Unabridged: 2026 Mid-Year Book Check-In with Sara Hildreth and Cree Myles
Now that we’re officially halfway through 2026, it’s time for a little mid-year book check-in with friends of the pod, Cree Myles (All Ways Black) and Sara Hildreth (Fiction Matters)! Together, we gush about the books we loved (and hated) from the first half of the year, the titles we’re most excited for in the second half of the year, and all the bookish trends defining 2026. Get ready for lots of reading inspo, juicy hot takes, and of course, book gossip.
TRANSCRIPT
Traci Thomas 0:00
Hi everybody, it's me, Traci Thomas, host of The Stacks, and you're listening to another episode of The Stacks Unabridged. This is our bonus episode, exclusive for paid subscribers on Patreon and Substack. Today is one of my favorite episodes of the year, one of y'all's favorite episodes of the year. It is our biannual check-in with Cree Miles and Sara Hildreth, two of my favorite readers about forthcoming books from July through December of 2026 The ladies and I talk about the books we're excited for, and we also reflect a little bit on what we've noticed so far in 2026 books. All right, everybody, time to dive into my conversation with Sara Hildreth and Cree Miles about the forthcoming books for the second half of 2026 Okay, everybody, you asked for it. You always ask for it, and you get what you ask for. This is another episode of The Stacks Unabridged. It is our semiannual conversation about forthcoming books. I am joined by our two favorite guests, who are already annoying me today, so we'll see how this goes. Cree Myles, you guys fucking know it's Cree and Sarah Hildreth. Okay, I don't have to introduce them every time. They're amazing. Links to all their stuff are in the show notes. It's like I do these like long intros for you guys, but it's like everybody who's here, this is the Patreon and the Substack paid subscribers. If you're here, you fucking know. So, Cree and Sarah, welcome back.
Sara Hildreth 1:42
If you know you know. Thank you for having us. It's a privilege.
Traci Thomas 1:46
Of course, of course. It's about to be a punishment. I'm gonna be honest, I'm coming in hot. You guys came in, Cree came into this episode of Books You're Excited For, and she said I'm ill prepared. I only have five books, so Sara and I said we were ill prepared, thinking we had too many books, so between us yeah, exactly between the three of us, we will balance it out as we always do, but before we get to the second half of the year, books, any, is anybody noticing any trends, anything going on this year, anything catching your eye about books so far in 2026
Cree Myles 2:26
I mean, we watched the Pulitzers together, and so I've actually been reflecting on how deeply dark, like the fact that a horror novel won for fiction, and then all of the reporting was just so dark, like it's just like I feel like we're just in a dark time, and in a lot of ways, like as we're all on social media, so I know that we see, like at least in my feed, when everything was happening in Minnesota, I was just getting that all the time, but it seems like things have quieted down, and I think that the writers and the journalists are not letting it quiet down, because they just, they have a craft that is not as present as the rest of the world lives in. So, I have just, I've noticed that, and just have been wanting to sit in that reality.
Sara Hildreth 3:20
Yeah, that's very understandable. Yeah, I'm insightful. Yeah, I feel like my reading has been so weird this year. I mean, on a personal note, my dad passed away, and that seriously impacted how I'm reading and what I'm reading now that my summer reading guide is out, I'm like getting back into some of the new releases that I'd kind of put aside for those other reasons, and it's interesting that that you say, Cree, that you're feeling like a lot of darkness in the world and in books, because the most recent new release I finished was The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout, who I feel like she's an author that a lot of people turn to for kind of warmth and like the goodness of humanity, and even though hard things happen, like our connections with each other are beautiful, and this was like her darkest book I have read, it was very political, and I think it's great that she went there, but it was just.. it was fascinating, because it's like even this author, who among like literary fiction writers, is writing some of the warmest books, is you know, like being pulled in kind of a different tonal direction because of everything that's that's going on. So I agree with what you're, what you're saying, great, both in terms of like how it's affecting readers and how it's affecting writers.
Traci Thomas 4:55
I, okay, so I can't really weigh in on this, because as you both know, I just read mostly. Be like really dark stuff all the time, and so I'm just, I've never read Elizabeth Strout. This is like, you know, not in my wheelhouse, and because so many of the Pulitzer ebooks and pieces like I had already read, like that's just where I live. I think that's why I like that award so much, but one of the things I have noticed this year is the amount of like vitriol around books, everybody hates everything and hates everyone, and Lena Dunham is the worst, and like obviously I despise yesteryear, but like the way that we're talking about these books, or like the way people want Belle Burden, the author of Strangers to be like destitute, like all of that, I found really interesting this year, like it's like a very like even like a book like Kin that I think is mostly everybody loves, like the way people are like Kin, I hated the ending, it's the worst, and I'm just like okay, the book's not the worst, like you just didn't like the ending, but I think that's more like the bigger, buzzier books are just more people are reading them and talking about them online, and the talking about them online is making more people want to read them, which also talking shit about books is good for books, but I don't know, I don't know.
Cree Myles 6:15
I also feel like, like the commodifying of intellectualism is like on the rise, like if we're watching like the luxury brands and Coach has the little trinkets and Dior put out the whatever, and so people are trying to jump in a conversation as if it doesn't take a certain amount of like rigor and previous participation in order to offer anything insightful, so I think a lot of times we're just getting these very vanilla takes because there are new readers or new people who are trying to jump on the intellectual bane bandwagon, as if it's not like a lifelong pursuit that shouldn't actually be esthetically created and be created in real life, you know.
Sara Hildreth 6:57
Traci, did you read the Maris Kreitzman piece in Harper's Bazaar about the rat. Did you see it floating around? Yeah, it was called The Rise of Rage Bait Lit, and it was about yesteryear strangers, the Lena Dunham memoir, maybe the Lindy West memoir, because that was a whole thing,
Traci Thomas 7:21
but I also think, okay, so I haven't read it, but one of the things that I've noticed is also it's not just about like, like the rage bit of it all, but it's about like where white women belong in marriage and family, like all of those books are about where white women belong, whether it's like Lena Dunham being out of place, yesteryear is about a trad wife, Belle Burden is about a divorce, and Lindy West is about a pretty fucked up marriage, and so I feel like, yes, it's about the rage, but I feel like the rage in these books are all coming from like domestic white women.
Cree Myles 8:00
Okay
Traci Thomas 8:01
does she talk about that part of it?
Sara Hildreth 8:03
No, no, like, but I think you're totally right,
Traci Thomas 8:06
because, like, Patrick Rad and Keefe has a really popular book, and, like, it's not rage-baity at all, because it has nothing to do, I mean, quite frankly, there's only one woman in the whole book, which was one of my critiques of the book. I love you, Patrick, but we exist, and I know he knows that, because, like, as, as my boyfriend, like, he's very kind and generous with me, but, like, I don't want to shit on my boyfriend, I love him so much
Cree Myles 8:36
not in public
Traci Thomas 8:37
not in public, no, no, we keep this in the, in the home, but, but, like, even kin is about black women, and, like, it's not this, like, there's something the white women say.
Cree Myles 8:48
On a personal note, the white women in my immediate vicinity have been.. it's the ability to self-manage themselves. They are busting out at the seams, they're giving everybody else their problems and their anger, like, and it really is just like, what, what does our society suggest that you think that this is okay, and you're the only demographic that I'm getting this from? And it sounds like that's also what's happening in the books. It's not our job to manage, y'all.
Sara Hildreth 9:19
Yeah, I think that's right. And I also think that these books are being kind of pitched towards like white women reading demographics who tend towards celebrity book clubs chosen by other white women, not that all of these books were picked for those book clubs, but they're in that same network, and I think like they are more provocative than a lot of what that demographic might tend to read, and I mean, I haven't read all of these books, but I, yeah, I'm curious about, like, what, like, you side Cree, like, what has been the foundation of. Reading and thinking through these ideas that now, like these books, seems so, whether it's offensive or just like poking at people, maybe who aren't used to being poked in this way.
Cree Myles 10:15
I feel like Traci, you can speak to this, because you talked about this on threads, and then Tayari, y'all, you and Tayari talked, but even the fact that Kin and yesteryear are in conversation with each other, in any, like, people are trying to do that in any meaningful way, is actually blowing me to smithereens. And then people being like, I didn't understand the meaning of Kin, I mean, the ending of Kin. I'm just like, you all don't want to think or feel, you just want to be entertained, I'm sorry, I'm tired.
