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- [00:02]
Rebecca Schinsky
This episode is sponsored by Incogni. You know how sometimes it feels like the Internet knows way too much about you? That might be because data brokers are collecting and selling your personal information. Incogni steps in to fix that. Incogni reaches out to data brokers on your behalf, requests your personal data to be removed, and handles any pushback from their side. And because many of these brokers keep trying to recollect your info, Incogni keeps working in the background, sending repeated removal requests to make sure your data stays off the market. The whole thing is fully automated, and that's why the yearly plan is such a great value. If you've ever wondered why robocalls just won't stop, it's because your number is being bought and sold. Some brokers even sell lists with names like Tough Start Young, Single Parents or Rural and Barely making it so companies can target disadvantaged people. It's real and it's really gross. I've personally been targeted online because of the work that I do, and Incogni has given me an easy way to push back and protect my personal information. And not only that, they handle it all for me. Use promo code Bookriot to get an exclusive 60% off an annual plan at incogni.com bookriot that's code bookriot at I N C o g n I.com bookriot.
- [01:18]
Navy Advertiser
You say you'll never join the Navy, that you never track storms brewing in the Atlantic and skydiving could never be part of your commute. You'd never climb Mount Fuji on a port visit or fly so fast you.
- [01:35]
Jeff O'Neill
Break the sound barrier.
- [01:38]
Navy Advertiser
Joining the Navy sounds crazy. Saying never actually is. Start your journey@navy.com, america's Navy forged by the sea.
- [01:52]
Jeff O'Neill
This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff o'. Neill.
- [01:55]
Rebecca Schinsky
And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.
- [01:57]
Jeff O'Neill
And we're doing it August.
- [01:59]
Rebecca Schinsky
We are. It's the dog days. Like, literally and spiritually right now, I think.
- [02:05]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I know we said that last time, but it remains to be the I. I've already shifted my headspace to the fall because I'm. I'm going to New York for work and I'm sitting at meetings. I'm diving into catalogs. Like, we've got some other stuff come on the horizon. We're getting ready for, like, it does feel a little bit of spinny, spin wheeliness.
- [02:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
I have, like, whatever the inverse of senioritis is, where you're, like, waiting for the first two weeks of school to happen. It's the End of summer, we have a bunch of things happening in early September and I'm just kind of like waiting, just waiting to get into those things. So late August. I mean, it is what it is. We got Katabas is coming out in like a week and a half, so that is exciting. Finally get to the big book of the summer. Maybe the big novel of the year. We'll find out. But yeah, just. We're just kind of chugging along right now. Hope everybody out there is hanging in there too.
- [02:57]
Jeff O'Neill
A family in town. We were talking about favorite movies. We've been slowly, as the kids are now to a place where we can open up another, you know, another tranche of our favorite movies and. And classics. Talk about. I was talking to my dad some of his favorite movies and he mentioned Good Will Hunting and Dead Poets Society. Like, oh, I think they get to join me on my annual Dead Poets Society watch.
- [03:18]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's on Netflix now.
- [03:20]
Jeff O'Neill
Okay. Well, you know, not all of us have a vhs. No, I'm kidding. I do have physical media for Dead Poets. But it's almost time. We're going to get One Cool Day. And I'm like, all right, kids, it's time to cry your eyes out.
- [03:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
And you didn't even wait until fall to show them When Harry Met Sally because I got a very exciting text the other day that you were introducing the kids to. One of our shared favorites.
- [03:42]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, we just sort of just. I mean, this is one. I think Michelle and I hadn't watched it together in a long time and like, let's. Let's go. Rowan's current. I think her current favorite movie, she said, is While youe were sleeping, the 1995 Sandra Bullock sort of Chicago mini classic at this point. But then. And we'd showed them Four Weddings in the Funeral. So like, the rom com backlist is coming open. It's like, okay, finally have to show this. They're big New York fans. We take them all the time. And you know, it's rated R. We've done.
- [04:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's pretty spicy.
- [04:13]
Jeff O'Neill
It's pretty spicy. But like they've watched Ted Lasso and compared to that, it's like kind of not.
- [04:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
I don't think you have as many awkward conversations to have with your kids coming out of When Harry Met Sally as a couple of those moments of the latest.
- [04:26]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, we've already had all of them. There's nothing that Harry and Sally are doing that we have to explain. Yeah, yeah.
- [04:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
How was it?
- [04:33]
Jeff O'Neill
They think they liked it. I think again, I've seen it so many times that you forget that if you've never heard. I'll have what she's having for the first time. Like, it's an amazing. It's incredible. It's really, really fun. That scene is like, I mean, eye opening Harry's darkness and Sally's, you know, general golden lab of a disposition or great. And it looks terrific. I mean we have it on, you know, a high def thing on a nice monitor and it never disappoints. It's always really, really terrific there.
- [05:04]
Rebecca Schinsky
I've been quoting the law firm of that's mine, this is yours. To some friends going through. So useful.
- [05:10]
Jeff O'Neill
I saw Instagram poster Blue Sky. I can't remember but like someone's like reading Shakespeare the first time. I was like, oh, this is where all the references are from. And for Michelle and I, this is kind of our genesis of quot or, you know, this is our shakes. This is our Hamlet. So many of them work into our. We also showed them Wonder Boys was actually we have a lot of Wonder Boys in our lexicon as well. 25th anniversary of wonder Boys, the film this year.
- [05:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think that was originally on my list for some bonus content this year and it got bumped just by the schedule, but Wonder Boys. Glad to hear it's holding up.
- [05:42]
Jeff O'Neill
It's. It was terrific. I think of the things we've showed them of late. The thing and I told you this like Chicago the Musical. I mean, the Zeta Jones Zellweger thing, mind blowing in. In comed. Constant rotation ever since then. And you know, I Ames asked me not Ames always kind of asked stuff out of the blue. But he's clearly been germinating on something for a while. And he asked me like, what do you think the most famous role in movies is? What do you think the most famous. Whatever. And it got to be like. I think because we had talked about how Catherine Zeta Jones as Velma Kelly's like might be the most perfect casting that's ever existed in the history of Hollywood.
- [06:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's very.
- [06:19]
Jeff O'Neill
We were having that conversation. I think he was marinating on this sort of.
- [06:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I mean, I think Costner in Bull Durham is up there in perfect casting. But there's something about Catherine Zeta, the song and dance.
- [06:31]
Jeff O'Neill
I mean the song and dance.
- [06:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
Just really, really wonderful. Good summer of media happening.
- [06:38]
Jeff O'Neill
Anyway, media diet check in, I guess over at the black o' Neill household over here. All right. If you're interested in digital content, like maybe make turning this into a breakout for Instagram. I don't know. Is This a thing someone would do. Talking about Velma Kelly, like something nice and current. I guess. She's in Wednesday right now. So she's in the, in the ether a little bit. We're looking digital content specialist. This is not something we're amazing at, but if you love books and know the ins and outs of social media strategy, especially social video, you might consider joining us over here at Team Book Riot. We're committed to building inclusive workforce and strongly encourage application of women, individual disabilities and people of color. To apply find details@riotnewmedia.com careers There'll be a link in the show notes by August 22nd. You need to apply. So we're coming up. You got a week or so left. That's riot new media.com careers. I just went into the Patreon feed yesterday. A little bit tardy as I've been backed up. Rebecca and I talk about the buried Giant podcast grow and right after this for next week's Patreon episode. Actually no, it's this week's. Just we're up to this week because we're backed up the most recent iteration of deals, deals, deals. I was working on this late into the afternoon yesterday to highlight some notable book deals that have announced since our last episode, which is in May. So the last four or five months.
