Things We Love and Things We Hate About Talking About Books Online with Traci Thomas

Summary

Book Riot - The Podcast: "Things We Love and Things We Hate About Talking About Books Online with Traci Thomas"

Release Date: March 19, 2025
Hosts: Jeff O'Neill and Rebecca Schinsky
Guest: Traci Thomas of The Stacks Podcast

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of Book Riot - The Podcast, hosts Jeff O'Neill and Rebecca Schinsky are joined by Traci Thomas from The Stacks Podcast. Together, they delve into the intricacies of discussing books in the online sphere, exploring both the positives and the challenges that come with it. The conversation is structured around five things they love and five things they hate about talking about books online, offering listeners a comprehensive look into the evolving landscape of book discussions in the digital age.

Giveaway Announcement

Before diving into the main discussion, Jeff announces a giveaway in collaboration with Aardvark Book Club. They are offering listeners a chance to win one of two Aardvark book boxes—one for literary fiction and another for genre fiction. To enter, listeners can follow a link provided in the show notes and choose their preferred box category. An additional entry method is available for those subscribed to the Book Riot Podcast Substack newsletter.

Things We Love About Talking About Books Online

1. Discovery of New Books

Traci emphasizes the advantage of online platforms in introducing readers to books they might not encounter otherwise. This serendipitous discovery enriches readers' experiences by broadening their literary horizons.

"One of the things I like most about talking about books on the Internet is that it means more books that maybe I would not have heard of otherwise come into my world."
— Traci Thomas [10:27]

2. Community and Connection

The online book community fosters a sense of belonging among readers who might otherwise feel isolated in their literary passions. Traci highlights the strength and support within her Patreon community, illustrating how members actively engage in activities like buddy reads and mutual support during crises.

"There is not like a popular discourse on the whole, for reasons that we can talk about, maybe when we get to hate for a second. But when you find a community or a reader or a podcaster or a substacker or, God forbid, a book talker that you connect with, it feels good."
— Jeff O'Neill [21:58]

3. Learning and Expanding Knowledge

Online discussions provide opportunities for readers to learn new literary terms and analytical concepts, enhancing their reading comprehension and appreciation.

"The way that I'm able to learn about specifically like, writing and books is really exciting to me as a person who always loved reading, but maybe didn't have that, like, background education."
— Traci Thomas [15:58]

4. Diversity of Voices

The internet democratizes book discussions, allowing for a wide range of genres and perspectives to be explored. This diversity enriches the literary landscape by highlighting voices and stories that might be marginalized in traditional publishing avenues.

"Having come of age on the Internet during, like, the early days of Internet 2.0... it's not just highbrow literary fiction and serious nonfiction that are valuable parts of a reading life."
— Traci Thomas [31:13]

5. Accessibility of Conversation

Book discussions online make literary conversations more accessible to a broader audience. This inclusivity allows readers from various backgrounds to engage in dialogues about books without the barriers of traditional literary criticism.

"The internet allows readers to connect who often feel isolated... and when you find a community... it feels good."
— Jeff O'Neill [21:58]

Things We Hate About Talking About Books Online

1. Overabundance of Books

The sheer volume of books available online can be overwhelming, making it difficult for listeners to keep up with recommendations and discussions.

"I hate that there's such a lot of books that I don't get to. That I want to get to."
— Traci Thomas [37:08]

2. Pressure to Recommend or Read Certain Books

Listeners often face unsolicited recommendations that may not align with their reading preferences, leading to frustration.

"I get those kind of recommendations or like, people coming to me and being like, have you read this?"
— Traci Thomas [10:59]

3. Toxic Comments and Misunderstandings

Public discussions can sometimes devolve into hostile exchanges, where genuine opinions are misconstrued as personal attacks, discouraging honest discourse.

"People love to tell me what to read without ever taking me into consideration."
— Traci Thomas [10:59]

4. Algorithmic Issues and Content Curation

Algorithms often prioritize content that maximizes engagement, which can lead to repetitive discussions and the marginalization of thoughtful conversations.

"The combination of short form video and algorithm... they've really encourage, like, liking books as a whole personality, which does not an interesting person make."
— Jeff O'Neill [55:19]

5. Monoculture and Lack of Big Moments for Books

Unlike movies or television, books rarely achieve widespread mainstream focus, making it challenging to create a unified cultural moment around a single book or author.

"There is no single text that anyone can talk about at length that does gets as much engagement."
— Jeff O'Neill [44:15]

6. Publishing Industry Frustrations

Traci expresses disillusionment with the publishing industry's practices, such as the reliance on sending free books for reviews without fair compensation, and the slow diversification of editorial voices.

"I hate that they don't pay book influence. I hate that they will be like, oh, we'll send you a book and a hat. And I'm like, no, babe, how much did the hat cost? Send me the check."
— Traci Thomas [65:08]

7. Misalignment Between Criticism and Appreciation

There's a struggle to balance honest critiques with the fear of offending authors, which can stifle meaningful discussions about a book's merits and flaws.

"I don't want to hurt the author's feeling... that's why we can't talk about books."
— Traci Thomas [46:32]

Conclusion

The episode provides a nuanced exploration of the benefits and drawbacks of discussing books in the digital realm. While online platforms facilitate discovery, community building, and diverse conversations, they also introduce challenges such as information overload, toxic interactions, and systemic issues within the publishing industry. Jeff, Rebecca, and Traci offer valuable perspectives on navigating these dynamics, emphasizing the importance of fostering genuine and respectful literary dialogues.

Listeners gain insight into the evolving nature of book discussions online, understanding both the empowering aspects and the significant hurdles that come with it. The conversation underscores the need for thoughtful engagement and systemic change to enhance the quality and accessibility of literary conversations in the digital age.

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Notable Quotes:

• "Something that I hate about the book space is it's like... you're being mean to an author. And I'm like, no, I'm doing my job."
  — Traci Thomas [46:32]

• "The internet allows readers to connect who often feel isolated. It's not the most popular passion to have. It just isn't."
  — Jeff O'Neill [21:58]

• "I am not a critic. I don't know what the word for me is... my opinion about a book is just that. It's not a judgment about anybody else's opinion about a book."
  — Rebecca Schinsky [46:32]

• "Books are being an independently owned bookish media company, and you are one of one and we are one of more. But it's still a really tough rack."
  — Jeff O'Neill [65:06]

• "I always say I'm the stupidest person in the room because, genuinely, that's how I approach the work that I do."
  — Traci Thomas [75:35]

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Upcoming Episodes:

• Patreon Episode: Classics You Actually Need to Have Read to Be Well Read
  A listener-submitted question explores essential classics for a well-rounded literary foundation.

• Midweek Show Guest: Laura McGrath
  An academic specializing in the publishing industry's statistics will discuss the most intriguing data in the world of books and reading.

• Fantasy Reading League: Collaborating with Laura McGrath to structure a fantasy league for books, promising a fun and interactive experience for listeners.

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Connect with Traci Thomas:

• Podcast: The Stacks – Available on all major podcast platforms, releasing every Wednesday.
• Instagram: @thestackspod
• Website: thestackspodcast.com

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Thank you for tuning into this episode of Book Riot - The Podcast. Be sure to subscribe and follow along for more insightful conversations about books and the ever-evolving world of reading.

Transcript

[Jeff O'Neill]

This Friday from Disney, the musical movie.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Event of the year arrives in theaters. My name is Snow White.

[Tracy Thomas]

Flawless, exquisite.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Get tickets now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Snow White will have you on your feet.

[Tracy Thomas]

I think that's a wonderful idea.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And cheering for more. I was thinking the same thing.

[Tracy Thomas]

Experience the magical story.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Magic mirror on the wall. Who's the fairest one of all?

[Narrator]

Snow White.

[Tracy Thomas]

Disney. Snow White.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Only in theaters Friday.

[Tracy Thomas]

Rated pg. Parental guidance. Suggested tickets on sale now. We're so done with new Year. New you. This year it's more you on Bumble. More of you shamelessly sending playlists, especially that one filled with show tunes. More of you finding Geminis because you know you always like them. More of you dating with intention because you know what you want. And you know what? We love that for you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Someone else will too be more you.

[Tracy Thomas]

This year and find them on Bumblebee.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A little something different today. Before we get started with the show, the good folks at Aardvark Book Club reached out to us and offered to send Rebecca and I one of their book boxes. Said, thanks so much. We have plenty of books, but I bet some of our listeners might like one. So we're doing a little giveaway for two Aardvark book boxes. One for literary fiction, one for genre fiction. I'll put a link in the show, notes for where to go find it and how, how you can enter. You have to pick which of the box you want to be entered for literary or genre and then of genre, which do you want? And then if you win, they'll send you a box of books. You can find out all about them there. Let it open for a couple weeks. All the information will be on the landing page for that giveaway. Have you signed up for the Book Riot Podcast substack to be entered? If you're already signed up over in the Book Riot Podcast substack, you're automatically entered. You don't do anything else, you're done.

[Tracy Thomas]

Click.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Could win right now. Got Tracy Thomas of the Stacks Podcast with us today. We have a really fun show coming up. All right, cue the music. This is the Book Riot podcast. I'm Jeff O'Neill.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm Rebecca Schinsky.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We're joined today by Tracy Thomas of the Stacks Podcast. Patreon. We were talking about. You've been on a tour before for your own book related show. We were commiserated. Rebecca and I just did one. Can't imagine doing a little bit of one. I'm a big fan of Tracy's show. She covers nonfiction a lot more than almost Everyone else does. And that's actually on my list of things we're going to do today, Tracy. A little bit. We are doing five things we like and five things we hate. About talking about books on the Internet. I underlined books and online. Sometimes they're combined, sometimes they're different. But, Tracy, before we get into that, tell me about your show, how you got into it, what people can expect if they want to, you know, give your. Your show a provisional download and put them there.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes, please do. Give me a chance. Give me a chance to come through, people.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, that's how we're doing.

[Tracy Thomas]

The podcast is called the Stacks. I've been doing it for. It'll be seven years on April 4th, which is amazing.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Congratulations.

[Tracy Thomas]

Thank you. It's a book podcast. I talk to authors, readers, public figures, people who like books. I like to say that it's a podcast about books for the people who read them. So it's not a podcast for writers. Writers can listen. You're welcome. A lot of writers do.

[Jeff O'Neill]

These are vibes with which we are familiar.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, but I'm a reader. Like, I don't care about your sentence structure. Like, I don't. I mean, I. Sometimes I know what point of view is, but sometimes I don't. And I definitely don't care about how you agonized over it for months. You know, like, I'm just. How did we get here? At the end of every month, the last Wednesday of each month, we do a book club episode. So we pick a book, we go deep dives. There are spoilers on those episodes. Everything else is spoiler free. And I try to talk about books in a way that feels, you know, fun and thoughtful, but isn't too pretentious, because that's sort of why I started the show. I read the book. Did you all read Blood in the Water by Heather Ann Thompson about the Attica prison uprising? So it came out. It won the Pulitzer. It's fantastic. I read it. I was already a big podcast listener. This was back in 2017, I think. I read it, and I wanted to hear someone talk about it. And there were only two podcast episodes about it. One was this lawyer podcast. So it was, like, deep into the law stuff, which is a huge part of the book, but they went like, minutiae, amicus, briefs, like, things that I was just like, I don't know, babe, sounds great.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

None of the normies.

[Jeff O'Neill]

So happy for you.

[Tracy Thomas]

Exactly, exactly. I was like. I mean, I listened. Heather and Thompson's amazing. So I listened. And then the other One was, and I cannot find this episode anymore. But it was something like, but not actually the New Yorker. And it was really, it was like a roundtable discussion and it was really heady. And I just wanted someone to be like, how about the scene where they're like rushing the Panopticon? And like, you know, I was like looking for. Didn't that book make you feel crazy? Like, let's talk about that. And so that's sort of the essence of the show. We'll get into some of the literary stuff, we'll get into some of the lawyer stuff, but really it's like, what did you think of this book? What did you like? What did you hate? And I try to bring that energy to every episode of the podcast.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And as you can tell, for those who listen to this show, that's why we have Tracion, a kindred spirit in a lot of ways and approaching things we do quite similarly. Also, you're doing something on your subject too. Like, one of the things I'm going to take in my hates is the I think it's wither nonfiction question mark is my hate. And Tracy, you're doing a deep dive on nonfiction, especially on your substack. So go check that out as well. Really cool. For those people who want to take, I mean, semi seriously, I think is a mode we all kind of traffic in. Right. Like, seriously but not formally is sometimes another way of putting it.

[Tracy Thomas]

I'm just like a self trained person. Like, I'm not a real. Like, I don't have a master's in English. I don't have any degree in English. I was a theater major. Like, I don't, I don't know what a book is. And I feel like a lot of readers feel that way.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, that's, I mean, 99.5% of people are that right. That actually people that are going to be reading and buying books or checking them out. Okay, with that, we're going to do a quick sponsor break and we're getting into it. Tracy, you're going to have honors. You can either defer your first pick. Let's start with. Well, let's talk about after the sponsor break. We can talk about P's and Q's here.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This episode is sponsored by Beartooth by Callan Wink. Stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook provided by our sponsors at Spiegel and Growl by Spotify Audiobooks. Two brothers struggle to keep up with their debts in an aging timber house hand built into the absarca Beartooth Mountains. They live off the grid near Yellowstone national park, surviving in the wilderness after the death of their father. Thad the elder is more capable of dealing with things like the truck registration or the medical bills they can afford from their father's fatal illness, while Hazen is different, more instinctual, deeply in tune with the natural world. Desperate for money, they're approached by a shadowy out of towner with a dangerous proposition that will change their lives forever. Set in the grandeur of the American west and evoking the pastoral storytelling of American greats like John Steinbeck and Cormac McCarthy, Beartooth is a breathtaking and remarkable exploration of human endurance, brotherly bonds, revenge and the wildness of nature. This is the ultimate literary heist novel and a thrilling modern day Western in the vein of popular TV shows like American Rust and Yellowstone. Again, stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook.

[Tracy Thomas]

Foreign.

[Sponsor]

Is brought to you by Sourcebooks publishers of I'll Never Call Him Dad Again by Carolyn Darian now this book comes with a bit of a trigger warning. In November 2020, Carolyn Darian received an unthinkable call. Her father was in custody. Investigators had uncovered the unimaginable for years. He drugged his wife, Giselle Pelico, and handed her over unconscious to dozens of men. But rather than stay silent, Giselle testified in open court, reclaiming her life and shifting shame to the abusers. Caroline turned their pain into action, launching Mindorpa to fight chemical submission, and together they transformed trauma into a powerful call for justice. I'll Never Call him dad Again is an international bestseller and recounts the story of Dominique Pellico and his drugging and abuse of his wife over the course of seven years. But it isn't just another true crime story. It is a call to action. So let's support survivors everywhere. Make sure to pick up I'll Never Call Him Dad Again by Carolyn Darion and thanks again to Sourcebooks for sponsoring this episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Brilliance Publishing. The Sound of Storytelling if you like me like to, let's say enrich your show or movie watching by listening to or reading the book that the show was adapted from. I've got something for you so Missing you by Harlan Coben Narrated by January Lavoy is now a Netflix Original series and you can listen to the audiobook before or after you watch it. In this gripping thriller, NYPD detective Cat Donovan stumbles upon her ex fiance's profile on a dating site which is, you know, starts to sound a little messy. It reopens emotional wounds from 18 years ago, and it unknowingly puts her into a dangerous conspiracy. As she investigates further, she's forced to question everything she knows about her past, including her father's unsolved murder. With her own life at risk, Kat must confront dark secrets and face challenges that will test both her physical and emotional strength as she uncovers a sinister web of deception. So make sure to check out Missing youg by Harlan Coben. Narrated by Janera Lavoy. And thanks again to Brilliance Publishing for sponsoring this episode.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, what do you guys think? Hates first or likes first? Are we gonna go back and forth or how. What do you think makes. We haven't talked about this. I should have thought about order, because now I feel. I feel bad saying, let's talk about all the crap we hate. But usually you say bad news before good news. Tracy and Rebecca, any thoughts?

[Tracy Thomas]

I defer.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Rebecca, you're the tiebreaker.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Let's go back and forth.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Or you want to go back? And we could go back and forth.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Hayden, like, that's so much to keep track of.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Historically, we will, you and I.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right. Let's do likes first. Let's do likes first. Okay. We don't want to turn everyone off. All right, Tracy, do you want to. You want to lead us off with something you like about talking about books on the Internet?

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay, I will start with one that is a like and a hate.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I've got a question. Sure. Absolutely.

[Tracy Thomas]

So one of the things I like most about talking about books on the Internet is that it means more books that maybe I would not have heard of otherwise come into my world. I talk about something I like, and someone DMs me, oh, have you heard of this? And I'm like, no, I haven't. Or I talk about. I talk to an author, and then they suggest a book or I follow them on social media and I see something that I end up loving. So I love that. However, the flip side of this hate is that people love to tell me what to read.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

Without ever taking me into consideration. I just got a DM from someone who listened to one episode of my podcast and said, I just found your podcast based off this one book, and you should do more horror on your show. And I said, well, I don't really read horror, and I've talked about this a lot because I'm extremely easily scared and I'm a slow reader. So if I'm reading horror, I'm spending too much time with the scary, and I'M having nightmares.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A tough long hang. The worst of all possible ways.

[Tracy Thomas]

Exactly, exactly. It's just like, I can't be here. I can't do this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, man.

[Tracy Thomas]

And so I get those kind of recommendations or like, people coming to me and being like, have you read this? And I'm like, no, babe, I have not read every book ever written. I haven't read most of the books that everybody else has read, let alone this specific singular title that you just read that came out yesterday. That is a, whatever middle grade YA horror fantasy. Like, I'm like, no, you know, I haven't read that. You know, I have no clue what book that is.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You know what we say on the Book Riot podcast? We say, get your own show.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Get your own show. Yeah, that's what we say when it comes to something like that.

[Tracy Thomas]

Well, that's what I said to the guy. I was like, I don't read horror, but I'm sure there's a horror book podcast you should find. And then he wrote back. That's really a shame. It's like, okay, well, yeah, I like.

[Jeff O'Neill]

The comments that are. You should be. Other than who you are in some fundamental way. Rebecca, I'm guessing you have something related to that on like.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Or I did. It's on my likes that you get. I called it like random discovery from, you know, like, folks I follow on social. And Jeff and I have talked about this a lot on our show that, like, I like the old school version of social media more than algorithm driven because I care that I know where the recommendation is coming from.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But when I've followed somebody for a while and they post about some book that I haven't heard of yet, and they're like, this is the best thing I've read this season. I'm going to pick it up. I think my most recent example was early 2024. Jason diamond posted about Vincent Cunningham's book Great Expectations and was like, don't sleep on this and I trust that wreck. And I picked it up and it ended up being one of my favorites of the year. But you're right. Just like the fire hose of incoming recommendations. Or the expectation that because you do this, like Jeff and I do this full time, we must have time to read every book and we've heard of every book. Or like, you know, I remind folks frequently we're not reading from 9 to 5 every day.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Even if we did she. Even if we did, we would still cover 4% of the books published. Like, there's just maybe That's a. That's a. That's a water hose you cannot drink. That's a fire hose you cannot drink from. Mine is somewhat. I guess I have two that are kind of related, unlike. So maybe I'll be the turn where we go back to you, Tracy, after this. You can find people that you want to hear more from just individuals also, if they are readers that happen to be a specialist in a different topic, like if it's food or science or something. Like they don't necessarily need to be book people to get interesting book recommendations from. They just need to sort of be interesting to read like Anne Helene Peterson or some other people like that where they are readers, but they have a different kind of worldview and sensibility. I really like that kind of stuff as well. I follow some economics folks, not because I know anything about economics, but I like reading about business. And sometimes I find things that I wouldn't have found otherwise. There. I guess that is sort of a turn into. It's also something I hate. Which we'll cover too. There are infinite things to discover. Like I'm never going to run out of stuff to do. Like it's just. It's just not going to happen. And not only that, there's infinity things that I'm not going to be able to get to. So I'm interested in enough things where my cup runneth over and sort of is getting on the floor and flooding my basement. When it comes to what's coming in, I do like that sense of eternal possibility. I'll put a pin on the flip side of that coin. I don't think I can put pins and coins. I'm mixing my metaphors here. But that sense, like you know, those two things together where you can find people to follow and there's infinite possibility means that you can really discover cool shit that you just couldn't find and wouldn't find on your own. And that's really exciting. And that's something. When I was, you know, 22, like in the pre Internet days, it was much more difficult, right? I was really doing New York Review of Books or the New Yorker or something like it was really these few curated gatekeeped places for a kid in Kansas. And it was fine, but the sense of possibility now is just. It's mind boggling and can be paralyzing frankly. So those are two of mine there, Tracy. Where do you want to go next?

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay. Another thing I love, which I think maybe is related to what you're talking about is like I feel Like, I've learned so much. Like, there are people on the Internet who I get to talk to about books who are. Who are MFAs in English or whatever, or who are, you know, who have written extensively about the art of criticism or all these things that I'm interested in, but I maybe didn't even know where to look for. A friend of mine, Sarah Hildreth, has this great substack called Fiction Matters, and she does this series called Reading in Public. And she talks a lot about, like, I learned she's going to yell at me because I can't remember what the phrase is. But I learned it stuck with me, obviously, about a rhetorical device that. Oh, my God, I'm blinking.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's okay, just talk through it. We got it. This is live podcasting.

