2025 Canon Contenders

15:01Rebecca Schinsky:Kirk's Prize for Fiction is an interesting one. Neither of you or I have read The Slip by Lucas Schaefer, but if you're going to, you should be buying low in the betting market for any of these, but you often get extremely Good's odds on like audacious debut novels that are kind of shaggy and weird because people don't know what they are. And again, the base case is nothing will happen. But also if something does happen, it's often the first book by a new voice that becomes really important and people will talk about that. So this one, the main character is a 16 year old who goes to a boxing gym in Austin, Texas, and he's visiting his uncle.

15:36Rebecca Schinsky:And then he's gone. He disappears. And then someone else disappears. And a decade later, an investigation response, these kids don't show up and something happens about what was going on at that gym. So again, another book about what's wrong with the fellas here, Rebecca, I think. And the comps, anyone can play the comp game because you can pick any book that's like book about people that survive. But the comps were Franzen, Roth, John Irving, which I can kind of see. I want to get to this book before the end of the year because it's stuck around enough. And I think enough of the kind of people who like the kind of books I like have said something about it.

16:19Rebecca Schinsky:But I'm willing to give this a yellow. What do you think about that?

16:21Jeff O'Neal:Yeah, I'm giving this one a yellow as well. Publishers notoriously play fast and loose with comp titles. Everything has been the next Gone Girl for the last 20 years. but when the reviewing bodies like Kirkus come out and say actually these comps to Franzen and Philip Roth and John Irving are earned and well-deserved that's something that makes me pay attention those are also people who have had decades-long important careers and so I do think that that might be a nod to the idea that with this debut Lucas Schaefer enters himself into a public conversation that he's likely to be a part of for a while this I got a press release for this book this week, since it just recently won the Kirkus, calling it the antidote to the media manosphere.

17:04It's like this concern with masculinity is really permeating, not just

17:10Jeff O'Neal:fiction and what people are writing, but also the ways that we're interpreting what's important in fiction. Right now, I think a yellow for this is totally reasonable. This podcast is supported by Quince. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm going to reach for every day when I get dressed, and right now I'm going for lighter fabrics, better materials, and pieces that feel effortless but still polished. That's why I keep coming back to Quince. They make high-quality essentials from premium materials like breathable linen, washable silk, and organic cotton, all without the luxury markup. Right now I am living in their 100 % European linen high-waisted shorts.

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18:57Jeff O'Neal:Today's episode is brought to you by It's Not Her by Mary Kubica. Two families at a secluded lake resort are at the center of a chilling crime in this twisty thriller from the bestselling author of Mokul Woman Missing. So Courtney Gray's peaceful vacation turns into a nightmare when she discovers her brother and sister-in-law dead in their lakeside cottage. Her niece Reese is missing. Her nephew Wyatt is asleep upstairs, unharmed. As police swarm the quiet resort, dark truths about Courtney's family and the town itself begin to surface. Is Reese a victim or the killer? With everyone hiding something, Courtney races to uncover the terrible mystery.

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20:39Rebecca Schinsky:I like your grouping here of crossover stars. I've read one, you've read one, and one of us neither have read. Oh, no, one. I've read two.

20:48Jeff O'Neal:I'm not lying. I've read one.

20:49Rebecca Schinsky:So why don't I start with the one I've read, which is Flashlight by Susan Choi. It's a multi-decade chronicle of a disappearance. Someone disappears on a beach and the long ramifications thereof, especially through the family's eyes. And then we get later, spoilers here a little bit, that this person is in prison in North Korea and has been a part of the authoritarian complex there and has been trying to wind his way out and back. But it's mostly about this particular time in history, this specific historical moment. It's based on a series of true disappearances in which the North Korean government kidnapped people off beaches in South Korea to try to turn them into spies or get information.

21:34Rebecca Schinsky:very strange and disturbing situation. Susan Choi's earlier book, Trust Exercise, won the National Book Award. I read and liked this book. I thought it was 100 pages too long, but it's been long listed and shortlisted for a bunch of different stuff and other people have liked it. So again, my own taste is only my own. I like the book. I don't know. I don't know that I can do with Sharifa.

22:01Jeff O'Neal:Yeah, that's over in the Book Riot podcast feed. A lot of these actually, we have book club conversations about. We'll mention those as we come through. Susan Choi, notoriously divisive among readers. People seem to like really love her books or really not love her books. It was the same with Trust Exercise. I think this is a yellow for Flashlight, but she hangs around. She does.

22:23Rebecca Schinsky:I saw her at McNally Jackson Books. They had like the star, like they built a little shrine thing, like trust us on this one.

22:30Jeff O'Neal:So I put a green on Susan Choi's name, but a yellow on the title.

22:34Rebecca Schinsky:Well, that's not the game, Rebecca. Come on.

22:36Jeff O'Neal:It's a yellow. We're going with the yellow.

22:38Rebecca Schinsky:Okay, yellow.