- [07:56]
Rebecca Schinsky
Of book deals there always one of my favorite rounds of bonus content and not just because I don't have to do homework for it though a nice perk but always nice to find out. Like I now purposely ignore book deal announcements unless it's something that you know is like seven figures and I can't avoid a headline about it. But just the George Floyd, the general yeah, the day to day flow of book deal announcements. I'm like I want want to go in clean and be surprised by the deals that you have curated. So I'm ready to be surprised.
- [08:26]
Jeff O'Neill
I was writing, I'm in middle of writing today's today in books to go a little bit louder later today. But I linked to a piece by Charlotte Shane from her newsletter about you know, the the vulnerability of writing a new book and publishing one in the world and then how a lot of the time, maybe most of the time for most books kind of nothing happens right that first week. Maybe you had some podcast interviews that you had released and your publicist is doing stuff and the marketing and gets noticed in, you know, a couple places. But the vast majority of the books kind of don't do a whole lot or they do kind of maybe what the publisher thought and that's not much for most books. And it's your creative heart and soul that you put out on there. And like I was just saying, like, this is just what happens to most, yes. Books because there are so many books. And the thing about doing the deals. Deal deals. I am looping back around here is I've talked before about looking at Publishers Weekly every week and there's so many books there, but looking at the deals that comes every day from publishers. And then there's stuff like really 30 every every day that are coming out and I get a certain amount of deal blindness. And there are just so many books. And the great trade off that we didn't opt into, but we enjoy, slash endure as people who care about books is you're gonna find so much to fit your particular reading, whatever. But most people won't care about most books because even like, you know, movies are having a pretty good summer. People are talking about weapons, they're talking about. They talked about sinners, they talked about Superman. Maybe not as much as Fantastic Four as people might thought, but anyway, doesn't matter. But like, you know, there's four or five movies that maybe come out in a week. And that means if you're interested in movies, you know, you can have seen it and just. It's just. That's the devil's bargain. With books. You're gonna have so much just for you, but it might be literally just for you and people you haven't met or, you know, scattered in cells of one all over the country.
- [10:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
It is just a difficult truth about publishing. I think that a lot of aspiring authors are surprised to find out that they resist the reality of that because you don't want it to be true. I was talking recently with an author friend who, you know, has been published and also teach, teaches writing and works on some writers workshops and all kind of that whole ecosystem about how candid they try to be with folks who are still aspiring authors. About like, you better really be in this because you are invested in the story that you're telling or the work that you're doing, the art that you're trying to create. If the reason that you're trying to get published is for that external validation, or so you can like walk through Barnes and Noble and point to it on the shelf and tell your parents, like, see, Ma, I made it. Or send them a clipping from a book review that is going to make your road a lot more difficult because as you're saying, most books will come out and very little will Happen. Maybe you'll have the release party at your hometown Indy. Your friends and family will buy it, your high school English teacher will pick it up and email you about how great it is to see your success, those kinds of things. But the baseline expectation for any book is that very little happens with it and that it will be forgotten. Like, we come around when we're doing our power ranking episodes, jumping into the time machine and looking 10, 20, 20, 30 years back, most of the books, even the big award winners from decades past, we don't recognize the titles at all.
- [11:51]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. And I, as someone who's not, you know, in the business of putting books into the world, but is interested in media and culture, I think it's very revealing. And this is something I know. But to hear individual stories like Roman Alam and Lindy Keisling, these are, you know, people that have track records and some name recognition with big five publishers. And yeah, I think you're. The point you just made or that your friend made about you can control, you know, if you can move the goalposts forward to you a little and be invested in getting your story, your book into the world and making a good effort at and having it be in the world that you can do, you know, that publishing can do for you. But much beyond that, because even I think. I think Shane's book that she's Talking about sold 12,000 copies or something like that. And like a whole bunch of it was an audio, which she was surprised by because she's not an audio person. I think this is the landscape of nonfiction to a large degree. Like 12,000 is, you know, a lot of people, but it's going to be scattered all over the place. Right. That's like three copies at 4,000 bookstores. That just. It doesn't feel like there's much momentum behind it, because it isn't. But that doesn't mean that 12,000 people read your thing. You know, if you can get. You can change that, your mindset and also allow yourself to dream. But that's. That seems to be a very difficult needle to thread. To be like, I'm okay if nothing happens, but also, I hope something does. That's hard. That's very hard to live.
- [13:15]
Rebecca Schinsky
Not easy. I don't admire the position authors have to be in at all. I don't envy it.
- [13:18]
Jeff O'Neill
I don't envy that at all. I guess this is maybe a good transition place to our first AD spot, but I've got some more. There are too many books. And that's also. No one was right about them, but let's do our first sponsor break.
- [13:30]
Sponsor Narrator
Today's episode is brought to you by Natalie R. Allen, author of the Royal Mask. Now, if you're in the mood for a little post apocalyptic realness kind of a trend these days, this book is for you. In a drowned world now known as the United Islands, Selene reappears after six years of being presumed dead with no clear memory of what happened, only to be thrust into a royal family she's never known and a court full of secrets. The only person who truly sees her is Luck, her adopted stepbrother, second in line for the throne and the one connection she can't afford to feel. As rebellion brews and enemies circles, Celine must uncover the truth of her past and choose who to trust before the crown costs her everything. So this is a fierce, emotionally charged coming of age story set in a post apocalyptic royal court full of lies and legacy. Ooh, that's a lot going on and I'm here for it. It's also a slow burn, high stakes romance for readers who love court politics, royal tension and forbidden love. Just so you know it's me, I'm readers, make sure to check it out. And thanks again to Natalie R. Allen, author of the Royal Mask. For spons this episode.
- [14:42]
Rebecca Schinsky
This episode is sponsored by Bantam Books, a division of the Random House Group, publishers of Not Quite Dead yet by Holly Jackson. Stick around after the show to hear an excerpt of the audiobook edition. In seven days, Jet Mason will be dead. She was violently attacked by an unseen intruder on Halloween night and now she will have to solve her own murder before time runs out. This is a new thriller about a young woman who is trying to solve her own murder. Don't miss Not Quite Dead yet from number one New York Times bestselling author Holly Jackson, whose book A Good Girl's Guide to Murder is now a hit Netflix series. Not Quite Dead yet, which Frieda McFadden calls a rollercoaster ride of page turning, suspense and knockout twists, is available from Bantam wherever books are sold. Again, stick around after the show to hear an excerpt from the audiobook edition of Not Quite Dead yet by Holly Jackson. Thanks again to our sponsors at Bantam Books, a division of the Random House Group.
- [15:39]
Sponsor Narrator
Today's episode is brought to you by Bantam Books, a division of the Random House Group, publishers of Not Quite Dead yet by Holly Jackson, a new thriller about a young woman trying to solve her own murder, of all things this summer. Don't miss Not Quite Dead yet from number one New York Times Best selling author Holly Jackson, whose book A Good Girl's Guide to Murder is now a hit. Netflix series. Not Quite Dead yet, which Frida McFadden calls a quote, roller coaster ride of page turning, suspense and knockout twists, is available from Bantam, a division of Random House, wherever books are sold. So in seven days, Jett Mason will be dead. She was violently attacked by an unseen intruder on Halloween night and now she will have to solve her own murder before time runs out. Don't miss this twisty new thriller from the best selling author which is guaranteed to be a good time. We got Halloween coming up, we got a little twists and scares for you. Make sure to pick up Not Quite Dead yet by Holly Jackson Jackson and thanks again to Bantam Books, a division of the Random House group, for sponsoring this episode.