[Tracy Thomas]

It's a rhetorical device where, like, it's a kind of speech giving that Frederick Douglass was really famous for. And it came from a biblical world. It's not Jacobian. I keep wanting to say that, but it's something interesting. Jeremiad. Jeremiah Jeremiad.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes, yes, yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

So I'd never heard that word before. And Sarah wrote about it in response to, like, some of the, like, speeches around the time of the election. And then I went to read Frederick Douglass's biography and David Blight talks about the Jeremiah. And I was like, this is so cool. Cause I'd never encountered this word. And then it popped up or like, a lot of. A lot of, like, literary language. I'd never heard the phrase Romana clef. I heard that before. And then, then I started seeing it everywhere. And so, like, the way that I'm able to learn about specifically like, writing and books is really exciting to me as a person who always loved reading, but maybe didn't have that, like, background education. And I found so many people in places where I've been able to do that and kind of share what I've learned with. With the world. And I really like that part of, like, reading. As Sarah would tell you, it can.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Really unlock your reading and vision. And it could be in multiple fields too. Like if you, you know, I live with an architect, so I learned an architecture term, and suddenly I understand a lot of different things about that field because I just have the language to see exactly in some degree there as well.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Like, there's so much interesting research that we can only have thoughts about what we have language for.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Right? Yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Which makes sense when you really dig into it, but it's kind of. It also feels like a late night dorm room Revelation. So, like, when you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You need the craft orange, like I do, man.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But, like, when you get new language for something, it does unlock, like a. A piece of your reading experience or a piece of the way that you understand a book and. And that you would have just missed otherwise. That's really magical. I had a related one. Mine was just that readers tend to be thoughtful and curious.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That 102 is doing a lot of work there. We'll put a pin in that one as well. Okay, go ahead, Go ahead.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

But tend to be thoughtful, tend to be curious. Like, I. I think readers tend to be interested in finding new ideas, in exploring new stories. Like, there is always room, of course, especially on the bookish Internet for, like, the comfort read or reading as escapism. But there is so much robust conversation online for reading as an avenue into something else. Like, there's the book as its own ends. And what you're talking about with, like, it's a Romana clef. And I've learned these new terms. But there's also, like, the book is a vehicle for something else. And I find that readers tend to. Tend to be. And Jeff, like, that's very intentional phrasing, so I'm glad you picked that up. But I like that vibe of, like, if you're bumping into a bunch of strangers and a couple of them are readers and the rest of them aren't, like, I will gravitate toward the people who are bookish, not because of the books, but because I think it relays or reveals a tendency towards curiosity and being interested in things that exist outside of yourself in some way. And that's like, that's the kind of person I want to hang out with. I just think that's more fun.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Tracy talks a little bit more about pop culture, especially in your substack. You do some reviews and, you know, roundups there. I could imagine. And I think I'm a prisoner of. I'm a prisoner of a cage of my own making. In our world of books, this is the audience we know. I don't know. I only can imagine if you're in technology or, God forbid, politics or something else. Your audience is. Let's call it tolerance for tolerance may be a lot lower. I think on the whole, there's a lot of work to be done. Caveat, caveat, caveat. I agree that probably the book's audience, you know, if you're going to draft an audience to talk to, that's probably. I don't know what you think, Tracy. I'm going to throw it to you if you agree with this. I think I would probably pick readers. I think I'd probably pick readers. I don't know. Who else are you going to take?

[Tracy Thomas]

I. I think readers maybe, but I think I'm really siloed to a specific kind of reader. I don't read a lot of certain kinds of books where there are people who I see posting things online that I'm like, like, whoa, that is bigoted.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You maybe need to holster the iPhone today.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, yeah. I think, like, it does depend on what you're.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think that's fair, of course.

[Tracy Thomas]

And so I think, and I agree with you that the people who are in the reading communities that I have been able to cultivate tend to be that way. But sometimes something will come across my timeline and I'm like, wait, right? Like, you're literate with that take. Oh, my God, how? Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I've often thought about, like, if I had to have a dating profile for something I know people put, like, if you're not into books, don't apply. And, like, I don't feel that way about it. I just need to see signs that you're interested in the world.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A mind at work around you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, a mind at work is exactly how I would put it. And I think reading can be shorthand for that, but it's not guaranteed to be reading. Not guaranteed to be shorthand for it.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I don't think any of the three of us are sort of mixing it up on the open Internet. Like, we're not in the. In the Goodreads comments or something like that.

[Tracy Thomas]

I'm terrified of all the Internet that I'm on is as much Internet as I can do. But, like, branching out. I'm like, ooh, rather high.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, we used to mix up a little bit more in the early days, Rebecca, But I think like an aging fighter, we pick our spots.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. I mean, 2017, about the time that Tracy started her show is about the time I started exiting all forms of Internet.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A few rounds of death threats will do that to you, right, Rebecca?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, Jesus, Gamergate was a good time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's a pod for a different day. I guess. Another my likes is somewhat related, and this is also biographical, is that the Internet allows readers to connect who often feel isolated. Like, it's not the most popular passion to have. It just isn't. And especially when I was a kid. And really, I think one of the reasons book riot got started, or Rebecca and I in our early blogging days and I'M even by the time a little bit later in the Internet's life, Tracy, for you, you know, in the real world, quote unquote, it's. You don't. You don't get to see who's really a reader unless you're on the subway or something like that. And it can feel lonely. You can feel isolated. There is not like a popular discourse on the whole, for reasons that we can talk about, maybe when we get to hate for a second. But when you find a community or a reader or a podcaster or a substacker or, God forbid, a book talker that you connect with, it feels good.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Just feels good. I am not. And it's that special thing where not only you're alone, but that's, you know, it's a small community. And that can make it feel special in its own way. Right. Like, I knows this thing that you don't about how people can be in the world in this particular kind of passion. So I think that is one thing that the Internet has been uniquely suited for, is that people can find a quote unquote, book club experience without having to join a local book club. And I try to hold that in my heart on my darker days of like, why are we doing this? And everything sucks. But then, you know, you get a really great email saying, you know, I listen to your show when I'm struggling, or that conversation is really good or whatever. And that's helpful to hold on to. But I do think it's still does that in a meaningful way that I don't think would have existed otherwise. And I'm going to pivot into my other, like, here. If not for the Internet, what the hell would I be doing?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, we know, right? You'd be teaching.

[Jeff O'Neill]

What? I know I was a failed academic, Rebecca. I wasn't. I wasn't, you know, I wasn't on my way to a professorship at Vassar. That's not how things were playing out for me. Like, what could you do? Right? I think it's harder to keep in mind the. The sliding doors of no Internet for what we get and what we don't get. Like, there was the New Yorker, the New York Times, and little magazines, and that was kind of it. Like, the three of us here probably would be doing a book club somewhere or reading on our own. I wouldn't. I don't know. How would you be?

[Tracy Thomas]

I would just be reading on my own.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's right. You would be reading on my own.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Me too.

[Tracy Thomas]

I've never been in a book Club until I started my podcast. Except for one fake book club that I had with one other friend in which we would sometimes go to Barnes and Noble, pick a single book that we both wanted to read, read it, and then go to Chipotle and talk about it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Genius. This is the way.

[Tracy Thomas]

There was. No one. No one else was invited to come. We had another friend who's like, can I come? And we were like, no, no. So, like, I didn't even know when I started this podcast, like, what a book club question was. Like, there's.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Well, they're universally terrible.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Terrible. Right?

[Tracy Thomas]

I mean, I didn't know what I was doing, but if there was no Internet and for book people or whatever, there's zero percent chance you weren't anything book related.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I would be dancing to the New Yorker.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. I would still be a fitness instructor. I would be doing all sorts of other things that I did previously.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, I think that's part of it, then, Tracy. It's like, it opens up these other weird little. It opens up a huge ecosystem that a lot of us have found a weird little niche in that could be to the detriment of some other things. Right? I mean, I don't know, but I. I did think about the contra example, which is like, I guess maybe I'd be teaching somewhere still. Maybe I would have pivoted into a different kind of career, but it certainly wouldn't have been this one. And my life certainly wouldn't have been poor for it. My reading life, certainly. But that's hard to imagine. Rebecca, you are going to be blasting off New York Review of Books reviews, right? You're going to be getting into your editions. The deep cuts there.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

No, I don't know where I would have pivoted, but I'm just. I want to share with Tracy that I've also. I'm just a book club flunky. Like, I've. I've been a member of several. I can't. I get. Demand avoidance about, like, you can't make me read that book on a certain timeline. It's finding the one friend, and Jeff is the one friend for me. That's like, I will read this book and I will talk about it with you, and this is the way we're gonna do it. I think that is the way. It's the secret.

[Jeff O'Neill]

My problem is that I'm too much of a mic hog in a book club setting because of podcasting and teaching, where sitting there and putting my. Sitting on my mouth, I guess to coin a phrase, is not something I do particularly well, so I just need to let people do their thing and I can. You can talk into a microphone. I've lost track of our counts.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Back to Tracy. From back to Tracy.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Do you got any more likes in the whole.

[Tracy Thomas]

So my. I'm going to do two together. Because one of the likes is sort of what you were saying about, like, community. But I just want to highlight one of the things specifically to me is I have this Patreon community.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

The Stacks pack. They're unreal. Un fucking real. There is not. I. I challenge any book community on the Internet to go up against these people. It is like we have a discord where they just will decide. We just decided. We're doing a buddy read of Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson's book from last year. What if we get it right about climate? And they're going to read each section one month at a time, do a zoom meetup where they talk about action items and hold each other accountable. And then they're also going to be in the discord, talking about topics, working through it. Like, this is a community. They meet up. There's a. There's the Toronto Mafia. They go to book events together. Every time they go to a book signing, incredible. They go. And I tell them. I'm like, you have. If it's a Stacks author, you have to tell them that. You heard them on the podcast. They get pictures of the Bay Area groups going to hang out, going to see Kaveh Akbar and Tommy Orange this week, because they're in the Bay Area. Like, so there's that part of it. But also on top of that, they are fundraising gods. We had a woman in our group who we love dearly, who lost her home in the Altadena fire.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, no.

[Tracy Thomas]

We put together very quickly. I didn't post it on social media. I just threw it in the discord. I said, can we raise some money for her? Like, on a Target gift card? I think we raised $30,000 in three days.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Tracy.

[Tracy Thomas]

What?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's incredible.

[Tracy Thomas]

Or like, thousand. Like, that's what I'm saying. Like, this community, they show up for each other in ways that, like, I. I only can take credit in the sense that I was like, come to my Patreon. But, like, so this is just, like, above and beyond. And there's so many other facets to the community that I'm so proud of. But, like, 60 people will come to the book club and everybody will talk.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Because I threaten them, but everybody does talk. So to the community point just that but then this is my real. Like, this is my last one. I only have four.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, that's fine.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, this is my real one. And this is so shady and so selfish and so me. One of my favorite things about talking about books on the Internet is when I feel like I put people on a book. Yes. Like, when I pick a book that I love and I don't see people talking about it online. And the next thing you know, it's everywhere. My most favorite recent one was Challenger by Adam Higinbotham. It did end up winning the Kirkus Prize, but I was into it long before that. One of my favorite authors, I told him to read it and he was like, this is the best nonfiction I've read since Patrick Radden Keefe. That was thrilling. Same with the book We Were Once a Family by Roxanne Asgarian. That came out in 2023. I loved that book. And so whenever there's a book that people associate with me, that is selfishly the best part of my job. Like, I get so geeked about it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That's really fun. We had a couple folks come up to us after our event last week who were like, basically like, I'm more of a Jeff or I'm more of a Rebecca.

