature than 19 year olds and vice versa, we do have the law. Again, do not do this. 42 year old guys. Let's not do this. But in terms of like, is this a death penalty for engaging with Corb McCarthy's work? I can certainly understand if it is for you, it might be for me eventually, but I'm really struggling with how to figure this out, to be honest with you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, Augusta Britt's take on her experience here, the way that she processed it and the way she understands the relationship, I do think is important information. McCarthy was exercising terrible judgment as a 42 year old who initiates this relationship and keeps it secret for decades and decades. And like he knows that this is a thing to keep secret. You know, and she participated in that as well. It does matter how, like we talk about believing victims and believing women. It does matter how she reports her experience. It matters the story that she's told about it. I also don't think it's, you know, coincidental that she and Jill Clement are of a similar generation where they grew, like the framing that you grow up inside shapes that in the same way that, like, when I was in middle school, it was common for boys to run around and like, snap girls bra straps or smack you on the butt. And a teacher might tell you you couldn't do that. But we weren't talking about sexual harassment. We weren't talking about it as abuse. Like, my understanding of those behaviors and whether they're appropriate for today's teenagers has certainly been shifted by the conversations that we've had around MeToo and by our. The ways that our public understanding about that kind of behavior has changed. And I think that part of the place I'm sitting right now is trying to have space for both the truth that this is not something McCarthy should have done. And it indicates something about his judgment and character that we, as the reading public and consumers of his work, should consider. And also that the experience that the other person in the relationship had and what they understood it to be does matter as well. And maybe, and we all have to do our own math about that, it doesn't make it okay. The fact, you know, the fact that she says, I loved him, I saw this as a way out of a difficult situation that well into adult life, she continued to view this relationship positively. Doesn't make it okay at all that he engaged in this when he was 42 and she was 16. But it is different from someone saying, I was taken advantage of. I was abused, I was raped, I was assaulted. You know, and the law might see those things to be the same. And that's how the law works. And in terms of how we make, like, more moral and ethical judgments about it, we're still. I think we're going to be figuring this out forever. When I say we're still figuring out, it feels like, oh, someday we're going to arrive at the answer. But I don't know that we arrive at a permanent answer about how we handle these things, because it is like the Overton window constantly moves. How we understand this as a culture and as a community is always evolving. And I would rather be in the place, similar to what Knife did for us, of continuing to ask the questions and be challenged by something than to make what I think are hard and fast declarations about it. So, yeah, I don't know where I'm going to land on this. I don't have a big affection for McCarthy or a connection to his work. This certainly complicates his legacy. I think that's kind of all we can say at this point.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I think so. And that's. There's not going to be another. I mean, I guess there could be some other round of ramifications, but there's no. No information with this particular relationship. Like, this is just what it's going to be. Right. Unless she changes her story or something. Like, just gonna have to live with that. And I guess that there is a. A real complexity to most of our lives. Most of us, people don't do something like this. I think one of the other questions that is, is. Was brought up in a lot of the. I think not first wave of me too stuff because I think the tolerance for. If this. If this had happened four years ago, I think the. Even my response would have been different. Seriously, I'm not dealing with this person anymore. As painful as that. Me as a reader of the books, to say, well, okay, so if we're. We're either asking for perfection or we're not. Right in human beings. Right in our artists. Okay, well, perfection is clearly off the table. Right? That's clearly off the table.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

