Nothing about this experience has been more delightful than the emails and reviews from listeners who say the show has helped them return to reading, expand their reading lives, or finally take on a book they didn’t think they were up for.

Bookish impostor syndrome is a real thing. It’s part of why we made the show. But nothing has been more surprising than finding it in myself nearly 20 years into being a Professional Book Person. I was so unprepared for it, I didn’t even realize it was happening at first.

When it was time for Pynchon, I found myself hesitating to get started. A frustrating experience in college made me nervous about Rushdie. Morrison? Not a problem, but probably only because I’ve read all of them at least twice already. I tend to be, if anything, overly confident in my abilities (hashtag Sagittarius), and I didn’t want to admit these feelings to myself. I couldn’t quite believe they were real.

Then the same thing kept happening: I’d pick up the book—that episode isn’t going to record itself—and discover that I was…fine. Better than fine. I got it! And when I didn’t get it, I usually knew that the unsettled feeling was intentional. (Gather round, kids, and let me tell you about postmodernism.) It turns out that reading thousands of books, mostly literary fiction, across multiple decades makes a difference!

One of the things we say on the show is that well-read-ness is a journey, not a destination, and we’re all starting from different places. You don’t need to have read thousands of books to be on your way; you just need to crack the spine, pick up your pen, and practice. Good reading begets more good reading. One great book unlocks another. Get your reps in, and revel in the feeling of your skills sharpening.

I was thinking about all of this as we talked with Emily Wilson for this week’s episode, and I wish I’d asked her if bookish impostor syndrome had ever been part of her experience. I’ve been thinking about it again this week as I’m reading The Odyssey for the first time since college and discovering that it’s not only easier than I remember but more fun.

These are the feelings I want for all of us as readers: the joy of discovery, the satisfaction of finding ourselves up to a challenge, and the confidence that comes from caring more about reading well than being well-read.

Arts and Activism

Before she was a working writer, Maya Angelou—born Marguerite Johnson—was a professional performer and civil rights activist. (Before that, she was the first Black woman to serve as a streetcar conductor in San Francisco, a story that would make Caged Bird worth reading by itself.)

In 1960, Angelou met Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. at an event in Harlem and was so moved by his words that she later teamed up with King and comedian Godfrey Cambridge to write and produce a Broadway revue called Cabaret for Freedom that served as a fundraiser for King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. The connection endured, and Angelou went on to serve as the Northern Coordinator for the SCLC.

A few years later, while living in Accra, Ghana, Angelou met Malcolm X. In 1965, she moved back to the U.S. to help him found the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Malcolm X was assassinated shortly after the move, and Angelou, who was devastated by the loss, decamped to Hawaii to resume her singing career before ultimately returning to Los Angeles, where she had spent her teens. That summer, while working as a market researcher to pay the bills while she honed her writing skills, she witnessed the Watts riots. She was 37 years old.

Join our guided read-along of The Odyssey when you become an Office Hours member on Patreon.

Connection, Creativity, and Coincidence

In 1967, at the age of 39, Angelou returned to New York and reconnected with James Baldwin, whom she originally met in Paris in the ‘50s. When King was assassinated the following year on April 4, 1968—Angelou’s 40th birthday—it was Baldwin who encouraged her to channel her emotions into creative work.

The first product of Angelou’s newfound direction was Blacks, Blues, Black!, a 10-part docuseries she wrote, produced, and narrated about blues music and Black American history. You can watch the first episode here.

But the real magic happened, as it so often does, at a party. In an attempt to pull Angelou out of the depression she fell into following King’s murder, Baldwin invited her to a party at the home of his friends Jules and Judy Feiffer. Angelou’s presence and storytelling so impressed Judy Feiffer that the next day, she called her friend Robert Loomis, an editor at Random House, and urged him to get Angelou to write a book. (You can watch Angelou and Baldwin in conversation in 1975 here.)

Though Angelou initially refused, Loomis used a little reverse psychology to get her to agree, saying, “It’s just as well, because to write an autobiography as literature is just about impossible.” That challenge was all Angelou needed to hear.

The Rest is Her Story

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings came out the next year, in February 1969, and was an instant hit. Angelou was celebrated as “a new kind of memoirist” whose groundbreaking style opened the door for Black writers, especially Black women, to tell their stories more fully. In the 57 years since, it has sold more than 2 million copies, been translated into dozens of languages, and become a mainstay on high school syllabi.

Angelou went on to write six more autobiographies, three essay collections, and several books of poetry, along with numerous plays, movies, and TV shows. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the first chapters in what proved to be a remarkable life built at the intersection of art and politics.

For our first Zero to Well-Read Guided Read-Along, we’ll be throwing it way back with The Odyssey by Homer in the run-up to Christopher Nolan’s epic adaptation hitting theaters July 17.