- [16:47]
Jeff O'Neill
So the Associated Press in an email to its contributor core, I'm guessing a freelance contributor core of some, you know, size there's a bunch of people that they're no longer running weekly book reviews. I'm not sure the last time I read an AP generated or I shouldn't say generated, written sourced book review because I I read the New York Times and places that don't subscribe to the AP and like the New Yorker, the Atlantic and the Nation and Washington Post. So like but if you I'm guessing I'm just throwing some names out here. But if you subscribe to the Des Moines Register or the Kansas City Star or a lot of local papers, the AP is an invaluable source for news from around the world, but also coverage of many kinds and book reviews being one of them. But in their as they say here they're now their analysis of their business. They've decided that they're not going to continue running them starting September 1st. So they're going to run anything they've commissioned. But everything else is going away. The online discourse is this is bad. Another, another one bites the dust. I wrote a little bit, I actually wrote quite a bit about this today in books where the the sad part is as sad as this is, the sadder truth is behind it, which is probably no one will notice that this happened. Or to a first approximation there may be some hardcore readers out there in some locations that rely on these or did read these but probably they didn't matter.
- [18:18]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I think it's probably the outliers of outliers are the ones who are who will notice they're making this decision. The quote and the announcement is based on what is being most read on our website and mobile apps as well as what customers are using. And this is one of the double edged swords of having the data that you get from digital media is you actually know which content people are engaging with. And so you can as a publication do your ROI analysis of what is worth it. And there are publications that have been able to like, they have the financial sustenance to be able to say like, it doesn't matter to us if people read the book reviews or not. We want to have them in there because we believe they're important. This, like criticism matters and we have a way to sustain it. So we're going to do that whether five people read it or five million people read it. But paying for book reviews is not cheap. I don't know what model the AP has on it, but you're asking someone to do five to 10 hours of reading labor plus analysis plus writing. I'm not sure what they've been paying for that, but they've determined that the way that they're readers are engaging with it can't support that effort. And that indicates that probably very few people will miss this. I think this is sad. And another one bites the dust. And also not new. You know, from early Internet times we knew that no one read book reviews like we started our individual book blogs and where we wrote about books in all kinds of ways. And by 2011, when Book Riot started, we published very few. And now we publish functionally zero traditional book reviews on the website because no one engages with them. There are so many more ways to talk about books and reading and even to be critical of them to help readers determine what is the good fit for them and what they don't want to bother picking up. That's not a 2 or 3,000, maybe even longer word big review. And like, as a person who values criticism, I find that to be a bummer list. Lists are great and recommendations are great and like God knows we publish a lot of them at Book Riot. But one of the things that I feel in my own reading life, that flattening of the conversation is connected to this decrease in criticism and a resistance of a lot of people in reading culture to the idea of criticism at all. That if you're, if you critique a book, if you say it wasn't good, if you say something doesn't work in it and you do this publicly, somehow you've either been mean to the author or you're insulting the people who do care about it. And that's a lack of nuanced thinking that I think is bad for reading culture. And bad for media consumption in general, bad for art. So this is a bummer to see they are going to continue covering books as stories. And so it will be interesting to see what that looks like. And I imagine more of the continued shift that we're seeing where like now even the New York Times is doing things that are closer to the themed Listicle six, you know, thrillers with this kind of specific trope that happen in them because they're seeing that that's how people funnel into content.
- [21:27]
Jeff O'Neill
I do think there is an undiscovered country out there which is a Star Trek reference, which is a Shakespeare reference. And I've thought about this and I think we've talked about this for a. And it would. I think it would be credibly called a review. A way of writing about a single book that is different than the review as has existed. Now that would be fun, interesting to read on its own for a sort of regular reader of magazines and newspapers. Because even the great kinds of criticisms that happen in the New Yorker or the Atlantic or the Nation or some of the high profile places that exist, where there is funding, there is belief that can sustain if it's a loss leader. I don't know, maybe they think of it as part of the package people subscribe to is that they get the review even if they never read it. Kind of like a gym membership, right? Like they know they like the building has it, even if they don't use it. But I still think there's a way that someone could write about a Katabasis. They could write about an Emily Henry, they could write about James that would do the work of review in a voice that is more, I guess, more engaging, just different on the whole. Like. Like I've thought about this a lot of trying it. I do not have the time to do this, but like you do one a month. And some of the people that I know that write about movies or write about tv, like, you know, some of the stuff we like on something like the Ringer, I could see one of those that kind of. Or defector. And maybe they do some of these. I just don't see them. But like a big fun rompy, deep diving Katabasis I think could work. Rebecca, I think someone could crack this. But maybe I'm. Maybe I'm Pollyanna about this.
- [23:09]
Rebecca Schinsky
I mean, I think something like that could work. And I also think that some of the publications that are continuing to do book reviews have shifted gradually in that direction. The way that criticism looks in the New York Times or the Washington Post, which do still have regular book reviews. What those look like today is very different from what they looked like 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. And that. That's been a gradual shift, so maybe we don't recognize it. But like this morning I was reading Ron Charles's review of Kate Reilly's new book, Roots.
- [23:37]
Jeff O'Neill
It's kind of one of one, but it's a good example.
- [23:39]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. And the opening line of it is something like, I'm in love with Ruth, but she wouldn't appreciate it. And he's writing about this character, which, I mean, that review and the Times review sold me on this book. I, you know, downloaded the E galley this morning. Like, this sounds interesting. I want to give it a try. But that injection of your personal perspective and some voiceiness into a review is a relatively new thing and generally a product of the Internet. There's much more of our critics voices and personal takes in reviews today than there used to be. It's not quite what you're talking about of that, like, big a big rompy, whatever, several thousand words that goes into something. And I do. I would love to see somebody crack that at a publication that can afford to pay them to do it. I think it could be done. But this is still happening. And I do think there's a real tension in the conversation of, like, maybe there are folks who still YEARN for the 5,000 word, very serious, highbrow book.
- [24:34]
Jeff O'Neill
Ready. I think there are some, but they subscribe to the New Yorker. Yeah, that's where that happens. That's where they. That's enough. They get it.
- [24:41]
Rebecca Schinsky
There's value in that. And I think there's still good reader service happening in some of these less formal ways of talking about books. It's a complete collapse of criticism is the thing that I'm concerned about. And I really try to resist. You know, the, like, ball is rolling down the hill, and so we're just on a slippery slope and it's all gonna go to hell. I really try to resist that, but I understand the fe feeling behind it that folks are expressing when they're like, well, another one bites the dust and we're all doomed. And some of it comes back, too, to how many books there are, as we were just saying, and how few options and opportunities there are for authors to get publicity and to get attention for their books. And so the death of book reviews in the AP is not just about what does it mean for how we talk about art. But if you're an author, that's One more place that now you don't have. One less place that you have access to for trying to get people to be aware of your book.
- [25:38]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. And that, you know, as I wrote in today in Books, I think one thing that's happened with the reviews is the attention for books still exists in major ways, but it's transmuted not in just a form, but location and medium. Right. Celebrity book clubs, like it's more, it's way more than just Oprah now Goodreads Reviews and then people talking about books and all the ways they talk about books in short form, social, video and other spaces. Those aren't my chosen ways of engaging with books, but those then do suck away like the attention, the energy, the focus from some of these more traditional places. And if the review reviewing as we know it wants to survive in a more of a mainstream culture kind of way, and by I mean that is like newspapers and magazines, which themselves may be more highbrow than a lot of these other places, says it needs to evolve as well. Right. In all, one thing you can certainly say about the algorithmic environment, this is something we both talked about with Algospeak, is it is an evolutionary cooker. Right. And it's going to survive based on the ecosystem in which it's placed. And if it's an algorithm, it's going to produce in one way. Right. It's going to trend towards things I think you and I don't particularly care for. That's not our chosen environment, but it certainly has, it has a evolutionary algorithmic evolution pressure in one direction. Celebrity culture is its own kind of cooker. Right. You're sort of borrowing celebrity attention that you can then focus on this thing. But is there a way in which the thing itself is compelling enough to exist in these different spaces? I think that's an under considered part of the death of the book review, to be quite honest. I don't think people have in the bemoaning of the loss of review space. I don't, I don't want to be sort of nakedly competitive or capitalist like this, but I do think in terms of attention and mind share, it can change, Right?