How imperfection.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So where is it?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So how imperfect are we going to be? And this one is more on the other side of imperfect than I would like, for sure. If she was 18 and it was quote, unquote legal, would I feel that much better about it that he was 42? Honestly, not that much different.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I would still feel pretty bad about. I mean, 16 is worse, but like, we're in a continuum here and we're each going to have our own kind of reaction for it. And we talk about covering authors on the site, especially historical authors who, you know, may have huge records of antisemitism. Like, we're all dull or where we give context. We don't talk about them. But at what point is that baked into the pie? Do you do it every time? This is something we talk about internally too, like how to deal with this. Sports is interesting because sports. I was watching the NFL last night. My Chiefs were on and I was looking for. And I was like, oh, yeah. I forget how much sports will just forgive.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And move on.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We talk about that a lot.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I'm not sure I'm more or less comfortable with that. It's just. It's just radically different. And you look at our political discourse and like, what are we doing here at the same time? So, again, this is bad. Do not do this terrible job, Cormac McCarthy. This should not be wiped away under the rug. But I think the question most of us ask in this kind of situation when it comes to our own personal consumption, advocacy, recommendation, whatever, when do I really sever ties? And this one's close. And it could go either way for me at this point.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I think it is just a question that we each have to answer for ourselves. Like, I wish someone would feel like that the genie would come out of the lamp and just tell us, here's the line and here's how you do it. And everyone will agree with you and you won't get any angry emails about any of the ways that you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, then I'll feel good about it, right? And I'll be like, you know what? That's right. And I can forget about talking about the Road or no country for Old Men or the Passenger, Stella Maris or All the Pretty Horses, and I can kind of wipe it away.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, and like, the Alice Monroe thing is an interesting one to bring into the conversation because you can. One interesting thing that can come out of something like this is a reexamination of a person's work through the lens of the new information that we have. So in the wake of finding out that Alice Munro was aware that her husb husband was abusing her daughter, you can go back and read Alice Monroe's work. And there are stories that address this kind of thing. There are stories about mothers keeping secrets. There are, like all Alice Monroe said a variety of things about this kind of behavior in her work. And it looks different now that we know this about her. And reporters have had a few months to get in on that since her daughter first came out in July talking about it. But I expect that we'll see some like, re understanding of Cormac McCarthy through the lens of this, especially because Britt claims to have been the muse for or like the inspiration behind several characters in much of his work. So, like, that is a whole conversation that's going to be had, you know, and it could continue to change. This could be like the Neil Gaiman story breaks and then a tide of women come after Augusta Britt and say, actually the same thing was going on with me and Cormack McCarthy and I didn't like it like that. That would change and expand how we're understanding this. The fact that where we currently are in 2024. And how we understand these relationships to be abusive is very different from what the culture's understanding of a relationship like this was when this relationship began. And that culture and that context shaped both McCarthy's decision making and Augusta Brit's decision making as she became an adult in the. Stayed in that relationship. And we just can't, you can't elide those factors or expect that a person in 1970 would have made the moral decisions that we use that call in the framework we use today. And she's Also, she is 16 and coming out like she was vulnerable. She's coming out of a terrible situation. McCarthy really, you know, took advantage of something or an opportunity here with her and she did not experience this relationship as abusive. And it's that. And that makes it difficult because if, if the piece had come out and she had said Cormac McCarthy abused me for decades. This is a very clean cut conversation we're having.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. All right. No way to transition out of that into more quotidian news things, but let's just do it while we're here. Costco is deciding to keep books year round in a hundred locations. Again, I'm going from memory here. I think I linked to this last week and today in books, but that means that 500 or so of their 600 locations will only have them seasonally. I have not seen much about. I'd love to talk to this, the merchandiser people. Like why these hundred locations? Yeah, is it just in, I don't know, whole, what was. Dave Wasserman calls him Whole Foods districts or something like this. Like why these specific locations and not. I don't want to besmirch. I could pick some random town but I don't want to besmirch anyone right here at this point. Very interesting to see.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It is really interesting. And you know the headlines about this have had a short memory because we got the news back in the spring that Costco would be ending year round book sales in all locations. And so this, this round of headlines, the way that I've seen it and the way that I've framed it is actually they're going to keep them in a hundred stores. They're not going out. But I think a lot of folks, this is the first they've heard that Costco taking books out of most stores. So there's been a variety. Like some folks are relieved that they will be staying and some folks are upset that they're going to be taken out of the majority because there's no explanation of how they chose these hundred. The only like useful line I've seen anywhere is that like this will provide helpful data to Costco about what the year round, what year round sales can look like in a modified sense. And so if that goes well maybe they will re expand. Of course it could go the other way year round sales in these hundred stores might not be robust enough to justify doing it. And then they might go to the plan of only you know, Q4 book sales in stores as you know, holiday gifting primarily. So it will be interesting to see I think as you pointed out in today in books like this is not just space in the stores that they have to account for but it's very labor intensive. You know, for like most of the time when I'm at Costco you're looking at things that are unloaded as pallets know like it's a pallet of tomatoes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A forklift Costco sort of doesn't want to stop.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right. And books are, books come in cartons of 12 or 24 and they have to be unloaded one at a time and stacked up on tables one at a time. And that takes a lot of labor and in a lot of cases they are like some of them are returnable, many of them aren't. Like it's a lot of work to get them sent back to publishers when they don't sell. So I understand why a big box read retailer might be taking another look at how they engage with books and reading.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, that logistics questions really opened my eyes about understanding because maybe they are profitable. Like it may not be that the books aren't selling but it's about marginal cost. Right. Like what could be there that's easier for them to stock. Right. Because if you go it's been a while since I've been in Costco, but the book table was probably the most discreet, skew dense area of the store. There's 50 to 100 different products on a few tables. Whereas you look at there may not be that many products in four aisles. If you go to the cereal or one of those other sections in there, maybe the medications or something else like that. But like and the other thing is they have to, they have to decide which books to carry. Like it's not a question of like where they're going to carry olive oil and pasta sauce and you know, four bags of sandwich bread. It's not that difficult. But someone at Costco has to make is it this book versus that book? If they make the wrong decision then they've got to return them and deal with them all that way. So it makes an interesting amount of sense. My other thought was say it is keep them these hundred plus Q4 holiday sales in other locations. What is the actual gross loss in dollars to the publishing industry and or Costco? And I think it might be a lot less than you think. I don't think it's going to be it's 75% loss that it's going to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Be a lot less. I think they landed on this Q4 strategy because they've probably looked back at the last several years of book sales and concluded just as with independent bookstores, like the vast majority of the money that they make they make in the last quarter of the year around the holidays. And so like Costco will lose some book sales just by virtue of books not being available from January to September in most places, but probably not enough to you know, make it a problem or to put them upside down on the cost of the labor versus the income that they've lost.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And you know, you know what Costco book sales would like to do? They would like to carry one title and sell 814.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right. And that it's, it's like printed by the Kirkland publisher at a discount or.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What if it was a Taylor Swift and you just had one book and we're the only place to get it. And apparently this worked Rebecca, because yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I believe it did.

[Jeff O'Neill]

814000 copies in its first week. The fastest selling non fiction title since Barack Obama's A Promised Land in 2020. When that came out I got that wrong on Instagram. I need to go correct that. I don't made a stupid typo about years. Which is all the more remarkable because two things, at least two things. One is that to the best of my knowledge there were no pre orders available.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There were not.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay. And so most of these big selling books bank a lot of their first week quote unquote sales as pre orders because people are actually buying them before. But Brenna over at NPD bookstore and put them on the board until they actually get shipped out and they're available. And of course this is only one location. So I was trying to guess if we could go ab test the universe this would be an interesting one to do. What if we just did this the regular old way? It's the heiress to our book. We're going to print as many as we can and they're in Barnes and Noble and Walmart and Costco and Target and indie bookstores. You can pre Order them. Does it do twice as many? I have to think that that lowered the ceiling, right?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I would think it would do some more. But also the Swifties are so devoted that I think whether it was like you can only go to Target to get to get this book or you can go to one of these other places and order it online. Online and. Or an online option would have expanded it. The way that this was rolled out was available in store on Black Friday and that they would be available on the Target website the next day if supplies lasted. So there was an online retail option for folks who couldn't get to Target or didn't feel like getting out or were willing to chance it, you know, rather than going on Black Friday. 814,000 copies and you were talking about Circana which does track the sales. So we know those numbers but the New York Times does not accept numbers from like a. A one off big box retail situation. So Taylor Swift will not be slapping a New York Times.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Gilbert, come on. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if he does.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't think Gilbert has anything to do. I don't know what it is the very obscure and arcane policies around the New York Times.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That is a truly screwed up. That's like you can sell nearly a.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Million books and not make the New York Times list.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I guess I just don't know this world enough to understand how many casual people might have picked it up on the Black Friday holiday weekend. And after if they're like I'm in Barnes and Noble anyway. I mean, you know my daughter, my aunt, my mom, my brother really loves Taylor Swift. Let me get this to get it under the tree for them because a lot of that kind of shopping, especially on books happens again. I'm sure it worked out well. I'd still would give.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A lot of. I'd give fold and Monday to see the deal. Right. Because people, you know people are wondering about all these kinds of things. Did you. Did you follow the stories about. About errors in the book? Like it's kind of.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. It seems like not a bang up job on the printing of this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Maybe not understanding how gutters work in full bleeds ad there's 12 page spread where it's swift in the middle of a bunch of dancers. But they didn't think that she's like in the crease. She's in the crease. You need to off anyway there's a bunch of stuff there. But I was you know in watching some Football yesterday or the day before. I can't really remember what is. I saw a Target Black Friday ad that featured Taylor Swift's book. And so we were talking about what is the nature of this deal here. This is a, this is beyond the. We're going to give you, you know, a better deal and we're going to give you an extra 3%.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