22:39Jeff O'Neal:The one that I've read is A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar. Set in near future Kolkata, India. The story takes place all over the course of one week, during which the main family that we are following are preparing to come to the United States as climate refugees. One night, a thief breaks into their house in search of food, and his life becomes entwined with theirs and results in tragic and unexpected consequences for everybody involved. I was really impressed with this. It was a finalist for both the Kirkus and the National Book Award. I think it should have won the National Book Award.

23:13Jeff O'Neal:It was also selected for Oprah's Book Club. So talk about living in that zone of both critical and commercial acclaim. It was one of two works of climate fiction that were shortlisted for the National Book Award. The Antidote by Karen Russell is the other one. If we've got some themes this year, it's maybe masculinity and climate. it was also on Barnes and Noble's list of best fiction of the year on a lot of best of lists, only about 3 ,800 Goodreads ratings, though. It only came out in October. So like, it hasn't had as long over the course of the year to accumulate ratings. But this one, the story of this one has been a little bit quieter, even though it has had all this recognition.

23:51Jeff O'Neal:I mean, I think a yellow is really the most reasonable way to go.

23:55Rebecca Schinsky:And for the next one to the loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by here in Desai. I think we have to yellow as well. Neither of us have read this, though I'll say this. I don't, that though, that subjunctive, that doesn't help me. That doesn't do anything, that subordinate clause, because it has no relationship to me having not read it. It, my own experience of this book so far this year is that I underrated It's Important for another exercise that we did, and a bunch of people responded and emailed in and said, what about this book? And then a bunch of people have checked it off the list, though, again, at 4 ,300 Goodreads ratings.

24:26Rebecca Schinsky:It's not flying up the charts. It's been 20 years since Desai wrote, or at least published Inheritance of Lost, made on a lot of short lists, Amazon's top 20 and Barnes & Noble. So it's gonna be on tables. It's gonna be available for people to buy at least for a while. And Desai is more name-riched than I thought. That's a long way of saying yellow, Rebecca, I think is what we should do.

24:45Jeff O'Neal:I was actually gonna make a case for green here. Well, make the case then.

24:49Rebecca Schinsky:What are you waiting for? A different podcast where we talk about this stuff? What are you waiting for?

24:52Jeff O'Neal:Because of what we said at the top that it's going to be hard to find 10 greens. And Desai is so beloved. The Inheritance of Loss has had a 20-year lifespan, and folks were so excited to see her come back. It does only have 4 ,300 Goodreads ratings, but it's also not been out for very long. It also just came out a few weeks ago as we're recording this. And her books live in paperback. This will come out in paperback. It will be read by a bunch of book clubs. And then I think it's sitting on Barnes & Noble paperback favorites, probably for decades to come. So that's my case for green with all of the previous caveats.

25:32Rebecca Schinsky:Let's do green. If we have to, we can come back to it. Our next section is bestsellers and book club hits. Let me try to yoke a couple of these together. Let's do a couple of genre things that have broken out this year. The first one up is The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. Jones has been writing for a long time. He has a lot of books under his belt. This one seems to have gotten more acclaim in sales than anything else before. It's written in diary form that a Lutheran pastor discovers in a wall, and it tells the story of a chain of events leading back to 217 Blackfeet dead in the snow.

26:06Rebecca Schinsky:And then what happens? These interviews by this Blackfeet named Goodstab, and apparently he did some stuff in response to that. It's a horror title. I interviewed Stephen Graham Joe's anticipation of this book. I found him lovely and super fascinating, but I'm too much of a chicken to read horror books. But this has popped up in a lot of places that horror often doesn't. And Jones is, again, there is no Stephen King, but there's some authors on our list, and I'll say V.E. Schwab is one of those people that are starting to have a body of work in genre that do a lot, that people have become a brand name of their own.

26:43and this feels like an inflection point of a kind

26:47Rebecca Schinsky:for Jones's sales and awareness outside of the horror community in which he's been really well regarded for quite some time. But I'm wanting to put green, I find myself wanting to put green on this.

26:57Jeff O'Neal:I want to put green on this as well. Like it made Publishers Weekly's top 10 of the year and that is a traditionally idiosyncratic and surprising list. Not a whole lot of big bestsellers make that Publishers Weekly list. And I think it reflects that Jones is in pretty rarefied air now of being a beloved genre writer, but who is having this breakout. Also Barnes and Noble's Best Horror of 2025. It was highly anticipated. Jones writes really quickly. There's a new Stephen Graham Jones book almost every year. And this one already has 29 ,000 Goodreads ratings. So multiples on top of some of the award winners that we were just talking about.

27:36Jeff O'Neal:So yeah, definitely a green for him.

27:38Rebecca Schinsky:The other one that I have in this sort of breakout genre here. And this is one we were looking forward to in 2025. And I know you've read it. This probably, I think, has a very good case to be green, because I believe it's going to be an adaptation that the Obama's production company is heading up. It's King of Actions by S.A. Cosby. Can you talk about this? You read this.