[Tracy Thomas]

Oh, my God, I love that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

It's super. It is super fun to be like, yeah, like that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Comparing the lines for that would not go great for me. So let's just.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I had similar ones on my likes. Like, you're basically never the only person who has read something thanks to the Internet. Like, if we had to rely on the people in my day to day life who read books and there are plenty of them, I would still be like a party of one for most of the things that I pick out. Or like, my mom is a pretty mainstream, what we would call like a civilian reader on the show. Every time she's like, what should I read? I'm like, I don't know, Mom. Everything I read is, like, super weird lately. It's not something that I can put in your hands, but there's always another weirdo.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Or to greater nerd theory.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's absolutely true.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay, but isn't this also sometimes a hate? Because one of my sometimes hates is like, when I read something so early and nobody else has read it and I'm waiting and I'm waiting and then finally other people read it and then I've like, moved on.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I think that's real. I can.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That is real.

[Tracy Thomas]

That's a small hate. That's not Like, a true.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I feel that more because I used to read farther out or further in advance. And when you've read something and it's like, five months before it's going to hit shelves and people are going to be able to talk to you, that is a real.

[Tracy Thomas]

I'm just like. And then they finally are like, oh, what about this part? And I'm like, I've completely.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Are you doing that, Tracy, to try to book the show or just because you want to? Is that why you're reading ahead of time?

[Tracy Thomas]

Sometimes I read ahead to book the show. Sometimes I read ahead because something comes and I'm excited. I don't read that far ahead. I think the furthest I've read ahead is that this year I read something in December that came out in March, but only because. Only because I thought I was inventing this book. And then two of my other book friends were like, I'm really excited about this. I started it. And I was like, fuck you. I want to invent this book. I call it Inventing a Book. When I read something early, and I love it, and, like, nobody's talking about it. So that's just, like, the phrase that I use. So I'm like, I invented this author. I invented this book.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Book.

[Tracy Thomas]

So that was it. But I didn't end up loving it. I liked it mine. But it wasn't like the.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, that's always a bummer when you're like, even if it's pretty good, if it's below expectation, it feels like a whomp.

[Tracy Thomas]

It wasn't worth. It wasn't worth putting my, like, inventor credentials on. But I think people will love it and I will talk about it. And I liked it. But, like, I was like, this is. I'm gonna. I'm gonna do this book. And, like, all my friends were like, oh, I started it already. And I was like, you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Never mind.

[Tracy Thomas]

I'm not cool.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It's fine, it's fine, it's fine. Rebecca, do you have anything left?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, my last one, I mean, is related to these, but, like, for the online portion of the question about talking about books online is the diversity of voices. Like, both on the shelf of the books that are available to us now, but also just in the conversation. Like, having come of age on the Internet during, like, the early days of Internet 2.0, when the idea of democratizing a conversation was really fresh of, like, you don't have to be a literary critic. You don't have to have an English degree.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You don't have to Live on the F line in Brooklyn.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, right. It's cool if you read romance. We can take that seriously and talk about it. It's cool if you're into sci fi. It's not just highbrow literary fiction and serious nonfiction that are valuable parts of a reading life. And like, those tend to be the main sources of my reading diet. But I so value the genre that I've been introduced to that I would never have like found. I don't think I would have found my own way in to just like reading some romance or finding the kind sci fi.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I certainly wouldn't for me.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right?

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. And also like, I, I agree, I'm just piggybacking off this because I agree with this so much, but also like in the diversity not only of like what's in the books, but also like, like the authors. And like, I feel like when I think about like reading like trans authors, for example, I. What I had read previously sort of was like all these coming out stories and now it's like, oh, wait a second, like I'm getting recommendations for all these different kinds of books by different kinds of trans and non binary authors. And like, it's not all coming out stories and lovely, but also like, there's so much more and there's historical books. Like, it's just the depth of like you're saying, like finding the right kind of romance for you or like finding that it exists.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right. Or like, I mean, Jeff and I both grew up in the Midwest and the black authors that I was introduced to in my education as a white kid in Kansas were almost entirely books about the struggle, you know, for lack of a better term. And to read just a diversity of books by black authors, by authors of color who are like, I happen to be a person of color, color. And of course the stories and experiences are informed by that, but that it's a much more nuanced, like a greater breadth of perspective that's offered there. And I think the Internet is almost wholly responsible for that. That it's not. That the stories are not as flattened and one dimensional anymore.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I've got one left. And then we'll do a break and come back to the dark side in a minute. I guess this is related to is like the insidery baseball stuff of like digital distribution of galleys, being able to browse catalogs online. Some of it is the initials behind my name. And just that book riot's been around a while. I can get a response even if it's a no from almost anyone in publishing. Right. They'll actually take my email, as I used to say, take your phone call. And communicating with authors and publishers is just easy. And that, that was really. Even from the very first days of my old blog, the reading April. Or someone would say, no, I cannot give you that galley. But at least they respond to my damn email. Like, at least they were there. And I felt like someone's on the other side of the line. Because without that, you know, it's still. It's still hard to know what's coming out and hard to plan and understand and see the breadth of what's going on there. And if you do want anything from publishers, I don't know what it's been like in the days before email. I have. No, you're right. You're making phone calls to Tin House. Like, I have no idea.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

You're not. You're just. You're writing the book review for a mainstream publication and they have the author or they have like the office.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, they have the galley room at.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The galley going through there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I know, it's just. But that independence and fragmentation has, you know, they have made need to make systems that account for that. And that makes it easy for to go through their laundry and stuff and really see what's going on behind the scenes. Okay, we're gonna do a quick break and then we're gonna come back. You don't wake up dreaming of McDonald's fries. You wake up dreaming of McDonald's hash browns. McDonald's breakfast comes first.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Tracy Thomas]

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[Rebecca Schinsky]

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[Tracy Thomas]

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[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, before we get into these, I want all the listeners to know I'll speak for Rebecca and I, and Tracy can speak for herself. We like what we do. We honestly do. Yeah, we. We like this. Please take this as the public venting space of people who live lives that also have trade offs. Let's call them this way. Right. I saw our Rebecca's friend and, you know, sometime guest on some of our shows, Josh Christie, talking about, like people saying they want to open a bookstore. He's like, you have no idea what you're Talking about this may be a little bit of the version of that. Like, a lot of people that listen to us, I'm sure, would love to do what we do. And you would, but it's all not sunshine and rainbows, Tracy. Is it?

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes. No, it's not. And also for people who don't know me, yes. One of my favorite things in the world is talking shit. I love to gossip. I love to talk shit. That's part of the reason I like my job, because I get to be critical of things publicly. And, like, I can just be like, this is my job. So also, having things that I hate brings me joy.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's one of your love languages.

[Tracy Thomas]

It is, it is. And that's not to say that I don't love my job. I certainly love my job. But part of what I love about my job is being able to talk shit about things publicly.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And Tracy works for herself in this regard. That is a very nice. I mean, we sort of do, too, but there are. Anyway, it's. It's.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes, I work really for myself, and so when I get fired, it's because I have to fire myself.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was gonna say you have done something really bad, Tracy, when you have to.

[Tracy Thomas]

I fire myself all the time. You need to take a break to.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Make a zoom call. With myself. Do you have five minutes today, Tracy? Yeah, Tracy, I sure do. We have a conversation.

[Tracy Thomas]

HR Wants to meet with you.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, no. All right. Right. Tracy, with that said, why don't you kick us off?

[Tracy Thomas]

I don't know where to start. I have a. I do have a longer list of hates.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay, okay.

[Tracy Thomas]

But most of my hates are minor.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like, they're not. They're not as. I don't hate as much as I love.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Minor. Hates would be an awesome substack. Okay, go ahead.

[Tracy Thomas]

One of the things I do hate is that I think we kind of talked about this in the loves. I cannot get to every book. And I hate that feeling of looking at my. Because I. I'm a spreadsheet person, like you all, and I have all my spreadsheets about what's coming and da, da, da, da, da. And what books have been sent to me and all of that. And I'm just. I want to read all of. Not all of them. I want to read a lot of these. And I think last year I read 140 something books.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Almost a great number.

[Tracy Thomas]

It's a great number, but do you know how many books got sent to my house last year?

[Jeff O'Neill]

No. Yeah. I mean, no. But yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like, 500.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And that's just the one that got sent.

[Tracy Thomas]

That's just ones that got sent. That doesn't include the Net galleys that I put on my Kindle or whatever. And so that it's not so much that I hate that I can't read everything, but I hate that there's, like, a lot of books that I don't get to. That I want to get to, or, like. Like, I, like, maybe I've met the author and I want to support their work. I want to know what they're doing, and I just can't. I just simply cannot. And also, I will not ever force myself to only read new releases. I'm just not doing that. Part of why I got into this was to talk about the books that I wanted to talk about in the ways that I wanted to talk about them. And that includes going back and reading Backlist. This is Loretta, right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Like, you just did it. Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, exactly. So I'm just like. Like, I. I think, like, 80% of what I read is from the same year that it comes out. But even still, like, I just. It's just. It's a pressure that is really hard. And the. And the people being like, have you read this yet? Have you read. I'm like, no, I haven't read Legend Born series. I'm so funny.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I think that comes out of a good place. When people ask you because they want your opinion, they do. They do talk about it. And, like, you just. You can't. You don't have enough arms. Like, there's not enough arms to hold all these babies. Like, there's just too many babies.

[Tracy Thomas]

Exactly. And I have twins, so I know what that feeling is. Okay. I know what it's like to have only one arm.

[Jeff O'Neill]

It doesn't feel. It feels like nine for two arms. Rebecca, I'm guessing you have something similar. I certainly do.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I did have something similar. Like, that the Internet makes it seem like new books are the only books that matter, which is really disconnected from most people's readings.

[Jeff O'Neill]

80% of sales are backlist.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, that wasn't. That wasn't actually on my list, but, yeah, that's. Go ahead.

[Tracy Thomas]

But, yeah, because also, like, this is back to what I was saying before of, like, reading things before anybody else has read them. Sometimes that's a pain. Point for me is sometimes I don't know if a book is good or not. I know what I think about it, but I'm like, I don't want to spend all this time in this book that Nobody's going to be talking about in a year. Like, I feel like there's so many books I read that are just like, nobody cares about. They're not going to stand the test of time. Not even two years, let alone 10 or 20 years.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, because to a first approximation, none of them will. We all know. Exactly. You know, maybe James by Percival Everett. If we had to bet on something, maybe. And then after that, I'm like, I have no idea what's going to be read in 10 years. None.

[Tracy Thomas]

Exactly. Exactly. And so I. That's one of the things, I guess, that goes with this. It's like too many books and not enough books that, like, I don't. I don't like to waste my time either. Right. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

One of the things we do here is go back to previous decades and power rank the books of like 10 or 20 years ago. And just going back and seeing what was popular 20 years ago and how few of them we're still talking about, I find it to be kind of liberating for the problem that you're describing of, like, this is a made up pressure because almost all of these things will be completely made up in 20 years.

[Tracy Thomas]

But, like, on the Internet, you would think that every book was. Was. I don't know.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Beloved. I'm just like, no, it's not. But it's not.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. This takes me to my first one, which is that the discourse, like capital D, discourse, can ruin a book before you even get to read it. Like, whether it's the hype train that just. This book.

[Tracy Thomas]

You hate a hype train.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You. There's no train you like missing better than a hype train.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm so allergic to the hype train. That's like, this book is incredible. And anybody who thinks otherwise is dumb. I. If, if the hype train takes off, it's going to take me a decade to pick that book up. Which, like, is kind of a bummer because sometimes I do miss things sometimes.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Sometimes popular things are good sometimes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Right. Like, I have not read Ferrante because I didn't get on the train early enough. And now I still am trying to, like, get Ferrante fever out of my system. And on the flip side, sometimes just the discourse about a book can be insufferable where, like, I bet I would like that book, but I don't want to go to the party that the people who are talking about the book have created for themselves.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Are you talking about My Struggle by one Karl Ove Nasgaard?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm guessing which you had just invented a reason that I have to read.

[Tracy Thomas]

That's true.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I have. I'm on the turn. I've got two that are related. I just had too many books that capsules a lot. There's just too many. There's nothing you can do about it. You know, Infinite Monkeys reading on Infinite Barco Loungers couldn't get through that. And I guess that goes maybe as a turn into something that I think at the heart of what you're saying too, to some degree is like, because of the nature of books as being sort of a secondary pursuit in culture, maybe even quaternary, I guess, if we're honest about it, and there are too many books, we just can't have a Barbenheimer moment where we get to be part of mainstream culture for a moment and like, really access even the big books that do become phenomenons still aren't big enough, really. And also Rebecca and I, we hate them typically the kinds of books that make it to that level. So that's a real tough beat for us. And we sort of will come into it later and then crap all over and people get mad on us. It's like, well, we just didn't like the book. Like, I do wish there was a moment where, I don't know, you know, Kendrick at the super bowl of books. And we just don't get to do that. And the flip side of that is we get to, you know, read about backlist. We get to not care about headlines because there are no headlines. But I wouldn't mind a headline now.

[Tracy Thomas]

And again, you know, or like the.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Days when a really good New York Times review could make a book and it would be the thing that every.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And at least you'd have. At least having an opinion about would be interesting. Like, we get it with like, Sally Rooney and that's kind of it. And even that's like barely a whimper in the cacophony of popular culture. Tracy, you probably feel this. Am I onto something?

[Tracy Thomas]

I do. I mean, I definitely feel that way. Like, there's no monoculture around books to steal. Sam Sanders favorite phrase, monoculture. But I also think, like, it's hard because there could be if book spaces probably, like, were more coordinated, you know, like, if Oprah and Reese and Book Riot and the stats and everybody was like, we're gonn read this one book and the New York Times put it on the COVID of the New York Times Book Review. Like, we probably could get that moment if we really wanted it, if we coordinated in the same ways. That, like, every movie theater is only showing 12 movies at a given time. Right? And, like, if every. If, like, authors were, like, going on tv, really, and, like, all of the things that happens with movies or whatever, if we were reading a book, as at the super bowl, right. Like, we probably could get there, but I don't know that we would like it there.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't think we would like it there. I think that's. That's the key point is, like, that catalog. Because the things that do break through to pop culture again, the industries that they are part of, want them to do that. But a fundamental level, there has to be, like, market pull from audiences to want to be there. Right. And, like, the fundamental demand writ large on the whole. I'm just saying thesaurus worlds for everybody right now is not to just go pick up a book on their Kindle or put it in their ears. It's just not the same way as it is to go stream something or watch the Super Bowl. It's just the demand's not there. So the tide can only be so high.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

The barrier to entry is so much higher. Like, if I see Kendrick Sue super bowl halftime show, and I want to go learn about Kendrick Lamar, I can commit to five minutes on Spotify.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Where if you're like, oh, man, I heard that James by Percival Everett is good. You kind of got to read all 300 pages. Yeah, right.

[Tracy Thomas]

I mean, it's a quick read, people. You should read.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You should get through it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I do think that's as close as we're going to get to monoculture for a while. Like, in terms of literary monoculture.

[Tracy Thomas]

I mean, Rebecca Yarrows, right.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

She's a literary Tracy.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Come on.

[Tracy Thomas]

I have not read it. I'm just reading. Well, but. Okay, but here's what I want to say, though, about this, because I. This is a thing that I have to deal with myself.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

I've never read a Rebecca Yaros. I don't. It's not a thing that I read. No judgment. However, if people like us want to have those big moments, we have to seriously engage with the books that people want to read.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This takes me to my next comment.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, thank you. Go ahead.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Because Jeff and I do read those big books to try to, like, specifically to earn our opinions about them. And we go. We tend to go in with, like, I hope this is actually good.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We want to like all of these things.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I remember picking up where the Crawdads sing in what, like 2018 or 2019, and being like, I was Getting on a plane, I was like, I'm going to read this. Hopefully it'll be good. We'll find out what all the hype is about. And getting 30 pages in and texting Jeff and being like, oops, here we go. But, like, we read the whole thing. We're going to talk about it. One of my. Maybe the thing I dislike the most about talking about books online is people confusing critical opinions.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's my number one, too. Yep.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Or something that unfair.

[Tracy Thomas]

Agree.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We are professionals at this. You might tend to generally agree with us, but, like, my opinion about a book is just that. It's not a judgment about anybody else's opinion about a book. I don't care what you read. Like, generally. And when we do, like, and generally on the show, like on our weekly front list foyer segments, we talk about what we're reading. They tend to be things that are positive. If we've read, like, a debut novel that we didn't like, we tend to not talk about it because what's the point in, you know, like, hampering any discussion about someone whose career is just getting started?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Clubbing a baby seal feels better than doing that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, but, like, if you've sold 4 million books in 12 days and I don't like your book, I'm allowed to not like it.

[Tracy Thomas]

Agreed.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is my podcast. I'm allowed to talk about that. And people who take it as like, that I've done something to them by daring to publicly have a contrary opinion or that take any critical or negative reading of a book as unfair to the author in some way. Like, that's. That will get me on my old person. The Internet is ruining us horse faster than anything.

[Tracy Thomas]

Rebecca, do you know my, like, the slogan that I'm like, most known for saying no talking shit about books is good for books. Yes. This is my. This is the hill that I will live and die on.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I make room for me on that hill.

[Tracy Thomas]

It is. It is the only thing I care about. And. And to take it even further, it's not just smart people whose professional job it is to be a critic who have the skill sets to do that. Doing it is good for books. I'm talking about everybody, everybody. One of the things that makes something like the Kendrick Lamar performance or an episode of the White Lotus or whatever a pop cultural phenomenon is that someone who knows not a fucking thing about Kendrick Lamar can be like, that halftime show was bad, and people will engage with that. People in the book space are like, oh, I don't want to see anything Mean, I don't want to hurt the author's feeling. Blah, blah, blah. I'm like, well, this is why we can't talk about books. Books. Because you're so worried about an artist caring what you think about their work. They made the art, they put it in the world. It's up for fodder. That's how this works. That's what art is. And so my thing is, like, yeah, maybe don't tag an author in your little book review or whatever. But also, even if someone tags you and says something mean to you and you're an author, you gotta take it on the chin, babe. You got to, like, you don't think Beyonce's getting tagged about what a fat, ugly bitch she is or whatever. I don't believe that she's my hero. But, like, you don't think that other artists are getting slammed? And I hear this from authors time and time again of like, well, you know, I put so much time, and it's so hard to write a book. I'm like, it's hard to work at McDonald's. It's hard to do everything. People put a lot of time into a lot of things, and people are still rude to them. But if you want to be an artist, you have to put your shit out there. You have to let people talk about it, and people have to feel safe to do that. And I think that's one of the things I hate about the book space is it's like. Like you're being mean to an author. And I'm like, no, I'm doing my job. Which is to tell you if you should read this book or not or what I think about this book.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah, I think that's so well put. John Warner has a great substack that I was. He had a great piece in it last week where he was like, I'm not a critic. I don't know what the word for me is. And I felt so. I felt so much kinship to that. Like, I don't have an English degree, you know? Like, I'm not a professional book critic. I'm. I'm a person who, like, has an educational background that made me a pretty decent reader. And I have the opportunity to read more. More books in a different way than a lot of people do. And when you talk about them online for 15 years, you develop, like, some skills. But, like, this. That is part of it is like, having a perspective and having a voice. And I totally agree that if you can't take people having negative responses to the art You've made. You really need to get off the Internet. Like, don't look at your ads on Twitter. Don't look at your Goodreads reviews. But the, like, the fans writing for the book is like, I haven't done anything to you. I don't care that you like it. Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

And like the fans being mad about it. I mean, I. This is like an author once referred to me behind my back, but obviously someone sent it to me because as I mentioned, I love talking shit. That they called me a common reader. And they said me saying that talking shit about books was good for books was like, this is why we need more serious critics and less common readers. Which to me is like, okay, hahaha. Hilarious. Sure. I am, I am. That's my whole brand is selling books. That's what I was gonna say. I'm like, you know who else is common readers? Everyone that you hope will buy your book. Most people who are reading books.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Her column was called the Common Reader. You're with good company.

[Tracy Thomas]

I mean, I don't take it personally because I mean, part of my thing is like, I am a common reader, right? Like, I want to talk to other readers about books. I'm not trying to talk to critics about books. But I do think this idea that, like, we can't say anything bad about books because it's bad for books is really backward because, like, I cannot tell you how many times when I talk shit about. People know that I hate this book. So I can say it. I think I hate tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay?

[Tracy Thomas]

And when I talked about hating that book, at least 20 people in the sex pack were like, I gotta read it. Like, they had to know.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And I know that I. Yeah, not bad for anybody.

[Tracy Thomas]

But that's how it is for all pop culture. If someone's like, I saw this movie and it's so bad, you're like, okay, I have it. I have an extra few hours. Like, let me just see what it's like.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh yeah. This is like, okay, I guess I'm gonna watch all three hours of Emilia Perez.

[Tracy Thomas]

Exactly. Because I have to go if it's as bad as people say. And so I think all of that is. I hate that people misunderstand. Like having conversations around. Around things. Honest conversations and disliking and liking things is not. It's not bad. It's actually quite good for art.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. And my version is. There's a quote from High Fidelity where John Cusack says, since when is bullshit to state an opinion? And that's all I've got here. It's. It's like the inability to parse between not liking something and thinking a whole category is bad or like the whole. Like, I tend. I don't use the phrase talking shit like that, but I will be critical of a book. I think part of it, too. I think what you're getting at, both of you, to some degree, is as common readers or uncommon readers or any kind of person in the world, people who read books like some of them and don't like some of them, and they hate some of them and they love some of them. If we don't reflect that to some degree, people have no reason to take us seriously as being a useful lens through which to understand their reading life. Because if you want sort of milquetoast, vague reviews, the New York Times Book Review is right there for you. You. Right. If you want measured, careful, literary. The New Yorker, I mean, there. There are outlets for that. But the humanness, I think, is one thing. That's one of the poses we were talking about with the bookish Internet is the real humanity and the actual experience of being a, quote, unquote, common reader has been articulated and performed and, you know, turned into businesses and personalities and lifestyles.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I didn't get this on my prose list, but I'm thinking about it now that you're saying it, Jeff. Like, Internet conversation about books has shifted. What, like formal criticism about books? Looks like the critics at the New York Times will write about, like, my heart was pounding when I was reading this chapter. Or they will infuse, like, personal elements.

