Obama's Podcast Guests, NBA Finalists, B&N Scoops Up Another Indie, and more.

Book Riot - The Podcast

Hosts Jeff O'Neill and Rebecca Shinsky navigate a dense episode filled with literary news, ranging from the announcement of guest pairings for Barack

Key takeaways

• Barack Obama's book podcast features notable pairings such as Tom Hanks discussing Marilynne Robinson's Gilead.
• The hosts mourn the passing of influential nature writer Annie Dillard, noting her impact on the genre.

Main topics

• Obama's Book Podcast Guests
• Passing of Annie Dillard

Notable quotes

The universe that suckled us is a monster who does not care if we live or die.

Conclusion

An insightful deep dive for book lovers that balances celebrity news w

Transcript preview

Speaker 3 (0:01) Hey there, I'm Travis Hoyum, one of the hosts of Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Each weekday on Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing, we talk through the business news you need to know and the stories moving stocks on Wall Street. On weekends, we game plan personal finance strategies and dive into the industries shaping tomorrow and host the experts, authors, and executives that understand them. Tune in for insights and a long-term perspective on investing and of course, stock ideas, plenty of them. To quote a listener, it pays to listen. Check us out and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. Speaker 2 (0:33) In January of 1915, Ernest Shackleton's ship, Endurance, became encased in the ice in the Weddell Sea. Through determination, grit, and savvy, Shackleton would lead his men through a brutal winter, then over hundreds of miles of Antarctic ice, followed by 800 miles across some of the roughest waters in the world. It is one of the most extraordinary and inspirational journeys in the history of exploration. Find this story and many others at The Explorer's Podcast. available wherever you get your podcasts or at explorerspodcast.com. Speaker 4 (1:09) This is the Book Riot Podcast. I am Jeff O'Neill. And Speaker 6 (1:12) I'm Rebecca Shinsky. Speaker 4 (1:13) Rebecca, we're chock-a-block today. We're in. We're back. Speaker 6 (1:17) We're back. Speaker 4 (1:18) We're so back. Some sad news, some exciting news, some interesting stuff, new book announcement, prizes. It's just kind of all over the place here, Rebecca. We are going to, one of the things we're covering today is the guests and I guess we already know the books, but the guest pairings for Obama's Book Podcast. We are going to be crashing an episode of this show in which we talk about that first episode. I'm not going to spoil what it is for, I guess, something we're talking about literally eight minutes. But be on the lookout for that when that show comes out. Over on Zero to Well Read, you can hear us talk with Sharon McMahon about... 17 books to understand America. I think we covered it. I think you read those 17. You're pretty much good. We fixed it all, Rebecca. Yeah, that's it. Then Speaker 6 (2:01) you're done. It's not like understanding this country is a forever project for any of us. We called in an expert. We got the definitive list. That's it. Check the boxes and call it a day. Speaker 4 (2:13) Forever Fraught. That's a middle-aged person's version of Forever 21. There you go. That's Speaker 6 (2:18) my Speaker 4 (2:18) store that I'm opening, Forever Fraught. Forever Speaker 6 (2:20) 45. Forever 45. Speaker 4 (2:24) It is just, there's just reading glasses on every surface. Like they may or may not be yours that you can go find. Let's see. What else do we have anything else to talk about right now? We're doing an update for the Patreon folks on the Fantasy League next week. We're going to be recording that. What was the most recent thing that just went into Patreon? Did we do something? I can't remember. Speaker 6 (2:45) We did our fantasy draft. Or not our fantasy draft. We did our seasonal draft. Oh, Speaker 4 (2:49) fall preview. Yes, Speaker 6 (2:49) seasonal. Yeah, the fall preview draft. And the voting has begun. I have not peeked at it yet. This is such a chock-full season of big releases that we ended that draft both feeling like we have no idea who's going to win the votes. It's going to come down to personal preferences of the listeners, as always, on that one. But it's really anybody's game. Speaker 4 (3:09) It is chock-full. season. Someone should tell the National Book Awards. We'll get to that here in a minute. Also, speaking of fall books, we're going to be book clubbing over here on Patreon, both Emily St. John Mandel's Exit Party, which