27:59Jeff O'Neal:Sure. This is a godfather-inspired crime epic that's set here in Virginia, where I live, in the American South, about a Black family. Main character has had a successful career in Atlanta gets called back home to help deal with his family. His father is ill. His father had run the only like or the best funeral parlor in town in their small town. And he discovers when he gets back that his brother has gotten involved in some shady dealings. And he's got to try to in trying to help his brother get out of the shady dealings. They both get further like drawn into the world of crime. It's really gritty.

28:38Jeff O'Neal:The Godfather comparisons, like there's a lot of violence on the page, but it reads like a house on fire. Cosby is wonderful. Made Amazon's top 20 books of the year. It was a finalist for Barnes and Noble's book of the year, and it made their best mystery thriller list. As you said, it's an Obama favorite. It's going to be produced in an adaptation by their company and almost 40 ,000 Goodreads ratings. Feels like a green to me too.

29:01Rebecca Schinsky:I think it has a real chance to be something.

29:03Jeff O'Neal:The only knock against it is that genre hits have a hard time. Like they're thrillers. Crime thrillers are really popular. There's a lot of them.

29:11Rebecca Schinsky:You've got to be like Gone Girl and really like be a phenomenon.

29:14Jeff O'Neal:Or The Godfather. So I think Yellow is the.

29:17Rebecca Schinsky:Yeah, you're probably right. That's a good point. Yeah. If Buffalo Hunter, Hunter is green. It does feel like that has a notch better chance than King of Ashes. Just from reading the tea leaves there. I'll do one that I read, Wild Dark. These are book club favorites, kind of so they've been passed around quite a bit. Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McGonaghy. This is the third of her novels. She's an Australian writer. The other two books were very well regarded. I think this one is really broken out even beyond that. Like the floor was really high for this and she's really punched through a ceiling here.

29:53Rebecca Schinsky:So it's another client, excuse me, climate book, but it's got a mystery about it. Like a woman washes up on this remote island end up in the Arctic Circle. And there's like this small family that's like they're tending this place. And it throws a bit of a monkey wrench in their life. It's actually quite a bit more literary than people might expect or might expect for something that's gotten read this much. But I think a certain kind of reader really responds to Maconaghan. I think I'd throw myself into that club. And then it's also gotten some of the other retail sales focused awards, the Amazons, the Barnes and Noble Best Fiction of the Year.

30:32Rebecca Schinsky:I think Makani is a goer, and I feel like this one has brought her to a new level. The thing that gives me pause is it borders into mystery, and it's a cool and memorable reading experience, but is it special, special? I just have a hard time getting it over the line. It's, I have a hard time.

30:55Jeff O'Neal:It's at least yellow. It's a yellow. Yeah, it's not an obvious red. Maybe that's enough for now. I have a hard time getting it over the line too, because I think the mystery elements that made it more readable and maybe gave it crossover appeal to more genre type readers, to me, lessened the impact of the literary qualities of the book. I think that the mystery components were a selling point for a lot of readers, but they were a discounting point for me as a literary person. I wanted this to feel more like Stoneyard Devotional by Charlotte Wood, to dwell in this quiet literary strangeness. They're on this island near Antarctica.

31:41Jeff O'Neal:They're tending a seed vault. The seas are rising. There's plenty to do without a mystery. I didn't feel like the mystery. To me, it was a bug, not a feature.

31:50Rebecca Schinsky:Or to be stranger or more, I don't know, to think about a C. Pam Zhang novel or something. than that. Something is really going on here. And it might, I think the sales indicate that people like it as a reading experience, but I think there's something, I think you're onto something where it may be sanded off its long-term sharpness, right? That will keep people coming back and back. But I wouldn't be shocked, but I agree with you here. Two more sort of general purpose, I don't mean to slag it like this, but these got read by so many people, that's almost hard to see them clearly. Swiss Army, yeah.

32:24Rebecca Schinsky:Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid. And Reed, of course, was the OG booktop phenomenon? He's question mark even before Hoover. And this is a lesbian love story said at NASA in the 1980s. People love Reed. I've been advised that I would like this book. It's a really fun book. I think a lot of people are going to read it. But if the ultimate litmus test we're doing here, does this feel like something we're going to talk about on this show in 10 years? Boy, it seems hard to say that. I think we might talk about a read book as representative of her commercial success. But would we pick this one? I don't think so at this moment.

33:00Jeff O'Neal:Yeah, I don't think so. I think we'd pick Daisy Jones. I think I would pick Daisy Jones. That's my favorite of hers that I've read. And I've not read the whole Taylor Jenkins read pantheon. I'm missing a couple. I really liked Atmosphere, but Daisy Jones still remains my favorite because it did do something that felt different. Like that fictionalized oral history is not a completely new invention, but we get less of it. This was Audible's best book, audio book of 2025, though. It's on Amazon's top 10. Top 10 for Amazon. Among Barnes & Noble's best fiction. We have to at least yellow,

33:31Rebecca Schinsky:but this might be one that turns green because our hands are sort of tied. I know.

33:34Jeff O'Neal:We might have painted ourselves into a corner by saying 10 have to be turned green.

