We asked the past year’s podcast-guests for the favorite books they read in 2024 and the books they hope to read in 2025 for our special year-end Guest List episode! Twenty-two guests participated, so listen to the show to hear about the books they loved this year, and use this page to check out all the books, as well as their past episodes!

Photo of my 2024 books (not incl. comics & some e-books) by me.

The Guests

Roland Allen – 10:50

• Say Nothing – Patrick Radden Keefe

Roland’s 2025 goals

• The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II – Fernand Braudel

Shalom Auslander – 30:05

• Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation – Greg Epstein
• The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity – Eugene McCarraher
• Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America’s Founders – Dennis C. Rasmussen

Laura Beers – 6:05

• The Ministry of Time – Kailene Bradley
• Demon Copperhead – Barbara Kingsolver
• Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

Sven Birkerts – 24:10

• Bartleby & Co, – Enrique Vila-Matas
• Lesser Ruins – Mark Haber
• All Souls’ Day – Cees Nooteboom
• Fever and Spear – Javier Marias

Mirana Comstock – 32:35

• The Algonquin Round Table: 25 Years with the Legends Who Lunch – Konrad Bercovici

Leela Corman – 19:15

• Sonic Life – Thurston Moore
• Beautyland – Marie-Helene Bertino
• My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Book 2 – Emil Ferris

Leela’s 2025 goals

• No Name In The Street – James Baldwin
• The Thick And The Lean – Chana Porter
• No Wave – Marc Masters
• No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980. – Thurston Moore/Byron Coley
• Einstürzende Neubauten’s Kollaps – Melle Jan Kromhout and Jan Nieuwenhuis
• The Diaries of Franz Kafka – Franz Kafka (tr. Ross Benjamin)
• Collected Stories – Isaac Bashevis Singer

Nicholas Delbanco – 17:45

• The Bee Sting – Paul Murray

Nicholas’ 2025 goals

• The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil

Benjamin Dreyer – 28:50

• My hefty stack of old DC comic books from the early-mid 1960s, revisiting the adventures of, mostly, Superman (and Superboy), Lois Lane, Lana Lang, and the Legion of Super-Heroes

Benjamin’s 2025 goals

• Interior Chinatown – Charles Yu
• The White Hotel – DM Thomas

Eric Drooker – 26:05

• Monica – Daniel Clowes
• The Power Broker – Robert Caro

Eric’s 2025 goals

• Orientalism – Edward Said
• War on Gaza – Joe Sacco

Randy Fertel – 31:55

• The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
• All Fours – Miranda July

Randy’s 2025 goals

• The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky

Sammy Harkham – 2:25

• My Last Sigh – Luis Buñuel
• Complete works of Jane Bowles – Jane Bowles
• Independent People – Haldor Laxness
• The Men’s Club – Leonard Michaels
• A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard – Paul Bowles
• West With the Night – Beryl Markham
• Hate #1-#30 – Peter Bagge

Sammy’s 2025 goals

• Reveille in Washington: 1860-1865 – Margaret Leech
• Hamlet – Shakespeare
• The Judges of the Secret Court: A Novel about John Wilkes Booth – David Stacton
• Frederick the Great – Nancy Mitford
• The Obscene Bird of Night – José Donoso
• various western paperbacks, a handful of artist biographies recommended by Dash Shaw, another of the Oxford History of America volumes, + “dip in with the regulars I read multiple books of every year: Charles Willeford, Jack Vance, Charles Portis, and Jonathan Ames.”

Frances Jetter – 27:50

• Stranger Than Life: Cartoons and Comics 1970-2013 – MK Brown

Ken Krimstein – 13:20

• The Sea Wolf – Jack London
• The Bat King – James Hilton
• Flicker – Theodore Roszak
• Evil Eyes Sea – Ozge Samanci
• The Werewolf At Dusk and Other Stories – David Small
• Blueberry Vol. 4 – Moebius
• Blueberry Vol. 5 – Moebius
• The Mysteries – Bill Watterson and John Kascht

Ken’s 2025 goals

• James – Percival Everett
• Japanese Tales – Royall Tyler
• War & Peace – Tolstoy (tr. Pevear & Volokhonsky)

Jim Moske – 24:50

• Ducks, Newburyport – Lucy Ellmann

Jim’s 2025 goals

• Septology – Jon Fosse
• Coming Into the Country – John McPhee

Robert Pranzatelli – 7:15

• Ballerina – Patrick Modiano
• Doctor Moebius and Mister Gir – Numa Sadoul
• “The Thanksgiving Visitor” – Truman Capote

Robert’s centenary Capote essay is over here.

Jess Ruliffson – 22:10

• The Corner that Held Them – Sylvia Townsend Warner
• Mitz: The Marmoset of Bloomsbury – Sigrid Nunez

Jess’ 2025 goals

• Dune – Frank Herbert
• The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. LeGuin
• Shred Sisters – Betsy Lerner

Dmitry Samarov – 4:05

• Life – A User’s Manual – George Perec

Dmitry’s 2025 goals

• Moby Dick – Herman Melville

Dash Shaw – 9:40

• Book of Disquiet – Fernando Pessoa

Dash’s 2025 goals

• He Rolled Me Up Like a Grilled Squid – Yoshiharu Tsuge

David Small – 12:25

• Close Range: Wyoming Stories – Annie Proulx

Benjamin Swett – 35:30

• Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Anil’s Ghost – Michael Ondaatje

Benjamin’s 2025 goals

• The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann

Maurice Vellekoop – 34:35

• Followed By The Lark – Helen Humphreys

Maurice’s 2025 goals

• Chasing Beauty: The Life of Isabella Stewart Gardner – Natalie Dykstra

DW Young – 18:45

• The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich – William L. Shirer
• Tours of the Black Clock – Steve Erickson

Gil Roth – 36:45

• Facing Down The Furies: Suicide, The Ancient Greeks, and Me – Edith Hall
• FEH: A Memoir – Shalom Auslander
• A Doorway to Joe: The Art of Joe Coleman – Joe Coleman
• Mysticism – Simon Critchley
• The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing – Adam Moss
• A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places – Christopher Brown
• The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper – Roland Allen
• The Picture Not Taken: On Life And Photography – Benjamin Swett
• I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together: A Memoir – Maurice Vellekoop
• Ain’t It Fun: Peter Laughner & Proto-Punk In The Secret City – Aaron Lange
• Victory Parade – Leela Corman
• Stan Mack’s Real Life Funnies: The Collected Conceits, Delusions, and Hijinks of New Yorkers from 1974 to 1995 – Stan Mack
• Radiant: The Life and Line of Keith Haring – Brad Gooch
• My Struggle – Karl Ove Knausgaard
• The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition – Emily Dickinson
• In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss – Amy Bloom
• One Friday in April: A Story of Suicide and Survival – Donald Antrim
• Roadside Picnic – Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

Gil’s 2025 goals

• The Snow Leopard – Peter Matthiessen
• Absolution – Jeff VanderMeer
• Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder – Salman Rushdie
• The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
• Anniversaries – Uwe Johnson