I went and picked up my signed copy from Powell's Tuesday, and then American Hagwon by Min Jin Lee, which is not out yet. So that's a future ambulation I get to look forward to. Okay, I think that's enough throat clearing. Let's do a sponsor break and get into the show. Speaker 5 (3:39) Today's episode is brought to you by Sora. Now, if you love Libby and you are a parent and or a teacher of a pre-K through 12 student, Sora needs to be a part of your life. It's a reading platform built exclusively for pre-K through 12 schools with the. privacy, security, and compliance protections classrooms actually need. For teachers, you can assign and monitor reading with confidence. It has built-in tools like pronunciations, vocabulary support, and annotation that supports comprehension, not just access within text. So kids can read, but they can also learn. more intentionally from what they're reading. For parents, it means a safe school approved way to encourage reading at home because all eBooks and audio books in Sora are selected by your school. So you can trust that they are age and grade appropriate. So like I said, if you love Libby, you're going to love Sora. Make sure to check out Sora. And thanks again to Sora for sponsoring this episode. Speaker 5 (4:46) Today's episode is brought to you by JN Chaney, Terry Maggart, and Ethan Vault. The best lit RPG, fantasy, sci-fi, and horror. If you would like something that's like We Are Legion, like the Boba Fett series meets Old Man's War, this... is for you. So Van Tudor spent his childhood on his grandfather's farm, listening to fantastic stories of spaceships and monsters, princesses and galactic knights and empires. He thought they were all made up, only meant to entertain until the day he inherited the family farm and discovered the truth. Grandad really was a legendary starship pilot and every adventure really did happen. And perhaps most importantly, hidden beneath the old barn, Van's legacy and inheritance awaits. It's a starship. And with the help of an android bird named Perry, who doubles as a combat AI, Van sets out for the stars in search of answers. And Destiny is calling, girl. This is for fans of The Expanse, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, The Murderbot Diaries, Firefly. Basically all of the best sci-fi set out in space in the last 20 plus years. If you like any of those things... you're going to like Backyard Starship book one, Destiny is Calling by Jay and Chaney and Terry Maggart. Make sure to pick it up. And thanks again to Ethan Vault for sponsoring this episode. Speaker 6 (6:12) This podcast is supported by Warby Parker. I've been wearing glasses since I was a teenager, and I've been a Warby Parker customer for more than 10 years. And now that I need progressive lenses, my glasses are an even bigger part of my everyday life. I recently did the math and I realized I spend about 80 % of my waking hours wearing them, which means I have pretty high standards. My glasses need to be comfortable, obviously, and I also want them to be cute. I like bigger, fashion-forward frames, and it can be surprisingly difficult to find those in proportions that work for my face. My newest Warby pair is the Zoya in Emerald Crystal, and they really hit the mark. They're oversized, this gorgeous translucent green, and they're comfortable enough to wear all day, which I quite literally do. Warby Parker has a huge selection of styles, plus virtual try-ons so you can see frames on your face from the comfort of your phone. Prescription glasses start at $95 and they have more than 300 stores across the U.S. if you prefer to shop in person. After more than a decade, there's a reason I keep going back to Warby Parker. I can find glasses that feel like me. Right now, buy one pair of glasses and get 20 % off any additional pairs at warbyparker.com bookriot. That's 20 % off any additional pairs when you purchase one pair at warbyparker.com bookriot. Book Riot. Speaker 4 (7:31) All I see here, Rebecca, is RJ's story about dungeon crawler Carl in the wild. So I see the floor. I see the dungeon to you. This is Speaker 6 (7:39) from the Department of Things. I almost texted you last night, but decided just to save it for the pod. So I was on my way to the movies last night. I went to see the Oasis documentary. It's great. And I was a little early, so I stopped at Barnes & Noble also to pick up my copy of Exit Party for our book club. And I was wedged in line in between two fellas buying different dungeon crawler. Carl books. And first of all, I would like a cookie for not going full