33:38Rebecca Schinsky:Well, I mean, we'll see what we're coming up. We can change the rules on the fly.

33:42Jeff O'Neal:We're in charge.

33:43Rebecca Schinsky:Well, but then I think it tells people that this is a hard thing and what kind of a year it's been.

33:49Jeff O'Neal:Yeah.

33:49Rebecca Schinsky:Buckeye by Patrick Ryan. Neither of us have read this, that we've been seeing the talk about it for a while. A multi-generational talk about two families in the Midwest from World War II forward. Amazon's number one book of 2025. I do take their pick seriously, but not determinatively because they, and I've talked to the editors over there and they're very sharp readers who care about books. Their goal is a little bit different than what we're doing, which is they want people that see that book to pick it up and really be glad that they read it.

34:18Jeff O'Neal:Yes.

34:19Rebecca Schinsky:And I'm not slagging that. That's a really honorable thing, especially if you're the world's, the largest bookseller that's ever existed in the history of the world, which is a funny thing to say, but it's so true that we sort of forget it. And that is not about anything. That has its own limits because books like this, generational sagas in the Midwest from World War II forward, have been something people have been writing since about the end of World War II till now. And we get a book like Anne Napolitano or Catherine Newman that people like and does well and pick it up and have a good time.

34:49Rebecca Schinsky:and then is kind of gone after a few years because another one comes and does the same, trying to do the same thing.

34:54Jeff O'Neal:I think one of those is, we'll still be talking about in 25 years, but which one it's going to be is wide open.

35:03Rebecca Schinsky:Yeah, I think I'm going to read this. I mean, that's a weird thing to do, but I just don't see it, Rebecca. I just don't.

35:09Jeff O'Neal:Yeah, no, I agree. And I mean, you know, Amazon and Barnes & Noble both have the factor also of these, they're surfacing these lists in time for holiday season. So it's, will you be glad you read it? but also can you buy this and gift it to someone? And does it sort of have that Swiss Army appeal? And for something to be that widely appealing, it needs to be somewhat sanded off. And usually it's the sharp things that make something last longer.

35:37Rebecca Schinsky:Or you have a compelling hook. And Mona's Eyes by Thomas Schleser has a really good hook. This is Barnes & Noble's Book of the Year. We started seeing it pop up in some place and like, what is this thing? and then it came out that it won. It's a novel. A young girl and her grandfather raced to see 52 works of art in 52 weeks as her eyesight is failing. It feels to me a little like combination of Elegance of the Hedgehog plus Tuesdays with Maury. And I don't know that we would cover this book on Zero to Well Read for sort of art reasons, but I can see it from a, this was a durable hit. This was a phenomenon.

36:11Rebecca Schinsky:It's kind of an interesting oddity, a curio. And if it sells over time, like some of these books can, I could imagine us talking about this. It's like, look at this thing. It's a work in translation originally from French. So I'm kind of interested in this.

36:25Jeff O'Neal:I'm going to make it a yellow as well, specifically for those reasons of like Elegance of the Hedgehog, same publisher, by the way. But that book was a big sort of cozy literary hit in its time. And I've considered Elegance of the Hedgehog for zero to one. Because it had such a big moment. That one felt, Elegance of the Hedgehog felt a little more organic where Mona's eyes, like Barnes and Noble has sort of put this in front of readers. It is a bit of an indie darling. I said, I think on our book, right? Instagram that I thought this book had sort of just come out of nowhere. And an indie bookseller was like, no, you just haven't seen it.

37:00Jeff O'Neal:But indie booksellers have been celebrating this book and trying to bring it up to awareness. And Barnes and Noble has paid some attention to that. But if it catches on, and I'm going to be watching to see if Mona's eyes starts showing up on best seller lists, then it could be something that has enough of a moment that it merits coming back and doing some kind of zero to well read type treatment of it in down the line. So I think a yellow is safe here.

37:23Rebecca Schinsky:And when I talk about something does something special, one of those things you could do is have a really good hook. Like you can say in one sentence, like, that's interesting. It's a good hook. You don't say anything else about it. And that's, that's enough sometimes for it to have a viral.

37:36Jeff O'Neal:It's also like a highly adaptable hook. Like this is a two hander. Oscar bait,

37:42Rebecca Schinsky:A two-hander for sure.

37:44Jeff O'Neal:Right? Some precocious child actor with like a charming European version of Tom Hanks.

37:52Rebecca Schinsky:Yes. I can really see this. This last one, you did a good job here peeling out some time for a breakout hit. This is a book I know you liked. It also got crowned by Barnes & Noble as the winner of its Discover Prize. What do you want to say about Maggie or A Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar by Katie Yee?

38:08Jeff O'Neal:This is also a really fun book. It's about a woman who finds out that her husband is leaving her for a younger woman, and then she finds out that she has breast cancer, and she names her tumor after the husband's new girlfriend, whose name is Maggie. So it's sharp. It's funny. She's using humor to cope. She's also reaching for connection to her Chinese heritage, and she's trying to instill some more awareness of Chinese heritage and folklore in her kids through the form of these bedtime stories that she tells on the page, which make the book – Like that's a little something different that happens on the book.