- [27:43]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [27:44]
Jeff O'Neill
What else could it look like? I do think there's a world in which again, it's never going to be like the old days. It's not going to be 95, which James woods and Kakutani and like you can make a book with a review, but could you engage with people and engage them without ever having heard of the book, ever needing to do the sort of review y thing of recommending the book or sort of even evaluating the book on its. But like use the review as a site for interplay, ideation, stimulation, exploration. I think that's out there. I think it's out there.
- [28:16]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think it's out there. And also that one of the reasons that traditional book criticism lasted as long as it did is that we lived in a data list space with it where you wrote your 5,000 words of evaluation. It went off in the Sunday paper, people picked it up and no one had to look, no one had to know how few of the readers of that paper were ever engaging with that, like old school, very formal, very dry flavor of book criticism. That probably this is an overdue evolution in how we address how we criticize, how we talk about books. And it's compressed by all of the components of the algorithm as well. But this, the like nostalgia for the days when everyone would read the book review feels really false to me. Like everyone probably still outliers of outliers that you could make a book with a review. But that was still very. A relatively rare case. It was just that a couple critics were well known enough and had enough cultural.
- [29:20]
Jeff O'Neill
Well, it was the combination of the critic and the platform, right. To use the New York Times and Kakutani is the example. Like it's the focus, right? That you had a. You had a concentration and you still do, but it's just different. A concentration of people who are willing to try kind of an arbitrary book, read that thing and use that as a jumping off port to go buy it or check it out from the library or something else as that's weakened and distributed. I think you get books that can pop in a lot of different places. Social media being one, though not the only one. But the. The for the medium has so enveloped the message that I think people haven't really thought about could we do something else with the message here that actually would. Would change how people understand it. So, you know, I don't know if you would have told me two weeks ago, hey, Jeff, does the AP write and commission weekly book reviews? I would be like, I don't know. And that might be as telling as anything, honestly. Yeah, I agree in a bit of good news on the whole, this is good news. That it didn't all get struck down, I guess is a bummer. But this much, much discussed, quite damaging and bummer sauce of A House Bill 1069 in Florida that passed in 2013 has removed hundreds.
- [30:41]
Rebecca Schinsky
2023.
- [30:42]
Jeff O'Neill
I'm sorry what I say, 2013. Yeah, I just. I just old manned myself a decade into the past there 2023. Broad over broad and unconstitutional. This is Kelly's reporting on Judge Carlos Mendez's decision in the Middle District Court of Florida and ruling in favor of the plaintiffs. So by and large, this has been deemed to rule unconstitutional. This is the big one that Ping PRH and a bunch of other publishers and a bunch of people lent their name to just John Green, Julia Alvarez and others. So thousand that the thousands of books. This is a quote from Stefano Farrell. It's given to Kelly. This means that the thousands of books have been prohibited from student access. Without careful consideration, their value should be returned to shelves immediately. A complete knockout. Dan Novak, the attorney for the plaintiff, said there's not a single issue the court did not side with the plaintiffs on. I kind of missed where the. Because Kelly's written much of. But I didn't really catch what. What the. What the plaintiffs didn't get. So anyway, read the full article there. The provisional thing with this is I assume Florida will appeal and assume this is going to end up on the Supreme Court's desk in. In which case, g. Your good guess. As good as mine. I don't know. Kelly doesn't say here what judgment do track record is here. But this is still a Florida court.
- [31:57]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [31:58]
Jeff O'Neill
So there's. There's a case that it could rule. Alongside it will be the Supreme Court rules.
- [32:04]
Rebecca Schinsky
Very interesting to see a case like this go to the Supreme Court because we haven't really. We have not seen a book banning case hit the court yet. The last case that the court decided on back in June, in which parents were allowed to opt students out of classroom discussions of books that had affirming messages about LGBTQ folks kind of reads as a book banning case, but is really about religious freedom. And it's really a step towards like school vouchers. Like, there's all sorts of school choice stuff that's. That's underneath that one. We haven't yet seen one go to the court that was actually just about the content of the books or that was more overtly about the content of the books, as those things are connected to LGBTQ life and culture in our society. Rather than being like a component of. Of something that lets the court gives the court cover to create cover for these parents to say, as a, you know, conservative Christian, my rights are being infringed if my student has to hear these ideas in their classroom and I want to send them to private school and I would like for taxpayers to pay for it. And here's why. And that's really, you know, what that decision paved the way for. So I will be, I think we'll all be girded to see something just about books Go. But this course court's current track record is not very encouraging.
- [33:24]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, there's something called the Miller Test, which is interesting to a phrase to know if you're interested in this. All which if you're still listening to us right now, I presume you're at least passingly interested in. It's called the Miller Test, in which a review of the material has to be considered as a whole. Like, you can't just take this one scene out of a book and say, ah, pornography. Ah, that's obscene. You have to consider the totality of the work. And this, this bill explicitly was not abiding by that. So if you could point out one thing where someone could consider it obscene, then the whole thing got thrown out. And this really goes back into really the history of obscenity and legal, legal challenges to literature. Allen Ginsberg and even, you know, stuff I know about Ulysses in In the US is like you can point any given thing that read on its own seems like, boy, that's pretty tough. But when considered with the artistic intent or what else is going on there. And this is something that I think people who read something other than only for pleasure all the time kind of get intuitively write. You can find a passage in almost any book that's interesting at all. They'd be like, oh my God, that by itself, I don't want that served up to me. But it's part of it. It's part of the buffet. It's part of the whole offering. Much like any individual moment in your life can be thought of as being obscene or disgusting or life's not worth living if all I have to do is spend at the dmv. But if you consider the totality of the whole thing, it becomes into different kind of a focus. So that's a good, that's a good example, the Miller Test. And I think I was thinking about this this morning. Maybe a more broadly based way to think about people in general is to apply the Miller Test. And again, of course there are some things that go beyond whatever your own velociraptor containment unit for using the Miller test might be. And I understand that that. But considering a moment or one thing said versus the totality of that person, their long track record. Certainly if someone has a pattern that's one thing. But we're humans and maybe the Miller test for our lives is not the worst idea in the world.
- [35:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, this social psych term for that is the fundamental attribution error that somebody, someone does something you don't like. And when we're applying it, when we're thinking about other people, we tend to apply the judgment to their whole being. We attribute it to who they are as a person, to their character. Where when we were thinking about ourselves and our own mistakes, we are putting it in the context of fully who we are. That was just, you know, a bad day or I didn't sleep well that night. I was a jerk. I shouldn't have done that. But it was, it was a behavior. It wasn't about who I am, but that we this is just a human thing. That we tend to see one example of someone and make decisions about their character, draw judgments about their character and who they are based on their those one thing. So in general context is helpful, I find.
- [36:04]
Jeff O'Neill
Right. And, and it is also the truth that when we encounter story stories of wrongdoing about people whom we do not know that we have no context. So it's so much easier to indict someone. And I'm not saying there aren't single things that are not worth putting them on the your personal do not disturb absolutely list, you know. But, but I think in general it might be not the best first, not the worst first order heuristic to apply a Miller test and say, okay, is this something I'm willing to contextualize? Or at least consider context for the.
- [36:38]
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- [37:08]
Rebecca Schinsky
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- [37:53]
Jeff O'Neill
I don't have context for this deal that Charlie Kaufman and the producers of his new short film struck with Canopy. Canopy spelled with a K. I don't know why I felt conditioned to make sure people understand that. I think if they're going to Google it, that's why I said that. Which is the platform that a lot of libraries use to provide movies and TVs to their constituents through their digital apps. Or, you know, but this is direct to. To Canopy. It's a short film. It sounds kind of weird. Sounds like Charlie Kaufman core, which, you know, your taste may not like that. I don't care about that particularly right now, except to say that is the. Is this something or nothing? We can go to the great Letterman.