sociologist on them. Like I resisted the urge to be like, tell me. We Speaker 4 (8:09) just Speaker 6 (8:09) said we could talk Speaker 4 (8:10) in bookstores, Rebecca. But I don't. We did. Speaker 6 (8:12) But like I didn't want them to feel like they were subjects of like some weird anthropological inquiry. I think it's like tell me about your book choices is maybe different from you're holding a book that was really great. So I just. Can I clue you Speaker 4 (8:24) in real quick to something about men just in general that maybe is helpful in this situation? We would love to be representative of a larger, we desire to be counted. And so like what I think and feel is that is now entered into the record. So you want to be perceived? Everybody Speaker 3 (8:43) knows. Yeah. Well, I'd like to, I'm Speaker 4 (8:46) speaking for all of us. I'm sure we're all in lockstep on this particular one. But someone's curiosity about why you are consuming the culture you are consuming as part of their general curiosity and understanding of the world. We don't even have to mansplain to you that situation. You asked for us to tell you how you got that book. Next Speaker 6 (9:04) time I will be noticing. And for all the listeners Speaker 4 (9:05) out there, if you want to ask a fellow why they're reading that or what they're listening to, not only are you welcome, you're going to get more than you want. So that's maybe the warning you should get about that particular. So you've got two fellas on either side of you. They've got their loot boxes and their cats on their shoulders. And that's it? That's your report? Speaker 6 (9:25) Yes. But no. So one of them ended up being parked right next to me. So I got in the car and I noticed that he was sitting in his car, holding up his little copy of like the third or fourth Dungeon Crawler Carl book, taking a picture of it, posting it. And he had this little gentle smile on his face the whole time. And it was so sweet. I was like, the fellas are okay. Maybe they're going to be all right. Right. They're reading whimsical lit RPGs. They're in the middle of a series. They're bonding over it. Like, it was just really cute. And that was the moment really where I was like, oh, I wish I had talked to him in line. But also it would be too creepy to knock on his car window and be like, hey, that was really sweet what you just did. And seriously, I'm not hitting Speaker 4 (10:08) on you. Yeah, that's the other part of that. Right, right. Yes, Speaker 6 (10:10) I have. Really, this is just anthropological. interest. But next time you go to one of the fellas meetings, Jeff, I don't know how often you guys do that. Just tell them they can expect to be interrupted in the future. Speaker 4 (10:21) I think that's really fascinating. I would very much, you know how on a lot of stores there's a, how was your experience and you hit a green button or a red button or whatever now? I think I would like Barnes & Noble and Powell's or really any bookstore to like, on your way out, there's a screen that said, how did you hear about the book you bought today? So shh. library, someone in your, you know, just give me five choices. I don't need to be exhaustive. I'd love to be exhaustive. I realize that you're only going to give them like five choices to pick from. I would love to see the results. I would Speaker 6 (10:51) love that too. Speaker 4 (10:52) Yeah. Well, that's great. I'm glad you were Speaker 2 (10:55) out there. It Speaker 4 (10:55) was lovely. It just made my evening. That's really interesting to see. And I guess when you're a phenomenon of this nature, you're going to have experiences like that where like literally both people in line are buying a book when they're selling this clip. Speaker 6 (11:06) I think I said last week, I've seen a lot of dudes reading Dungeon Crawler Carl in airports. And I normally don't talk to anybody sitting next to me on the plane. But next time, if I win the lottery and there's a guy with a Dungeon Crawler Carl book next to me, I will ask some questions. Okay. Speaker 4 (11:23) Just get out your pad of paper and say, okay, just so I have this here. I'm so Speaker 6 (11:27) glad you're here today. Speaker 4 (11:29) Yes, I'm so glad Speaker 6 (11:31) you're here today. Speaker 4 (11:33) In sadder news. Annie Dillard, one of the 20th century's great writers of everything, but especially of a kind of contemplative nature writing. It's a little bit difficult to get into the kinds of things that she did write. Passed away. She was 81 years old. A good long life for Annie Dillard, a favorite of both of ours. Though