38:42Jeff O'Neal:She's trying to keep herself tethered. Her best friend is also like really sharp and funny. This to me feels like the entrance of a new voice that I'll be paying attention to. Folks who like this kind of domestic, like literary domestic fiction might recognize the names Jenny Offal or Rachel Kong or Wakey Wang. I think Katie Yee is in that same zone. I don't know that this book stands the test of time. It has some debut novel problems as well. But I was happy to see it win the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize as a like sort of a spotlight that shines on a book or shines on an author and says, this is one to watch.

39:19Jeff O'Neal:Honestly, as much as it saddens me, I think this one is a red.

39:22Rebecca Schinsky:Yeah. I think it has a hook where you get two sentences in, you kind of understand it, but maybe a little too odd in its own kind of quirky way. Pop culture juggernauts. So there are some books that just sell a bunch. and like a prize winner, that is no guarantee of anything except that maybe you should be considerate. It puts it in the conversation for something that are going to return to. I mean, the big book of the year came out early in the year in terms of sales, attention, special editions at Target with people around the line. Rebecca, this is something that just doesn't happen. Like second or third week of January.

39:54Rebecca Schinsky:Yes. It is Onyx Storm, which is the third installment in the highest profile romanticity series out there. The Court of Thorns and Roses preceded it, but in terms of awareness, This is the standard bearer for the idea of romanticcy as a genre, which has become the hottest in terms of sales genre that I have seen be created and get its own name and special section in bookstores in our whole careers. The only knock against it is it's the third one. And it's hard to know what to do with the middle. And there's two more coming. It's going to be a while. These first three came out hard upon each other.

40:31Rebecca Schinsky:Yaros is like crying uncle a little bit, as she is, of course, should be doing to keep herself sane. You and I have read Fourth Wing. This is not our cup of tea, which doesn't mean anything. I don't think in 10 years we were going to do one on Onyx Storm. I think in 10 years we absolutely will be doing one on Fourth Wing. I totally agree. And say what was Fourth Wing.

40:55Jeff O'Neal:Yeah. I think Onyx Storm as a standalone third book in this series is a read. but that we will be talking about the fourth wing phenomenon in 10 or 20 years in the way that now we're still talking about 50 shades of gray and like twilight we did twilight it's like right in there like it's at some point there will be a twilight episode of this or there has been a twilight at some point there will be a 50 shades of gray episode of this podcast but we'll be doing the first book and sort of talking about the whole series and when we when it comes time to talk about

41:23Rebecca Schinsky:fourth wing that's what we'll be doing as well i think we can move through the first two using almost precisely the same logic, which is Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins and The Secret of Secret by Dan Brown. Sunrise on the Reaping, of course, is the second prequel to the original Hunger Games series. And this, the hook here, is it is the story of the Hamish Abernathy Hunger Games. Do you know, which quell is that, Rebecca? Is that the second quell for you, quarter quell? Which one is it? I'll give you a hard time. I haven't read this one yet. The movie trailer actually just came out yesterday as we record.

41:57Rebecca Schinsky:It's the second most rated book on Goodreads this year after only Onyx Storm. Here's another thing. You have to have looked at Goodreads for a long time. Like we have to recognize that a 4.51 rating on Goodreads is materially different than like a 4.2. Like you get above a 4.5, people really like this book. The reviews have been great elsewhere. And to bring it into my own house, both of my kids, or actually no, just one of my kids have read it and loved it. And I thought it was really, really good. I think it's gonna be a terrific movie, but we will be doing The Hunger Games.

42:29Jeff O'Neal:Yeah. Yeah, the movie of this is coming out next fall. That is very likely gonna be the hook for us to talk about The Hunger Games itself on this podcast.

42:38Rebecca Schinsky:If we get to 2000 episodes and we need to mine these durable IPs, maybe we'll get to Sunrise.

42:44Jeff O'Neal:What a great problem that would be to have.

42:46Rebecca Schinsky:Yeah, it'd be a wonderful problem to have it. And not a bad gem to find down there at the bottom of that mine with that pickaxe where we'll have to get there. Yeah. And then Secret of Secrets by Dan. Oh, I'll take this one because you've read the next one. So why don't I take this one real quick? Dan Brown has another book out. And it's Dan Brown doing Dan Brown things. This time on the nature of consciousness. Also this time with brand integrations. Oh my God. I don't think we have this confirmed, do we? Do we have this confirmed?

43:11Jeff O'Neal:We don't have it confirmed, except that in the acknowledgments, Dan Brown thanks people for helping find so many great synergies. And there's like a Starbucks mention. There's a bunch of men's clothing brand mentions. We don't know which ones.

43:24Rebecca Schinsky:Marriott gets huge shouts about the Marriott's here.

43:27Jeff O'Neal:Which brand mentions are paid placements, but I feel confident that some of them are.

43:33Rebecca Schinsky:Which is weirder, that he talked about Starbucks and Marriott that much without a brand deal, or that he had a brand deal to do it? I can't figure it out.