Guided Read-Alongs are available to Patreon members at the Office Hours level ($10/month) and above and are designed to help you tackle books you’ve always meant to read and enjoy them more deeply without turning reading into homework.

Here’s What You Get:

• ➡️ A pre-reading guide suggested timelines, translation guidance, and more.

• ➡️ An exclusive mini-episode about how to prepare for the read, what to pay attention to and anything else you need to know before you dive in

• ➡️ A dedicated chat space to connect with each other and the Zero to Well-Read crew along the way

How to Plan:

We’ve designed Guided Read-Alongs to allow maximum flexibility, so you can read when and how it works for you. Our episode about The Odyssey will hit the main feed on Tuesday, July 7, so we’re working backward from there.

If you want to go ahead and pick up a copy or request it from the library now, rock on.

If you’re looking for some guidance about how to choose the translation that’s right for you (because there is no one right translation for everybody), stay tuned for the pre-reading guide next week.

The exclusive mini-episode and dedicated chat space will be available beginning Tuesday, June 16.

How to Join:

• Upgrade to an Office Hours membership, which includes ad-free, early listening to all ZTWR episodes and also gives you access to exclusive bonus content.

• Do what works for you. We’ll suggest a reading schedule and provide some framework for discussion, but we’re all grown-ups here.

  • Read when and how it works for you.

  • Chime in, or just hang back and take it all in.

We’re excited to read with you!

On this week’s episode, we trace the Braiding Sweetgrass phenomenon and reflect on the ways Robin Wall Kimmerer blends Indigenous philosophy and practice with scientific knowledge to imagine new ways of living together and responding to environmental crises.

How it Happened:

• 2010: Robin Wall Kimmerer sends the manuscript of Braiding Sweetgrass to Milkweed Editions, a small nonprofit publisher based in Minnesota

  • An editor named Patrick Thomas, who had heard Kimmerer speak at an event, rescues it from the slush pile (it does happen!).

• 2013: Braiding Sweetgrass is published with an initial print run of 8,000 copies and no marketing budget to speak of and no reviews from mainstream outlets.

  • Milkweed hypes it at the American Booksellers Association’s annual Winter Institute conference, where it finds its way into the hands of indie bookstore tastemakers

  • The publisher returns to Winter Institute every year with more copies of Braiding Sweetgrass, an unheard-of practice that results in continued momentum

• 2014: Sales double over the previous year. This pattern continues for 7 (!) more years.

• 2015: Kimmerer appears on Krista Tippett’s public radio show On Being, sparking wider public awareness of her work.

• 2020: Early covid: Braiding Sweetgrass makes its first appearance on the New York Times bestseller list, where it will stay for 5 years.

• 2022: Kimmerer receives the MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as the Genius Grant.

• 2025: Kimmerer is named to TIME’s list of 100 most influential people in 2025 with a citation written by Elizabeth Gilbert, who blurbed the first edition.

• Today: Braiding Sweetgrass has sold more than 3 million copies and been translated into dozens of languages. It still reliably appears on indie bestseller lists, staff picks shelves, book club selections, and reader-to-reader recommendations

Why It Works:

Kimmerer taps into a collective yearning to feel connected to the earth and each other. Stating repeatedly that “all flourishing is mutual,” she argues for humans to reshape our relationship to the natural world and shift from consumption to reciprocity and responsibility. She writes with moral urgency but is never scolding or judgmental.

Braiding Sweetgrass offers an invitation and a new set of instructions. Kimmerer’s voice is warm and meditative. Her writing is poetic and lovingly detailed, and it is wonderfully obvious that she is thrilled to be sharing her deeply held beliefs with the wider world.

Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.

Perhaps the most powerful element of this transformative read is that Kimmerer offers a positive vision for the future; not a list of don’ts but a call to DO differently:

Despair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth…Restoration is a powerful antidote to despair. Restoration offers concrete means by which humans can once again enter into positive, creative relationship with the more-than-human world, meeting responsibilities that are simultaneously material and spiritual. It’s not enough to grieve. It’s not enough to just stop doing bad things. [emphasis mine]

The best antidotes to anxiety are information and action, and Kimmerer gives us generous helpings of both. It turns out that “touch grass” is pretty great advice.

I knew the experience of reading this book at 42 would be different from my first encounter with the text at 16 or 17, but wow, did I underestimate it. Within the first few pages, I was struck with a conviction that would endure throughout the reading: high school is the exact wrong time to read this book. Whatever your take on it was in your younger and more vulnerable years, it’s worth a look with grown-up eyes.