On your cover price. Take this is a whole situation going on.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Target also had an exclusive like new album in vinyl that she was selling. So there's a, there's a big deal going on there with Target. I think we can go back to the conversation we had when this was announced where people were hand wringing about what does it say for the state of publishing that Taylor Swift is doing it herself. And we both said Taylor Swift doesn't need publishing in the ways that anybody else would. And Taylor Swift is a one of one and this proves it. Like notably Obama's book. That is the only title that has outsold this in its first week. Was available in all of the traditional retail outlets. So Taylor Swift came very close to outdoing Obama in just one location. She would have blown the doors off this number.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I think that's, that's, that's right. I think whatever you're going to say that this would have been the best selling nonfiction book. Book in week one sales. That is on sort of NPD's Modern. It's even hard. I don't even think we'd have to go really think about something that could even come close. It's a one of one. It's not really. It's sort of a. I mean the physical form is a book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. But it doesn't mean anything about publishing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It doesn't really mean anything about publishing. If anyone who could get this kind of a deal from Target, Stephen King, I, I shudder to think about Emily Henry, like, oh yeah, close. Rebecca Yarrow. They would take this deal because the marketing thing alone. The marketing thing alone. But no one else can because no one else is Taylor. All right, let's see. Where do we want to go next? Spotify reveals top audiobooks in the US and globally. This one is fascinating to me because a. It is an extremely uninteresting list to me personally as a listener of audiobooks. Quarter Throne Roses. I'm glad My mom died. I like that. Top title, I guess. Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah G. Moss. Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover. The 48 laws of power by Robert Green. Fellowship of the Ring, Court of Wings and Ruin Moss Icebreaker By Hannah Grace, 4th Wing By Reko Yaros, and Funny Story by Emily Henry. So we've got the McCurdy, which is the audiobook phenomenon of the last several years. As a standalone, we get a couple of always sellers, 48 laws of power and Fellowship the Rings and then romance.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And romance.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's what it is. None of these are 20, 24 titles. That's interesting to see.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's right. And they're all white people.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All white people. But this is what Normie casual audiobook listening is looking like right now. That's just what this is.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, this is algorithms also. You pull up your spotlight.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think Normie is that now.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think norm is algorithms is driven by algorithmic recommendations. That's right. You open TikTok and it tells you to go read ACOTAR. You open the Spotify audiobook section, and it's like, it knows how old you are and it. And your gender, and it generates, like, listeners like you. You know, maybe you've been mainlining Chapel roan all summer. You probably want, like, here's this book by a lady that you could read. It's. It is as mainstream and boring as, like, it's. This is just a flattened list. And this is my primary complaint about the Internet in general right now, that the algorithm, it. It feels like we should be coming to, like, the natural end of an algorithm somehow, because everything looks. Looks the same, a lot of things sound the same, and the least interesting, lowest common denominator versions of things are the ones that get elevated and widely dispensed. And this is just the Spotify version of that. Yeah, it's really close to the TikTok top books list.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I mean, similarly, the Goodreads Choice Awards winners were announced. That whole cycle happened between news stories with us. There are books. I like that one. I like God of the woods by Liz Moore, which won for mystery or thriller. Yeah, somehow that's mystery. Thriller, but not historical fiction. We can. We can do this all day. Somewhere beyond the Sea. I enjoyed beyond that. I'm not really into a lot of these books. The Bookshop by Evan Frist, which is a history biography. Pretty. It's a good profile of several bookstores. In the Anxious Generation by Jonathan Hayford. Nonfiction, the the Wedding People by Allison Espach. One for fiction, romance, Emily Henry's Funny Story. Science fiction, the Ministry of Time, Horror, Stephen King's you like it. Darker, romanticies, Sarah J. Maas's House of Flame and Shadow.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This list is an anomaly in that James is Not on it because James was in historical fiction and Kristin Hannah beat James.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Just, just outsold it. I mean, that's what these are.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And James belongs in the fiction category.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do you think if it was in the fiction category it would have beaten Wedding People?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I wouldn't bank on it. Just because the Goodreads choice list is a popularity contest and a Read with Jenna Summer beachy pick. I wouldn't be surprised if more people have ranked it like rated and reviewed that on Goodreads and ultimately voted for it than voted for James. But I mean, whatever. This is what the Goodreads list looks like. Goodreads does a good job or a decent job at the outset of offering like somewhat.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's nothing they can do though.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, they offer like somewhat diverse sets of nominees when the voting opens. But we see this is the place where you see the very most regression to the mean and the most damning reflection of the decisions that the broader reading public is continuing to make. And when we talk about like publishing has diversified, the pipeline continues to. There of course is a lot of work to be done. But like some responsibility does fall on readers. And the Goodreads Choice Awards is the sharpest reminder of that every year that publishing is working hard to put out books by people from marginalized backgrounds and to try to elevate them. And there are all like publications doing it. The big book clubs are paying attention to this and make pretty diverse selections. And when the reading public gets a chance to go vote on what they liked the most that year, they still produce a list that is almost entirely white.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I've got to say I've got to believe the avid reader press people. I think that's who published Ministry of Time got to be really thrilled to see the Ministry of Time here. I think it's had a bit of a late year surge. It's been on a bunch of lists and some roundups there. I can certainly see why I did enjoy it as. Even as much as the end was confusing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. It's imperfect, but it's fun.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I'm not really sure what else to say. It's about as uninteresting list as I can. I can really see. I guess I didn't really. Kelly Bishop winning memoir for the third Gilmore Gore was a surprise.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Surprising to me.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You've got a lot. You've got. Got. I don't know. I guess what was I expecting to win here? I mean, I didn't think that more people read the Lisa Marie Presley book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right. Or Cher. That's a big one this year.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That came out pretty late in the year.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's true.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I do think that matters for the Goodreads Choice Awards. People haven't had time to read it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Similar with the Ina Garten. I. I guess I would have.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I would have banked on the Ina.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Garten for the memoir that or the Lisa Marie Presley book. Yeah. I don't know. I guess as Sami Sami and we're going to do this is it for the Patreon that we're doing talking about the year in Books list is that we're doing that you're going to hear us talk about. One of my notes is there is a certain It's a phrase I I guess I learned in 2016 from probably Nate Silver. Herding. There's quite a bit of herding that goes on. But I will take your most herded curated best of your list over the Spotify list or the Goodreads winners. Just I absolutely will at that point. Let's do another sponsor break looking for a pickup truck to get just about anything done. Look no further. The Chevy Silverado EV isn't just the most powerful Silverado ever with next level towing capability and technology. It also offers game changing versatility with the available multiflex mid gate and tailgate. Which means Silverado Silverado EV helps you carry large, bulky and oddly shaped items up to nearly 11ft in length. Chevrolet Together, let's drive. Visit Chevrolet.com to learn more.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

