Unabridged: The Book Trends That Are Annoying Us

Y’all know how much I love being a hater and how easily things annoy me, so we’re dedicating a whole episode to the most annoying trends in books these days! I’ve invited Sara Hildreth (Fiction Matters), friend of the pod and one of my favorite book people, to rant with me about secrets, tropes, and the state of literary awards.

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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes. You can also find what we talked about on Bookshop.org and Amazon.

• The 2026 National Book Awards Longlists (The New Yorker)

• The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty

• Fiction Matters (Patreon)

• Beginning Middle End by Valeria Luiselli

• “Is 2026 The Year of Book Monoculture?” (The Sam Sanders Show, KCRW)

• “Books That Matter: Julie Buntin on THE STONE DIARIES by Carol Shields” (Sara Hildreth, Substack)

• Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

• Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

• William Shakespeare

• Othello by William Shakespeare

• Under Story by Chloe Benjamin

• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

• Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

• Moby Dick by Herman Melville

• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

• Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

• Taylor Jenkins Reid

• The Seven Lives of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

• The Great Wherever by Shannon Sanders

• The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

• This Is Us (Fox)

• Sterling K. Brown

• Mandy Moore

• Whistler by Ann Patchett

• The Disappearers by Marlon James

• “Ep. 442 I Put My Readers Through the Ringer with Marlon James” (The Stacks)

• The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

• The Bachelor (ABC)

• The Academy Awards

• Kin by Tayari Jones

• John of John by Douglas Stuart

• Heather Rivalry by Rachel Reid

• Sarah J. Maas

• “Amazon Names Kin by Tayari Jones the No. 1 Book of 2026 So Far” (Amazon News)

• “My 2026 Summer Reading & Music Lists” (Barack Obama, Medium)

• Oprah’s Book Club

• James by Percival Everett

• Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

• Dèy by Edwidge Danticat

• Python’s Kiss by Louise Erdrich

• A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James

• The Round House by Louise Erdrich

• “The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century” (The New York Times)

• Valeria Luiselli

• “Ep. 88 Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli -- The Stacks Book Club (Ayser Salman)”

• The Telephone by James Gleick

• Transcription by Ben Lerner

• Mad Eden by Morgan Thomas

• Min Jin Lee

• The Booker Prizes

• The Pulitzer Prizes

• The Song of Storks and Dromedary by Anjet Daanje, translated by David McKay

• London Falling by Patrick Radden Keefe

• Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker

• Fear and Fury by Heather Ann Thompson

• Rachel Aviv

• Anand Gopal

• Pamela Colloff

• Camonghne Felix

• Leonardo DiCaprio

• The Revenant (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2016)

• The National Book Critics Circle Awards

• The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

• Aspen Words Literary Prize

• The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes

• Search by Michelle Huneven

• Conclave by Robert Harris

• Kiley Reid

• “Unabridged: Behind the Booker Prize with Kiley Reid” (The Stacks)

• Mice 1961 by Stacey Levine

• Merve Emre

  
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