[Jeff O'Neill]

More personal stuff into it that they.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Weren'T doing 15 years ago because that was. You were supposed to have distance and kind of sit in your ivory tower and that. That the Internet has successfully shifted expectations about how we engage with art. At least enough that you can put some humanity into it, I do think is a perk.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, I'm not sure who's tuned in. We did a roundtable. Jeremiah. About that one. I think we. Did I use that right, Tracy?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I don't know.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Just give me credit. Just sit there and say, great job, Jeff. Thank you very much.

[Tracy Thomas]

It could also be a jer. Is that how you say it?

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think it's a Jeremiah because it is Jeremiah, I think, from the Bible. Okay, I'll go next, because I think mine kind of got washed out there. Boy, now that I put this in front of them, it seems mean.

[Tracy Thomas]

Do it. Oh, yeah. Go mean. Go mean.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Tracy's so excited right now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I hate video. I hate it. And the algorithms, they can all take a long walk off a short period. The combination of short form video and algorithm, I think it has made it now and I'm somewhat of a student of literary history. This might be the most superficial time to be in reader and recorded human history. And I don't think. I think the perverse incentives of the algorithm are doing it. I don't think people would be doing this on their own if they were just let their own devices prices. But the combination of algorithms and what's popular and maybe it's informing at least two. I think probably it could be the root of all evil. For the other things I really don't like about this particular bookish moment but all the things I like about talking about books online again, people always say I'm sure if you just found the right book talk creators ladies and gentlemen, I have tried and that is not for me. I spend 20 minutes on it and I feel like. Like I don't even want to say because that's too mean and I don't want the emails. Don't email me about this particular one. I just am not here. It just doesn't work. And is there a version of video? I kind of was into the more early YouTubing days of books. There were some people I liked about it before it was short form video and algorithm within inches life but right now I'm not a huge fan and I think it, I think you know, with kids Tracy, maybe think about the same thing. The people that are spending this much time doing short form video with a dopamine connector right in their head like the Matrix. I don't think it's good. And Rebecca and I have been pretty medium agnostic when it comes to experience art. I'm coming around a little bit. Shinski, we haven't talked about this. Like I think people need to practice sitting down and reading a book without their phone in their hand. And I think, I think and I don't think movies do the same thing and I actually don't think TVs do the same thing. I'm a cranky old man now and I think you need to learn how to read a book and sit down and do it and go through the whole thing and then maybe not do something else with it. Like I think it's good for you and I think this is all bad and I hate it all. And am I right Tracy, or am I wrong?

[Tracy Thomas]

I think you're right. I mean I don't like the video stuff because mostly because if I'M going to watch something. I want to watch like a really produced television or movie and I want to watch like really the marginal value. I agree with that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I totally agree with that. Right? Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like, I'm just like, if I'm going to do it, I want to watch the zeitgeisty thing. I don't want to watch you tell me what you thought or like, hold up seven books and be like, like, I make these stupid reels, but I hate them. Everybody knows it's my least favorite part of my job is what I try to do, like a reel a week and you can just see. I like, I used to like put makeup on. Now I'm like in my sweatpants. Like my unshot. I don't fucking care. I'm just doing it because Instagram told me I had to. I'm like, if you see one, can you just like it so that you. I feel better because I'm like, yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Our listeners know this, that we may be doing more of this. And I'm five with every piece of my 47 year old bald self to do this crap at this point. Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

This is also on my list that algorithms tend to flatten everything and they really encourage, like, liking books as a whole personality, which does not an interesting person make. That's just all of that, like everything you're saying, Jeff. I didn't know that the, the idea that people need to just sit down and read a book without their phones was something we were coming around to. I'm, I've been on that tip. Leave your phone in the kitchen, sit down on the couch.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, I'm like, what do you mean, read a book without your phone? I don't understand. People are reading books with their phone.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Well, just like, just get off your phone for three hours. I mean, it could be reading a book, it'd be going for a hike.

[Tracy Thomas]

But I do think just like, get off your phone.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Just paying attention to something and focusing on it. I think actually we need to do it. Like, we need to do exercise. Like, our brains need it. We're turning into mashed potatoes. It's not going great out there.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, no, I agree.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And I think like, the, the, the element of liking books is your whole personality. Like, this comes home to me anytime that I'm on someone else's podcast. So, like, it'll probably happen after. If you share this, Tracy, I get a bunch of new Instagram followers because it's like, hey, people from Book Riot, whatever. And I don't talk about books online. Not Much because I got to do it 40 hours a week. So I'm not like, that's not what's happening in my personal life. In my personal life, I'm like, traveling and talking.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You'll get to know one tree very well if you follow followers.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. And like, making pies, this is what you're gonna get. So I watch my follower count, like, spike. And then over the week or two after it, I watch it fall back down. And people are like, I came for books. And she's not talking about books. Or occasionally, like, I talk about politics a lot. I will get DMS that are like, I wish you would talk about books more. And I'm like, I don't know what to tell you. Get your Instagram account.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's what the pods for.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, that's interesting. So my Instagram, my public Instagram is for the podcast, so it is all books. I have a private that I like, don't. Private, like locked or whatever. But sometimes people will, like, hear me say something that I'm into, like in passing or on a story, and they'll be like, I didn't know that. And I'm like, yes. Because I'm a whole entire thing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There's a whole other thing happening behind this.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like, a lot of my friends in real life are like, I didn't even know you like books that much. I'm like, that's true.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah. Like, drop a giant umbrella here for a conversation about Paris social relationship.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay.

[Tracy Thomas]

I've got a thing that I hate.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

Something that I hate. This is also gonna sound rude, so sorry.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's okay.

[Tracy Thomas]

But I hate stupid readers. Like, people who don't actually read the article or the caption that have all these fucking hot takes about what you said. Or, like, giving recommend. I'm just like, can you just read it? Can you read what I wrote? Or, like, I'll write a review of a book and they'll be like, oh, my God, so glad you loved it. And it'll be like. Like, the review will be like, I did not care for this book at all. It was a big miss. And they'll be like, oh, my God, I'm so glad you liked it too. Like, just. Just. I appreciate you trying to get it more on.

[Jeff O'Neill]

She reads on your. She reads stuff. Or on your own stuff?

[Tracy Thomas]

No, I get that on my Instagram all the time.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Instagram.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. Or like the other day. I mean, this happens. Even listening. Like, I. I did an episode of Lolita, and we say anytime there's a spoiler. We say there's gonna be spoilers the top of the episode. I said, there's gonna be spoilers. I write in the caption. And then someone wrote, I can't believe you would spoil this book. First of all, Lolita. I'm like, it's from 19.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I have a whole differential about that.

[Tracy Thomas]

But yes, but I don't spoil books without telling people because I hate spoilers. And then people like, why did you spoil this? And I'm like, but I, you know what?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Because they're doing 25 other things. Their phone is in their hands and they're not listening.

[Tracy Thomas]

So I hate that. Like, I really hate reading publicly and, like, coming to the work with good faith and, like, trying to do a decent job. And then people are just like, I don't mean whatever. I get get it. I'm. I am not everyone's priority. Like, Jeff, like you said, like, you're like, I don't listen to every episode. I'm like, I know I put out too much content. Like, nobody, not even my mom, not even my husband. I don't even. I mean, I do know everything I put out, but only because I'm a one woman show. If I had someone else to do stuff for me, I would never read all of it. So, like, I understand that part of it, but I do. It does. Just like, it's such a pet peeve. When I, like, like, right. Like, my name is Tracy. And they'll be like, hey, Stacy. I'm like, ah, come on.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

We've long dreamed of an Internet function where you would be required to, like, answer comprehension questions about an article before you're allowed to comment on it.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Or like, or even a timer saying, you, you can't comment for 50 seconds. So they can just give yourself a minute. Just give yourself a minute not to say something.

[Tracy Thomas]

I feel like someone who worked at the New York Times Food Food section was saying this to me. I can't remember who, but they were like, we wanted to add a function where it said, before you could comment, did you actually cook this recipe?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

Or did you make modifications? Because it'll be like, this recipe is horrible. I didn't use butter. I used olive oil. I didn't use onions. I used shalloties for wagyu beef.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And it's exactly like, well, I don't know what to tell you, man.

[Tracy Thomas]

That's how I feel. I'm like, you can comment. You can tell me I'm an idiot, but can you just tell me before that, if you actually, actually read what I wrote, that's all I want to know.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Related is the what about ism. The, like, this list on the Internet is wrong because you didn't include my favorite book.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yes. Oh, my God. That was New York Times book list last year.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, that. Those two comments. I'm so used to them, Tracy, that I didn't even consider them as candidates. Oh, yeah, Like, I'm just sort of.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like, I'm used to them, too, but I.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, no, you're right.

[Tracy Thomas]

I just, I just hate them so much. But I, I, I'm used to them. But every time it happens, I'm just like, why are you really, like, this.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Is how you're spending your one wild and precious life?

[Tracy Thomas]

Commenting on book things you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I haven't read.

[Tracy Thomas]

Like, why are you being mean to me? I feel like I'm being bullied right now.

[Jeff O'Neill]

All right, Rebecca, what do you have.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

That ratings and reviews online are functionally useless now because authors have turned them into popularity contests that, like, if you've got a lot of Twitter followers, or it used to be this way, and you could just ask everybody to rate your book or review it on Goodreads whether they had read it or not. Plus, the, like, review bombing aspect, like, some of this is maybe just a goodread reads sucks portion, but that if the size of your online following can swing the public discussion about your book rather than the actual, rather than an actual discussion of your book. Those, all of those, like, social reading platforms, I find to be, like, almost completely useless. I know that people find certain voices that they like and trust and will follow over time. And I can see how that would work just as well as it works on, you know, Instagram or TikTok or anything else. But, like, the social reading, social media for books thing. And people are, we get emails from people who are launching new ones all the time. But, like, unless you find a way to protect it from this, it's basically useless.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And you have to curate your curators, man. That's the only way to do that. You have to, like, curate your curators. And no one, those platforms want such scale that it's not, it doesn't make any sense for them to care about, you know, the net effect of doing it. Yeah, that one sucks on mine. I have, have, I think this one we're all going to share, even if it's not on your list. Like, the overbearing whiteness of bestsellers and popular books, like, have made effectively zero progress. There was a moment, like, five or six years ago. I felt like there was some traction on the lists.

[Tracy Thomas]

And this was five years ago. Almost exactly.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, almost exactly.

[Tracy Thomas]

Black Lives Matter.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was even thinking a little bit before that, Tracy. A little bit, to be honest.

