Jeff and Rebecca look at the most important, memorable, strangest, and all and all most superlative stories from the year in books and reading.

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Discussed in this episode:

TBR!

First Edition!

The Book Riot Podcast Patreon

Read Harder 2024 is alive!

Good job, book people: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store gets all the love; Paul Harding does not win awards for the book Jeff called “gormless”

Bad job, book people: The Vaster Wilds & Let Us Descend are under-celebrated

Love to See It: Pultizers expand eligibility

Audiobook moments of the year: Michelle Williams narrating Britney’s memoir; Leslie Jones’s 17-hour-long freestyle; Spotify introduces free listening for Premium members

Worst publisher response to book bans: Scholastic’s whole diversity collection situation

Best publisher response to book bans: PRH takes legal action against book banning states

Achievements in Reporting: The Atlantic’s coverage of the Books 3 data set used to train LLMs

More of These Conversations: The bestseller lists are broken and Goodreads is bad for books

Biggest Mystery: WTF Oprah was up to with Covenant of Water

Still Waiting to See Its Impact: Simon & Schuster sold to KKR, TikTok plans a publishing imprint

Eyeballs Emoji: The BookTok hockey romance shenanigans, Bigolas Dickolas moves some units, Review Bombing Author

Nobody Asked for This: Twilight series coming to TV; HBO plans 10-year run for Harry Potter reboot

Anticlimactic: Manuscript thief pleads guilty

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The Year in Review