Traci Thomas 10:44
I feel like it's unfortunate that Kin is even brought into this conversation in a lot of ways, because I feel like that book is so above and beyond like what Yesteryear has done and is doing, but because they both came out around the same time, both from Knopf, and both had huge marketing pushes, they're sort of being pinned up against each other in a way that I'm, is like, it upsets me, because I've read both, and like, one is really good and one is a fucking mess, and like, you can like yesteryear, like I'm not saying that you can't like yesteryear, but the idea that yesteryear and kin are in the same orbit is like upsetting to me, in the same way that, like, you can like a McDonald's cheeseburger, you can, but, like, you can't tell me that a McDonald's cheeseburger is the same as a cheeseburger from, I don't, I don't know, some fancy place, you know what I mean, like, yeah, and a lot of people like McDonald's cheeseburgers, and that's fine, but like, real people
Sara Hildreth 11:46
If you have that every day, then
Traci Thomas 11:48
and I like, I like, I mean, I don't like McDonald's cheeseburgers, like, I love a chicken nugget from McDonald's, and that's different than, like, you guys know what I'm saying, and like, quality and enjoyment are two separate things, and we have to be okay with saying that without being elitist, you know? Like, I feel like that's the thing, is like people get worried if they say that something like yesteryear is bad, that they're like, be like, well, you're just, you're a book snob, and it's like, well, no, I just know that a McDonald's cheeseburger is not as good as that cheeseburger? I have from that steak house. Like, I just understand the quality, the thickness, like the sauce. Like, it's just.. it's this.. this cheese is real cheddar. This is American. You can like American, but you've got to recognize, you know? Like, how come I have to say this?
Cree Myles 12:37
How honest are we about to be right now? Because I would also like to dive into the fact that Knopf published both of those in the first place.
Traci Thomas 12:44
Well, we can be honest about that, because there's an editor at Knopf that I think is the, or that I know is the editor of this book, who has a history of putting out books that I hate over there, and she's like their one commercial person, and I think, quite frankly, she pays for a lot of the other books to get done, like the books that she publishes do well. Yesteryear is going to pay for a lot of the literary fiction that we end up loving, or the nonfiction that we end up loving that comes out of Knopf, and almost every publishing imprint has at least one editor, if they're good, who is publishing the books that make the money.
Sara Hildreth 13:19
Okay, I'm thinking too, because about, like, thinking about kin in particular, the reactions of people who loved an American marriage but didn't love kin. I think readers are more and more needing, and I'm not, I'm not excusing this, but I think needing and wanting, quote, like the high concept novel, like they need to have the one sentence, this is what this book is about, and I know that's what it's about, and that, like, one sentence is like sustaining me through it's how I know to pick it up, I think, and I think An American marriage is a high concept novel, and I don't think kin is like you have to read kin and think about what it's really saying and what it's really about. I'm not saying that an American marriage was like too simple or anything, but you can give someone the one sentence pitch.
Traci Thomas 14:16
The log line is very clear.
Sara Hildreth 14:18
Yes, and yesteryear is like the epitome of a high concept novel, and I think that that both sells books, and I think it's having some sort of impact on reading too, where people leave a book that was emotionally resonant and beautiful, and sometimes meandering, and they're like, what did I read, like they need to be told, yes, what it was, so I don't have a clear thesis about this, but that's just something I'm noticing in publishing and readership as well.
Traci Thomas 14:50
I think it's because I mean, maybe this is like broadly like a cult, like the cultural moment we're in with all the uncertainty in the world, but I do think some of it is like going into something. Knowing, knowing how to organize your thinking around it from the beginning. If you know this is a book about a trad wife who goes back into time, then the whole time you're reading it, you're thinking, how did we get here? You know how to think about what you're reading, you're working towards the ending, or like solving the mystery, or whatever. Whereas, if I just tell you a book is about two friends growing up, you're just like, okay, but like, what's gonna happen? Like, there's no.. it doesn't give you any guide, and you really just are like out on the open road. And I mean, if I'm being quite honest, I prefer to have some sense of what a book is about. Like, I was very nervous starting kin, I was like, it's everyone's just like, it's about friends, I don't like to know more, like I don't like to read a ton about a book, but I like to have some framework, so I do understand that, and I think, like a book, like yesteryear, if you have a really good, clear premise, it can carry a book, so many people are like, "I didn't like it that much, but it's such a great idea, I'm like, "Yeah, but you didn't like it, like it wasn't good,
Sara Hildreth 16:01
yeah, and I'm not saying either that the high concept novel is necessarily like commercial, like some literary fiction is super high concept too, but yeah, I think that you said it so well, Traci, like when you have that high concept, you know how to organize your thoughts going in, and that's why, like, I really wanted to read a lot of genre fiction in the last few months, because picking up a lot of literary fiction, it's like there's so much uncertainty about what you're going to find there, but if you pick up horror or a romance or fantasy, you at least have some understanding formula, what's going to be there, and there is something comforting about that, even if you're reading something really dark.
Traci Thomas 16:46
Yeah, okay. We have to pivot to talk about books, though. This was great, really quickly. Just one so far, best book of 2026 for you,
Cree Myles 17:03
one?
Traci Thomas 17:04
I mean, sure, I say just one, but I'm not, you're in Milwaukee, I'm in LA, like, I'm not gonna be able to like tie you up and beat you up if you break the rules, so
Cree Myles 17:11
I don't know, I don't know,
Traci Thomas 17:15
I'm just outside your door
Cree Myles 17:16
my reading this year has been absolutely exquisite. I said at the beginning of the year that I was tracking hours instead of books. I've been reading slow and immersive, and I've been doing deep dives. I have loved everything that I've finished. So, as far as new releases, I really enjoyed Honey by Imani Thompson. I really enjoyed Dead First by Johnny Compton. I, of course, loved Kin. I recently discovered William Denby. He's an OG from the 50s, a black writer, southern black gothic. I'm loving Beetle Creek. I read The OG, I reread The OG, and it was still.. it still stands up. It's been 15 years since I read The Dispossessed, and everyone looked me dead in my face. It is one of the best books ever written. So that's what I got. That's where I am.
Traci Thomas 18:11
Okay, that was a lot.
Cree Myles 18:13
That was one plus
Traci Thomas 18:15
that was one book from 2026 but it was actually nine books, and most of them were from not 2026 so A+ for Cree. Just do you, girl, keep it up. Sara?
Sara Hildreth 18:27
I also loved Kin, that's high on my my list. At the beginning of the year, I read Departures by Julian Barnes. I think this was like a timing thing. Julian Barnes is one of my favorite authors, and he has said this is going to be his last book. He has a terminal illness, and he was writing about, like, what it means to die and what it means to to end a career, and kind of like how he wanted to leave his career, but it's like both fiction and memoir, so I loved the meta-ness of it. It was very much like a me book, but also like the timing was so beautiful. And then I, this comes out in July, but I'll throw out The Great Wherever by Shannon Sanders. I absolutely loved that, and I'm looking forward to more people getting to read it.
Traci Thomas 19:15
Do you think I'll like it?
Sara Hildreth 19:17
I think you, I think you could.
Traci Thomas 19:19
Okay, it's what I'm gonna pick up next. That's my next read.
Sara Hildreth 19:22
A lot happens. It's, it's funny without being like try-hard funny.