I was looking at her. corpus today. And I've got a lot of Dillard left for me, which is wonderful. And I think I knew this because I've really only read about three, I think three or four of her books. And there's some I've been meaning to read and kind of, it's not urgent, right? I'm now between zero to well-read and some front list, but getting into say Annie Dillard's autobiography, which I very much want to consume and have in my brain. I don't know when I'm going to do that, except now that I do, because I'm going to start this this afternoon on audio, if I can find it. Won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction for The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She was 28 and became the youngest woman to win that award at that point. A chronicle of a year living at Tinker Creek, which is somewhere outside Roanoke, Virginia, I believe, if I remember this correctly. In the Speaker 6 (12:49) Appalachian Smoky Mountain kind of. Blue Mountain Zone. And I first read it right after moving to Virginia. And so I'm feeling like extra connected to nature here. She's described often as a modern day Thoreau. She wrote her master's thesis on Thoreau. I think it's fair to put her in that tradition, kind of transcendentalist, the natural world as a sacred place and as a source of spiritual. nourishment. Like if you're in that pipeline of no longer going to church, but connecting with the out, connecting with the outdoors as your form of church, if you're in the Mary Oliver zone, but you haven't picked up Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is wonderful. I dug out my paperback so I can get into it this weekend. And then I discovered that the audio book of it is included on Spotify. So I think I might just. I might take some long walks where I'm gently crying over the next couple of days. Like this would hit me pretty hard. I don't I don't think a writer's death has hit me this hard since Mary Oliver several years ago. I Speaker 4 (13:51) kind of feel like Dillard is already out in the forest somewhere kind of walking around like an elf. So I didn't really even I mean, it's sad, but I didn't really feel it that way because I kind of thought maybe she was already a Nyad. Speaker 6 (14:03) Totally believable. I'm choosing to believe that she, Wendell Berry and Mary Oliver are like on a really great hike. Yeah. Somewhere in the great beyond together. Speaker 4 (14:12) If she just disappeared into moss like Yoda in Return of the Jedi, that would make sense. That would be a worthwhile way to go. Underrated among her works, again, of the few that I've read, but I don't hear anyone ever talk about The Maitreys by Annie Dillard. That was her second novel. It is the story of a long, long relationship between a husband and wife who live in Provincetown. There are fewer of these than you might think. You and I both like this kind of a genre. Um, at the same time, it's not always happy as you might understand, uh, in, in this particular book, but that's what Dillard does. Yeah. But for the time being her 1999 work of narrative nonfiction, it topics include, and I quote birth sand, China clouds, numbers, encounters, think thinkers, evil, and now. So there you go. Um, a Speaker 6 (15:00) little bit of everything. Speaker 4 (15:01) Yeah. Uh, can I do, can I do, um, Can I do a wiki quote? Can I do a passage? Please. Yeah, let's have a moment with her. Let's see. Here we go. The world is a monster. Any three-year-old can see how unsatisfactory and clumsy in this whole business of reproducing and dying by the billions. We have not yet encountered any God who is as merciful as a man who flicks a beetle over on its feet. There is not a people in the world who behaves as badly as praying mantises. But wait, you say, there is no right and wrong in nature. Right and wrong is a human concept. Precisely, we are moral creatures then in an amoral world. The universe that suckled us is a monster who does not care if we live or die, does not care if it grinds itself to a halt. It is fixed and blind, a robot programmed to kill. But we are free in seeing. We can only try to outwit it at every turn to save our skins. Annie Dillard, ladies and gentlemen, fare thee well. Speaker 4 (16:04) Okay. Annie Dillard is the kind of author you might see Obama Speaker 6 (16:09) talk Speaker 4 (16:10) about. You know, in the Robinsonian universe, I can imagine Marilynne Robinson being a fan of Annie Dillard. I was thinking about this too, just one more minute on Annie Dillard. Speaker 6 (16:20) I got all the minutes you want for Annie Dillard. Speaker 