The Year in Review

Jeff and Rebecca look at the most important, memorable, strangest, and all and all most superlative stories from the year in books and reading. Subscribe to the podcast via RSS, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. For more industry news, sign up for our Today in Books daily newsletter! Discussed in this episode: TBR! First Edition! The Book Riot Podcast Patreon Read Harder 2024 is alive!  Good job, book people: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store gets all the love; Paul Harding does not win awards for the book Jeff called “gormless” Bad job, book people: The Vaster Wilds & Let Us Descend are under-celebrated Love to See It: Pultizers expand eligibility Audiobook moments of the year: Michelle Williams narrating Britney’s memoir; Leslie Jones’s 17-hour-long freestyle; Spotify introduces free listening for Premium members Worst publisher response to book bans: Scholastic’s whole diversity collection situation Best publisher response to book bans: PRH takes legal action against book banning states Achievements in Reporting: The Atlantic’s coverage of the Books 3 data set used to train LLMs More of These Conversations: The bestseller lists are broken and Goodreads is bad for books Biggest Mystery: WTF Oprah was up to with Covenant of Water Still Waiting to See Its Impact: Simon & Schuster sold to KKR, TikTok plans a publishing imprint Eyeballs Emoji: The BookTok hockey romance shenanigans, Bigolas Dickolas moves some units, Review Bombing Author Nobody Asked for This: Twilight series coming to TV; HBO plans 10-year run for Harry Potter reboot  Anticlimactic: Manuscript thief pleads guilty Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices