Funny Story --- or is it? We're tackling this wildly popular Emily Henry read this week, and we'll just say we aren't quite sure we're on board (is that a kayak pun?). Everything has its place, and sometimes, that place is what must be a very overcrowded apartment in Michigan. Put on your cardigan, practice your children's book reading voice, and kill some time with us while we chat about this little book.

Is our review of Tara Conklin's The House Girl affected by paint stripping chemicals? Maybe! Is our episode affected by paint stripping chemicals? Also maybe! We're talking about dog names, puns, dinners, and oh, yeah, we read a book. The dual timeline in this novel is connected in an interesting way and we're having fun exploring it amidst the fumes.

Bad music, old canned beans, and nasty dresses really appeal to one of us as we dive into The Girls by Emma Cline. This week, we're getting into the head of an outlier in a cult in the '70s that is absolutely not led by Charles Manson, does not involve Sharon Tate, and doesn't include a gross member of the Beach Boys (double entendre intended), and we're sort of enjoying it. So hop in the bus and discuss this killer novel with us!

We've been doing this for a whole year(!), and we are feeling festive! We're giving these books a quick second chance review now that we've had time to think about them (or entirely forget them). We'll tell you what really stuck with us and what we could really do without, and of course talk about charcuterie along the way.

This week, we're off to Cambridge! We're pretty sure we're a little bit smarter than some of those professors, at least at judging people's character. The Maidens by Alex Michaelides is a thriller with a great setting and lots of (mostly) smart people trying to get to the bottom of a murder or two. We have some concerns about investigation tactics, so curl up with a bottle of (NOT decanted) wine and mull over the suspects with us.

This week we're admitting we're definitely really in 2025, and we're finishing up Wifedom by Anna Funder. At the end of the day, we aren't totally sure what we think of this marriage (and of how it's portrayed). We do agree on at least this much: If you have tuberculosis, maybe you shouldn't lie about it to your family and friends and everyone you meet.

We've traveled far and long, and we had the first half (or more) of Anna Funder's Wifedom to keep us company. We're discussing airplane coincidences, turtle feeding habits, and also whether or not the patriarchy is to blame for the erasure of the (so far, pretty cool) wife of George Orwell.

Happy New Year! We're kicking things off with a light Hallmark-esque pick: Melissa Wiesner's The Second Chance Year. So grab your menudo or your favorite tripe dish and listen in as we contemplate whether we'd be able to do anything useful with a do-over year.

It's a Christmas miracle! Our sound gremlins came back (gremlins are a Christmas thing, right?), but we managed to get all our thoughts out about Christopher Moore's The Stupidest Angel before everything went south. So head to Ikea, we'll keep you company on the way. Just watch out for 29 foot trees on the road, and be wary of making any vague wishes...

Listen, we'll hang out in the street to wait for Krampus to smack us around a bit, but don't give us used socks, okay? This week we're into Sarah Clegg's The Dead of Winter, a look at how some traditions (especially involving goat heads) are formed or were thought to be formed. Hide behind a table with us, put on your fake horse head, and settle in to learn about Belsnickel and the Christmas witches.