When I first read The Great Gatsby in high school, I understood it as a book about yearning, a subject teenagers get on a cellular level. Jay Gatsby stood in his yard at night and stared at the green light on Daisy’s dock because dude had it bad for a girl he couldn’t have. Longing, unrequited love, social ambition, grand gestures that are destined to fail: what are angst-ridden adolescents better equipped to relate to?

The thing is, though, that Gatsby isn’t about that kind of yearning. It’s not actually about wanting someone you can’t have, but about wanting a whole (past) life you can’t have. It’s about the danger of clinging to a vision you’ll never be able to realize—because time only moves in one direction—and the destruction you can wreak when you’re willing to pull everyone down the vortex with you. That’s adult shit. And though Fitzgerald wasn’t even 30 when The Great Gatsby came out, it feels like distinctly middle-aged shit today.

Zero to Well-Read guided read-alongs are coming! Start your Office Hours membership to be notified of the first selection later this month.

Sign up now

The way to read Gatsby and feel its wisdom in your bones is to wait until you’ve been alive long enough to have loved something—a person, a dream, a story about yourself—and lost it, and been tempted to hold on anyway. The Great Gatsby is a cautionary tale about something most of us learn the hard way: the past is an ash heap. Dig through it long enough, and you’ll destroy not just your present but your future too.

Today, we’re thrilled to announce Zero to Well-Read Guided Read-Alongs, which will be available to Patreon members at the Office Hours level ($10/month) and above. These are designed to help you tackle books you’ve always meant to read and enjoy them more deeply without turning reading into homework.

Join now!

We’ll reveal the first selection later this month for a read-along beginning in June.

How Guided Read-Alongs Will Work:

• 📆 4 times per year: we’ll select a title to read together. These will usually be for an upcoming episode, but we’ll also take on new award winners, surprise literary phenomena, and whatever else seems fun and worth exploring together.

• 🎁 Title reveals: 4-6 weeks out, we’ll announce the title and give you plenty of time to acquire a copy or request it from the library.

• 🧭 Pre-Reading Guide: 2-4 weeks out, members will get an exclusive mini-episode about how to prepare for the read, what to pay attention to and anything else you need to know before you dive in.

• 💬 Chat with us and other members as you read in a dedicated Patreon chat space. We’ll be in the chat throughout the read, offering prompts, context, and conversation as we go.

How to Join:

• Upgrade to an Office Hours membership, which includes ad-free, early listening to all ZTWR episodes and also gives you access to exclusive bonus content.

• Watch for the first title reveal, coming soon.

• Do what works for you. We’ll suggest a reading schedule and provide some framework for discussion, but we’re all grown-ups here. There’s no homework and no wrong way to participate.

  • Read when and how it works for you.

  • Chime in, or just hang back and take it all in.

If you’re already a member at the Office Hours level, nothing else you need to do. This is an added benefit of your membership.

We’re excited to read with you!

That’s the kind of snapshot memory you make when you’re feeling infinite, which is how I’ve thought of those magical moments when you feel one with the universe and everything is briefly perfect ever since Perks gave me the language for it.

It’s a rare book that sticks with you for 25 years, and I’ll admit that I was nervous about going back to a text that was so formative for me.

Millions of readers have found solace and delight in this perfect time capsule of millennial nostalgia since MTV Books (the most 1999 thing ever) published it, and I’m so grateful for a chance to revisit it. While it didn’t land with my 43-year-old self the same way it did when I was 17, it did something I appreciate more by providing me an opportunity to think about the girl who felt connected to something bigger when she picked up this tiny book.

I’ve taken a lot of late-night, windows-down, music-up drives in the intervening decades and experienced more than my fair share of “I feel infinite” moments. What a gift it is to know them when I see them. What thanks I owe Stephen Chbosky for helping teach me how.

I was washing my hands in the ladies’ room after seeing Wuthering Heights in IMAX on opening night when I overheard a fellow moviegoer say this to her friend, and before I knew what I was doing, I had turned around, hands still dripping, to say, “I’m so sorry to tell you, but that’s not what happens in the book.” The way her face dropped when I told her that not a single one of the 400+ pages of Brontë’s novel features Catherine and Heathcliff banging it out.

I was there to see Emerald Fennell’s adaptation—which hits HBO Max today—on opening night because I’m good at my job. Everyone else, it seemed, was there for Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie doing slimy, slurpy, BDSM fanfic on the moors. Which, no shade if slimy, slurpy, BDSM fanfic is your jam, I just think you deserve better than what Fennell served up. Making us watch Elordi drag his middle finger through the runny yolk of an egg? Straight to jail.

Wuthering Heights is not a romance, and not just because the ending is about as far from happily-ever-after as it gets. The cast of characters is a truly nightmare blunt rotation. Cathy and Heathcliff are a cautionary tale about conflating obsession with love. There’s no chemistry on the page (or the screen). It’s mostly a tale of real estate deals gone bad.