43:39Jeff O'Neal:Or even just how clunky they are. Like I was reminded recently of how awkward the product placement is in the Truman Show, where Laura Linney like turns to the camera and is like, we're having a deep conversation, but now a moment for a laundry detergent. And it kind of feels like it intrudes that way in the secret of secrets. So it's not natural.

44:00Rebecca Schinsky:And despite all that, we still had a grand time. We had a great time. You and I both enjoy reading Dan Brown. We book clubbed it on the BR podcast. But if we ever do Dan Brown, I think this is like maybe one of the first couple, but I don't think so.

44:13Jeff O'Neal:This is my, I think, second favorite after the Da Vinci Code. Yeah, but I've enjoyed it more upon reflection. And folks, if you want to hear us go like really long on The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown, that book club episode is over in the Book Riot podcast feed. We had a great time. Who cares about your poops?

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45:44Jeff O'Neal:Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab, which was blurbed as the toxic lesbian vampires are here. The story connects three women over five centuries and across continents is about vampires is about sexuality and relationships and all sorts of other things. We expected this one to be a big crossover hit, that literary people would pick it up, that genre readers and fans of V.E. Schwab would pick it up. It seems to be doing very well so far. It has 120 ,000 Goodreads ratings. And I got to book club this one as well with our colleagues Vanessa Diaz and Danica Ellis over on the Book Riot podcast.

46:24Probably a read.

46:27Jeff O'Neal:It doesn't do any new things, really. Vampires are historically, like those stories are often concerned with sex and subversion. This is a different take on it. But Schwab has read her vampire history very clearly and is trying to work in that tradition. So yeah, I think I think I read.

46:47Rebecca Schinsky:Yeah, I think at some point, one of these V.E. Schwab books, and she has a lot of interesting ones that have broken out and like been really big within the reading community. One of these days, one of those can be adapted. and whatever one that happens to may be a candidate for us to talk about someday because I think she's a super interesting writer. I have her and Bardugo and Kwong kind of in the multi-genre brand name author of the rest of our lives category. And that's how I'm going to transition into Catawba's Spire of Kwong. Nice segue. Which is, I think we knew this book was coming out in 2024.

47:22Rebecca Schinsky:It was our mutual pick for could be book of the year. It's done quite well from the polygenre Wunderkind. Wunderkind no longer, I mean, she's a little bit older now. She's still quite young, but she wrote the Poppy War series when she was a teenager. And she's turned into a commercial fiction, juggernaut, babble into the yellow face. Then this is a Dante-inspired academic odyssey through the underworld that's really about the skewering of academia. That seems to be its biggest goal here. And if not a tacked on love story, a secondary love story, also a long chapter about Crohn's disease, if you've been looking for that.

47:56Rebecca Schinsky:It's done quite well. But I think it's underwhelmed slightly on the whole. I think there's a chance we come back to this because I've said before, this represents maybe not the apotheosis, but it could be the peak of book as object moment where it's got this gold embossed list. like the getting a galley was like a galley brag moment. We haven't had one of those while as a look at this. We got it early, sprayed edges. There's a map in there, this beautiful cover, huge publicity campaign. This was going to be when the commercial fiction world and the book talk world gets together. We're all reading the same book at the same time.

48:36Rebecca Schinsky:And it just didn't quite happen.

48:38Jeff O'Neal:Yeah, it just didn't quite happen. In trying to do several things, it didn't do any of them as fully as the fans of those particular things wanted them, I think. Like, the literary references feel similar to like, the volume of literary references that we get in The Secret History by Donna Tartt. And then there's all of the genre adventure, journeying through hell and like, romanticcy elements that also like, didn't go as hard as the people who came for a romanticcy wanted. So I think in trying to reach two audiences or like, with two potential audiences Quang could have reached. I don't want to assume her intentions there.

49:16Jeff O'Neal:Neither of those audiences was fully satisfied. It's like compromises were made on both sides. 75 ,000 Goodreads ratings, nothing to sneeze at. But when you look back up at Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, which was sort of neck and neck with Catabasus early in the year for which of these is going to be the literary genre hit, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is ahead of it by 45 ,000 ratings.

49:38Rebecca Schinsky:I lost the deed to my house if that was that Catawbasid would have 50 ,000 fewer ratings on Goodreads.

49:45Jeff O'Neal:Like we did a fantasy book, like a book fantasy league with some of our colleagues. And I like we were all sad except for Sharifa who got Catawbasis. I took Barry Our Bones in the Midnight Soil in the second round. And like by the Goodreads standard at least, that worked out better for me, which is a total surprise.

50:04Rebecca Schinsky:And I don't remember having seen it on a lot of these end of year roundups, Catawbasis. I think it's on some. It's on some. It's not, you know, well, at least it's included. It may not be anyone's book of the year, but a lot of people have it among their finalists.

50:14Jeff O'Neal:Yes, I think yellow is right for that one.