Traci Thomas 19:27
Thank God
Sara Hildreth 19:28
it's what I actually, what I really liked about it. Traci is something we've talked about a lot. The point of view was so intentionally chosen, like it's a first person narrator, but the narrator is a ghost
Traci Thomas 19:44
yeah,
Sara Hildreth 19:44
and so she's like observing things, so you get like kind of snarky narration, but you also get this sort of distance from the plot and these observational takes, and I just thought it worked really well for what she was doing,
Traci Thomas 19:59
Okay I'm excited. Okay, so obviously Patrick Radden Keefe is a banger, but I'm gonna go with a book that I just read, which is called Unreasonable Women. It's by Justine van der Leun, Justine VDL. Yeah, I'll get it at some point, and it's about it's like my kind of book, where it's three, she follows three people, three women who are in prison for murder slash manslaughter, and they all did something called criminalized defense, so they killed their abuser, whether it was their husband, boyfriend, father-in-law, or stepfather, or whatever, and the book is all about women who are in prison for killing people, and what's really crazy about this book is that there's not a lot of data about this, because, like, the way the criminal justice system works is once you are once you're convicted, like you're a murderer, you're guilty, you're the perpetrator, other people are the person who killed the victim, and so there's no statistics on like how many women tried to say that it was self-defense, or like the context, so she sends out 10,000 letters to prisons across the country gets back 1000 responses, and then uses this to, like, she finds the three women she's gonna follow from that, but she uses her own research, just like asking directly, and there's some really interesting stuff in the book that she addresses head on that I loved about, like, well, how honest are these women's replies, and what, what does it mean to, like, tell your own story? And then she also, like, but prosecutors are telling their own story, and like, they're also trying to persuade their audience, and, like, so I don't know, it's a really interesting book, and I love that she kind of does that because it undermines a lot of her book in some ways, and it makes her book so much better, like there's a way that if you do that wrong, it's like, well, these are all lies, who cares, but she really, like, you can tell she's just so thoughtful, it's handled so well, the writing is tight, it's really intense, like even for me, a person who likes intense things, there were moments in this book where I was like, okay, like, I like, for me again, a person who thought, like, we were once a family, was like a lovely book. So it's really, really good, though. It's really good, and that came out in June.
Cree Myles 22:39
You sold that.
Traci Thomas 22:40
It's, it's really good, it's so good. I think when people listen, so Justine's coming on the podcast. I haven't recorded with her yet, but I, after I read like a third of the book, I immediately, like, in one sitting, I like immediately reached out to her team and was like, "Can she please?" Like, I was like, "I gotta talk to this woman, like it's really, it's really good. I don't know that it's Pulitzer. Do you know what I mean? Like, I don't know that it's that, but it's.. it is. I would say it's very in line with we were once a family.
Cree Myles 23:10
Okay,
Traci Thomas 23:11
which is amazing. Okay, we were.. I asked you each to bring like two books you're excited about for each month. I don't know. Let's just kind of go through.. what do you have in July that you're excited about? Obviously, you said the great wherever, so I didn't put that on my list either, but we're excited about it.
Sara Hildreth 23:29
I have a book called You Won't Get Free of It by Rachel Aviv. I think she was a Pulitzer winner or finalist. Do you know her, Traci?
Traci Thomas 23:38
Sounds like non-fiction.
Sara Hildreth 23:39
nonfiction, and it is stories of mothers and daughters. I am the mother of a daughter. I am the daughter of a mother. So I'm like interested in this exploration. It sounds like it's going to be like not all sunshine and rainbows, and maybe potentially like a little hard to read at this, like, stage of motherhood, but it's.. it sounds like it's going to be great. I mean, the fact that she was at least a Pulitzer finalist, I should look up what her previous book was, makes me think the writing is going to be great. Yeah, so that's.. that's one of mine, and one of my only non-fictions, I think, of the of the back half of the year,
Traci Thomas 24:22
starting strong. Cree?
Cree Myles 24:25
I did, um, I did dig around in the horror world when I was trying to put this together, just because I like Dead First so much, and the Pulitzer backdrop, and I think at the end of the day it deep in my heart, I am a horror girlie, and my tolerance is also building, like you know, we've talked about this for years, and I'm like, I love it, but I'm lactose intolerant, but I have been able to read semi distant, I couldn't read what you were just talking about, Traci, like I won't sleep forever, but this is not real, but anyway, the one that I found that I'm curious about is The House on Blood Street by Josh Hanson. Only because you know my favorite horror novel is Rosemary's Baby, and I'm curious, this one, it's a house, and they move in, and the like trigger is that there's a bunch of porn on the walls, and so I think we're still going to be like tapping into like bodily autonomy, like we're going to have some conversation around that, except the character is going to be the house, so I'm curious to see if it turned out. Also, I'm a sucker for a cover, and it's giving just like 1980s realness, so we'll see.
Traci Thomas 25:33
Okay, I have two, but one is Good Morning Means I Love You by Kendra Allen. This book wasn't on my radar, but Jason Reynolds mentioned it to me, and was like, it's sort of like if Sula had kids, like what her kids would be up to, and it's about a woman, yeah, it's she, the author's a poet, and it's like about a woman, so I'm assuming good writing, that's why I mentioned that, hopefully, but sometimes the poets be just doing the worst, you never know,
Sara Hildreth 26:00
So true
Traci Thomas 26:01
It's either greatest writing ever, or truly a disaster on the piece. There's no okay poet novel, but the good thing is, you know right away, like you know pretty early on, it's like, oh uh oh, or like, yes, I'm happy here, but it's my understanding is it's about a woman who has like two lovers and has a child with each of them, and it's like about unconventional choices and like motherhood and sort of like free spirit. I don't know, it's also very short. This is a book that I could either really like or immediately, immediately dispatch of like 10 pages in, be like never Jason's off the trusted recommendation list, like never coming back. So you know, I like to try things out. And then my other one is called Catch the Devil by Pamela Koloff, which is an extremely me-coded book. It's about a con man in, like, the Gulf Coast, who he was, like, conning everybody. Then he ends up in jail, and he starts telling the prosecutors, "Oh, this guy in jail confessed to me, here's what he said, and becomes like a star witness to earn his own freedom, but in the process ends up getting someone convicted of a murder they did not commit, and it's a true story, and it's investigative journalism. And tell me, that doesn't sound like genetically engineered in a lab for me. It sounds great.
Sara Hildreth 27:33
yeah, I okay. I looked up Rachel Aviv. She was a Pulitzer finalist for feature writing. She's a New Yorker writer, my other July that I'm excited about is like a more, more people probably know about this one, but Beginning, Middle, End by Valerie Lucelli.
Traci Thomas 27:49
Oh yeah,
Sara Hildreth 27:50
she wrote Lost Children Archive, and this book sounds like it's almost going to be a sequel to Lost Children Archive, because well, I won't spoil the end of that book, but in that book there's a mother, a father, and two kids. They don't have names. In this book, it's the mother and daughter, and she doesn't say that they're, you know, that it's a sequel, but based on what I know about, like, her life and auto fiction and her ex-husband, like, I think that I think this might be like a continuation. I just love her writing, it's very like hypnotizing in a way, where I get almost lost in what she's saying, and then, and then when I think back, and blown away by how much research and detail she was able to put into it. I really love that kind of prose
Traci Thomas 28:41
Wasn't her ex-husband's book on your list for the first half of the year?
Sara Hildreth 28:46
yes, because I was like wanted his side of the story. Did you get it? Well, I only read half of that, and then my, my life kind of like imploded, so I do want to go back to it, because I was feeling like I was getting his side, it's called Now I Surrender, but he is his books, at least this one does not have that hypnotic effect. It's much more of like I'm thinking about how he's constructing it,
Traci Thomas 29:16
I see,
Sara Hildreth 29:17
and he's throwing in so much history and sometimes sort of like fantastical elements. It's just so doing so much that it doesn't like wash over me in the same way. So, I think I'm on her side. Oh, for sure, on her side, for sure, on her side
Traci Thomas 29:36
Even if she did something wrong, I'm on her side. Literally, imagine aligning with the man in this economy.
Sara Hildreth 29:42
Ew Ew!
Traci Thomas 29:45
Never, sorry, anybody else have anything else? In July, okay. On to Augusto.
Cree Myles 29:55
I mean, the obvious one for me is Dey by Edwidge Danticat, um. It comes out in August.
Sara Hildreth 30:04
I'm embarrassed to share mine, because this is the one that I'm like, they're gonna mock me, but I'm gonna share it anyways.
Cree Myles 30:10
We'll defend you.
Sara Hildreth 30:15
There's this book called The Song of Stork and Dromedary. I don't know what that word means.
Cree Myles 30:22
Here she go, bro.
Traci Thomas 30:29
Cree just rolled her eyes before I could, right after she just said, 'We'll defend you"
Cree Myles 30:31
We'll defend you from the masses. We'll defend you from the masses. Only we can make fun of you.
Traci Thomas 30:33
I cannot, the song of stork and draglonide?
Cree Myles 30:35
Here she go, bro. Here she go.