[Tracy Thomas]

A little bit. But I feel like when it really.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Picked up, that's really kicking. Picked up. And I've come around to that. It's again, I've talked to people in publishing. I know there's editors and people care there. There are more candidates. There are just more books on shelves for people to pick up and read and good ones in various. Across the forums. But. And I think, I think it's both. It's a chicken the egg with algorithms, but also the kind of readers and what books the median American reader is going to pick up. It just doesn't like the incentives for people to pick up something other than what's easy for them to find at the end shelf at Target or what they're getting in the in their Book Talk algorithm or their Instagram wheels is. There's a recursive effect and it comes to the circle. It goes back to the superficial reading thing and the social short form video. I think whatever progress we've made was completely wiped out politically and sort of technologically. And I have no idea where to go from here. I really don't. I feel as hopeless because we've been doing this a long time. This is something we've cared about for a long time, even back before the book riot days. And I don't know what the fuck to do. I really don't know what the fuck to do. That's a bummer. It's not funny. I don't have a funny take on that.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

When people get mad when we are like, readers have to do something.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. Readers have to do something.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. People love to be like, I don't, I don't know who.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I just want to read a good story.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. I don't look at the author. I'm like.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And they want to blame the publishing industry and there's more they could do differently. But I actually, I've seen the change and they're doing stuff differently and the lists are worse. So I don't know what that means.

[Tracy Thomas]

Well, I think I do. I do put a lot of blame on the publishing industry as well. Not just the reader. But that's because maybe I'm a reader and I don't, I don't feel like precious about protecting the publishing.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I'm not, I'm not. I was. I mean, we talked. No, no.

[Tracy Thomas]

I'm not saying it's really large.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah. But like, I've seen the change in what publishing actually makes and the marketing budgets because we see some of the ad products here. And again, there's still plenty of work to be done. But there's a little bit, like. I don't know.

[Tracy Thomas]

Can I just say this? This is my theory. A little bit.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah.

[Tracy Thomas]

Let's go about on the publishing side. I won't spend too much time. I think that publishers are trying to put out more books, but I think because so many of the editors are like white women that don't have shared experiences with a lot of their authors, they are nervous to push back on parts of books that need to be edited. I think that's probably fair. They're putting out books that aren't as good as they could or should be because they're worried about being seen as, like, racist because they're telling a black author, like, what are grits? Or whatever.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I don't know.

[Tracy Thomas]

And so I think, like, they're sliding on their rigor a little bit. It just to be like, we put it out and so then people buy the book and the book isn't that good. So why would you go back to that author? Or, like, why would you trust.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's interesting.

[Tracy Thomas]

So I. That. I think that's part of it. And I noticed that in a lot of the books that came out in 2022, sort of like after racial reckoning.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Especially debuts, have this problem anyway. But.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, yeah. So that's part of what I think a little bit.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think that's a good theory. And it's like, it goes to the pipeline problem in the industry that, like, publishing has gotten much better at the lowest levels of, like, at the entry levels, hir more diversely. But it takes much longer to diversify the higher echelons of any structure. And we're not there. We're not like, anywhere close to there yet. The publisher's weekly salary survey every year that shows the gender and race breakdown for folks at various levels. I think that could really be. Could certainly be part of it. Everybody's. But like, everybody holds responsibility for this in some ways. And how resistant some readers are to, like, oh, maybe I should pay attention to who the author is. Maybe I should look at how white my bookshelf is.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, I agree.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I think the way is maybe. I think, Trace, you're absolutely right. I think the thing I would say is, like, I still think the pressure I want to put on the publishing industry do better is still there. But I think the new thing for me is, like, that's not. They can't do it. All right. And this is happening on the macro scale, politically, just to be perfectly honest, like, yeah, no, I kind of environment, like, what can you really expect to some degree, but regression? We're not going to stop talking about it. But I, you know, I agree with you. A bummer. Two times a thousand for me and a lot of other people, too. All right, who's next? Where are we?

[Tracy Thomas]

My hate fits with this.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Okay.

[Tracy Thomas]

I. One of the things I've hated a little. I loved it and hated it. Is learning about the publishing industry as a person who got into this as.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A reader, because I'm fascinated by that.

[Tracy Thomas]

I didn't know what an arc was. I'd never heard that word. I had to Google arc books, galley books. Like, I didn't know. I didn't know that books had publicists. I didn't know that I could reach out to a person to ask for a book. I didn't know any of this. I didn't know that publishing people made $0. I didn't know that publishing was full of people who say that publishing makes no money. And then finding out, like, Prince Harry sold a bazillion copies and funded Penguin random house for 75 years. Like, I didn't know anything about publishing as an industry. And the more that I learn, the more depressing it can be. Including, like, I mean, this is. This is sort of a piggyback hate. But, like, I hate that they don't pay book influence. I hate that they. They will be like, oh, we'll send you a book and a hat. And I'm like, no, babe, how much did the hat cost? Send me the check.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I mean, that's, like, for as long as the Internet has had, like, you know, casual, amateur, like, professional amateurs. Like, when I was blogging in 2008, it was the same thing. Like, we'll send you this book for free. And it's, like, cool. You want 10 to 12 hours of my labor for an ARC that's worth $4? And maybe a hat that. I don't even know if I'm gonna like this book.

[Tracy Thomas]

But that's. The hat's ugly also. Just saying, yeah, right.

[Jeff O'Neill]

No one wants wearing that hat.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah. So, like, I just. I think, like, something that I've hated is, like, having the curtain drawn back a little bit because it has ruined aspects. It's also made things make a lot more sense and made things cooler. And, like, I think about Books in a different way. But it's frustrating to be like, oh, publishing doesn't value like people who don't work at the New York Times or like publishing doesn't value the people who work there. They don't pay their staff well. They don't treat like you can't get into publishing unless you have money for the most part. And like all of these pieces, I just, I didn't. I'm sure if I had thought about it maybe I would have been able to figure it out quickly. Like it doesn't seem not obvious. But learning about it in such a quick. Being so immersed in the world has been. Has made me have issues.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Seeing how the sausage is made is that's a real one. Or like finding out that even most bestselling authors have day jobs because being a professional author or like finding out.

[Tracy Thomas]

How many books like approximately gets you on the bestseller list. I was like, I know it's low people, it's low.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I guess that relates to one of mine too. Rebecca, just to jump in line. Just like the downstream effects of there being too many books is part of that, right? If, if There were only 500 books published a year, there would be more money behind each individual title. Now again, there'd be a lot of trade offs for that. I don't think I want to live in that world as a reader necessarily. But the reason there aren't isn't that much money for each individual author with very, very few exceptions is because the money that people do spend, the books are so spread out out and more people are interested in having been published than making a living off of it so that the reward they're getting is having a book in the world or like at least, you know, pulling the slot machine of the publishing industry having a crack at it. But that means there's fewer quarters to pay out for everybody else. That's that. I don't know what to do about that. I've thought about this a lot over the last 10 years. Like would I have it be where off individual the median author could be a, you know, a middle class person person and that would mean there are 90% fewer books. I guess I'm not pressing the button. I guess I'm not. But the weird downstream effects of that are, you know, really hard to live with. And the other part of that, it's hard to make a living in the book business. Tracy, this is, you know, kind of going back yours. There's not a lot of money in the advertising industry. The market is not that Big in terms of audiences. So it's a real, you know, online media writ large is tough if you're not. Well, I. I don't think there is any caveats to that, but Books are being an independently owned bookish media company, and you are one of one and we are one of more. But it's still a really tough rack.

[Tracy Thomas]

Really hard.

[Jeff O'Neill]

A really tough racket. Rebecca, go.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay, I'm going to pivot us a little bit.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

My last hate, and I think this is about the online of it all, more than books.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, good.

[Tracy Thomas]

My last hate is about this, too.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Okay. Yeah, I think this exists. If you're producing work online in any capacity. It's what the hosts of Pantsy Politics call the chorus of 10,000 voices, which is just awareness of what the very online conversation or very online expectations are about anything. And when I say very online, I'm talking about, like, two standard deviations from the mean of engagement with Internet of, like, far, far left politics, all those kinds of things. Like, before a sentence comes out of my mouth on a podcast, I should probably run it through a filter of what are the people maybe going to get mad about? And I want to be aware of issues. I want to be sensitive to the kinds of language that could be harmful to people like that. We care about those things here. Those are in line with Book Riot's values. And also we're trying to have a conversation about art, which is messy. We are people in the world, and that is messy. And if there's no space to have conversations where you don't use perfect language for everything all the time. And I think for me, this connects to a larger argument about the left eating its own. It makes it very difficult to do the kinds of work that we're trying to do or to bear the progressive messages that we're trying to bear and to push the kinds of books we're trying to push. Because if you're trying to talk about a book by an author from a marginalized community, you're saying this book has value. And maybe I'm not from that community and I don't know all the language. I want to put the book in front of our audience and help it have a greater platform. And I also know that there are going to be 10 people emailing me because I didn't say a thing. Exactly. Perfectly. And I think Jeff and I have made similar choices over the years. We're just going to get through things wrong sometimes. We want to be good students and open to feedback. And I Like, I hope our audience knows that we want to be corrected. Like I want to be open and correctable as a person online. But I think we, I do think it pre silences a lot of interesting voices that might otherwise have podcasts or might otherwise have bookish platforms that would be doing really interesting work. But that input from people who have never done this work, who don't know how hard it is to make a show like we make or to make a show like you make and have thousands of people have their own opinions.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And try to have interesting spontaneous ideas right in the moment. Right. Like those. The, the hegemonic filter of your tribe is a real thing. And I think can you have your cake and eat it too? Of like try to do the right work. But like, like you said, Tracy, there's so many books, we cannot be expert in all of the kinds of things we're talking about. So, you know, and I think our audience gives us this benefit of the doubt.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I think we get a lot, we.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Get a lot of largess and I think podcast, podcasts aren't as subject to sort of call out culture and people aren't pulling clips from like minute 41 or whatever because they're not listening. I also think, and I'm going to give it back to you here in a second, Tracy, this is related to my last one too, which is the. I think we have, I think there is a certain corner that has replaced a criticism or a call out with engagement and thinking. They think of that as thinking rather than having an interesting idea of your own. There's sort of preset templates that are ready for people to use. Use. But having your own idea or your own take, even a carefully considered one, it's much easier to say you didn't get this right. Or what about not like that's interesting. Here's how I took it. Like I love. That's interesting. Here's how my thing went differently. I'll read a hundred of those and I'll read zeros of like, you obviously don't know what you're talking about because no one knows that better than I do. But I'm trying to do a thing here. Go ahead, Tracy.

[Tracy Thomas]

Well, I always tell people, some people get mad at me when I say this, sorry, whatever. But I always say I'm the stupidest person in the room because, because genuinely, genuinely, that's how I approach the work that I do. I try to put things together in the moment. I try to talk to experts about things and ask questions and then Regurgitate what I'm hearing to explain what I'm thinking about it. And also, I think it's okay not to know know. Like, I. Like, why else would I be interviewing you if I knew everything? Why would I ever waste my time talking to someone? You know what I mean? And so. So, like, my whole thing, like, I do a live show here in la, and the first one we ever did, I played this stupid game where I was like, okay, raise your hand if you've read these books. And it was like, Moby Dick and, I don't know, Infinite Jess and all these, like, fancy schmancy books that people are like.