I guess we can get into it here. The New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Our scores for internal use and then the top 10 all came out. I just looked at the scores you access denied me. You didn't share this with me. This is just for you. You didn't want to share. Are you going to lord it over me? You have to guess.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No. This is the one we tied on.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, we tied how many we get right?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Let's see, we got. We made 15 predictions for things that we thought were locks for the list that we called them the RST L and E picks. 11 of our 15 got in and then we did a mutually agreed upon B tier of seven titles.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Five of those we did almost as well, actually. We did a higher hit rate on.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The B tier as percentage goes. Five of those got in and then we had split decisions and we each got three of our split decisions in.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So let's talk about this. I think the Duala did made me forget my analysis of this. I, you know, I didn't. It just kind of went out. My short term memory got wiped on the books that we thought were locks, the ones that did not get in. I think you were maybe more on this point than I was wondering about whether or not Revenge of the Tipping Point wouldn't be. I will make this my mistake because I was like, it's Gladwell sold a million copies. It's a phrase that people know. Be surprised they don't put in there. They did not. I wondered about the timing of Orbital. Right. I know these lists take some time and Samantha Harvey was shortlisted for the Booker but had not won. The sales trajectory in the UK for Orville has been wild to watch, apparently. I've seen some reports that it's the. I don't quite know the terminology I'm trying to use here, but in terms of the Delta or maybe even absolute sales, it's performed remarkably well out of scale for a Booker winner. I'm generally surprised the City Uncertain Walls and Demon of Unrise were on the list. I'm not surprised about those, those first two, just because we had questions about that. I'm shocked about the Seminar Walls and Demon of Unrest. I really am.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The Time's review of the new Murakami was not great.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, okay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And. And we don't know. We don't know the ins and outs of how the list gets made. But I would assume the person who wrote the review has some sway there, or that the review itself has some sway in how the editors make the decision. Demon of Unrest.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Let me poke at that. I think they're flat out wrong. If we're using Notable here, I can get behind Orbital, maybe was behind the Deadline, won the Booker Prize. I think if this list, if this is the 100 Notable Books of the year and you know, if you can do it in time for Orbital, win the Booker Prize, it has to be on the list. Rebecca, this is silly. Like Murakami is the biggest selling literary fiction person in the world. He hasn't had a novel out for seven years. We're not saying best, they're not recognizing this is notable. And you can do some. I liked it or I didn't like it. But Notable doesn't care if you liked it or not. So that's my hobby horse about those two.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think then that what we would really be suggesting is that the New York Times change the adjectives that they put in front of this list.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, I think notable's fine. Or, like, if they're gonna do that, like. But they don't tell us why it's. They don't tell us why things aren't on the list.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I understand. I think that this list and being labeled as notable carries with it. We are saying that this book is good enough to be noted to have to draw your attention to it. Not just that it's notable, that the book exists.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, then you're right. They need to change it. And we're going to have some words, because this is silly. To win the Booker Prize and to be having Mercamulus come out and saying it's not one of the hundred notable books of the year, that's silly. What are we doing? Words have meaning.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

If only you were going to talk to Gilbert Cruz sometimes. You could ask him. We got notes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm hopped up, right? I'm sitting down. I'm feeling no pain. You can't hurt me.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Have you warned Gilbert that when you talk to him, the wheels might come off?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I didn't realize I had this one in the chamber, to be quite honest with you. I was like. But I was like, actually, when I think about it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