When we discussed Wuthering Heights on the podcast back before it opened in theaters, I wondered how much license Fennell would take with the story and how the differences would impact the reading experience for people who picked up the book after seeing the movie. Did the women who were in the ladies’ room with me that night go and read it anyway? What did they make of it?

While I can’t say I enjoyed the experience of reading Wuthering Heights, I am glad that I did it before seeing the movie. Emerald Fennell’s avant garde horniness can’t hold a candle to Emily Brontë, one of literature’s great stone-cold weirdos. That’s what I really should have said to the women in the ladies’ room that night. If you go to Brontë’s book looking for what Fennell was selling, you won’t find it. But what you will find is a whole lot stranger and more interesting.

I’ve been thinking about “A Temporary Matter” for more than twenty years, and it turns out I’m not alone. joined us on Zero to Well-Read this week, and after we bonded over having been haunted by the same story, Laura, a literary historian and data scientist, dropped some amazing details about how a debut short story collection by an unknown writer was the first paperback original to win the Pulitzer and became one of the most significant publishing successes of the 20th century. It’s incredible stuff.

Here are some numbers for you:

• 📈 1.2% of books acquired annually are debut short story collections.

• 🏆 4 short story collections have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in the last 50 years.

• 🥇 2 paperback originals have ever won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

• 📚 15 million copies of Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer-winning debut short story collection Interpreter of Maladies have been sold since its publication in 1999.

Fifteen million copies of a debut short story collection. Fifteen million! That’s more than the total sales of the three existing books in the Fourth Wing series combined, and Lahiri did it in about 200 pages. Without the benefit of dragons and wall-banging sex scenes! We used to be a proper country.

“A Temporary Matter” sets up many of the themes that run throughout Interpreter of Maladies: identity, loneliness, the distance between the lives we envision and the lives we actually live, and the difficulties of communicating about any of it. It’s an astonishing piece of writing to open the kind of collection that would be a capstone to many other writers’ careers, but Lahiri came out of the gate with GOAT-level goods.

We had a wonderful, wide-ranging conversation about this history-making book. You can find detailed show notes and the bonus episode in which we try to pick the three best stories of the bunch over on Patreon.

And if industry data is your catnip, you’re gonna want to pick up Laura’s book Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction, out today, and subscribe to her Substack, .

Here they are:

All you have to do to enter is be signed up for the free Zero to Well-Read email list. You’ll receive a weekly email with information and reflections on a new title. Join us on Patreon for ad-free, early access and bonus content.

To be eligible to win, you must be 18 or over and live in the US or Canada. One winner will be randomly selected and notified via email. Entries will be open through May 10th at 11:59pm Eastern.

Ready to enter? Sign up here. (If you’re already subscribed, you’re already entered! )

Subscribe now

If you’re just hearing about Zero to Well-Read, it’s a podcast that is part book club, part English class, all about the books you wish you’d read.

Each week, Book Riot CEO Jeff O’Neal and Chief of Staff Rebecca Schinsky take on a new title, from classics you should have read in high school to prize winners, cult favorites to modern hits, and tell you everything you need to know: the plot, what it feels like to read, why it matters, and the key takeaways you can use at your next dinner party.

Happy listening, and thanks for subscribing!

This is easy to see and impossible to ignore when we look at the rise in book banning and censorship attempts over the last five years. It’s present in conversations about who gets to tell their story and whose voices are sidelined or silenced. We think and talk a lot about the structures and systems that control access to books, which is an important framework to understand, but it can also elide the individual intellectual transformation we experience as readers.

The radical use of language and the radicalizing effects of reading—the individual revolutions that can lead to collective movement—are central to Percival Everett’s James, in which enslaved people secretly educate each other and risk their lives in order to explore art, philosophy, and ideas that are literally world-changing.

Everett, as usual, is working on multiple levels. So many levels. The man can spin plates like nobody else. And thus James is about so many things: the absurdity of racism, the brutality of American chattel slavery, the limits of history, the failures of even the most well-intentioned white people in a white supremacist society, and, yes, the invisible and undeniable power of private thought.

Here’s the titular James, moments after worrying that his cover would be blown if he were spotted holding a book:

“At that moment, the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. ​​They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and therefore completely subversive.”

“Completely free and therefore completely subversive” is what the book banners are afraid of, and it’s why they’ll never win. The power isn’t just on the page; it’s in the ideas themselves and in the realization that true freedom is always an inside job first.

We had a wonderful time discussing James and Pervical Everett’s wild and wily creativity in this week’s episode. I hope you’ll join us!

