After a general discussion of John Updike's ability to crank out aphorisms, Hannah and Sam quickly get into their favorite books of 2021. Well, not all that quickly. They first talk about Mark Prins, the Iowa Writers Workshop, and "The Latinist." Obviously, we didn't read all the books last year, so this is just us talking about books we liked a lot. Hannah finished 70 books, Sam thinks he finished about 50, both sampled about 100 total. That's a good go of things, we think. Hannah gets animated about "The Martian." You'll like it. Sam admits to thinking of Richard Powers as "Dick Powers" and being unable to take him seriously.  All told, we talk in some detail about 25 different books.  Also: We couldn't remember that it was Jacqueline Bissett that Andrew McCarthy lived with as a young actor. But it was. Not Brooke Shields. And you should stick around for the finishing discussion on why we love Twitter.