- [38:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [38:34]
Jeff O'Neill
Bifurcation here.
- [38:36]
Rebecca Schinsky
I don't know.
- [38:37]
Jeff O'Neill
And I don't know.
- [38:38]
Rebecca Schinsky
I don't know that this one thing is something. Talking about context, like just the story that Charlie Kaufman is going to have his new film distributed by Canopy is interesting. The film is called how to Shoot a Ghost. It's debuting at the Venice Film Festival next month. But the thing that made me interested was like, huh. I've never seen Canopy do something like this before. This is the. Yeah, I think of them as exactly the way that you just described. It's a platform that allows you to stream movies and TV shows with your library card. But. But that they're getting into distribution seems to me like it might be a signal of a new or additional mode of doing business for them. I did go looking a little bit. They did co produce the Band Together documentary that we spoke with some of the other producers of that earlier in the year here on the pod. So, like, is that. Are those just two cases or is Canopy getting into.
- [39:34]
Jeff O'Neill
A third is a line, right? No, a third is a plane. Two is a line. Sorry, geometry.
- [39:38]
Rebecca Schinsky
But a third would be a pattern. So I guess we'll be watching for that. Just. And if they are doing that, then why. Presumably this would be about revenue. The reason businesses do most things that there's not a whole lot of money to be made in distributing films and TV shows through libraries. Folks aren't paying for that service, of course. And getting your name out there as a distributor of films and maybe of like, the more Artsy stuff like what we're talking about with Charlie Kaufman.
- [40:07]
Jeff O'Neill
If.
- [40:07]
Rebecca Schinsky
If it's not a revenue play, it's a clout play or maybe both. But certainly as Hollywood collapses and condenses, well, that's. There are more options.
- [40:15]
Jeff O'Neill
Interested, right. Is like, okay, well, think of it. I mean, Canopy in a lot of ways is a streamer like any other, except that they're. The people who pay them are libraries, and the people who pay libraries are cities and governments. Right. And, you know, that eventually comes from the taxpayer, but not in a sort of direct quid pro quo. I'm. This is my subscription. This is whatever. But if, like, you know, Paramount plus or whatever, Warner Discovery just paid $7 billion for UFC, the ultimate goal is for people to use your platform, and then you get more people to use it. If there are things you can only get on Canopy that people you might be interested in, more people will use Canopy, theoretically, in which case the library is going to buy more seats or they can raise the price or, you know, I'm not actually sure what the business model is. Is it a perfect, you know, view? Is it as a group license for X number of streams for whatever. But whatever their business model is, more people using it as good for canopy.
- [41:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [41:13]
Jeff O'Neill
The thing that really struck me was this kind of a deal as a glimmer on the horizon of a maybe of a silver lining of a cloud that hasn't. That has formed of rev, you know, funding for the kinds of things that someone who subscribes to Canopy in the library might like in the form of npr, pbs, Voice of America, really being gutted. Right.
- [41:38]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [41:38]
Jeff O'Neill
Is there a world in which Rick Steves cuts an interesting deal with Canopy?
- [41:44]
Rebecca Schinsky
Well, I would love to see that.
- [41:46]
Jeff O'Neill
You'd have to imagine that the overlap of the people that use their library and people who would watch Rick Steve on their local PBS affiliate is probably pretty considerable. Or if it's not for Canopy movable, that might be a movable audience to get them to download something.
- [42:01]
Rebecca Schinsky
I was thinking the same thing. Or like the Criterion film audience, like, if you want to watch some Criterion movies and I assume they have some sort of premium access, Criterion channel, something, but maybe you don't want to do it often enough to pay for that. If you could get those kinds of things, a Charlie Kaufman kind of movie through Canopy and nowhere else could be an additional way to shore up the platform. It was just interesting to see that happening. And it felt like something is under this, that the Charlie Kaufman thing is not the thing, but that what's moving them to make a deal to distribute a film like Charlie Kaufman's or to co produce the Band Together documentary? Like which. That made a ton of sense just on its face. Right. The Canopy, which works with libraries, would be invested in defending libraries and the freedom to read.
- [42:43]
Jeff O'Neill
But if there's something, it's like a philanthropic kind of.
- [42:46]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. If there are like tectonic plates shifting, which it seems like there could be here, that will be very interesting.
- [42:52]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I just, I'm fascinated. I'd imagine the, the sticker price for a Charlie Kaufman short film was not that much. I mean, I'm guessing that's something like to get us to talk about it and other outlets to do a headline was probably a wonderful earned media play for the. Whatever check they had to write to acquire this. Because the market for short films is, as I understand it, pretty, pretty slim. But I wonder if they're going to have any. Like, what's a metric for what kind of data would Canopy need to see to be like, okay, what if we raise the stakes here? Like, what kind of a more substantial or thoroughgoing or a durable commitment or like, you know, what kinds of things would get people who use or know about their library to install and use the app? Seems to be a really good question, a really good question for them to be answering. This reminded me, and this was actually part of half baked ideas, so I'm going to ruin it here. What about just Libby doing the Audible or whatever thing and commissioning books? Exclusives.
- [43:53]
Rebecca Schinsky
Exclusives. That would be very interesting.
- [43:57]
Jeff O'Neill
The library, I mean, the library systems themselves, they don't, they don't need to do that because essentially your local library has a monopoly on your library usage. That's a weird thing to say, right? I mean, but like, you know, you don't, you often don't have many choices about which library system to use unless you're part of an academic library or something like that. So like my local, the Multnomah County Library, I'm going to use that library for my library needs. But Libby has a different use case, which is they want people to use their app and for library systems to continue purchasing more and more services from them. In which case some sort of halo product would be very interesting and they'd have all the data, right? They have the Netflix data. Like, I'm sure they've had a conversation in a room somewhere saying, if we had X kind of a book of our own, I bet more people would come that they could pay something different than sort of the market price for it because they're not trying to sell it. But what would be a uniquely like Moneyball acquisition for Libby to get people to use. That I think is a fascinating thought.
- [45:03]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. And it's probably somebody like Stephen King or James Patterson or Nora like some Emily Henry. Some big popular.
- [45:10]
Jeff O'Neill
You'd have to outbid the market though. See I think that's the problem. Like they. It would need to be some weird thing that shows up in their data that like people really like your kids books about whatever or something like that doesn't. You're not having to outbid the marketplace. I just am repeating myself now. But like that there it's sort of under appreciated how much this thing is popular in libraries that isn't as popular just on the open sort of. You have to buy for a market. I don't know. I don't know. But that I would be very. Because it was it bookshop that had that Lydia Davis book that was like bookshop only kind of a similar deal. I don't think it's gone anywhere else. They've had enough experience just like converting regular people that they don't need to worry about this. But it made me think about in the world of arts commissioning books don't get commissioned like this.
- [45:57]
Rebecca Schinsky
It's true.
- [45:58]
Jeff O'Neill
In a. In a governmental way. Which is de facto how this would be. Anyway. Okay. Where do you want to go next? Your call.
- [46:04]
Rebecca Schinsky
Where do I want to go next? Let's shout out these queer authors for their active Protest. There's a UK based LGBTQ + writing prize called the Polari Prize that several authors. In fact it looks like most of the authors who were nominated.
- [46:21]
Jeff O'Neill
It's getting really slim.
