Okay, this is actually our favorite episode of the year: our annual superlatives!
Books and other media mentioned in this episode:
Halle’s Instagram
Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
Women’s Prize for Fiction
Michael L. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Ann: Babel, Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators’ Revolution by R.F. Kuang, Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li
Halle:
Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng, pandemic books:
Wish You Were Here by Jodi Picoult,
Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout
Ann: The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas
Halle: Thank You for Listening by Julia Whelan, The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd
–
My Oxford Year by Julia Whelan
Ann: Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie
– Poirot (TV)
Halle: Broken Harbor by Tana French
– Bridgerton (TV)
–
In the Woods by Tana French
Ann: Spear by Nicola Griffith, Two Storm Wood by Philip Gray
Halle: Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese, Marrying the Ketchups by Jennifer Close
–
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Ann: The Boys by Katie Hafner, You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
– Am I The Asshole on Reddit
Halle:
Notes on an Execution by Danya Kukafka
Ann: Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson
Halle:
The Wedding Season by Katy Birchall
The Book That Ended a Mini Reading Slump
Ann: I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys
– Nicolae Ceaușescu’s Last Speech (YouTube)
Halle:
Sophie Go’s Lonely Hearts Club by Roselle Lim
Ann: WAKE by Shelley Burr; The It Girl by Ruth Ware
Halle:
Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid;
The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
Ann: White Oleander by Janet Fitch, If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
– If Beale Street Could Talk (film)
Halle:
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Book That Has Stayed With Me
Ann: Love & Saffron by Kim Fay, Just Like Home by Sarah Gailey
Halle:
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan
Book That We Didn’t Think We’d Like, But Then We Did!
Ann: In the Shadow of Lightning by Brian McClellan, Stories to Tell by Richard Marx
– Richard Marx on YouTube
Halle:
The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec
Author(s) we discovered in 2022 that we’re most excited to read more from in 2023
Ann: Alex Jennings, R. F. Kuang, Gillian McAllister, Emiko Jean
– The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
– Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
– Wrong Place, Wrong Time by Gillian McAllister
– Mika in Real Life by Emiko Jean
Halle: Annabel Monaghan, Roselle Lim, Sabaa Tahir
Book we wish more people knew about
Ann: The Good Wife of Bath by Karen Brooks, Leech by Hiron Ennes
– The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
Halle:
This is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch by Tabitha Carvan
Our best audiobook experience and/or the book that was BETTER as an audiobook
Ann: A Promised Land by Barack Obama, Spear by Nicola Griffith
– Audie Awards
Halle:
Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet,
The Unsinkable Greta James by Jennifer E. Smith,
Funny You Should Ask by Elissa Sussman
Our Favorite Non-Book Media Property of the Year
Ann: Cobra Kai (TV); Dickinson (TV); The Jackie Daytona episode of What We Do In the Shadows (TV); Everything Everywhere All At Once (film); Barbarian (film); Greta Thunberg owning Andrew Tate on Twitter; phone games: Wordle, NYT Crossword, Redactle
Halle:
The White Lotus: Season 2 (TV),
Julia (TV),
Junior Bake Off (TV),
Midnights by Taylor Swift (album)
The Book We Recommended the Most This Year
Ann: The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings, The Woman in the Library by Sulari Gentill
Halle: Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau
– Taylor Jenkins Reid books
What We’re Reading This Week:
– A Time to Kill by John Grisham
– The Pelican Brief by John Grisham
Halle: Dirt Creek by Hayley Scrivener
– Jane Harper books
Well-Read on Twitter
Well-Read on Bookshop