[Jeff O'Neill]

And you never raise your hand.

[Tracy Thomas]

And I said, congratulations, you're all smarter than me. I've read zero of these books. Can we continue like you? You don't have to be intimidated by books. And so, I mean, to both of your points, I totally hear you. I think I run into slightly less of that than you all because I think you two are both very smart, and I think people probably feel like you are.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Oh, Tracy, come on.

[Tracy Thomas]

No, for real. I think you guys, like. You guys have real opinions and do things. I sort of just, like, listen and then say back. And I think that is, like, what works for me. And I think I get less. I get less of, like, you don't know what you're talking about. I still get it. I still get plenty of it. But I think less than you are all get.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

I'm gonna say the fact that you have landed on that as your angle makes you smarter than both of us.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I was gonna say, yeah, you. You went all the way back around. You know, you came all the way back around that way. Does anybody have anything left?

[Tracy Thomas]

I have one. My last one. And this is, like, very much about social media. All right, I hate. This is a stupid one, too, but I hate that we have the same seven online conversations about.

[Jeff O'Neill]

I thought about this, Tracy. I didn't know if you've been around long enough, so I. I kept this off the board. Yes.

[Tracy Thomas]

Thank you very much. Every five days is our audiobooks reading. What should you do with an arc when you're done? Can. Are you going to go to jail.

[Jeff O'Neill]

If you put it in a little.

[Tracy Thomas]

Library.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Out of your books or not? If you make a craft out of a book, you're definitely going to.

[Tracy Thomas]

Well, what if you dog ear a page? Is that the worst thing that's ever happened?

[Jeff O'Neill]

Prison immediately or just straight to the electric chair? Either one. Those are your choices.

[Tracy Thomas]

Even the conversation of, like, should book Influencers be paid. Like I, this is my hobby, so why should I ask a publisher to pay me for this? I'm like, these same nine conversations are. It's like, do you think you're inventing this question?

[Rebecca Schinsky]

They do. It's, it is the, like. So I am Internet ancient. So I've seen this on blogs and then Tumblr and then YouTube and then Twitter and then Instagram and now TikTok. And it will like, these same conversations will recycle on every new form of social media to the point that like Book Riot now has guidelines for contributors. We've been in business for almost 14 years. Like your post about audiobooks are just as valuable as everything else. Like, that's right. And we wrote it seven times over the last 14 years. So you can't do that.

[Jeff O'Neill]

You gotta move along here.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, those conversations, I'm just like, oh, wow, we're gonna, we're gonna do this again. And then people like in the being like, it, you guys, how do you read so many books that you read over 50 books a year. How do you do it? Do you have a job? Do you have friends? Do you have kids? I'm like, I have a job, friends and kids that I run.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Strangers, Instagram. That's how I read more than 50.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah, that thing that is, that is by far the most of all the things I've listed, that's the one that I is the most annoying to me regularly. Though it's also the least, the least, least important one. Like, it's like, not like I'm like losing sleep over the conversation about audiobooks, but every time I see it, I'm just like five seconds to be like, I hate you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

And then I'm doing this again. Like we're really doing this again.

[Jeff O'Neill]

To give ourselves and those people some, I call it generous reading to give ourselves some slack. And those people, some psycho. Say two things. One is, I think one reason we get so frustrated by that is that it takes up the room for other kinds of conversations. Wish people were having, right? That we do. And it's because. Because there is no single text that anyone can talk about at length that does gets as much engagement. Because that's what drives the algorithm is one of these things. And those are. And because readers are isolated, they don't know that those are conversations people have had a billion, billion times. And Also someone every three years a 14 year old turns 17, which means they're coming to the Internet for the first time as someone who's a reader. Like, there's this old saying, like, you know, someone's born every day that hasn't seen the Flintstones yet, which really dates me. But, like, there are some people that this is their first encounter with it.

[Tracy Thomas]

Yeah.

[Jeff O'Neill]

But there is a lot of engagement.

[Tracy Thomas]

Neither of you are on threads, right?

[Jeff O'Neill]

No, no, no.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay, so I'm on thread.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Book threads is, like, particularly deranged and book threads.

[Tracy Thomas]

But I'm saying book threads will have the same conversation about audiobooks every three weeks. Like, I'm not talking about, like, three years. I'm not talking about. Oh, another generation. Yes, I guess so. I don't. I think people see that it gets a lot of engagement, and then they put be like, what's the deal with audiobooks? Is that really reading? And then. And then three weeks later, it'll be like. So I have a serious. A genuine question. Is audiobooks reading? And then it'll be like, unpopular opinion. Audiobooks is reading. And I'm like, oh, my God. Like, so I'm not even talking about, like, the grand scope of time. I'm talking about Tracy, what do you want from me? I was trying, but I agree with you.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Incentives of the algorithm. Like, just talk about whatever gets engagement.

[Tracy Thomas]

I agree that people are coming to it new. Like, again, I didn't know what an ARC was. I had to learn, learn. But I also didn't post the same question every three weeks to get likes. I don't know. I just. I hate it.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Also, what if we just did away with unpopular opinion?

[Tracy Thomas]

But oh, my God. Because also on threads, this is just a bigger threads complaint. Unpopular opinion on threads is literally like, unpopular opinion. Broccoli is a vegetable. And you're like, that's not. It's not even an opinion. That's just a sentence. Like, that's just.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's just a declarative sentence.

[Tracy Thomas]

They'll say things that are so popular. Popular like unpopular opinion. Beyonce's a good singer. I'm like, okay, okay.

[Jeff O'Neill]

Wild. This goes back to my. Please have an original thought once in your life. I'm gonna try to salvage this for people listening that are not professional podcasters in some way. I. This, though, this kind of conversation is what's make talking about books on the Internet a delight. What a delight to have you, Tracy, that we got to do this.

[Tracy Thomas]

Thank you for letting me bend and celebrate. But mostly, yes, on the.

[Jeff O'Neill]

We got on the vent. Tracy, remind people again where they can find you that maybe don't remember from 55 minutes ago or wherever we started this.

[Tracy Thomas]

Okay. My podcast is called The Stacks. You can find it anywhere. You got your podcast wherever you're listening to this right now. It comes out every Wednesday. And I'm on Instagram at the Stacks Pod and my website is the stacks podcast.com. find me all those places.

[Jeff O'Neill]

There'll be a link in the show notes book riot.com listen or your podcaster of choice. I'll put all Tracy things there. Rebecca, what do we have coming up on our docket to let people.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Oh, what do we have coming up? Well, we have Tracy. This is airing on Wednesday. Our Patreon episode at the end of this week is going to be about classics you actually need to have read to be well read, which is a question a patron asked us recently. And next week in the midweek show, we will be joined by Laura McGrath who is an academic who studies her work is about statistics in the publishing industry. And she's we don't know anything. We asked her to come in with us cold. So she's going to to us about the most interesting stats in the world of books and reading. Gonna be super great. And then she'll join us for a Patreon episode where we will be dreaming up together how to make a fantasy reading.

[Jeff O'Neill]

That's right. We're finally doing our fantasy league for books with Laura. She's gonna help us structure that. That's gonna be really cool. On first edition of late, I just talked to Alyssa Wilkinson about her new book about Joan Didion called We Tell Ourselves Stories. I talked to Amal El Mahtar about the river as Roots. I talked to Sachi Cole about her book Sucker Punch. This week I joked on the live event about the book about phosphorus. But the first edition episode is coming out with Jack Lowman as editor to talk about the book about phosphorus I really love called White Light. Then I've got some others. Oh, I'm talking to Jane Friedman who has a new book about making her career as a writer. Go check out First Edition for all the real heads out there. Tracy, what a delight. We'll have to think about some reason to vent together on a show in the future.

[Tracy Thomas]

Anytime.

[Rebecca Schinsky]

Thanks so much, Tracy. Thanks so much for listening today. Please enjoy this excerpt from the audiobook edition of Beartooth by Callan Wink. Thanks to our sponsors at Spiegel and Grau by Spotify Audiobooks.

[Narrator]

Only a sliver of ice remained in the cooler, but the beer was so cold it made the back of his throat ache. Thad downed half a bottle in one gulp and then released a prodigious bell Belch. He'd stashed a bag of elk jerky in the truck and they ripped and chewed the salty meat until their jaws hurt, washing it down with the beer. Belching and yawning and stretching their arms and backs. They sat on the dropped tailgate and Thad decided that instead of driving the maze of logging roads in the dark, they should just camp out one more night, handle the transaction out here in the woods tomorrow, and then head home after all the contraband had been transferred. I'm going to start a fire. Hazen rummaged around in the cooler for another beer. He'd had four already, about as many as Thad ever liked him to have. Something about booze made Hazen argumentative, less pliant than he normally was. No fire and you're done after that one. Find a spot to crack trash. Take your pack with you. Don't leave it in the truck. My sleeping bag is wet. I'm going to start a fire and dry it out. Why is your bag wet? I don't know. It just is. Well that's your own stupid fault. It's not that cold anyway. You'll be fine. You could have been airing it out this whole time instead of bitching and drinking all my beer. If I can't have a fire then at least let me have another beer. He had finished his last one and three long drinks. Drinks half chewed, jerky still in his mouth. No fire, no more beer. Find a spot to crash and I'll see you in the morning. That's bullshit. One more beer. I'll pay you back. No. Why? You know why. Go sleep. Hazen took one more piece of jerky and reached for the cooler. Thad chopped his wrist down and then Hazen slid from the tail tailgate and stomped off into the dark, dragging his pack behind him. Thad could hear the sound of breaking branches, incoherent muttering. Thad got himself another beer and reclined against his foul smelling pack and yawned. Hazen could be a royal pain in the ass. He probably should just forbid him from drinking at all. Last year Thad had to pull him out from under a pack of firefighters who were intent on rearranging his face. He'd gotten a call from the bartender at the Blue Goose who said he should probably get over there quick before Hazen got his neck broken. By the time he arrived, Hazen had already talked his way into a pretty sizable ass beating. It was a small town and no local would have let Hazen get under his skin, but it was late summer and There were wildfires burning all over in the mountains. Town was full of hotshot crews from down south. Thad never did find out exactly what Hazen had said when he got to the bar. Three short wide Mexican looking dudes were about to start applying their $300 whites to Hazen's skinny midsection. Luckily Thad had been able to pull Hazen out and smooth things over. He bought drinks. He wasn't sure if the men spoke English. He pointed at Hazen and tapped his head, spiraling his finger around his ear. Loco, he said. If he never had to go to town, Hazen would be just fine. Thad figured. Hell, during some era not too far past, Hazen would have probably been happier and more well adjusted than Thad. He could have trapped, lived in the woods, got royally drunk once a year at some sort of mountain man rendezvous and spent the next year working off his hangover alone in the mountains, skinning beaver and talking to himself.