Jeff and Rebecca look at the most important, memorable, strangest, and all and all most superlative stories from the year in books and reading.
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Discussed in this episode:
Good job, book people: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store gets all the love; Paul Harding does not win awards for the book Jeff called “gormless”
Bad job, book people: The Vaster Wilds & Let Us Descend are under-celebrated
Love to See It: Pultizers expand eligibility
Audiobook moments of the year: Michelle Williams narrating Britney’s memoir; Leslie Jones’s 17-hour-long freestyle; Spotify introduces free listening for Premium members
Worst publisher response to book bans: Scholastic’s whole diversity collection situation
Best publisher response to book bans: PRH takes legal action against book banning states
Achievements in Reporting: The Atlantic’s coverage of the Books 3 data set used to train LLMs
More of These Conversations: The bestseller lists are broken and Goodreads is bad for books
Biggest Mystery: WTF Oprah was up to with Covenant of Water
Still Waiting to See Its Impact: Simon & Schuster sold to KKR, TikTok plans a publishing imprint
Eyeballs Emoji: The BookTok hockey romance shenanigans, Bigolas Dickolas moves some units, Review Bombing Author
Nobody Asked for This: Twilight series coming to TV; HBO plans 10-year run for Harry Potter reboot
Anticlimactic: Manuscript thief pleads guilty
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