So you're quibbling about what notable means.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm not quibbling. The dictionary will agree with me. Everyone will agree with notable means. If everyone's like, what were the hundred most notable things that happened in the news this year? You're not picking the things that are awesome and amazing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I think there's some light between the dictionary definition of notable and the New York Times definition.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, you know what the gray lady needs to get a different things we like the best. Fine, just say that. But one of the reasons I like this list and I've picked it as my number one with an asterisk is it does a combination of like again, because Beauty Land, like, made it on the list. We love that book. I will cham that book to the ends of the earth. If we got 15 people in the room together with us today that read 20 books last year, 80% of them would have never heard of Beauty Land coming out this year. That's just the God's honest truth. So, like, which is it? Maybe you have tears. Maybe you can say, okay, the newsmakers, like, put that on. Like, we hated them. But like, you got to have them on the list.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I think that's an interesting. Interesting. Like Beauty Land especially is an interesting contrast because I think what they're really saying with notable is 100 books we recommend this year.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, then, you know what? They just got demoted. They're with everybody else now. They're with just the best books of the year. There's no going for the historical record. You're with the Washington Post, New York Times. I know that's the most painful thing I can say to them at this point. You know, Ben Bradley did all this work for nothing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You came back spicy.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't know what this is. I'm not sure. I guess if I. I'm thinking because just historical record. And what's going to be weird in 10 years if nerds like you and I do are looking into our 10 and we're going to forget. I mean, we'll do other things, but like, someone might say, like, Orbital won the Booker Prize this year and Murakami came out with a big new book that was a big, messy Murakami book. And it wasn't even notable. It just wasn't.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, I would love, we talk about, you know, like, how we would love for there to be more stories about, like, scientific research that had null results. Like, we tried these things and nothing happened. Like, I want to know that it happened. I would love a piece from the New York Times about, like, the books that are conversation worthy but weren't good but did not get good reviews. Like, let's talk about that. But I don't think that serves readers who are turning to these end of year lists as, like, what do I catch up on this year and what do I buy as holidays gifts? And if it didn't get a good enough review or if you don't feel.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, I know they do that because I just get in my print New York Times, I shell out $20 a week for that. They had their own special section for holiday gift books. There's space for all that stuff. They do their top 10 recommended books of the year out of this list. Right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, what we want here, I think is like two sentences at the top that says, what do we mean by notable?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Or categorize them. Right. Maybe you've got 30 spots for, you know, we'd really look like dummies if we didn't include this on the list. Like, it's just notable. Right. Even if we didn't like Intermezzo, you can't leave it off the list. Right. Because It's Rooney and she's even hotter than. And sold better than. But like, if they left Intermezzo off, even if it got a bad review, what are we doing with notable? So anyway, there I am. What. What else do we want to say about this?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, I'm very proud of our performance here, I guess. Yeah, I feel good about it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think this is the first year we've done this. We've learned a couple of things I think you're right to note in terms of pre. Next year's notable list we're gonna have to look a lot harder at. Did they give that big book a decent review? Did we like it? Do people think it's good? Because if we had that list, I think I would have left Revenge of the Tipping Point off.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The four hadn't read Murakami. I hadn't really thought about it. I. I don't think of Murakami as review proof necessarily because no one is anymore from sort of a critical consensus way. But it's. It's his first big novel in seven years and he's still Murakami. It's notable whether or not he just wrote. Wrote Watermelon nine times in a row, which is maybe one of the chapters in this book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't know.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I still have it, but I haven't got it. Could be. It could really be. So anyway, I guess the. The things that. Let's see were. The weirdly that we got the. The three for three for the tier things we didn't agree on. We were kind of as. About as right as. Well. No, we were less right on those. We were less right on things we didn't agree on on the whole because.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. There's like 15 of these that we each were championing one and we each only got three of our picks. You got John Lewis, A Life, Everyone who is Gone Is Here, and Lovely One by Ketanji Brown Jackson. And I got Long Island Compromise, Color Television and Great Expectations. But we had a lot of guesses there. Like the Strange Events.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Why didn't I agree about Great Expectations? Why didn't I agree about that? That was dumb. I should have agreed with that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't know. That was a smart pick by you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Thank you. I don't remember why you didn't agree.

[Jeff O'Neill]

With the other ones. I didn't agree with you when I just hadn't read them. I haven't read Colored Television. I haven't read Coloring on Compromise.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm Surprised that Margo's got money troubles. Did not make the top. This top 100. That's. It's been doing pretty well at the end of year lists. It got a pretty solid.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Did you look at the review? Maybe they hated it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I didn't. I remember. I think I remember seeing that it was. They were like, pretty positive on it. It showed up in some, like, summer roundups at the Times, but maybe just didn't and cross the threshold. I expected to see like, Code Dependent. I thought would have been an interesting one. That was a Booker finalist.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's really throwing. I mean, like we talked throwing darts in the nonfiction. We don't have the experience ourselves is very tough to do.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's tricky. The Richard Powers not making the 100 notable playground wasn't on the list. That was interesting.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The. The Shinsky hive is rising up to agree with you about the end of Playground, by the way.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Thank you. I feel validated. I saw some of those on Patreon. I do appreciate it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Let's move on to the top 10. Anything else to say about the notable except that they're wrong and they need to get a dictionary and learn how to use it?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, my only comment about the top 10 is I want it to stop being alphabetized.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Was that. Did that trigger you. You didn't like that?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I am just so annoyed that I have spent the whole season clicking on links to top books of the year lists from tons of publications and every one of them starts with all fours because that's the damn Alphabet.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We haven't done our favorite books of the year list and. And Book Riot itself has. We've been rethinking about how to do our best books of the year or, like, do some other coverage. I do think there's something to be said. Here are the 20. And here's the order.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, a rank order.

[Jeff O'Neill]

This is just rank order them.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Which. I think that's how we do it. Like, I think that's how you and I have. Well, we have done it that way.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I have. No, again, we've done both. I'm a changed man today than I was 72 hours ago. I'm not sure what's left.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, as we've said, chaos reigns right now. Yeah, we've done both ways on the show. We've done ranked lists and then we've done like, here are my top 10, in no particular order. I think my list this year is going to be a mix of those. Like, I will.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm going to rank. I'm going to you know what? It's time to. It's time to inherit the mantle of truth and courage. We're going to rank them so recklessly sloughed off by others. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Next week's midweek episode will be our favorite books of the year. So if you want to put it down, now that we're going to rank our top 10 each. Let's do it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It. So the other thing Rebecca didn't like about this being alphabetized, that right out of the gate she had to lay down with All Fours by Miranda appearing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Here and then I mean they got you too good material by Dolly Alderton.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was feeling so good and then I kept scrolling like oh come on.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like you get five novels for the year onto this list of the ten best books of the year because the other five picks are nonfiction and the first two we object to.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And then James. So like we're, we're ready to throw out the Internet. We're ready to just sort of bury it in the. And you know, put it in that Chernobyl reactor where you dump a bunch of cement on it. You don't touch it for 10,000 years. But then we get James.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And then they did kind of redeem themselves with a nice surprise. I love to be surprised. You dreamed of empires by Alvaro. Enrique or Enrique. That's one I haven't seen on a bunch of year end lists. And so for something to make translation.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm going to read this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

By the way, please read this before you read All Fours.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So let's remind. I mean we don't need to rehash this. And there's a certain amount of tongue in cheekiness I'm doing here, especially when it comes to taste. Taste. You and I, you didn't care for all fours. I didn't care for good material. Taste is subjective. There's clearly a lot of people all fours resonated with. I know a lot of people really enjoyed good material by dollar Alderton. They thought it was like a latter day nor Ephron. I. I really need to take an antihistamine for the allergic. My immune system when I'm reading. When I'm doing this, I see what people mean.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Comping anything to Nora Ephron is setting it up for failure.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I think the first half of this book I got into the second half good material I found to drag and I just didn't find it witty and charming. I thought line per line dialogue for dialogue. What we're really talking about, Nora Ephron is dialogue right because it's movies and everything else. I thought Greta Valdin was head and shoulders better.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