50:16Rebecca Schinsky:Why don't you go? So we have three ones to watch. So these are smaller books, literary titles, and nonfiction. Why don't you start with the nonfiction? Because you never know with current event issues, like what's going to be the book that people look back on to reference this moment. We talked about one day everyone will be against this as a contender. I think because the AI story is moving so quickly, it's hard to bet on this because the river is moving so quickly. But you really liked Searches by Vahini Vara. And I still want to get to it, though. I don't know that I will.

50:46Jeff O'Neal:Yeah, it's Searches, Selfhood in the Digital Age by Vahini Vara. It's another book that's wildly of this moment. If you aren't familiar with it, Vara wrote an essay in 2022 about her sister's death that she co-wrote with ChatGPT and wrote about that. It's very meta. The essay went viral, ChatGPT was very new. And this is a book length exploration of what makes us human in an age when machines can appear to create art, or when at least that's the thing that we're being told that machines can do. So she feeds her manuscript into ChatGPT. She asks it for questions and feedback. At one point, she's like, I'm going to write a chapter about this.

51:27Jeff O'Neal:Why don't you go write a chapter about it also? And we get to see the side by side of her, how a human processed this thing versus how a machine that can really only reproduce ideas did it. It's really potent, very interesting. It was a PW top 10 book of the year this year. I'm going to give this one a yellow. I think we will see some book about technology that we are still talking about in 25 years. But if I had to put a bet on that right now, it would be last year's big book, The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. I think that has a better chance of being the book that we look back on as having represented a turn in the tide about how we all relate to technology.

52:07Rebecca Schinsky:The other one about AI this year that we maybe could have put on the list is if anyone bills it, everyone dies about AI. And that's either going to be very right or very wrong. And depending on which situation, in either case, it's going to be a notable book of 2025. My favorite book of the year, and I know one of your favorite books of the year as well, is edition by Katie Kitamura. I had a chance to talk with her. We book clubbed that on the Book Riot podcast too. She's three for three in my book of the novels that she's come out. This is not for everybody. And for a book like this, that almost has to be the case for it to be a book that we talk about in 10 years, because it needs to do something strange, weird, innovative, something that continues to inspire, provoke, and confound.

52:46Rebecca Schinsky:And that certainly does the second part of this. I really don't want to spoil this because no one has really read this yet compared to a lot of the books we're talking about. It morphs from a still, steely, incisive relationship story to a pretty wild and transgressive mind-warping experience. Like you're not sure what it is you're reading. And that's rare. I felt things reading this book that I don't feel when I read books that often. And that's special and special matters. It was a finalist for the Booker Prize. So this is no like dark horse, deep cut, like indie or university press title. We did a book club, one of your favorites.

53:20Rebecca Schinsky:I'm putting this as green right now. Yeah, I'm greening this one also.

53:24Jeff O'Neal:And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. It's rare. Like, we have a lot of overlap in our taste, and we like a lot of the same books. But it's rare that even in a year where we've read a lot of the same things, we have the same favorite book. Right. And we have spent this entire year, because Audition came out pretty early, like, arguing over who was going to get to be the one who talked about Audition in the various places. Like, who was going to blurb it for Book Riot's Best Ubs? Who was going to get it in our Best of the Year So Far podcast? Like, I don't remember the last time that we had that over one novel.

53:55Jeff O'Neal:And some of that, too, is a function, again, of like that there hasn't been one big book of the year. Like, even last year with James, we both really loved that book. But we just kind of took it off the board of like, obviously, James is the book of the year. So we'll fight over something else. Audition feels, I mean, like, it's such a work of art. And Kitamura is an artist. and she's on the edge of something and willing to be weird and strange and to push readers in a way that I think that kind of exploration has a better chance of enduring than something that's a predictable sort of middle-of-the-road commercial fiction.

54:35Rebecca Schinsky:You've got one more here, Wilderness by Angela Flournoy. And I've got one more we didn't put on the board that I'm going to mention I just thought of, but I think you'll agree we should at least consider it.

54:42Jeff O'Neal:So The Wilderness by Angela Flournoy, a long-awaited second novel from Flournoy, whose book The Turner House in, I believe, 2015 was very popular and beloved. She was a breakout writer. And this follows a group of Black women friends over the course of several decades. Like, they are growing up in America. And the book is about growing up and about America and about being Black in America. It rings bells of climate concern, of what it's like to live in cities, urban life, and the long impact of traumatic events. It also is overtly inspired by The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler.

55:18Rebecca Schinsky:Zero Wellred loves that. That moves it from yellow to green almost immediately. Like, I think the AI in my Google Doc won't let me make it a yellow.

55:26Jeff O'Neal:And I think it's a green also because Flournoy does take this into a new direction. She moves into the future. Like, it's not just friends growing up. It's friends growing up to beyond where we are right now. I think the book goes into 2028. And it feels very possible and very prescient in the same way that Octavia Butler feels possible and prescient. Like she's also just like Angela Flournoy's name definitely has green on it. But this book feels like such a level up from the Turner House, which was a more straight ahead sort of commercial upmarket commercial book.