Sara Hildreth 30:37
Dromedary? I should have looked up that word, but I don't really care enough. This is by Anjette Daanje. She, like, she wrote that book, The Remembered Soldier, that was huge last year, translated. I didn't read that book, but this one is a book about a novelist who's researching a Bronte-like,
Traci Thomas 30:58
Oh no
Sara Hildreth 30:59
Reclusive Victorian figure, that's all I need to know,
Traci Thomas 31:05
that's all I also need to know.
Sara Hildreth 31:06
I'm really proud of myself for bringing it, even knowing the looks I was going to get saying this title.
Cree Myles 31:13
Me too. Me too.
Traci Thomas 31:13
The Song of Stork and Dromtoday. I'm trying to find it, so I can look at the cover.
Sara Hildreth 31:20
The cover is...
Traci Thomas 31:21
Oh I thought the cover was gonna be doing more for us
Sara Hildreth 31:24
No
Traci Thomas 31:26
okay,
Sara Hildreth 31:27
yeah, it's FSG. It's 700 pages.
Traci Thomas 31:31
Oh my god, just keeps getting worse.
Cree Myles 31:34
Jesus Christ, Jesus Devonte Christ. That's a lot.
Traci Thomas 31:41
So I'm gonna do a book that I also should be mocked for, but for opposite reasons. And I just wanna do a disclaimer that Greta, Greta Johnson pitched me on this book on her podcast, and I started when she said it, I was like, now I'm mocking you, but she sold it so good, I have it, and I'm starting it after The Great Wherever, and it's called Etna. Do you guys know about this book?
Sara Hildreth 32:08
No, is it Paul Yoon?
Traci Thomas 32:09
It's Paul Yoon's new book, and it's narrated by a dog, which is the least me thing, besides the song of Stork and Drum today, that I can think of, but aside from that one piece of information that it's narrated by a dog, so please, no thank you. It is about an ex-military dog that is traveling through a war-torn country to go home, and so I'm told it's dark, I'm told it's bleak, it's also only like a two 220 so I feel like I could survive. I don't know, I'm intrigued by it. And then Rosamond, who's a member of the Stacks Pack here, she read it and loved it. She's also a dog person, so can't exactly be trusted. This is one of those books that I'm like, I just want to read it now, because I have a feeling it's gonna be very buzzy, and people
Cree Myles 33:06
Very high concept
Traci Thomas 33:09
I'm like, well, I have to read it to know, is this dog really that dog, or are you guys unwell?
Sara Hildreth 33:19
I think he's a great writer.
Traci Thomas 33:20
I think he's a great writer.
Sara Hildreth 33:23
Yeah, I'm curious about that.
Traci Thomas 33:25
Wait, I shouldn't say I think he's a great writer. I've never read him. I've heard he's a great writer.
Sara Hildreth 33:29
Yeah, he is.
Traci Thomas 33:31
I'm gonna give it a shot. And I'm sort of excited about this like book that I probably shouldn't like. I'm just like, let me just try. Sara, do you have more in August.
Sara Hildreth 33:41
Well, the Chang Rae Lee Tender Age comes out in August, which I am excited about, but I'm going to be spending all my time on this 700 page faux Bronte book, so I don't have time to read anything else.
Traci Thomas 33:58
I have another small book, which is, which is very me-coded. It's called Hiroshima 815 and this is the book that is from the from 1945 or 46 and it is by Kiyoshi Tanimoto. And this is the first time it's being published. It was like a lost memoir, and they found it, but he was a survivor of the atomic bombs dropping in Hiroshima, and for people who have read John Hershey's Hiroshima from 1946 he's actually one of the people that John Hershey features in the book, but this is his own memoir, and so I'm just, you know, have like sort of a weird obsession with Hiroshima, so I'm excited about that, and then the other one that I have that I want to quickly mention is called Seasons of Fury, and that comes out august 25 and that's by Rosina Ali, who's a writer at the New York Times Magazine, and it's about four Muslim families and sort of like the relationship of the United States. To Muslim Americans, and it goes, it covers like eight decades, but it goes through like 911 and like the lies and the history, and like the failed promises, and I think it's supposed to be good. I'm gonna give it a shot.
Cree Myles 35:15
I have a debut that I'm curious about, just because I'm always reading for a debut, and I liked the cover Queen Map by Emily McBride, and I liked the.. I read her Nation piece because she, like in her bio, it says that she had written for the nation, so I read her Nation piece, it's about an Irish family, but I just based on that, I am.. I might give it a go, I might try it out an audio book, and then see if it's.. I must have liked the trust the publisher too. Who is it? Oh, FSG. Yeah,
Sara Hildreth 35:48
that covers kind of creepy.
Cree Myles 35:49
I really like it. I like it, you know. I'm a sucker for an acrylic.
Sara Hildreth 35:54
There's a lot of flesh.
Traci Thomas 35:57
Nothing says Cree like a lot of acrylic flesh.
Cree Myles 36:03
Thank you, thank you.
Traci Thomas 36:07
Okay, so listeners, before we do our September books, I'm just gonna quickly do like September's crazy. Here's what's coming that you've probably already heard about, because it's happening, but Marlon James has a book, Deesha Philyaw has a book, Hernan Diaz has a book, Min Jin Lee has a book, Sigrid Nunez has a book. Yeah, so there's a lot coming, and I feel like, unless any of you really want to talk about any of those, just everybody, those books are coming.
Sara Hildreth 36:42
I'm curious, if for you all, if one of those is like calling to you more than others, or if, if you're just gonna skip all of them, or
Traci Thomas 36:54
I'll tell you the two I plan to read. I plan to read The Min Jin Lee and the Deesha Philyaw. I plan to skip the Marlon James and the Hernan Diaz and the Sigrid. Oh, and I also plan to skip the Emily St. John Mandel, which is also coming in September.
Sara Hildreth 37:09
Oh, yeah
Traci Thomas 37:10
I think it's going to be bad because nobody's talked about it yet, and it's been out. The arcs have been out for a while, and that's always my..
Sara Hildreth 37:15
I have one friend who read it, and she said it was bad. Yeah, and she has good taste. So
Cree Myles 37:20
I'm skipping Marlon James for sure, and I'm finishing Deesha. I started it, so I'm gonna push through.
Sara Hildreth 37:29
I think the Min Jin Lee is at the top of my list, and I want to want to read the Marlon James, but right now I don't really want to read it, so we'll see. But you loved A Brief History of Seven Killings, right?
Traci Thomas 37:49
I read it. That's not an endorsement.
Cree Myles 37:54
Hell nah
Traci Thomas 37:55
wait, I will say I loved the ending. Yeah, God damn, did it take a long time to get there.
Sara Hildreth 38:02
Yeah,
Traci Thomas 38:03
I struggled. Also, to be fair to Marlon James, though, I read that book in 2016 which was the year I was like, I'm gonna get back into reading, and I was not the kind of reader that I am now, where I could enjoy the challenge of a book like that. I was just like that. I read that in like June and July, so like, what was that book, six six or seven, like, of getting back into reading, so like that's a really difficult book. Yeah, and so I don't, I don't want to say that like I'm out on Marlon James because of that. I just, I know this book is really long, and there's just so much coming out in September that I really am excited about, that I just feel like that's not a priority for me, unless a lot of people I know and love are like, "You actually would fuck with this, and then, of course, I would, but I'm not gonna. I like to be an early adopter on books, but generally, I like to do that with books I think I'll like.
Sara Hildreth 38:55
Yeah, that makes sense. And the Min Jin Lee is long too, like a lot of these are long
Traci Thomas 38:59
So long, and I can remember what some author told me was like twice, it was like 1000 pages, the first manuscript,
Cree Myles 39:06
Jesus, wow.
Traci Thomas 39:08
And they like cut it way down, which.. thank you.
Sara Hildreth 39:11
Yeah.
Traci Thomas 39:12
Okay. So, what other September books do folks have?
Sara Hildreth 39:18
I like Emma Kline. Do you have. did you guys read the guest or the girls?
Cree Myles 39:23
It's interesting to me. I have, yeah, yeah.
Sara Hildreth 39:29
I'm curious about her new book. It's called Switzy.
Cree Myles 39:32
Okay,
Sara Hildreth 39:33
okay. It's about an.. but it's about a man, which I'm always less interested in.
Cree Myles 39:40
eah, I'm okay when a woman writes it.