- [46:23]
Rebecca Schinsky
There have more than a dozen authors and two judges have withdrawn themselves from the Polari's two big writing prizes. It's the Polari Prize and then the Polari First Book Prize which is for a debut. And these are the stars sole prizes that are devoted to recognizing queer authors in the uk. Sort of sounds like the UK equivalent of the Lambda Literary Awards here in the States. They have withdrawn their names from consideration because one of the authors nominated was John Boyne who is a self proclaimed TERF and has publicly aligned himself in defense of J.K. rowling. You wrote about this a little bit in Today in books. Just noting what an under acknowledged act of resistance something like removing your name from consideration can be. Especially when it's done in a coordinated group like this. Like this is a powerful act of protest that really pulls the power of these awards away. It saps them of their meaning. And it looks like everybody, most of the folks have decided to do this. So whether they will proceed with giving the award to like the one remaining person and how much less winning this award means when you win it in this context, a really notable thing that they've done here. And again, like not something I'm sure that these authors took lightly because opportunities to get your name recognized and opportunities to put nominated for long listed for winner of are so, so limited in publishing that voluntarily giving those up on principle is really admirable. And I'll be. I'm very curious about if or how the Polari Prizes will respond. It seems that they're going to be forced to respond to this in some way. But we haven't seen a response as of today on the 14th.
- [48:07]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, I would think they would have to. I mean, we saw this happen with the Penn Foundation a couple years ago where there is a. Especially in these communities, which are a lot smaller than people think. It's not a house of cards. But like anything with, with reputation, it can erode very quickly if the people that are participating in the maintenance of that reputation are suddenly like, no, I'm not interested. This is beyond what I'm interested in lending my name to. Lending my, my, you know, my being right. My, my work being associated with this in some way. Yeah, there's going to be a reckoning at the Polari of some kind or another. I don't know if there's going to be a reckoning about this Jane Eyre adaptation, but. Oh boy. Emerald Fennel's new Jane Eyre adaptation starring. It's a Lordy and Robbie. Right. I'm just doing this from them right now because I have the link open. The early reviews are wild, which I've got to say, Jane Eyre's been out there for a while. I'm okay with a wild like, Me too. Let's do something. Let's do. Let's get nuts. I'm okay.
- [49:06]
Rebecca Schinsky
Emerald. Emerald Fennel is the person who created Saltburn. So, like, what did we think we were getting when the Saltburn person went to make Jane Eyre? But there are several explicit scenes that apparently significantly deviate from the source material. I'm just going to quote a few things here because it's entertaining. The film reportedly opens with a public hanging that descends into absurdity when the condemned man ejaculates mid execution. This sends the onlooking crowd into an orgiastic frenzy, prompting a nun to do something that I'm not going to Quote, wow.
- [49:43]
Jeff O'Neill
And that and giving what you just said so wild might be understating this, the press tour for this. I'm really looking.
- [49:51]
Rebecca Schinsky
No kidding. Purposefully discomforting masturbation, all sorts of food items being used here.
- [50:00]
Jeff O'Neill
I, you know, this is, I, this is why even use, why even use the underlying source material? I, I guess that's the point. And not, and not. I'm not trying to do a scoldy pearl clutchy way like Jenn Air is going to be fine. It's a public domain, like, whatever. But I'm like, why. Why even use Jane Eyre at this point? Like, why even call it Question?
- [50:21]
Rebecca Schinsky
I mean, there's the whole Mad Woman in the attic of it all, which I imagine Emerald Fennel might have a really good time with. And her movies are. I mean, Saltburn didn't have any trouble getting its name out there. So like movies are going to get attention and be wild in these ways, but you get a sort of extra layer of it. I think you get extra, extra pearl clutching when you take Emerald Fennel and combine something so traditionally protected as Jane Eyre.
- [50:50]
Jeff O'Neill
I. And people who haven't read Jane Eyre, like, it sounds more stodgy than is, but it's an interesting, weird, dark and strange. Yeah. So I don't know. I'm. I, as someone who, I mean, we kind of, we kind of, especially when it comes to classic adaptations, like, we tend to think the source material is going to be fine.
- [51:09]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah.
- [51:10]
Jeff O'Neill
You know, I could imagine if this was a new book, you know, the first adaptation of a modern classic, maybe I would feel differently about it. But it's sort of beyond beyond.
- [51:20]
Rebecca Schinsky
This makes me personally like 500% more interested in watching a Jane Eyre adaptation.
- [51:25]
Jeff O'Neill
Like, I mean, I've seen good ones, I've seen faithful ones. Like, I don't need another. I don't know that I need. I don't know. I'll be watching this myself.
- [51:33]
Rebecca Schinsky
Oh, I'm gonna do this for science. Stay tuned for my notes.
- [51:38]
Jeff O'Neill
All right, let's do Frontless foyer.
- [51:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
All right.
- [51:41]
Jeff O'Neill
Brought to you by Thrift Books. You could get a good copy of Jane Eyre, right? I doubt it's going to have the scene you described in it, though. I guess now with Jane Eyrets and Public Domain, Emerald Fennell's, you know, adaptation, kind of like Tarantino did with the one time in Hollywood made a book version. Not it. But that wasn't adapted from anything. But that would be an interesting literary thing there more than 19 million things. You can buy all the books really. You can Buy anywhere used and new free shipping on orders of over $15. You also get enrolled in their reading rewards program, which every purchase gets you closer to a free book. And who doesn't like free books? Go check out thriftbooks.com as you're thinking about your next book purchase. I've been circling people like us. Rebecca. It sounds like you did it. Tell me. Give me a report. I did.
- [52:33]
Rebecca Schinsky
I read it.
- [52:33]
Jeff O'Neill
Well.
- [52:34]
Rebecca Schinsky
Well, I was not left absolutely breathless and utterly filled with joy for life as this publisher's blurb promised I would be.
- [52:43]
Jeff O'Neill
So your eyes didn't pop out of your head?
- [52:46]
Rebecca Schinsky
They didn't. But it was great. This was my first Jason Mott experience. I did not read helluva book. I just missed that train in 2021 when he won the National Book Award. But it did have the Percival Everett esque feel that the synopsis sounded like it would have. So novel about two writers. One has just recently won the big one and receives an offer from a benefactor to move overseas. And he's trying to decide if he's going to do that. And the other author has lost a child to gun violence and is about to give a talk In a community that has had someone die of gun violence recently. The presence of guns looms over the this whole thing. And it's really America as defined by guns and other places as defined by their absence of guns. Especially for a black person. And the black people are the people like us that the title refers to. So the character who's spending time in Europe is really sitting with like, what does it mean to be in a place where you feel safer in your own skin because there are not guns? But it's done through this slant kind of storytelling. I found Mott to be really delightfully funny. And of course there's a lot of him in both of these characters. And the lines get blurred. And then Jason Mott himself, or some fictionalized version of Jason Mott shows up near the end. But the character who has won the National Book Award is like sitting on a plane talking to his seatmate. And she's like, you seem familiar. Didn't you win a big award? And he tells her that his name is Ta Nehisi Coates. And later on he gets recognized as Colson Whitehead and. And signs a bunch of autographs as Colson Whitehead. And sort of has this fraternity that I 100% believe exists in real life of black authors who don't look anything alike but that are frequently mistaken for each other.
- [54:37]
Jeff O'Neill
Yes.
- [54:37]
Rebecca Schinsky
And that the only thing that you can do with this is laugh at it or be really sad about it. And so he turns it into this wry component of it. But just the like the deep self awareness of a writer who will write this kind of book book and poke fun at himself and poke fun at what it means to win the big one and also that your life doesn't change in a bunch of ways and to be able to do all of these things. Like is this a book about art? Is this a book about writing? Absolutely yes. But it's also yes. Also really is a book about American culture and about the presence of guns in things and how that is defined. But I found it to be really enjoyable because Mott is working on so many levels. Like it feels like four dimensional chess. Yeah, that it. I enjoyed it a lot more than I would have enjoyed a more straight ahead novel that was like this is a novel about guns in America. So it was very good. I did not expect the synopsis to live up to its claim that I would be, you know, changed for all time. That was excessive. But the book was great and I think it will be in my contenders for favorite parts of the year. I think you'll really like it.