In terms of one, you know, lines and finding the dialogue and characters be witty and charming. I get this is a little more of a conventional. For someone who's supposed to be a stand up. The main character is hilariously unfunny. I don't know if that's part of the gag or what's going on here. Oh, boy. That's a. I also. I also find it difficult. It's a tall order. Right. You're a novelist. You're trying to write great stand up comics. Like stand up comics don't do a great job all the time. Comedy is hard to do.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Comedy's really hard in writing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So anyway, martyr, of course. And then. Yeah. So the five. And then on the non fiction side, this looks a lot. I think everyone who's Gone is Here was on my I Wonder about list. I Heard Her Call My Name by Lucy Santi. This is not something I'd heard too much about. It was on my. Oh. A memoir by a literary and culture critic about coming out as transgender. That's an interesting one that I think a lot of us maybe would be interested in. There's zero chance I'm going to read even the best biography that's ever happened about Ronald Reagan in my life right now. Maybe I will at some point. This is on a lot of year end lists. I'm sure it's great. I have zero interest in this right now. None.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And the Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides, that's been making a lot of the year round list.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I think we thought about that. Right. We're like maybe this one of these kinds of like you don't know unless you've read them there, I think. Yeah. So the notable. So my notes for the New York Times, as I always appreciate the word I know they put a lot of time into it. Someone must have fought. I hope someone really loved these books to fight for them because the idea that good material is a better sort of commercial fiction upmarket thing than Beauty Land, frankly offends me as a person. But there's also. I can be wrong. It's big of me to say that, Rebecca, that I can be wrong from time to time. What humility I'm exhibiting.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, I'm so. I'm just so entertained today.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. All right. We're gonna do Frontless for you, then we'll get out of here.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

All right. I've had a pretty busy couple.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Well, it's Been a while since reading Weeks.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I finally read Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder a couple years ago. Okay. The book rips. Yeah, I read it on a plane. It's super. It is super fun. It is about a woman who's in her, I think, like early to mid-30s. She's had a career in the art world, but had a baby and has stepped out of her career to a full time stay at home mom for some unknown period of time. Like eventually she hopes to go back to work. Her husband travels for work a lot, so she is just at home with the kid. It is drudgery. And she has. She feels like kind of feral and starts thinking that she is turning, or maybe she is actually turning into a dog. She thinks that like a tail, she gets a cyst on her lower back and when she lances it, a tail comes out. Like her teeth get sharper.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I know the feeling. I hope that's what I wish I would have. I would have preferred that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And her husband, like, she points out that her teeth are getting sharper. Her husband notices. So, like, we are given to understand in the text that not all this, this isn't all in her head, but how much of it might be in her head is a real question. There are these three, like Lululemon moms from that she sees it like the Mommy and me thing at the library. And later on, three dogs show up on her front lawn.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And she's pretty sure that it's those moms in dog form. Like, that is the kind of thing that is happening.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Pretty sure. You've got to really be in a state to be pretty sure.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Wondering is one thing, but pretty sure is another.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. The Lululemon moms turn out to be in like an MLM that sells herbal mixes to like help you get like mommy's little helper stuff to help you like, get through the day. And she's just like, this is a righteously ragey book about what happens to women in our society and especially in heterosexual relationships once they become mothers, and how lonely that can feel, how isolating it can be and how angry.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like kind of literally domesticated. Right. Like you've really been.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And just like you, like you are a caged animal and what needs to happen to make you feel freer in some way. I had a great time reading it. I have rarely felt so extremely validated about my decision to not have children. And I have even less of an idea how they're going to pull it off as a movie now than I had when I just watched the trailer for the film this summer and I had read the book. So, like, it's a big question for me how this is going to work. Like the device of her feeling like she is a dog or the experiences that she has when she is in her dog shape. How is that going to come across on film? What have they decided to do with it? Really interested in that. But I'm super glad that I read it. I would put it in the hands of like any women that you have spoken to who have talked about their experiences.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What do you think the All Force crowd would make of it? For all the people that like, I loved All Fours, are they gonna be like, oh yeah. Or they'll be like, this is too weird. Or how they don't feel dissimilar in the. The thing they're trying to excavate in some degree.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think Yoder excavates it much more directly, weirdly through this fantasy. I mean, the Miranda July is weird too. It's like come to this hotel room that I've decorated as an art project, but not really because I want to have an affair with. With this 22 year old man. And that doesn't come to fruition. But maybe I'm going to do like performance art on my Instagram to feel.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like she in her 50s is the main character in her 50s in all fours.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

She's either late 40s or early 50s. She's perimenopausal.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And the main character in Nightbitch is a little bit younger.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, there's a thread. Like you could. I could kind of imagine that the character in Night becomes the character in all fours. I mean, personally, I enjoy Night Bitch a lot more. It goes like, the sentences are just really sharp. She goes right to that. Like the things that make women feel feral and angry. And it didn't have. I mean, my objection to the Miranda July is kind of like manic pixie, perimenopausal girl. That there's like some pick me energy to like look how special.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Doesn't sound like there's a lot of that in Night Bitch.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