Almost nothing happens in Gilead, but it is about everything: love, faith, family, community, friendship, morality, and mortality. It rings every bell on our list of the immortal questions art asks:

• What is the good life?

• What do I owe my neighbor?

• How do I know what I know?

• Is this all there is?

• How to deal with the certainty of death?

• What else might there be?

• What’s the deal with good and evil?

• Free will? Real or no?

That’s a rare feat, and it deserves the highest praise.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

How it Landed

Gilead was an obvious masterpiece from the jump, and the critics knew it. At the time of its publication in 2004, James Wood described Gilead as “religious, somewhat essayistic and fiercely calm…a beautiful work -- demanding, grave and lucid.” Kirkus called it “a novel as big as a nation, as quiet as thought, and as moving as prayer. Matchless and towering.” Publishers Weekly nailed it:

Robinson's prose is beautiful, shimmering and precise; the revelations are subtle but never muted when they come, and the careful telling carries the breath of suspense. There is no simple redemption here; despite the meditations on faith, even readers with no religious inclinations will be captivated. Many writers try to capture life's universals of strength, struggle, joy and forgiveness—but Robinson truly succeeds…

Robinson won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for Gilead.

Listen on Spotify

The Long Tail

From what we can tell, Gilead has had a permanent spot on Barnes & Noble’s paperback favorites tables for the better part of twenty years. Indeed, that’s how I first discovered it.

In 2015, President Obama—a huge fan of Robinson’s work—asked her to sit down for a conversation when he was visiting Iowa. That’s right, a sitting President sent a fan letter so he could conduct an author interview. Those were the days. In a truly remarkable hour, they discussed Christianity, democracy, citizenship, and…Hamilton. A few months later, TIME would name Robinson to its list of the 100 most influential people.

In 2021, after the publication of Jack, the fourth and final book in the Gilead quartet, Oprah selected the whole set for her book club.

And in 2025, Gilead earned the #10 spot on the New York Times’s list of the 100 best books of the 21st century so far. We couldn’t be happier to have contributed two votes for it.

Etc.

Martin Scorcese has the film rights and is planning a series of adaptations to begin with Home, the second book in the quartet, with Leonardo DiCaprio set to play the charming, troubled Jack Boughton. We did a little dream casting on this week’s Office Hours, available for premium subscribers.

Become a premium subscriber

“This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it.”

That’s the #1 Gilead quote on Goodreads, and it calls to mind some favorite poetry.

I don’t know if Marilynne Robinson loves Mary Oliver, but their sensibilities are so similar and so central to my own spiritual framework, I’m not going to pass up an opportunity to talk about them together. As he reflects on the most meaningful moments of his life, Reverend Ames repeatedly circles back around to the importance of noticing, of seeing the beauty around us, of being disciplined about how we pay attention and to what.

Annie Dillard put it thusly: “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.”

Mary Oliver spent decades putting it into practice.

• A poem titled “The Real Prayers Are Not the Words, But the Attention That Comes First” is a catalog of natural wonders.

• Lilies, plum trees, violets, and moss catch her eye in “Yes! No!,” which closes with “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”

• In “Sometimes,” she left us instructions for living a life: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

• And in Upstream, “Attention is the beginning of devotion.”

That’s life-changing stuff. Whether you’re on your first read of Gilead or, like me and Jeff, your fifth, I hope you walk away feeling a little more wonder for the beauty of the world and the power of the written word.

Ready to Listen?

Let us make it easy for you.

We’ve read and discussed dozens of books, from English class staples to cult classics to pop culture phenomena. We’ve climbed the Apple Podcasts charts and earned a spot on the list of Essentials in the books category. We’ve notched more than 600,000 downloads. And we’ve heard from countless listeners who are leveling-up their reading lives alongside us. In short, it’s been a hell of a ride.

What’s Happening

Zero to Well-Read is the most fun we’ve had in a long time, and as we continue to explore ways to reach new listeners and grow the community, we’ll be converting this newsletter to focus on ZTWR.

We’ll be sharing background info, author insights, favorite quotes, and other miscellany from our research for each episode. If that sounds good to you—and we sure hope it does—you don’t need to do anything. The goods will land in your inbox in fresh new wrapping soon. If not, here’s your heads-up to unsubscribe. The BR Pod isn’t going anywhere.

In the Meantime

While we set up the ladders and prepare for a little renovation, here are a few highlight episodes to get you started.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: This is the one where it all began. We pop some champagne and kick off the show with a conversation about how this book ended up on high school curricula everywhere, why that’s the exact wrong age to read it, and how it still echoes in today’s culture. Apple | Spotify

The Secret History by Donna Tartt: It’s the OG of dark academia, and it still hits. Sex, drugs, classical literature, and a little murder for good measure. This one was a ton of fun and includes a delightfully deranged tangent about Miss Piggy. Apple | Spotify

The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler: This eerily prescient dystopian novel opens in 2024, and WHEW, did Butler get a scary number of things right about life in the future. Her life was as groundbreaking as her work, and we couldn’t be happier to see this book breaking into mainstream literary consciousness. Apple | Spotify

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson: This masterful history of America’s Great Migration reads like fiction in the very best way, and it deserves its place as the highest-rated nonfiction on the New York Times’s list of the 100 best books of the century so far. Truly an all-timer reading experience. Apple | Spotify

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: This book is not what you remember from 8th grade English class. We talk about what aged well, what no longer resonates, and why so many readers today still cite it as their favorite book. Apple | Spotify

✅ Subscribe in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your app of choice to catch a new episode every Tuesday, and watch this space for more updates. Thanks for rolling with the evolution!

From classics to contemporary hits and social media sensations, we’ll tell you why these books are great, what you should know about them, what makes them weird and fun and strange, and why they matter. It’s the literary cocktail you always wanted to go to…as long as no one would ask you what you thought of Ulysses. The first season kicks off today, with a new episode each Tuesday. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere you get your pods.

If you like the show, please rate or review it, and tell some bookish friends!

This mile-long line from last year’s sale? Not for you. You’ll shop the sale Friday night while the getting is still great.

We had such a great turnout and so much at Powell’s earlier this year, we can’t resist a chance to go back! Join us July 9th at 7pm for a conversation about the best books of the year so far. Book Riot’s managing editor Vanessa Diaz will be joining us, along with Powell’s book buyer extraordinaire, Keith Mossman.

Bring a friend! Bring your whole book club! Definitely bring your opinions and personal faves! We can’t wait to meet you.

What about New York/LA/DC/etc?

We’d love to explore events in other locations. If you’re affiliated with a bookstore, book festival, or other literary event/event space, give us a shout at podcast@bookriot.com.

Several readers had heard of it because someone they know cares about it. A couple are reading it themselves. And one suggested that we should have known about it because booksellers and librarians knew it was coming and we really should maybe talk to more of these people because really we should have known.

Maybe.

The truth is, though, that I don’t care about this series, just as there are many, many books I don’t care about. This is not the same as saying I think they are bad, should not be published, the people who read them are somehow less than, or some other negative evaluation. I just don’t care. This is not to say that there might come a romantasy book that grabs my attention somehow, though probably the signal I would need would be something along the lines of “this is really doing something different.” Because for now, I feel like I get the genre, and it’s now how I want to spend my reading time.

But as someone who podcasts and writes and in general tries to cover books, my own taste cannot be the boundary of what I pay attention to? This is where the answer becomes more difficult. Am I trying to be exhaustive, a book nerd version of “all the news that’s fit to print?” Even formulating the question that way shows its absurdity: I cannot do. Rebecca cannot do it. Our entire staff cannot do it. The dozens of editors at the NYT book section cannot do it. Because there are too many books and books take a long time to read. It’s that simple.

So the last installment of an extremely-popular romantasy series needs to be about something other than romantasy is still really popular for us to get interested. This does not mean it is bad. It means that we are more interested in spending our time talking about other things. We note the big sellers and sometimes engage with them. We think about and are interested in talking about the genres and kinds of books that are on the rise and reshaping whole editorial strategies. When it comes to how we spend the next minute thinking or exploring, we are going to let our curiosity be our guides.

This is the only way it can be and not burn out. To cover a field so wide and unwieldy when you know you cannot take it all in for years on end, you have to balance what you should cover with what sustains you. If we somehow required ourselves to spend the vast majority of our reading and thinking and talking time on the popular stuff, we wouldn’t still be doing this. Heck, we probably wouldn’t have started. Ours is not a mandate to chronicle the whole, but to curate and consider stories and books from the reading world for people who care about books and reading, but not any specific book or story. The original tagline for the show was “what’s new, cool, and worth talking about in the world of books and reading.” Your criteria for “worth talking about” probably doesn’t line up exactly with ours. And it shouldn’t. But neither does it mean that if we don’t talk about something, that no one should. It just means our questions and interests lie elsewhere. And time, friends, is short.

We are still taking recommendations requests for our Moms, Dads & Grads recommendation episode. Email your requests (for a mom, dad, grad, yourself, or anyone) to podcast (at) bookriot (dot) com.

Recently on the Book Riot Podcast

The Classics You Actually Need to Read to Be Well-Read [Patreon]

5 Fascinating Stats About Modern Reading Habits, with Laura McGrath

Building a Fantasy League for Books [Patreon]

The It Books of April

National Book Critics Circle Winners, Censorship Cases on a Collision Course with the Supreme Court, and more

AUDITION by Katie Kitamura & and the Documentary BANNED TOGETHER

Americans Want To Read More Books. Or Do They?