56:03Rebecca Schinsky:It was much more recognizable, the Turner House. This is a good version of this thing that I know.

56:08Jeff O'Neal:And I wonder if one of the reasons that we haven't seen the wilderness like break out quite as much as we expected is that it's weirder than people who were coming for the Turner house were expecting to get from her. But I love to see that happen when a writer takes a turn for the slightly weird and is willing to go a little bit speculative or to do something different that isn't guaranteed. This is thorny and it's political. And I like to see a writer embody that space. So I am giving her a green.

56:36Rebecca Schinsky:I think that's right. And I say here, I think she's among the top 10 to 20 literary writers who are on their second book. And that's like, it feels like a very small thing to say. But also the first book was widely acclaimed. And this one, I think if we're going to talk about a Flournoy book in 10 years, which I think there's a good chance we will. It's going to be this one. Of the two already, it's going to be this one. So I think that's Warrant to Green too. This might also Warrant to Green because if you win the Nobel Prize and you're alive, well, you have to be alive to win the Nobel Prize.

57:01Rebecca Schinsky:But it came out in January. And when you were talking about addition saying it came out early, I was like, oh, wait, We Do Not Part by Hong Kong came out this year. which is a book we really love too together. We both did really love that, yeah. My question is not if this one's worthy. It does all kinds of things that I want art and writing to do. I learned a lot. I felt a lot. I had to think. Certainly a brain on activity if there ever was one. Evocative, moody, strange, and beautiful. My only question about green versus yellow here is in 10 or 20 years, I'm sure you win a Nobel Prize, you're automatically in the conversation for us to do a pod about you at some point.

57:33Rebecca Schinsky:I don't think it's a clip to vegetarian though because that was such a phenomenon. And that's the book that got her to this place. So I don't think I'd green We Do Not Part. I agree. But it's certainly worthy of being in the conversation.

57:42Jeff O'Neal:On Hong Kong is We Do Not Part is wonderful. But if you're doing the one episode of Hong Kong, you have to do The Vegetarian.

57:49Rebecca Schinsky:You have to do The Vegetarian. That brings us to then. Let's do a quick. Okay. Could you count while I talk about what's in green? So I already counted. Thank you very much. I made a list while we were going.

57:58Jeff O'Neal:Would you like to know? Wonderful.

58:00Rebecca Schinsky:Do we have eight?

58:01Jeff O'Neal:We have five. We have five greens. one day everyone will have always been against this the loneliness of sonia and sunny the buffalo hunter hunter audition and the wilderness and i think we should leave it there because we had 22 now 23 books total on this list with the addition of we do not part five out of 23 is like a top

58:23Rebecca Schinsky:22 that's i agree with you let's top quartile the exercise is interesting if we have to go from from 12 to 10 what's not as fun is like let's gin up an extra five yeah yeah if we had to cut them down but i think this is pretty reflective yeah if you had to pick a yellow that you thought you know if there's a yellow that we had to pick one more which do you go with

58:48Jeff O'Neal:this is very hard i think if i have to and supports your and supports your thought that we shouldn't add anymore maybe maybe catabasis i think if i have to pick a yellow because of the phenomenon bet on right bet on the like most elevated version of spredges and romanticy and like that people would be interested in that as here's what happens when you try to like reproduce and write into all of these phenomena at the same time but i don't think we're getting like like a 20 year collector's edition of Katabasis down the line because like people are still adoring it at that point. But it's, I think an interesting object.

59:31Rebecca Schinsky:I wonder how the deal was. That's it was immediate, not immediately, but very quickly a deal was struck to make this into a property. And I don't remember what platform or whatever. I wonder how they're feeling about that right now. Yeah. I think if I have to pick one,

59:50Rebecca Schinsky:it's not easy. I think Mona's Eyes just because it's a bit of a wild card and I don't like any of my surer bets so I'll buy longer odds of Mona's Eyes that it's the kind of book that like you know what? This has been read by people for 20 years and everyone loves it and it feels timeless and it's a book people give to their grandparents or kids and art lovers like it like again I don't love my odds but I think I'll go with Mona's Eyes I think that's good reasoning alright Rebecca we did it you can email us zero to well read at pod yeah zero to well read at pod dammit zero to well read at book riot we've done four hours of podding in a row I'm fraying at the edges a little bit here please if you have a chance rate and review the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts this has been really fun Rebecca also this is I think well this will be our first episode in the feed that's not title specific I can't remember the calendar I think it is

1:00:51Jeff O'Neal:It's one of them.

1:00:53Rebecca Schinsky:It's one of our first episodes. It's not title specific. It's been an experiment for us. We weren't going to do as many episodes over the December to January season, but we're having a good time. We got some amendment by the show. We thought we'd try something else. So if you like this kind of episode, this would be an easy one for us to do, I guess, once a year that help us with one episode a year format, Rebecca, but shoot us an email at zero to well read at book riot.com. With that, I do. Thanks Rebecca.

1:01:21Jeff O'Neal:Y 'all have a good one.