Sara Hildreth 39:42
Totally, yes, but I feel like all of her books have been very like focused on the like a young woman's experience, so I'm curious, now she's writing about an old man at the end of his life, so I'm curious about that, that that pivot or. That choice, but she's just really good at, like, to me her books are like my favorite kind of beach reads, and this is not coming out in the summer, but maybe I could get an early copy, because she writes place so well, and she is very interested in opulence, and I like kind of traveling into that world in my, in my reading, and this one takes place, I think, in Greenland, then London, then Zurich, and.. and I think that she does that sort of like transporting read pretty well in kind of a hazy way. I'm just.. she's one of those authors where I've read pretty much everything she's written, and now I feel like I'm in.. like I just have to see what she does next, even if it's never my, like, absolute favorite book of the year, so that's one of my.. I mean, I'm a client is still a big name, but that's one of my September picks.
Traci Thomas 40:50
I have, I have three. I'm sorry, but I'll do one at a time. This is a big name, but not in the world of online book people in the same way, but Kai Bird has a new book out called American Scoundrel, and it's a biography of Roy Cohn, and Kai Bird is the man who wrote American Prometheus, the book about Oppenheimer, that massive book. So he's like a known biographer, and I do fucking love a biography like that, like a real true, give me 1000s of pages. This book, actually, though, it's long, but it's not American Prometheus long, because, like, if you've ever read American Prometheus, the book is like 1000 pages, but the text goes from edge to edge to the page, the margin is so thin, and the font is like six point font. This is like, I have the arc, it's probably like 700 pages, I bet 100 are notes, and it's normal. It's like it's long, but it's not. I was like, oh, I could read this, and Roy Cohn is the infamous fucking asshole lawyer. He was like on the bad side of McCarthy era, he was closeted homosexual who died of AIDS in the 1980s 1986 and he also was Trump's mentor at the end of his life and the beginning of Trump's life, and famously got his start prosecuting Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, so he's sort of like this, like it's, I'm really excited about it, because he is, it's New York, it's Washington, it's history in this sort of mid century up into the 80s, and he was a real fucking piece of work, so if you've seen or read Angels in America, he's also a character in that play, that's how I was first introduced him, actually was like a fictionalized version of him. He's played by Al Pacino in the movie version, and he was played by Jeremy Strong in that movie that came out about Donald Trump a few years ago, called whatever, what was it, with Sebastian Stan. Anyways, he's one of my favorite real-life villains, so I'm excited about this.
Sara Hildreth 43:01
That's exciting. Sounds good.
Traci Thomas 43:03
Yeah, I hope it is good. I really hope it's good. I think there's some secrets that are going to be revealed in it, because when I reached out to the publisher about it, they were like, we're not putting it on a real embargo, but you can't talk about anything that you read in the book until the book is published. That was like the deal, they made me, they're like, you can talk about the book, you can read the book early, but we're asking people not to like reveal what's in it, so I think we're gonna get maybe some sexual scandals, that would be my guess.
Cree Myles 43:34
Okay
Traci Thomas 43:34
like, why else would they care, everything else is pretty, he was a lawyer, so it's like in court record, like, unless there's some things that were like un sealed, but I'm hoping we're gonna get like he fucked.. I don't want to name a name, but like I'm hoping I'm hoping Kai Bird's like name a name, yeah, yeah, maybe he fucked Donald Trump, would love, would love, would love anyone else. What else we have in September?
Cree Myles 44:00
No, I mean, I had Marlon James was on there, and Deesha was on there. I have this - it's like a translation, it was a National Book Award shortlist, The Bitch, but it's getting pubbed in 2026 That looks interesting, just because I'm an awards whore, so
Traci Thomas 44:21
It's called The Bitch?
Cree Myles 44:22
yeah, by Pilar Quintana.
Sara Hildreth 44:26
I have others, but I'm not as excited about them as my October picks.
Sara Hildreth 44:30
Okay, well, then let me quickly do my other two. Wow, my other two. My next two are a pair, they're a package deal, because they're by a husband and wife duo, two separate books published in the same month by married people.
Cree Myles 44:42
Lame
Sara Hildreth 44:43
I think it's cute. Don't say lame. Don't say lame. Danzy and Percival are married.
Cree Myles 44:48
Yeah, they're my only exception. A broke clock strikes right twice a day.
Traci Thomas 44:53
Okay. Well, this clock is the other time in the day that it's gonna be right. What is. It's the art of fighting by Priya Parker, who wrote The Art of Gathering, which is one of the most important books to me in my entire life. I love the book so much, and this is a book about how we should fight, how to fight in a way that is useful and productive, and I think she's a genius. And then her husband also has a book, his name is Adnan Girardis, I can never say his name. He's the guy on CNN, the Indian guy on CNN who has like the white stripe stripe in his hair, and he sticks up. Yeah, that's her husband.
Cree Myles 45:29
Okay,
Traci Thomas 45:29
and his book is called Man in the Mirror, and it's about the Jordan Neely killing on the subway. Do you remember the black boy who was like the Michael Jackson impersonator, and that horrible white man strangled him out on the train. It's about that, and so I'm excited about both of these books, because I like both of these writers, and also I'm interested in both of the topics, and also I read the two books about the Bernie Goetz shootings earlier this year on the subway, so I'm like, this will be a nice way to tie in all the vigilante fucking racist chaos on the New York City subway together like that.
Sara Hildreth 46:07
How do they both go on tour at the same time?
Traci Thomas 46:09
This is what I.. this is a question that I asked. That, yeah, that was my first question. And my thinking is that A, they're rich, and B, so they have child care, and B, I don't think he'll do the same kind of tour that she'll do. I think he'll do a lot of his tour at home or, like, in New York on media, you know, like he'll go and do them, like news hits. As a, I don't know, that he's like at bookstores or whatever. She'll be everywhere, because she is like a genius and a brilliant mind.
Cree Myles 46:40
I have a question. Um, just, we're talking couples. Did either of you read Kaveh's partners' book?
Sara Hildreth 46:48
Oh, I did.
Cree Myles 46:48
Okay,
Sara Hildreth 46:49
I liked it.
Cree Myles 46:50
Okay, I have it.
Sara Hildreth 46:51
Did you read it?
Cree Myles 46:52
No, I had it's in my, it's in my house, and it's on my to-do list, but it's not.. I'm, don't know if I'll get to it by the end of the year.
Sara Hildreth 46:58
It's very weird and in quirky and I think it was more interesting to me, like it was very interesting to me, and when I was reading it, I was like, this is so fun and odd and bizarre, and I thought I would think about it more afterwards than I have, so you know, so I liked it, but it wasn't like,
Traci Thomas 47:25
is that ultimate drag, like friendly drag I've ever heard from Sara? That was incredible.
Cree Myles 47:32
I thought I would think about it more, but here we are. So, anyway
Sara Hildreth 47:36
I forgot, I didn't even.. I forgot to bring it up when we were, when we were talking, but it is, if you're like, want to read a new book that is totally different from anything else, it is totally different, like it feels so confident and so itself, and I appreciated that, even if I didn't think about it as much after the fact.
Traci Thomas 48:05
October ghouls and goblins come out to play. Sara, what do you have?
Sara Hildreth 48:17
Well, in spite of not liking Demon Copperhead, I am interested in the new Barbara Kingsolver. She kind of won me over with her National Book Award.
Traci Thomas 48:26
That's why I read Demon Copperhead, and I said, "This lady's a lie. It's a lie." I'll never do it again.
Sara Hildreth 48:31
I've liked other of her books, but you know, sometimes authors like Demon Copperhead was her last book. This one's probably more likely to be like it than her first book. So I'm gonna try it
Traci Thomas 48:42
Also the cover is a nightmare on that book.
Sara Hildreth 48:45
I have not seen the cover
Traci Thomas 48:47
it looks like a bad version of the R. O. Kwon cover for Exhibit, or whatever.
Sara Hildreth 48:53
Uh, oh, oh yeah, that's not good at all.
Traci Thomas 48:56
It's not good at all.
Sara Hildreth 48:58
Okay, well, I might still read it. We'll see.
Traci Thomas 49:04
Cree, do you have any October books?
Cree Myles 49:06
I do. Okay, I'm popping my Murakami cherry. Actually, right about.. I'm my next book is IQ84 and
Sara Hildreth 49:15
Whoa and you're going with the big one first?