4 (16:22) The more famous narrative nonfiction writer of the 70s is Joan Didion, Speaker 2 (16:30) right? Of course. And. Speaker 4 (16:34) I think you can like both, of course, but I think your heart's going to tend one towards the other. And while I like and admire Didion, Dillard's my lady over there. It's an interesting Rorschach. Yeah. Do you think Cosmo ever did these kinds of, are you a which sex in the city person are you? Which 70s narrative nonfiction essayist are you? Speaker 6 (16:55) I wish we lived in that universe. That would make me feel better about things. You know, at least for me, Didion is about. Mostly intellectual appreciation. Yeah. Speaker 4 (17:06) The Speaker 6 (17:06) craft and the way she uses language. And I do feel things, certainly, when I read her, especially the Year of Magical Thinking. But Dillard is just like, she's working on a spiritual level for her readers and certainly for me. I think that's a really interesting distinction. Speaker 4 (17:21) Yeah. I mean, Didion is deserts Speaker 6 (17:23) and Speaker 4 (17:23) boulevards and Dillard is, you know, glens and dells and bogs at the same time. Anyway, so we got official public announcement. about the guests and pairings of those guests for Barack Obama's book podcast. You knew all of them. I had known the first one because we found out about it through normal work channels. We kept it to ourselves like adults. Let's do it this way, Rebecca. Which of these episodes are you most excited for? And then we'll do the third one. Speaker 6 (17:52) Episode five, Percival James talking about Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison. Speaker 4 (17:58) Percival Everett. The writer of James, of course. Yeah, but Percival Everett. Oh, yes. Did I say Percival James? People might be confused. Yeah, I knew you were talking about it. We're looking at the same thing. Episode five. So that's going to be mid-October. It's weekly starting next week. Yes, mid to late October. A wonderful pairing there. I'll go next. I think from there. Boy, I think I think episode six, Speaker 3 (18:21) Lauren Speaker 4 (18:22) Groff on all the pretty horses by Cormac McCarthy. Speaker 6 (18:26) Fascinating. Episode Speaker 4 (18:27) six in the hammer spot. Speaker 6 (18:29) This just gives me so many more questions about how did they how did they come up with these pairings? Who discovered that like Lauren Groff is also big on all the pretty horses? And has she previously been connected to the Obamas? Yes. I don't know. Higher Ground Productions, Little Birdies. Hit us up. If you're the Speaker 4 (18:50) booker for this, the emails and have you read the book and making sure that there are copies and the whole thing. Oh, I forgot Speaker 6 (18:55) to tell you. After we were speculating that episode when we got the books, but we were speculating about who the guests would be, I did get a message from a Little Birdie who works at Higher Ground who said that they had a great time listening to us get close, but not quite close enough. I'm like, oh, you're almost there. Speaker 4 (19:10) I think that's right. We were close, but not close enough. Let's go through the rest. Episode one, Tom Hanks on Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. When I found this out, I kind of short-circuited a little bit. Speaker 6 (19:25) Like America's two dads talking about our shared favorite book. What are we supposed to do? Speaker 4 (19:30) Our priestess of the plains talking to, come Speaker 2 (19:35) on. Speaker 4 (19:36) Episode two is Ta-Nehisi Coates talking with President Obama about the fire next time by James Baldwin. That's Speaker 6 (19:43) a Speaker 4 (19:43) great Speaker 6 (19:43) combination. Speaker 4 (19:45) Yeah. Speaking of things that are elite, Jill Lepore on all the. King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, all the King's Men, which I just picked as one of mine for our talk with Sharon McMahon about books to understand America. I don't know if I'd remembered that it was on this list. Maybe it seeded into my brain. I think I forgot that it was already on there. Yeah. That will be fascinating, too. That'll be more. That'll be the most overtly political one, I think. Oh, Speaker 6 (20:10) I think so. Yeah. Speaker 4 (20:12) The Fire Next Time, of course, is political, but more in a cultural way. This might be like. you know, elections and stuff. Straight up political, yeah. And Speaker 3 (20:18) then Speaker 4 (20:18) episode four, the last one we haven't mentioned, Ben Rhodes, the author of The World as it is a memoir of the Obama White House,