The Spring 2025 Hot List Checkin [Patreon]

Talking Bibliotherapy with Emely Rumble

Last Thursday, Jeff and I gathered with about 75 book nerds—longtime listeners, brand new pals, friends, and family—for a live recording about the 20 most recommendable books of the century so far. We threw each other a few curveballs, Jeff’s kid’s got in on the action, and several attendees even shared their own recs. The vibes were immaculate, and the energy in the room was just. so. fun. We can’t wait to do it again, and we’re hoping to take the show on the road, as it were, to explore live recordings in New York and who knows where else. Holler back in the comments if you’d be up for a show in NYC this fall!

Head over to The Wheelhouse to hear the whole episode, and tell us: how many of the 20 have you read? What surprised you most?

On the Show

Will Romantasy Get a Shot at Big-Time Adaptation?

Who Will Win the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay?

Give Me Liberty AND Give Me Jeff

The It Books of March 2025

New York Report, New Harper Lee Collection Announced, Golden Ticket Strategies, and More

Book Club: The Antidote by Karen Russell

The Gilead Adaptation is Real, Meta Streisand’s Itself, Powell’s Event Debrief, and More Book News of the Week

Book Club: Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza [Patreon-only]

Live from Powell’s, the 20 Most Recommendable Books of the Century So Far [Patreon-only]

Coming Up:

• Traci Thomas from The Stacks podcast joins us to talk about what we love—and hate—about talking about books on the internet.

• The classics you actually need to read to be well-read

• English professor, literary critic, and data scientist shares the most interesting stats in the world of books and reading

• We dream up a fantasy league for books

  ---

Listener Feedback

Listener emails are in italics. Our responses (if any) in bold.

Hello!
I’m currently a uni student in the U.K. and *some* of the ebooks on my uni library website allow me to download the whole book as a single PDF; others allow me to download PDFs for each chapter. I can then use the “send to kindle with ‘convert’ in the subject line” hack to get those PDFs onto my kindle, without any DRM (so far as I can tell).

I would be happy to pay for a DRM free PDF of books so I could send it to my kindle - but obviously it’s not in publishers’ interest to offer these as they’re very easy to distribute illegally.

(I am in the subset Rebecca mentioned who buys my physical books in indies/Waterstones and my ebooks on Amazon).

More and more I am reading ebooks on the Libby app on my phone and iPad (you can’t get library ebooks through overdrive or Libby onto the kindle here in the U.K.) but it’s a much worse reading experience than reading on my kindle, because of the backlit coloured screen and distraction factors.

JO: Probably those ebooks that you are getting without DRM just don’t have it—some publishers allow their books to be distributed without it (Tor I think. Others too). Rebecca and I have made the switch to Bookshop for our ebook buying, but I agree that I would like an e-ink reader for these, as my iPad is great for many situations, but reading outside season is coming, and it sucks at that. There are a bunch of interesting devices that run Android, but I happen to know from little birdies that Android reading apps and Bookshop are still…getting to know each other.

Hi I’m fresh off a singular reading experience and here with a hot take.

I think there’s finally a book that you can mention as a read a like for the night circus with a straight face.

To be clear it is not as good as the night circus. And it’s doing some different things. BUT I think that for some people it might scratch that itch.

But I just got off the very emotional and immersive reading experience and so recency bias etc. I cried four times. Which is like four times as many times as I’d cried reading books this whole year. I’m not a cryer. And it’s not a five alarm snot bomb. It’s more a single poignant tear. (Is this scale anything?)

ANYWAY. It’s got the two magical beings engaged in sparring and magically building things together. It’s got beautiful prose and an air of bittersweetness. It’s got an epic magical sweep.

It’s less grounded in our world, and it’s less elegant and parseian and more like renaissance Italy. It’s grittier and it’s focused on grief and forgiveness rather than romantic love.

The book is City in Glass and it’s maybe my favorite reading experience of the year so far.

Love the pod,

(name redacted)

Ps. I was the “I’m afraid of literary fiction” question and I did it!! I did a Perceval Everett (The Trees) and it was FANTASTIC. I loved it. It was not at all what I was expecting at any point. I keep thinking about it. Thanks!

JO: Including this one for the rec (I don’t know it) and for the Everett can do anything confirmation from a new reader. You do those two things, your email gets in the round-up.

Hi Jeff and Rebecca,

I tuned in to the NBA award ceremony via Facebook and saw something that surprised me.

Look at the number of viewers. It bounced around the 80 mark…sometimes higher, sometimes lower. Briefly maxing out at 100 or so. Can this be right? I find it shockingly low.