Cree Myles 49:19
I.. it's.. it's the one that keeps popping up in my life, so I'm just, I'm just going with that. But there's a new book coming out by Murakami in October called Abandoning a Cat, so I just put a pin in that, because if, if it's all as iconic as everyone says it is, I'm gonna have to spin the block.
Sara Hildreth 49:37
Isn't this his first book from the perspective of a woman.
Cree Myles 49:41
Oh, I don't know. I don't know anything about him.
Sara Hildreth 49:44
I think I think it is.
Cree Myles 49:47
Okay.
Sara Hildreth 49:49
And he's famously terrible at writing women, so
Cree Myles 49:52
Great I'm looking forward to that for 800 pages.
Sara Hildreth 49:55
Yeah, I mean he's still really good, but he's not good at writing women.
Traci Thomas 49:59
You know, sometimes you just got to know your lane. Some, some men just got to be men. Like, I don't need a man to tell me what it's like to be a woman, right? Just like I got.. I didn't like when The Bachelor started having black leads. I was like, this is a white mess show. Like, why are you trying to do race to this? Don't forget, you know? Do you know what I mean, though? It's like there are plenty of women and men who can write well, there's plenty of women who can write women, and a few men who can write women. Maybe Murakami doesn't have to own that lane.
Sara Hildreth 50:29
Yeah,
Traci Thomas 50:30
we're gonna find out. Well, I've only read his nonfiction. I've only read about the sarin gas attack in Japan underground. It was good.
Sara Hildreth 50:38
That tracks
Traci Thomas 50:39
Yeah, okay. Really quickly, I want to mention a book I just discovered last night, but I haven't done enough research on, but it's called Strung Up by Staci Patton, and it's about the.. this is.. I'm.. this is dark.. I'm sorry.. it's about the lynching of black children, and she's a historian, and I'm just really curious to see what it is that she's done, and how it works. The other one that I have, actually, two, but the other one I'm really excited about is Nafisa Thompson Spires, has a new book coming out called The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford, and I was already excited about it, but then I found out that her editor is Kathy Belden, so now I'm extra excited about it, and it's short, and I love the heads of the colored people. I read it twice, so I'm really excited to see what she has in store for us. I'm just really excited about it.
Cree Myles 51:35
Okay,
Sara Hildreth 51:36
I'm excited about Lydia Millett's new book, it's called Fair Ones, it's about like a group of three friends, and one of the women dies unexpectedly. The women are like in their mid 40s, and then it becomes it's told through, I think, one half is told through one friend's perspective post death, and then the other half is told through the other friend's perspective, and I like books that play with perspective like that. Like, what did this person miss? What did they not see? How are they interpreting the situation differently? And I really, I like, I like her books. They're always a little bit weird. She wrote that one. It was on my summer reading guide last year, Pure Pure and Radiant Heart, about Oppenheimer. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah. And she's just, yeah, she's kind of a weirdo, but her books tend to work for me, so I'm excited about that one. And then there's a book called May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry that I don't know much about, but it's out from transit books, and I love the.. I just love the cover, and it's already out in the UK and Australia, and so I'm seeing people reading it and loving it on Instagram who have already gotten it. I don't know much about it, but I like the title, "May We Feed the King. I like the cover, I like that people I like are already reading it. I think it's about a museum curator becoming like overly obsessed with the project she's working on.
Cree Myles 53:07
Oh, that's fun.
Sara Hildreth 53:09
Yeah, so those are those are a couple of my October books.
Cree Myles 53:14
So, Walter Mosley published two books this year. Did he publish one at the top of the year? And then there's one coming out
Traci Thomas 53:19
He published Galen
Cree Myles 53:21
Yeah, and then Hanging and Burning is coming out in October. Wow,
Traci Thomas 53:25
I heard Galen was a M E S S.
Cree Myles 53:29
He must owe the IRS some money, bro, because I don't even understand what's happening, right?
Traci Thomas 53:34
Like him and Nicole Kidman, they're always working.
Cree Myles 53:37
Goodness gracious, like I can't even, but for anybody who's a completist, there's another one coming.
Traci Thomas 53:43
Got a lot of work to do. Okay, wait. So my other book for October is called Back Essays on the Soul and Spine of America, and it's by Lauren Michelle Jackson, who wrote, we did it for book club about called White Negroes, about like basically the ways that white people steal black cultures about cultural appropriation, and it was fantastic. We did a book club with David Dennis, and she's got a new essay collection. She writes for The New Yorker. She's amazing. She is my Jia Tolentino,
Cree Myles 53:43
I was, you know, my brain went there instantly. I'm locked in. Okay, for me,
Traci Thomas 53:43
she's my geo tontino, and like the collection has essays, like there's an essay about Gone with the Wind, I'm told there's an essay about ballet, horse racing, Sarah, for you, there's an essay about Nathaniel Hawthorne, wonderful
Sara Hildreth 53:43
Something for everyone
Cree Myles 53:43
literally,
Traci Thomas 53:43
and the cover is really, it's working for me.
Sara Hildreth 53:43
Can you say the title again?
Traci Thomas 53:53
Back, like, okay, the back, like the back side. So, yeah, I don't know,
Cree Myles 53:54
I really like the title too.
Traci Thomas 54:54
It's a good ass title. She's like a real fucking talent, and so I'm really, really excited about. The book, her first book was with Beacon, and this one's with Amistad. I'm a little not sure about that, but I'm just assuming she got a good editor. But I also think she's such a talent, she's a New Yorker writer, like I believe in her, and I wonder if some of these are also previous published. I don't know, but I think she's really great. She's super young too. Anyways, so that's my other October book. Okay, does anybody have November? I only.. so the rest of my spreadsheet I have five books for November and December. I was gonna say I don't
Cree Myles 55:33
I don't have anything for the rest of the year.
Sara Hildreth 55:36
What do you have, Sara? I have for November I have a book by Priyanka Mattu called How to Be Less Useful: The Joy of Inefficiency.
Cree Myles 55:47
I saw that.
Sara Hildreth 55:49
Yeah, I.. this is.. this sounds like my kind of, like, quote unquote self-help book. I do not like optimizing, I do not like efficiency, and I feel like this is more the kind of book, like it's not like I'm an optimizer who needs to scale back. It's like reading this will make me feel better about choosing not to optimize about your life
Traci Thomas 56:11
Here are my choices.
Sara Hildreth 56:13
yeah, I've been enjoying, like, listening to podcasts and stuff, kind of about similar topics. So, okay, I think that'll be, you know
Cree Myles 56:21
Do you know anything about the writer.
Sara Hildreth 56:23
Nope, I don't so it could be bad.
Cree Myles 56:25
I saw the cover, and I was like, oh, this might be interesting, depending on their ability.
Traci Thomas 56:31
I did start her previous book, and I did not finish it.
Sara Hildreth 56:35
Okay, that's good to know.
Cree Myles 56:36
Okay,
Sara Hildreth 56:37
Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones, is that the one?
Cree Myles 56:40
Oh, Jesus.
Sara Hildreth 56:41
Alright, so that was a memoir, so maybe in a different, we'll see.
Traci Thomas 56:46
yeah, I give her a chance. I actually have two books for November, crazily enough. One is called Humpty Dumpty. Have you guys heard of this? It's a novel, it's a novel from FSG. Okay, those are two things you both like.
Cree Myles 57:00
I'm locked in!
Traci Thomas 57:01
Two things you like. Okay, but it also has things for me. It's a novel about a high school quarterback and his family that are embroiled. This is what the log line says, that are embroiled in an abhorrent crime and its cover-up. A bold novel that confronts American hero worship and it's irreversible consequences,
Cree Myles 57:22
it's giving good for good for Thanksgiving, because I read Piglet around Thanksgiving. This is the South, yeah,
Traci Thomas 57:30
yeah,
Sara Hildreth 57:30
like Bear Town. Did you
Traci Thomas 57:32
know I don't, I don't want to read any more of it, so I don't know anything besides what I've just read to you, like I don't want to read more of the blurb, because I feel like this is one of those books, I just gotta go in and see what happens. It looks a little long, but if it's good, if it's like juicy small town drama, I think I could ride with it. My other one is this book called Mona. Have you guys heard of this?