- [55:45]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. And it's not very long.
- [55:46]
Rebecca Schinsky
I noticed I was looking at under 300.
- [55:51]
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- [56:51]
Jeff O'Neill
Support for this podcast and the following message comes from America's Navy. The Navy offers new graduates hands on training and experience in careers like computer science, aviation and medicine, plus education and sign on bonuses. Parents help your grads start their career today@navy.com Anything else? I've got a couple to talk about.
- [57:14]
Rebecca Schinsky
No, that's my only one right now. Doing homework for other projects.
- [57:16]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, well I'm doing that too. But yeah, an audiobook and in the text book at this that I read last week, I like them both quite a bit. Let me start with It's Only Drowning by David Litt, which I listen to on audio memoir. Lit is a former Obama speechwriter and those guys really dine out on that, by the way. Which is.
- [57:33]
Rebecca Schinsky
They do.
- [57:34]
Jeff O'Neill
It's. I don't know, is there some statute of limitations like saying I was captain of my high school football team also.
- [57:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
Which speeches.
- [57:41]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, well that's fair. Anyway, takes up surfing during COVID Kind of because rather than making sourdough bread takes up surfing as a someone in their mid-30s and in New Jersey. So it's cold weather surfing for a lot of the year and that's part of it. So there is the thing I like of someone taking up a thing. You know, the cork dorks, the hammerheads. I always. I'm here for almost any version of that. I think that there's two things that elevates this beyond that which is kind of enough for me anyway is he's genuinely extremely funny. It's a very funny book. And a middle aged man who could stand to lose a few in the wetsuit trying to learn isn't inherently comedic and all too relatable. Like I've worn a wetsuit of late and so I can, I can readily transport myself into these environs.
- [58:30]
Rebecca Schinsky
I just recently got shaken into one like how you're trying to shake a pillow into a pillowcase. It's not a. Not a very.
- [58:37]
Jeff O'Neill
You really have to treat yourself like a slab of meat unless you are of, of you know, extremely fit or svelte morphology at this point. But and then the other thing that relates it is his brother in law is a serpent surfer and you know, has been since he was a kid grew up in New Jersey and he is on the other side of the culture war as. So this is a memoir. I should say. I don't know if I said this is a memoir.
- [58:59]
Rebecca Schinsky
I think this came up in a Deals, deals, deals or some announcement.
- [59:03]
Jeff O'Neill
It's the kind of thing I may.
- [59:04]
Rebecca Schinsky
Have sounding familiar with.
- [59:05]
Jeff O'Neill
I see myself highlighting it. His brother in law is not registered to vote but listens to Joe Rogan, unclear where he is on vaccines. And like he, he's not a. He's not full maga, right. Not one of those. But seems on the other side of Litz, very like Obama, lefty, super tuned into the news and political and David Litt, he's like once he's I think learning to surf is a thing about regaining some bodily autonomy and having something to do he found some very stuck and like woe is me and woe is us about the world with which very relatable valid and he found himself getting not addicted but compelled by this effort which is a whole body whole mind experience if you're learning how to surf in difficult waves like you don't have time to worry about climate change right in those moments so there's a moment of escape but it's also like can he use this common sea it's not common ground literally not common ground with his brother in law to heal com you know reach out and connect and what does that mean even to do and the answers are interesting. It's not a happily ever after this this person doesn't go sign up to volunteer for AOC nor does he pull an AK47. It's something more elusive, interesting and complicated than that. So I found it to work on multiple levels. It was really good. I really enjoyed it and wonderfully narrated by the writer which is I'm always looking for so a real thumbs up if that sounds like something you'd be vaguely interested out there. My other one, the Great Black Hope Is it the Great Black Hope or.
- [60:46]
Rebecca Schinsky
Just great black Just Great Black Hope.
- [60:48]
Jeff O'Neill
I don't have In Front of Me by Rob Franklin. His debut novel that follows a you know, Ivy educated but newly out of college queer black man living in New York. He gets picked up for having a minor amount of cocaine while partying in the Hamptons. And then so that's one thread we follow though it's not really about that sort of in the background like he has to keep appearing in court and gets his folks involved who's embarrassed by who are black bourgeoisie from Atlanta professors and academics. And then the other was his flatmate friend who was the daughter of of kind of almost like trying to think of the equivalent like I don't know, she's a black soul and R B singer from the 90s who's retired but her daughter is found dead. His. His flatmate, her daughter is found dead and there's an investigation and you know someone writing a piece around that. So they got these two like pretty serious narratives of him as a black person navigating you know the the jurisdiction jurisprudence system in New York and also his friend who is this wealthy socialite who also turns out to have a drug problem. But I think what Franklin is really I mean he's interested in those but the most of the words you spend on the page is this the main character in these parties and spaces and dealing with other people and trying to figure out what it all means and what he wants and his own. His own. His sexuality is figured out. But how to like what he. What the point of his sexual experiences are, what the point of his friendships with other people are. Does he want to be in these rooms? Does he not. What rooms does he want to be in if there's other rooms? So there's something like Gatsby comparisons which are wrong. But the thing I think they're trying to capture is this being young, being in these parties and searching like sort of trying to figure out what it's all about. And as a new. It's a wonderful New York book. These are not parties and spaces I ever participated and certainly not recently. But he's really good. Like Fitzgerald is as there's a group of people at a party and the dynamics between them and when they're mixed race or queer or there's also an upstairs. Not upstairs but like there's also like the people working in finance. And then he goes to parties in Bushwick with like on the ground artist and activists. Right?
- [63:12]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah. There's real class stuff going on.
- [63:14]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah, he's moving all around it. So I found that part pretty compelling. I think it does have some debut novel stuff going on. Like what's the plot exactly. You know, which is okay because I found myself wondering like looking ahead to the next court date. But it never really seemed like he was in danger of like spending 3 to 5 in minimum security there because he's connected and. But even the stuff about like going to Zoom therapy and so or aa like I found all just the existing stuff fine. I could have done without the drug bust. I could have done without the dead ingenue. Just a slice of life at this moment of time in this Milou. And this character was enough for me. So.
- [63:51]
Rebecca Schinsky
I totally agree. I think I talked about it with Vanessa on a show like a front list foyer when you weren't here. But that's how I felt about it as well. That like dwelling in the spaces that Franklin creates with this character. The vibe of the like this is a Vibes based book and that there's almost too much plot that he's trying to like bolt onto it to give it a shape or a what happens. That felt like the debut novel problem of it to me. But I'm very looking forward to whatever he'll do next. It was a fun read.
- [64:20]
Jeff O'Neill
But I think the Gatsby ones are sort of spiritually if not demonstrably right. Because I think even Fitzgerald would rather the plotty stuff that happens at the end of Great Gatsby is not the thing he's most interesting. Like that's a denouement, but like that's not what the book is about.
- [64:36]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, I think that's right. And it's one of those like, well, it was the New York magazine summer read this summer. Like the book club book last summer.
- [64:45]
Jeff O'Neill
So much sense last summer they did.
- [64:47]
Rebecca Schinsky
Emma Cline's the guest. And that was when everybody was like, this book has an ambiguous ending. I don't know what to do with it. And I found it so interesting, just kind of follow, vaguely following at the conversations that folks were having about this. But raises a lot of questions. There is a lot to talk about if your book club is. I thought it was an interesting pick. If your book club is looking for something that is not a straight ahead book club novel but that has like lots of little hooks that you could put a conversation on.
- [65:16]
Jeff O'Neill
I'm not ready to talk about this book yet. But another book I read recently where I encountered a new to me vocabulary word.
- [65:21]
Rebecca Schinsky
Okay.