There is not a lot of that. It's like a bite me.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. All Fours would be a great alternate title for Night Fitch, actually, now that I think about it. It's funny. Anyway, fascinating. I really want to. I don't know when I'm going to get to this because, like I almost got it when it first came out. I think the first time this was on our radar. We talked about this before is ideals. Deals. Deals.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes, it was. I remember being like, whoa, whoa.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What a pick from me there. Okay. What else? I'm sorry.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I got too interested in the Rental House by Wakey Wang. Basically.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Let's talk about that for a minute. We both read that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's Man. Wakey Wang.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So good.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This was funny.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's very funny. It's very. But it's super dry.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, you kind of have to. You got to be ready for it. Because it can. It feels. I think a lot of her writing feels very detached. Can feel very detached if you're not seeing the intimacy which with that attachment allows her sort of convey what's going on.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Chemistry is really quiet. Joan is okay. Is pretty focused.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's like very. It's like very small. It's like one person. Covid and with limited relationships.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is about a couple in their 30s who are married. They have chosen not to have kids. It starts with. They've rented like a rental house for two weeks in the Hamptons or somewhere like. The Hamptons.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Doesn't matter. It's around New York. They live in New York and they're going to these places that are sort of in the right. They're a little far further from chaos town than we live right now. But, you know, you get in the car and you gotta pack for the weekend.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes. She's Chinese. Her parents are immigrants. They're gonna come first because they are still living in, like, lots of COVID anxiety. And then. And they wouldn't come after his parents had visited the house. And then his parents are going to come for the second week. So the first, like, third of the book is that those back to back weeks of them having these, like, intense visits from their parents. And I think anyone in their 30s or up who has had complicated visits with their families will recognize a lot of experiences and a lot of feelings that Wang puts on the table here with like, I just need to go in my room and lay on the ground and drink five glasses of wine and no one talk to me.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. I think anyone who has left the place they grew up. Up and find there to be some disjunction between the ethos of that place and their current existence can relate to.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This in some way.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think that's a lot of people.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And he's less than you might think. But.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And the man in the relationship grew up in West Virginia in, like, Appalachia, in a community that he now describes as white trash. So. And he's become a scientist and has a Lot of intellectual distance from his upbringing. A lot of. Also judgment that he's pretty honest about directed towards his parents and his siblings. And they have kind of differently flavored, disastrous visits. And then it jumps five years to when the couple have rented a different house just for themselves to get away, and their marriage is in a different, maybe more challenging place. Yeah. I found it to be so sharp and funny and. And. And some of the experiences they have as a child. Free couple and the comments people make to them. I was like, oh, man, I've been right there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I. I knew you were having a weekend. And I was like, if Rebecca's reading.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This now, I was. I was.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We should try to. We should try to get her on together. We should talk to her. That'd be fun to do maybe with a. It's late in the year, and I think she's touring, but maybe for the paperback or. Yeah, we need to talk. We need to know more about this person because we both. Both on. We're three for three here. Of finding them very interesting and different, but related at the same time. Also, I'll say one of my favorite endings in a while because one of the main characters does something, and I don't want to spoil it. Maybe you and I can talk about it that I think we've dreamed of doing in our own lives. Or like. Or like you have this. Anyway, I. I'm so tempted just to say what it is, but it's so.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Don'T give it away. It's great.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Why can't I do this? But I should. But I can't. Can't. But she does. But I can't. Anyways.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But maybe you could because she did.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You could because she did. But also, it's fiction and it ends. Maybe they all died right after this and everything really did go sideways.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I was gonna keep reading Wakey Wang, like, no matter what, because the first two books were so great, but this one was so funny.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think my favorite of the three.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And it's.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think so.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's driven all. There's like a. There is a rage under it as well. Like, the things that she's funny about are things that the characters are angry about and that I expect or suspect that Wakey Wang has felt some anger about herself. And the way that. That gets, like, alchemized into really funny, really sharp. Like, I would watch, you know, like, 17 cathartic seasons of TV with these people working their stuff out.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well. Yeah. It's terrific. Okay, what else is on your list?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Before I Get to that was shared. I'm about halfway through cabin by Patrick Hutchison and it's so great.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, good. I needed you make that face for.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Me to get exactly what I wanted it to be like. The pitch is he's a young guy who buys like a 120 square foot falling down cabin in the mountains a couple hours outside of Seattle and knows basically nothing about like you know, carpentry or home maintenance or how to do anything. But he's going to learn and bring his friends along in the hopes of having this little refuge to go to. He's a writer. He has a job that he like a day job that he hates. And he starts to derive a lot of satisfaction and meaning and happiness from having this place to go, but also from the making of things with his hands. Like there's a Bill Bryson comp on the book. But I also think that like Nina McLaughlin hammerhead is a good comp for this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's all I want. A hammerhead slash, walk in the woods.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Maybe it's not as overt. He's not trying to do a bit the way that Bill Bryson is trying to do a bit. It just, his voice just is funny. So I understand how they got that comp. It's really, it's really enjoyable. It's great.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Let's see. I talked, we talked about rental house. I also read. So I, I think Thanksgiving weekend is my favorite weekend of the year for a lot of different reasons but. And then I like to do read. We get the tree up. Reading by the Christmas tree is my favorite sort of single thing to do. And I was looking for something that was just not going to challenge me and I can just sink into it. So I picked up what's next.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Is this the West Wing book?