Sara Hildreth 57:54
No.
Traci Thomas 57:54
Okay, so this is a book by a professor who is writing with a pseudonym. Her pseudonym is Azra Liaquat Khan, and it is her memoir of being a professor, Muslim sort of academic by day and by night being a bad girl stripper, and it's about her movement between these two worlds. I am very curious about this. I think if this is good, it could be fantastic, and I think if this is bad, it could be a book that I talk shit about for the rest of my life. So, we'll see
Sara Hildreth 58:40
who's the publisher?
Traci Thomas 58:41
It, I don't want to tell you, because Cree is going to tell me it's bad, but there's one, there's one editor there that's amazing. It's from Tiny Rep Books, it's Tiny Rep, but Pilar is there, Pilar Garcia something, and she's the editor on Magical Realism, which was a national book award finalist, and was fantastic, and I feel like Pilar has a really good taste, and she usually.
Sara Hildreth 59:07
Is she the editor?
Traci Thomas 59:08
I don't know, I don't remember, BU this feels like a her book.
Sara Hildreth 59:12
Yeah, okay, okay.
Traci Thomas 59:14
Tiny Rep doesn't do a lot of books that are books that I'm super excited or interested in. Generally, their list are things that I sort of skim, and I'm not, and this book grabbed my attention, and I feel like that usually the books I like there are from Pilar. That's all I'm gonna say. I don't know, but I don't know,
Cree Myles 59:32
because that there's a similar.. and Sara, cut me if I'm wrong, in W, the character Keisha, she.. I feel like that was her, that was her line all the way through. So, which isn't the whole entirety of that book, but is she going to be able to outdo what Zadie Smith did with that concept? I don't.
Traci Thomas 59:53
This is a memoir. This is this woman's actual life.
Cree Myles 59:55
Oh, okay. All right.
Traci Thomas 59:58
She's an award-winning author, professor, and labor organizer, she's writing under a pseudonym, and she also was a stripper.
Cree Myles 1:00:06
I like a lay, I like an organizer, a labor organizer. She might be, we'll see, and yeah, we'll see about.. I'm not holding my breath.
Traci Thomas 1:00:13
I, you know, November is always the dreg
Sara Hildreth 1:00:18
I've got one more November, all the beastly things by Eilish Quinn.
Traci Thomas 1:00:24
Okay,
Sara Hildreth 1:00:24
It sounds like an Irish name. I like an Irish author. Yeah,
Cree Myles 1:00:27
okay.
Sara Hildreth 1:00:27
Um, it is about a post-apocalyptic matriarchy that has erased men and capitalism. I don't know, I'm into post-apocalyptic. I have not read a good post-apocalyptic in a, in a while, and I love when a, like, dystopian world actually starts with, like, a utopian vision and then makes it devolve, instead of just coming up with, like, the craziest shit you can imagine for a dystopia to think, like, what could, like, what would a potential utopian place look like, but then what? Where would it go wrong? Where would it devolve?
Cree Myles 1:01:10
Poking holes in the dream.
Sara Hildreth 1:01:12
I think those tend to be more successful because somebody's dystopia is always somebody else's utopia. You know what I mean,
Traci Thomas 1:01:21
I do know. Have you ever heard The Giver?
Sara Hildreth 1:01:24
Sure have. Sure have.
Cree Myles 1:01:26
Shout out to Lois.
Traci Thomas 1:01:28
Love The Giver. Wait, what was the name of your dystopia? Utopia,
Sara Hildreth 1:01:33
all the beastly things. It's not a good title,
Cree Myles 1:01:36
I was about to say, and I'm just tired of them having good ideas and poor execution, so
Traci Thomas 1:01:41
a good, a good like this, that book I talked about.
Sara Hildreth 1:01:44
This is a high concept, yeah.
Traci Thomas 1:01:46
The Unreasonable Women book, that I'm like obsessed with, yeah, of the worst covers I've ever seen for what this book is. It looks like a book about botany, and I'm just like, who said, look up the cover right now, it's called Unreasonable Women. I told you, it's about women who killed their abusers, and tell me that does not look like a book about photosynthesis at nighttime? Sure, does
Sara Hildreth 1:02:08
That is bad.
Traci Thomas 1:02:09
It's incredibly bad.
Cree Myles 1:02:11
Come on, dude, this one and the Humpty Dumpty one you mentioned. I didn't like that cover either. I didn't like that cover either.
Traci Thomas 1:02:18
I didn't like that cover either, but at least that cover I was like, I see a football player, like I see, I see the like the bars for the field goal.
Cree Myles 1:02:28
Great, great. Anyways, okay.
Sara Hildreth 1:02:31
FSG usually has great covers. I know
Traci Thomas 1:02:33
I was, I was stunned, stunned by the cover of Humpty Dumpty. Okay, December, I have one December book that I'm, yeah, I was, I was sort of reaching with, but I think it actually could be good. It's called It's from Norton, so it's giving history from Infinite World. The subtitle is The Sound of the Hammond Organ and the Tragedy of AIDS in the Black Church, and I'm sort of curious, as like, what's gonna happen here? I don't, I don't know. I don't know anything about the author. I don't know anything about the book. I'm reading their bio right now. Ashen Thomas Craley is a professor of religious studies and African American and African American studies at the University of Virginia. So, I don't know, but I do. I love a book about the AIDS epidemic, and so I almost will always read nonfiction about that. It's one of my things
Cree Myles 1:03:27
That'll pair well with Deesha's.
Traci Thomas 1:03:29
Oh, is that an AIDS book?
Cree Myles 1:03:31
There's lines, there's three lines.
Traci Thomas 1:03:34
Okay, got it.
Sara Hildreth 1:03:36
I have actually.. this is one of the books I'm most excited about this year comes out december 1. It's called Wild Aster. It's by this woman named Anna Hogeland, and she wrote this book a couple years ago called The Long Answer that I thought was so fantastic. It was kind of auto fiction. She, she, Anna, the author, and she speaks about this, had to have, or chose to have, an abortion, kind of late-term abortion, because of, because of some genetic issues that she discovered, her doctor discovered in the fetus she was carrying, and it was a wanted baby, and it was obviously a very like traumatic thing, and she kind of wove that into writing this beautiful book about motherhood and different types of experiences of motherhood, but it's, it's a novel, and it was from Riverhead, and Riverhead did zero to publicize it, and I just felt so, like I felt so bad for her, because I really feel like that book, it was, it was wonderful, and many people would like it. Now she's at Bloomsbury, which is, you know, much kind of smaller reach, but this book is about a young woman whose biological mother steals her back from. From her adoptive parents, and then they kind of live their life on the run, so the concept get, and I feel like high concept. I know I like her writing. Traci, one thing you might appreciate about her writing, she talks about how, like in her MFA program, she would have to, like, she was trying so hard to replicate these sentences of these great writers, and then she realized that that was holding her back from writing books with momentum, and once she started thinking about momentum, instead of like the precision of every single sentence, like writing just clicked for her, and that is how her books read, like somebody who clearly studied meticulous prose, but then has a lot of concern for the pace of a book, so I'm, I'm really, really looking forward to this one.
Traci Thomas 1:05:46
I would never think to articulate the books that I like as books that have momentum, but that's exactly what I like in a book.
Cree Myles 1:05:52
Yeah, like, yeah, just never thought about that,
Traci Thomas 1:05:54
bigger and bigger, like, just keeps like making a snowball, whatever.
Sara Hildreth 1:05:59
Yeah, I had never thought about that idea either, but it really changed the way I read, read books, so yeah.
Traci Thomas 1:06:06
Cree, anything else from you?
Cree Myles 1:06:09
No, happy to be here.
Traci Thomas 1:06:12
You did great, honey, you did great. Okay, last question, really quickly, any award predictions that we want to just say because we're here and we can
Cree Myles 1:06:22
do, you guys remember that it kind of went viral. It was the old woman at the National Book Awards, and there's like, I just read old shit, that's me in this conversation. I have no, I have no predictions.
Sara Hildreth 1:06:34
It was Anne Carson. She was like, I'm a classics professor, I read Homer.
Cree Myles 1:06:39
It really is, it really, yeah. And I went to St. John's. It's just old shit all year.
Traci Thomas 1:06:45
Great. So, no predictions for me.