- [65:22]
Jeff O'Neill
So. And there was one to me in green, Great Black Hope. So we're going to do a couple weeks of Jess Vocabulary Corner. So the one in Great Black Hope was Swart S W A R T. I don't remember. Okay. And I. I don't know this word. I don't know this word. It's an archaic word which I felt better about myself about.
- [65:40]
Rebecca Schinsky
Okay.
- [65:41]
Jeff O'Neill
Means naturally having skin of a dark color. So in describing like swarthy, same root, but. But Franklin's using it to describe, you know, skin tone, as you might imagine. But I stopped on that. Stay tuned next week for just Vocabulary Corner. I've got one for you.
- [65:57]
Rebecca Schinsky
I'm excited. I'm terrified.
- [65:59]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. But I mean, I don't know, it got me thinking about how much of my reading do I encounter a new. I mean a technical term, of course. Scientific. Technical term, of course. I don't know what that means, but in terms of just in a prose sentence in a literary fiction novel, I was delighted to have an occasion to look up something.
- [66:19]
Rebecca Schinsky
It is fun.
- [66:20]
Jeff O'Neill
I know other people may bump on that, but I found it a wonderful moment there. So thank you, Rob Franklin, for giving me an occasion to. To break out the vocabulary.
- [66:30]
Rebecca Schinsky
Why haven't we been doing this all along?
- [66:32]
Jeff O'Neill
I don't know. I don't know. Unfortunately, the entomology of why it means dark is not amazing for how we've depicted darkness. But again, where do you go?
- [66:45]
Rebecca Schinsky
A lot of etymology. Not great.
- [66:48]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. Also in case. I also like. I also like the rhyming parts of the online dictionaries because, like, I can. I can do this. It also reminded me one thing I learned in Eminem interview one time is that there is no amer. You know. You know, orange famously has no word that rhymes with wolf.
- [67:07]
Rebecca Schinsky
No. Yeah. You'd have to like, kind of elide the l and.
- [67:12]
Jeff O'Neill
Yeah. Which is no rhymes.
- [67:13]
Rebecca Schinsky
No.
- [67:14]
Jeff O'Neill
But. But anyway, so there you go. I.
- [67:16]
Rebecca Schinsky
Fascinating.
- [67:16]
Jeff O'Neill
A little word time.
- [67:18]
Rebecca Schinsky
Welcome to Vocabulary Station. All right.
- [67:22]
Jeff O'Neill
It's pretty good. That's our show book riot.com solution listen, shoot us an email podcastookright.com go check out the Patreon if you want to listen to talk about the buried giant or all the other. You get all the content we've ever done done over there. It's a pass. All right. Just like your library card. You get anything from the library, you sign up through Patreon to get anything we've ever done over there. It's gonna be fall preview season, draft before too long. It is on the horizon.
- [67:49]
Rebecca Schinsky
I'm starting to, like, put the finishing touches on my draft spreadsheet.
- [67:55]
Jeff O'Neill
I find it to be an extremely exciting fall.
- [67:57]
Rebecca Schinsky
Okay.
- [67:59]
Jeff O'Neill
Oh. Oh, okay.
- [68:02]
Rebecca Schinsky
I'm extremely excited about a few things, but currently I'm very excited about January.
- [68:09]
Jeff O'Neill
What besides Saunders?
- [68:11]
Rebecca Schinsky
Lauren Groff. Lauren Groff and Saunders is a tough lineup to beat, but we do get.
- [68:18]
Jeff O'Neill
Lockwood, Brown, Rushdie, Zadie.
- [68:20]
Rebecca Schinsky
Yeah, that's true. It's pretty good fall.
- [68:23]
Jeff O'Neill
You have a galley of dead and alive, right?
- [68:24]
Rebecca Schinsky
I do.
- [68:25]
Jeff O'Neill
Did you look at at it all?
- [68:27]
Rebecca Schinsky
But I haven't started it yet because I'm saving myself.
- [68:29]
Jeff O'Neill
There's a chapter on Morrison, apparently. I haven't looked at it.
- [68:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
All right, well, I'll get in there.
- [68:34]
Jeff O'Neill
Okay, thanks, everyone. Rebecca, we'll talk. I'm gonna talk to you in like 30 seconds.
- [68:37]
Rebecca Schinsky
But we'll talk to y' all soon.
- [68:39]
Jeff O'Neill
Talk to y' all soon.
- [68:45]
Rebecca Schinsky
Thanks so much for listening today. We hope you'll enjoy this excerpt from the audiobook edition of Not Quite Dead yet by Holly Jackson, provided by our sponsors at Bantam Books, a division of the Random house Group.
- [68:57]
Audiobook Narrator
Friday, October 31 Chapter 1. Dead Gray Skin rotted away to show off the stringy sinews of muscle below. Sunken, rubbery sockets around sparkling hazel eyes. Those were actually hers, though they moved as she studied herself. Decaying corn on the cob teeth with gore stuck in the spaces between. What did zombies eat again? Just brains? Or they weren't fussy about the other guts too. Probably didn't enjoy the candy apple she'd had earlier. Jet watched her reflection in the funhouse mirror. Her dead face. Sorry, her undead face.
- [69:47]
Rebecca Schinsky
Face.
- [69:49]
Audiobook Narrator
Okay. She'd worn the mask for three whole minutes, so mom couldn't complain. And now Jet couldn't breathe hot toffee air that turned wet against the rubber, sticking it to her skin. She pulled the mask off. Still pale. Slightly less gray though. But the mirror elongated her round face, distorting her thick brows and upturned nose. Her short blonde hair was sticking up now. Static buzzed against her hand as she flattened it. Chat. Damn. She flinched. The mirror warped his face behind her, squashed his muscular frame into accordion ripples. But Jet knew his voice, of course. JJ Lim. But not with his usual black swept back hair and clear tawny skin. He wore a garish red wig and denim overalls over a striped shirt, train track gashes drawn on his face. Chucky. They'd watched that movie together on their third date. Didn't mean to scare you. He sniffed. Awkward. It's Halloween. That's the point. More awkward. Jet walked away without looking at the unwarped him past a stall of pumpkin pies and apple bread. Just $5. Yelled the chalkboard sign. It's JJ slipped off his wig and stumbled after her through a group of freshly face painted kids. Why was he following her?
- [71:32]
Rebecca Schinsky
Her?
- [71:33]
Audiobook Narrator
She'd given them both an easy out again. Sorry, he continued. I was wondering. I just. Well, this was fun. Jet was super glad she'd come to the Halloween fair now, the whole of Woodstock, Vermont, swarming the green in the middle of town, and she'd managed to run into the one person she didn't want to see. Trick or treat. A small vampire yelled up at her. Jet hoped he'd choke on his slobbery fangs. Were kids always this annoying? Or did the sugar rush bring it out of them? It was past ten now. When did parents put children to bed these days? Not early enough. She picked up her pace, but JJ didn't give up. Up, Jet, please. He reached out for her arm. I need to talk to you about something. Jet stopped. Side something meant them, didn't it? And they weren't a them anymore. Not for months. I can't right now. Lie. I'm helping my parents run the fundraising booth. Bigger lie. Did Henry draw those scars for you? Change the subject. JJ narrowed his sharp eyes. Please, Jet. It's important. Oh, important. Jet snorted. Like when you said I was the best you could hope for in Woodstock. Such a poet, Jay, you know I didn't mean it like that. That and it's not about us. It's hey buddy, think you dropped this, a voice said over JJ's shoulder, saving her. It was her brother Luke, bending to retrieve the crumpled red wig from the grass. Pin pricks of string lights reflected in his matching hazel eyes as he straightened up and squared up, passing JJ the wig. JJ took it and finally took the hint too, losing himself in the crowd. Saved you, Luke said. Jet would never admit it. She was about to tell Luke so when he punched her in the shoulder, aiming for the dead arm spot. He missed, but also he was fucking 30 and a dad now. When would the punching stop.