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's the West Wing book written by Mary McCormick and Melissa Fitzgerald. For those of you who know the West Wing, that's Carol, who's CJ's assistant. And then Kate Harper who comes in later on and is the national Security advisor to President Bartlett. It is. Yeah. So they're, they're clearly in the cast and they have access and they get interviews and they kind of. Basically there's two chunks to it. There's the casting, like beginning of it of the show. And then they pick a couple of notable episodes and talk about what went.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Notable because they were good or notable because they exist. Existed.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No. Well, I think because fans like them. Okay, right. And they have stories to tell and then it's interspersed with stories of like why service is Important. And cast members relationship. Different volunteer or advocacy groups.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Interesting.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think that's what kind of got this off the ground for Melissa Fitzgerald and McCormick as they care about issues and they've gone on to advocate for a lot of different things. I think they saw it as a way to both write about the show, but also go use that as a platform to talk other things. I will say this honestly. After I read the first few, I started skipping the service story stuff. It's great. I'm very curious about what Alan Alda cares about, but that's not what I'm there for. I'm there for what happened in this scene. What's it like to work with Sorkin, who could have been this person versus this person. And for that, it's okay. They really don't want to. And I understand this. They. They sound like they love their time there. And everyone but Rob Lowe also did, which is great. And I'm sure John Spencer is wonderful. But there's like a huge section of people memorying John, which is wonderful. But for a casual fan or. I'm not anyone who's reading this book is not a casual fan. I don't think I'm the obsessive. Like some of the. I don't listen to the West Wing Weekly, whatever. I never did that. But there's a. It's fun. There's a lot of anecdotes. My family and I just did a watch of the West Wing, showed it to kids, and they really enjoyed it. So we like it together. So I was pulling out anecdotes, anecdotes there. I'd say this. I've got one major beef with the. With this thing. And this is. At some point you've gotta. Why did the show end the way it did? Why did it end? At season seven, we got. Why did Sorkin and Tommy, the producer. I don't even. We always call him Tommy Schlami when we see the credits, because that sounds funny. But it's Thomas Schlame or something like that. I don't know. It's funny. I should have done on audio if it was there. But, like, why did the show end? Like, we just didn't talk about it. It's like it was just kind of. This is the last season and that's it. They did a lot of the. Sorkin leaving. Basically, he couldn't get the. The scripts in on time. And they're like, either you're gonna get more of a writer's room or you have to go, yeah. And then he's like, I'm gonna go. So again, that's a story. I knew. It's like a warm bath that maybe I stayed in a little too long.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You know, like, you know, I should have got out of the bath 10 minutes ago, and now I'm feeling kind of like this is a pruning. Yeah. A little pruny. The bath water's gotten a little room temperature of down. I'm going to be really uncomfortable when I get out now because the whole thing is cold. And also, I'm in. I'm just stewing in my own filth here at some point. That's not okay. So, again, if you really love the show, I would recommend it, but also know that you're not. What I really want is an entertainment reporter to do a history of the West.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I want a big oral history of the West Wing. Is. Yeah, that's the thing I want as well. I'm still writing the end of my reap, my seasonal rewatch from election season, and I have not been able to motivate myself to get into any of the, like, the broader parasocial landscape of West Wing content, I guess.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Again, I don't think you get a lot of that. Like, what was the casting process like for Donna Moss, if you. I mean, I was interested in that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Sure.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think the thing that's hard to capture is what makes that show special. The cast was certain, but Sorkin is unbelievable. Like, if that's. If that's Today, that's an 11 or 12 episode, they do it like succession. And he can write a lot more and he maybe lasts longer than four seasons because, like, that's what the newsroom.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, it's bonkers going back and watching it and being like, they did this every week for 25 weeks a year.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I mean, just the fatigue alone would been reason for Sorkin to leave anyway. And then I did read the Boys of Riverside. Oh, tell me Amazon's book there. I listened to it. Wonderful, uplifting, interesting story. Book of the year. It is a lot of the standard sort of motivational stuff you're gonna get, or not motivational, but inspiring. Like, scrappy underdog team wins the big one one. Spoiler alert. What I hoped. What I wondered and hoped for was a little bit more of. Again, since the. The writer is not himself deaf, he can't do it. But get into deaf culture a little bit more. Can you do a little country of the Blind stuff about deafness? Like, so this team. University University California, Riverside School for the Deaf It's a small school in Riverside, California, Central Valley, which serves deaf students. And they've been around for a long time. Time. And their football team has lost most of the time forever until they don't. And weirdly, the book doesn't talk about why this team. I think the answer is they got an awesome quarterback. I think that's the real answer. And it wasn't that they were deaf, that they were. They didn't have an advantage, nor a disadvantage. Kind of walking a fine line. Right. Because they are unable to use sound to communicate. You know, words, whistles, other things going on. Which means that there's strengths and weakness to that they can use hand signals and other kind of signals that the other team can't intercept or try to decode. Except if someone does figure it out and brings in an ASL fluent person, then they have to use code for the asl, which is interesting. But the economics of it, it was good. But book of the year I'm really struggling for. If you like sports stories, you're interested in deaf culture, you like just a interesting listen, I can recommend it. But book of the year, I'm struggling to get all the way there to, to put it charitably at this point, that seems fair story. Yeah. Eight man football. They're playing eight man, so that means there's only eight players rather than 11. So even the world of like small town California football is interesting with the deaf culture piece layered on that. I, I think they, the, the, the author could have done more with individual characters. There's one kid that's living out of his dad's car across from the school and other things that go on, but I just didn't feel like, like I was expecting Friday Night Lights, but with a deaf football team. It's not that. It's not that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's. It'll probably get adapted and I will encounter it then when I can go.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Cry for two hours about the phenomenon of this particular. I'm not going to say this school, but this team, like this collection of players, was actually a two season cycle. And in the first season they get all the way to the state championship and that's where the buzz happens. And then. But if you don't want this spoiled, thriftbooks.com, lots of books, you can get there. Thanks so much for sponsoring the show. Listen, show notes, whatever spoilers are going to come here. That first season, they make it to the championship and they don't win. But when they did, there was a flurry of media attention around that team like they were on Good Morning America and a bunch of other stuff was happening. So the most interesting thing to me was this, the follow up scene season to this and that's baked into this experience of being in the media spotlight is part of this book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Which is, which is interesting. I did like that. And I think, I think his name is Thomas Fuller. I'm not looking. I think is the person who wrote this book. He wrote a long New York Times profile of this and then took a year off from the same. He was the San Francisco chief of the New York Times took a year off to write this book. So he was there for it. But it even wasn't even a media story story. Like I felt like there's a couple of ways you could made it. Made it a little more meaty, I guess for lack of a better term. But also I think this person they we've got a good story. Don't screw with it. And I can understand that. They got Amazon's book of the year. How am I to tell them they wrote the wrong book?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, they're doing well right now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

They're doing well right now. So it's, it's very recommendable for someone who likes sports stories. Dad book extraordinaire. Absolutely. Maybe should have thought about that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's on Spotify premium for audiobooks because I, I located it there but have not started it.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't think it's longer than 15 hours.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's like seven.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, it's pretty. It's pretty brief. So thriftbooks.com 19 million titles you can get there. Free shipping on orders over 15. Good luck getting a ship. Good luck ordering a book. A new book for under $15 easy. But you don't have to order new books because they've got used of all kinds. With every purchase you can get points towards a free book in the reading rewards program. Thanks so much to ThriftBooks.com for making this possible. Rebecca. Thanks to you for holding it on long enough to let me maybe irrationally and out of scale vent about this. The use of one word, the greatest, you know, journalistic institution.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

What are we doing here with our podcast if we're not occasionally going off tangent.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right. Well, I was on tangent. It's just maybe I shouldn't have like burned set fire to the tangent, soaked it in oil.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We warned folks up front that we are in chaos town today.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So thanks everyone for listening. We'll talk to you later.