We asked 2015’s podcast-guests for their favorite books in 2015 and the books they hope to read in 2016 for our special year-end Guest List episode! More than 30 guests participated, so listen to the show to hear about their picks, and use this page to check out all the books, as well as their past episodes!
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If you’d like a guide to the episode, detailing the order of the speakers and when their segments begin, please scroll to the bottom of the page. If you reach the gorilla reading poetry, you’ve scrolled too far.
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THE GUESTS
Derf Backderf (begins 29:10)
- Rendezvous with Rama
– Arthur C. Clarke
- Ringworld
– Larry Niven
Derf’s 2016 goal
- To read more books from this list
Anthea Bell (49:55)
- Before the Feast
– Saša Staniši?
- All for Nothing
– Walter Kempowski
- SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
– Mary Beard
- War and Peace
– Tolstoy (tr. Pevear & Volokhonsky)
- Possession
– AS Byatt
Anthea’s 2016 goals
- Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the House of Caesar
– Tom Holland
- The Brothers Karamazov
– Dostoevsky
- The Children’s Book
– AS Byatt
John Clute (and our followup) (36:30)
- Don Quixote
– Cervantes
- The Buried Giant
– Kazuo Ishiguro
John’s 2016 goals
- Mardi and a Voyage Thither
– Herman Melville
- The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade
– Herman Melville
Michael Dirda (and our 2012 and 2014 talks) (32:35)
- TRUMBO
– Bruce Cook
Matt Farber (14:55)
- The Martian
– Andy Weir
- NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
– Steve Silberman
- The Witches: Salem, 1692
– Stacy Schiff
Jonathan Galassi (3:20)
- A Little Life: A Novel
– Hanya Yanagihara
- Pnin
– Vladimir Nabokov
Jonathan’s 2016 goals
- My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels, Book One
– Elena Ferrante
- The Story of a New Name: Neapolitan Novels, Book Two
– Elena Ferrante
- Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay: Neapolitan Novels, Book Three
– Elena Ferrante
- The Story of the Lost Child: Neapolitan Novels, Book Four
– Elena Ferrante
Brad Gooch (11:40)
- My Struggle: Book 1
– Karl Ove Knausgaard
- My Struggle: Book 2
– Karl Ove Knausgaard
- My Struggle: Book 3
– Karl Ove Knausgaard
- My Struggle: Book Four
– Karl Ove Knausgaard
- A Little Life: A Novel
- Tehran Noir (Akashic Noir)
– Salar Abdoh
Brad’s 2016 goals
- City on Fire: A novel
– Garth Risk Hallberg
- Black Deutschland: A Novel
– Darryl Pinckney
Langdon Hammer (47:40)
- Note Book
– Jeff Nunokawa
Langdon’s 2016 goals
- The Quarry: Essays
– Susan Howe
Liz Hand (41:00)
– Timothy d’Arch SmithLiz’s 2016 goals
- My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels, Book One
- The Story of a New Name: Neapolitan Novels, Book Two
- Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay: Neapolitan Novels, Book Three
- The Story of the Lost Child: Neapolitan Novels, Book Four
- The Flamethrowers
– Rachel Kushner
- Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s: A Library of America Boxed Set
– Sarah Weinman
Jennifer Hayden (25:10)
- M Train
– Patti Smith
- The Blazing World: A Novel
– Siri Hustvedt
- Bacchus Omnibus Edition Vol. 1
– Eddie Campbell
- The Sculptor
– Scott McCloud
- Tim Ginger
– Julian Hanshaw
- The Age of Selfishness: Ayn Rand, Morality, and the Financial Crisis
– Darryl Cunningham
- Saint Cole
– Noah Van Sciver
- Bright-Eyed At Midnight
– Leslie Stein
Jennifer’s 2016 goals
- Ruins
– Peter Kuper
- Not Funny Ha-Ha
– Leah Hayes
- Invisible Ink: My Mother’s Love Affair With A Famous Cartoonist
– Bill Griffith
- Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise
– Oscar Hijuelos
- Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio
– Jessica Abel
- Our Expanding Universe
– Alex Robinson
- Bottomless Belly Button
– Dash Shaw
- War of Streets and Houses
– Sophie Yanow
- Step Aside, Pops: A Hark! A Vagrant Collection
– Kate Beaton
Ron Hogan (8:05)
- Witches of America
– Alex Mar
- The Incarnations: A Novel
– Susan Barker
Dylan Horrocks (37:25)
- The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America
– James Wilson
- The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010
– Selina Todd
- Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class
– Owen Jones
- Common People: The History of an English Family
– Alison Light
Dylan’s 2016 goals
- The Making of the English Working Class
– EP Thompson
- Te Puea: A Life
– Michael King
- My Father, the Pornographer: A Memoir
– Chris Offutt
- The Solitudes
– John Crowley
- Love & Sleep
– John Crowley
- Daemonomania
– John Crowley
- Endless Things
– John Crowley
David Jaher (5:40)
- Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
– Herman Melville
Kathe Koja (17:00)
- The Complete Plays
– Christopher Marlowe
- Heartbreaker: Stories
– Maryse Meijer
- Stay, Illusion: Poems
– Lucie Brock-Broido
Jonathan Kranz (13:20)
- Middlemarch
– George Eliot
Jonathan’s 2016 goal
- Norwegian Wood
– Haruki Murakami
Peter Kuper (4:15)
- The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1984: A Graphic Memoir
– Riad Satouf
- Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
– Haruki Murakami
- The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
– Elizabeth Kolbert
Peter’s 2016 goals
- Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir
– Roz Chast
- My Struggle: Book 1
- My Struggle: Book 2
- My Struggle: Book 3
- My Struggle: Book Four
- Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World
– Bill Nye
- 10:04: A Novel
– Ben Lerner
- Franz Kafka: The Complete Stories
– Franz Kafka
- The Grapes of Wrath
– John Steinbeck
Lorenzo Mattotti (46:35)
- Le Royaume (French Edition)
– Emmanuel Carrère
- Inspector Maigret
– Georges Simenon
JD McClatchy (35:55)
- Anna Karenina
– Tolstoy
- H Is for Hawk
– Helen Macdonald
- Purity: A Novel
– Jonathan Franzen
- Sentenced to Life: Poems
– Clive James
Sandy’s 2016 goals
- Great Expectations
– Charles Dickens
- My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels, Book One
- The Story of a New Name: Neapolitan Novels, Book Two
- Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay: Neapolitan Novels, Book Three
- The Story of the Lost Child: Neapolitan Novels, Book Four
Scott McCloud (47:05)
- Safari Honeymoon
– Jesse Jacobs
- Beautiful Darkness
– Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët
Michael Meyer (29:55)
- Moby-Dick: or, The Whale
Michael’s 2016 goal
- Middlemarch
Dan Perkins (a.k.a. Tom Tomorrow) (40:05)
- NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity
- The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper
– Tony Ortega
- The End of All Things #4: To Stand or Fall
– John Scalzi
- The Gone-Away World
– Nick Harkaway
- A Carlin Home Companion: Growing Up with George
– Kelly Carlin
- Killing Pretty: A Sandman Slim Novel
– Richard Kadrey
Summer Pierre (15:25)
- Soldier’s Heart: The Campaign to Understand My WWII Veteran Father: A Daughter’s Memoir
– Carol Tyler
Summer’s 2016 goals
- A Collection of Essays
– George Orwell
- Selected Essays
– Virginia Woolf
Witold Rybczynski (31:15)
- Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads
– Paul Theroux
- Inspector Maigret
Witold’s 2016 goals
- The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1-6
– Edward Gibbons
Dmitry Samarov (and check out our 2014 talk) (18:10)
- Preparation For The Next Life
– Atticus Lish
- The Other Paris
– Luc Sante
Elizabeth Samet (46:05)
- The Free World: A Novel
– David Bezmozgis