For perspective, at the same time that the awards show was in progress, my favorite local clothing store was having their weekly Wednesday fashion showcase, also on Facebook. (I live in St. Albert, Alberta, Canada. Population 68,000).

JO: It’s a long look in the mirror when you realize just how little the vast majority of people care about literary fiction, which is the crown jewel in the NBA awards. I think you could make a good award ceremony that people would watch, but how many more? And to what end? Though this does make me wonder about a BR pod live-commentary feed folks could tune in for. I bet it would outstream the main feed.

Etc.

What’s on your mind? Email us any time at podcast@bookriot.com.

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The Big 5 Are Indeed Big, First Major AI Verdict Comes In, Remembering Tom Robbins, and more.

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Gaiman Sued, Blurbs Deprecated, and A Book Sales Check-In

The It Books of February 2025

Dark Horse Drops Gaiman, Ebooks Come to Bookshop, ONYX STORM is the Fastest-Selling Books in 20 years, and more.

Book Club — LIFE IN THREE DIMENSIONS [Patreon-Only]

Deals, Deals, Deals Winter 20245 [Patreon-only]

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Listener Emails

Listener emails are in bold. Jeff’s responses are in italics.

Regarding Barbara Kingsolver opening a rehab center, this reminded me of an interesting piece of history. Before reading Demon Copperhead (which, by the way, I did not love), I first read David Copperfield, and then a dickens biography by Claire Tomalin. In the biography, she talks in some detail about a project that Dickens founded that was a rehabilitation home for prostitutes to help them get off the streets. I would think Kingsolver’s effort must be in some way an homage to Dickens’. Thought you might find this interesting.

Good guess, I do in fact find this interesting. However, that is a very low bar.

I’m a MLIS student and wanted to offer some help for Rebecca as an occasional romance reader. Though I can’t help with some of the romance “hieroglyphics” she mentioned when searching for romance, like writing quality, I can recommend a site that is a go to for myself and other romance readers that was introduced to me when I started reading romance in 2024: Romance.io

It’s a social cataloging site built specifically for the romance genre and has copious amounts of user tagging that can help guide romance readers toward a good fit. You can browse lists, search by tags, or by specific book.

For each book, there is general information like overall rating and spice level but also specifics like time period, main character characteristics (job, body size, personality, age, etc.), tropes, gender and sexual orientation, kink and other sex types, and content warnings, to name a very few.

The only downside is that is user, not professionally, tagged and is not an exhaustive catalog of books. Information is only as robust as the number of people who have reviewed a book and input info and thus, newer releases usually have fewer ratings/information. The search engine often needs help by inputting both book title and part or all of the author’s name.

However, it’s a great source of information that I hope will help Rebecca and other romance readers. She can search for romance with nerds, multicultural characters, or older MCs! I hope this is helpful.

There have been other attempts at cataloging books according to kinds of content in them. There was one Small Demons that was incredibly ambitioius and cool. And I am not sure about the legality and still have philsophical questions, but an LLM tool with a robust data set (legally acquired, opted-in yada yada) could be EXTREMELY AWESOME.

On the "Books to Watch For" episode, you said something about VE Schwab signing all 500k first print copies of her new novel. When The Anthropocene Reviewed was adapted for print, John Green signed all of his 250k first editions, too. I know this because he wrote a bonus half-episode about it! If you haven't listened to the podcast or audiobook, I highly recommend both. I also expect it would be a great listen with teen/tween kids.

We got quite a few emails about marathon signing-sessions and the logistics thereof. My two cents: sign fewer books. Are there really people that are like “I am only buying this book if it is signed?” How many lost sales would occur if you only signed 10,000!

I'm catching up on the Impossible Questions, and I realized I have data that could help with one of them--the how many books are read out of obligation. Well, I only have data for me, so it's probably more like an anecdote with numbers.

I am a statistician with hyperfocus problems and poor impulse control so I track A LOT of data about my reading and have for almost ten years. So this is data about ten years of reading from one white lady in her thirties who lives somewhere in the mid-atlantic and is a power genre reader. (Actually I was the lady who felt like she "should" try more "literary fiction" so you can tell I have been thinking about this.)

Anyway, I tag every book I read with some combination of Veggies or Candy (or neither, or both). Literally to capture if I feel like reading it is a thing that I feel like is virtuous or I need to do to understand society, or more of a guilty indulgence in something I want to read. My parents always did say that it was a waste that I wasn't raised Catholic. Since 2014 I have finished reading 863 novels and novellas. Of those I've tagged 259 as "Vegetables." So that's almost exactly 30%. I tagged 406 ( 47%) as "Candy." I tagged 26 as both and 224 (26%) as neither.

Sometimes I wonder who exactly it is that listens to this show. And then I get emails like this.