Cree Myles 1:06:48
I'm excited to see what comes out, and if I want to read it after it wins.
Traci Thomas 1:06:52
When it's old, give it some time. In 50 years, you're gonna go back and read like Audition by Katie Kitamura.
Cree Myles 1:07:02
Personally, I'd be like, this is the best ever.
Traci Thomas 1:07:05
I wish someone had told me about this, but back when it came out. Sara, what about you?
Sara Hildreth 1:07:13
I have a feeling that Departures by Julian Barnes will be on the Booker Prize list, like he's won the Booker before, and to be a booker winner, and be like, this is my last book. I feel like they've got, you've got to put them on the long list. I'll be so curious about the National Book Award, because I feel like they're going to almost have to make a decision of if they're going to lean into all of the all of the heavy hitters or lean more obscure, because it'll, I mean, I hope they don't make that kind of decision. I hope they just choose the books that they truly believe are the best, and that we have a mix of..
Traci Thomas 1:07:53
I hope we get a mix.
Sara Hildreth 1:07:53
Those are the best lists, but with so many big names releasing, it's gonna.. like, is it.. is the entire list going to be Lauren Groff and Marlon James and Min Jin Lee, and like, or what are we going to see there?
Traci Thomas 1:08:05
I hope we get like, I hope we get like 5050 at most. I think, well, a book we have not mentioned that I think will be on list, though I haven't read it. It's giving me maybe Booker, from what I've heard, is Transcription.
Sara Hildreth 1:08:18
Oh, I loved Transcription,
Traci Thomas 1:08:20
that's the Ben Learner. People seem to have loved it. I feel like it gives you a lot to chew on. It sounds like it's a kind of book you might want to reread a few times, and those are all booker things, and it's short, so I keep saying I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to get to it, but I feel like from, from what I heard, from what I've heard from people, it has award awards, the vibes to it. I'm really curious to see what happens with Kin, and during the award season, I'm really curious, because I loved that book. I think it is like the platonic ideal of a friendship novel, but I don't know that it has.. I don't know that it has the legs to make it once we get into the fall, because I don't know what those books hold, like I don't know how good these other books are that are coming, and I also don't know, like with, like, the Oprah of it all, sometimes that can hurt an author, like I don't know, I'm really curious, but also she's never gotten her due, so I wonder if it also might be like this is Te Ari's year, and they're gonna not that she's not deserving of it. She certainly is with this book, but I'm just like, I feel like sometimes when I read a book I'm like, oh, this has award season all over it, and I didn't feel clearly about that about Kin, though I loved Kin and think Kin is a book that people will read for, like, Cree. You'll, you'll probably read it again in the distant future as an old book.
Cree Myles 1:09:45
Do you think it's in conversation with The Color Purple? Because that did sweep awards.
Traci Thomas 1:09:50
I mean, I think it's in conversation with The Color Purple,
Cree Myles 1:09:53
but I mean, because when we taught, when we first talked about it, you just talked about the size of the novel, like what she's, what she's covered. In scope wise, and I was thinking it's similarly like the color purple similarly covers that scope wise, except just the only difference is geographically because one of the sisters goes to Africa, but other than that, like it's just, you know, so I think, and it did well.
Traci Thomas 1:10:15
Yeah, I mean, I think that's a like, I don't know, I don't know what the publishing landscape was like then, I'm just thinking about kin up against the rest of the field this year, like we just listed all these heavy hitters that are coming out, and I don't know what their books are like. I don't know, I think it'll be really interesting to see. I think it is a deserving book. I think last year it wins every award, or at least is in the conversation. I think this year it'll be interesting to see if it's like too commercial, like what, like what happens too accessible, not high concept enough, not like pushing that, like the National Book Award sort of likes books that push some sort of boundary formally, or like doing something we like. So I don't, I just don't know. I'm very interested to see what happens.
Sara Hildreth 1:11:03
Yeah, yeah, you're, you're right, Traci. It feels very classic, and I, and yeah, I think that is what works about it and makes it so excellent. Like, she didn't need to do anything. wild and crazy to make the book incredible, but that is sometimes what the award season awards, especially when they're having, if they're going to have to, like, you know, put all of these big books next to each other and decide which one makes it,
Traci Thomas 1:11:33
like it's almost too clean and tight and good and simple, and like just like easy, not easy to do, but easy to read and enjoy, like it's almost too.. it doesn't have enough friction.
Cree Myles 1:11:45
It walks the line,
Traci Thomas 1:11:47
yeah, but, like, honestly, I'm not predicting this, but honestly, it feels more like it could be a Pulitzer book than a National Book Award book.
Sara Hildreth 1:11:58
I agree, because it feels very American. It's. it even though it's like contained, it feels sweeping, like you get lost. Some of these other books coming might also feel very Pulitzer. Yeah, that's right.
Traci Thomas 1:12:16
It's hard to know, but I don't know. The moment I finished it, my thought was like, what's gonna happen at the end of the year with this book?
Cree Myles 1:12:23
It's so good.
Sara Hildreth 1:12:23
I was looking at the National Book Award for fiction judges, and I'm only familiar with one of their works, because sometimes it's like, oh, like last year Ruman Alam was on the on the panel, and was like, oh, of course, that book, North Sun, was one of the finalists, because, like, there's some, like, but I, I can't, I can't discern any, anything like that from these, these judges, because I don't know, I don't know their work, but yeah,
Traci Thomas 1:13:00
all right, well, anybody else have anything else they want to say about books so far this year, or book predictions for later this year, or anything else?
Sara Hildreth 1:13:08
I wanted to say that I had to go back and look, because I was like, did I bring yesteryear to this podcast at the beginning of the year, and I think Cree brought it, but then I said I was like, oh, the author seems really cool, like her, she has a great podcast, I'm just excited to read it and support her, I haven't read it
Cree Myles 1:13:35
it has not aged, it is the equivalent of the New York Times saying
Traci Thomas 1:13:39
Cree brought it, I thought I brought it.
Sara Hildreth 1:13:41
Yeah, did you bring it?
Traci Thomas 1:13:43
I think I brought it, as like a
Cree Myles 1:13:45
I had never, I found out about it at BookCon weekend.
Traci Thomas 1:13:49
Well, no, you didn't. If we talked about it in January, you found out about it here. You just don't listen to us. We definitely.. I think I brought it. Sara
Sara Hildreth 1:13:58
Okay
Traci Thomas 1:13:59
I can look and see. I have my notes still. I brought yesteryear my April books. Wow, I've read all of the books I brought for April. London Falls, The Edge of Space Time, yesteryear, Honey, though that got moved to May, and If This Be Magic. Wow, I've read so many of mine.
Cree Myles 1:14:20
Good, that's good,
Sara Hildreth 1:14:21
that's amazing.
Traci Thomas 1:14:22
I'm killing it. Usually I say books, and I don't read any of them. Okay, we did it, we did it, guys. Way to go. See you all back here in January to do this again. Cree
Cree Myles 1:14:37
yeah,
Traci Thomas 1:14:38
between now and January, just like, just take a few notes of a few books you hear about. You don't have to read them, just for some content.
Cree Myles 1:14:46
We, we clearly, we have not addressed that elephant of the room, that we just engage with books differently, and we have two totally different audiences. Like, I have audiences who are like is paradise a book? like that's who I'm dealing with.
Traci Thomas 1:15:03
We have different audiences and different jobs. If you had to interview an author who wrote a book that came out that month, right, right week, you'd be reading newer books. No, I know, but you know
Cree Myles 1:15:15
And I must say, my talk with [?] about the dispossessed felt so much more freeing than talking with the author, you know, it's always so much better. That's the dream.
Traci Thomas 1:15:26
That's why my book club is never with the author. Like when we had Paradise, I had the best time talking to Namwali about Paradise. I prefer that's why we have a book club, so I can read what I want to read sometimes. Yeah, yeah, talking, talking to an author and talking about a book are two different things.
Cree Myles 1:15:45
Yeah, so anyway, everybody listening, you really just only listen to Traci
Traci Thomas 1:15:51
and Sara.
Cree Myles 1:15:53
Yeah, but I will tell you about some backlist bangers as I find them.
Traci Thomas 1:15:58
Okay, we're out of here. Love all of you linking to everybody's stuff, so you can find them on the internet, blah blah blah. Bye. See you in the Stacks