- Life and Fate
– Vasily Grossman
Elizabeth’s 2016 goal
- The Crying of Lot 49
– Thomas Pynchon
Liesl Schillinger (19:20)
- Boswell’s London Journal, 1762-1763
– James Boswell
- My Struggle: Book 1
- My Struggle: Book 2
- My Struggle: Book 3
- My Struggle: Book Four
- Fates and Furies: A Novel
– Lauren Groff
- A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall: A Novel
– Will Chancellor
- Brand New Ancients
– Kate Tempest
- The Big Green Tent: A Novel
– Ludmila Ulitskaya
Liesl’s 2016 goals
- Childhood; Boyhood; Youth
– Tolstoy
- Eugene Onegin
– Alexander Pushkin
- Doctor Zhivago
– Boris Pasternak
- The Complete Works of Isaac Babel
– Isaac Babel
Posy Simmonds (43:50)
- The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling
– Henry Fielding
- Alone in Berlin
– Hans Fallada
- Promise at Dawn: A Memoir
– Romain Gary
Posy’s 2016 goals
- My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels, Book One
- The Story of a New Name: Neapolitan Novels, Book Two
- Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay: Neapolitan Novels, Book Three
- The Story of the Lost Child: Neapolitan Novels, Book Four
Levi Stahl (34:10)
- John Aubrey: My Own Life
– Ruth Scurr
Rupert Thomson (and our 2014 talk) (6:40)
- Love Me Back
– Merritt Tierce
- Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell
– Deborah Solomon
- The Green Road: A Novel
– Anne Enright
Rupert’s 2016 goals
- The Visiting Privilege: New and Collected Stories
– Joy Williams
- A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories
– Lucia Berlin
Irvine Welsh (22:40)
- Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America
– Jill Leovy
- Jellyfish
– Janice Galloway
Warren Woodfin (23:55)
- Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800-1200
– Maureen C. Miller
- Oliver VII
– Antal Szerb (tr. Len Rix)
Warren’s 2016 goal
- Middlemarch
Jim Woodring (44:55)
- Tenth of December: Stories
– George Saunders
- How To Draw Cartoons
– Clare Briggs
Claudia Young (42:40)
- My Brilliant Friend: Neapolitan Novels, Book One
- The Story of a New Name: Neapolitan Novels, Book Two
- Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay: Neapolitan Novels, Book Three
- The Story of the Lost Child: Neapolitan Novels, Book Four
Claudia’s 2016 goals
- Devotion: A Memoir
– Dani Shapiro
- Slow Motion: A Memoir of a Life Rescued by Tragedy
– Dani Shapiro
- The Fire Next Time
– James Baldwin
- Between the World and Me
– Ta-Nehisi Coates
Gil Roth (53:10)
- James Merrill: Life and Art
– Langdon Hammer
- The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World
– David Jaher
- Beware of Pity
– Stefan Zweig
- Invisible Ink: My Mother’s Love Affair With A Famous Cartoonist
- The Story of My Tits
– Jennifer Hayden
Gil’s 2016 goals
- The Sword of Honour Trilogy
– Evelyn Waugh
- Patience
– Dan Clowes
- The Radetzky March
– Joseph Roth
- The Portrait of a Lady
– Henry James
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Guest List Sequence
Jonathan Galassi – begins at 3:20
Peter Kuper – 4:15
David Jaher – 5:40
Rupert Thomson – 6:40
Ron Hogan – 8:05
Brad Gooch – 11:40
Jonathan Kranz – 13:20
Matt Farber – 14:55
Summer Pierre – 15:25
Kathe Koja – 17:00
Dmitry Samarov – 18:10
Liesl Schillinger – 19:20
Irvine Welsh – 22:40
Warren Woodfin – 23:55
Jennifer Hayden – 25:10
Derf Backderf – 29:15
Michael Meyer – 29:55
Witold Rybczynski – 31:15
Michael Dirda – 32:35
Levi Stahl – 34:10
JD McClatchy – 35:55
John Clute – 36:30
Dylan Horrocks – 37:25
Dan Perkins / Tom Tomorrow – 40:05
Liz Hand – 41:00
Claudia Young – 42:40
Posy Simmonds – 43:50
Jim Woodring – 44:55
Elizabeth Samet – 46:05
Lorenzo Mattotti – 46:35
Scott McCloud – 47:05
Langdon Hammer – 47:40
Anthea Bell – 49:55
Me – 53:10
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