We asked the past year’s podcast-guests for the favorite books they read in 2020 and the books they hope to read in 2021 for our special year-end Guest List episode! Thirty 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! And visit our Bookshop.org page for many of this year’s Guest List books!

Photo of many of my 2020 books (not incl. comics) by me. There were a LOT of electronic versions this year

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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.

APPLE PLAYER TK

The Guests

Derf Backderf – 27:20

• Krazy Kat in KoKo Land – George Herriman
• Loac Essentials Presents King Features Volume 1: Krazy Kat 1934 – George Herriman

Derf’s 2021 goals

• Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
• Nod Away – Joshua Cotter

Philip Boehm – 41:40

• Young Heroes of the Soviet Union: A Memoir and a Reckoning – Alex Halberstadt
• Shadow City: A Woman Walks Kabul – Taran Khan

Philip’s 2021 goals

• Saint Sebastian’s Abyss – Mark Haber
• new poems by Nathalie Diaz

Ruben Bolling (aka Ken Fisher) – 10:15

• Heart of Darkness – Peter Kuper adaptation of Joseph Conrad
• Life in the Stupidverse – Tom Tomorrow
• We Should Improve Society Somewhat – Matt Bors

Ruben’s 2021 goals

• Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio – Derf Backderf

Betsy Bonner – 5:45

• Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
• Postcolonial Love Poem – Natalie Diaz
• Fierce Attachments – Vivian Gornick
• The Bill From My Father: A Memoir – Bernard Cooper
• Recollections of My Nonexistence: A Memoir – Rebecca Solnit

Henri Cole – 16:45

• Daybreak: New and Selected Poems – Claire Malroux
• A Month in Siena – Hisham Matar
• Cleanness – Garth Greenwell
• The New Life of Hugo Gardner – Louis Begley
• So Forth: Poems – Rosanna Warren

Joan Marans Dim – 19:30

• Live As If: A teacher’s love story – Frye Gaillard
• Disloyal: A Memoir: The True Story of the Former Personal Attorney to President Donald J. Trump – Michael Cohen
• Fear: Trump in the White House – Bob Woodward

Joan’s 2021 goals

• Nothing about Trump

Emily Flake – 9:35

• A Children’s Bible – Lydia Millet

Emily’s 2021 goals

• No Immediate Danger: Volume One of Carbon Ideologies – William T. Vollmann

Jonathan W. Gray – 14:10

• Immortal Hulk Vol. 1 – Al Ewing & Joe Bennett
• Sing, Unburied, Sing – Jesmyn Ward

Jonathan’s 2021 goals

• He hopes to tackle James McBride’s work

Tom Hart – 14:35

• Blossoms and Bones: Drawing a Life Back Together – Kim Krans

Tom’s 2021 goals

• Middlemarch – George Eliot (maybe…?)

Arthur Hoyle – 6:40

• 6 to 6 – Mather Schneider
• The Fragile Keepers – Natalie Pinter
• Escape From the Planet Crouton – Wayne F. Burke

Rian Hughes – 7:15

• The Seventh Function of Language – Laurent Binet

Rian’s 2021 goals

• His own novel!

Richard Kadrey – 12:55

• The Rural Gothic in American Popular Culture: Backwoods Horror and Terror in the Wilderness – Bernice Murphy
• Black Hammer Volume 1: Secret Origins – Jeff Lemire & Dean Ormston

Richard’s 2021 goals

• Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin – Megan Rosenbloom
• House of Psychotic Women: An Autobiographical Topography of Female Neurosis in Horror and Exploitation Films – Kier-La Janisse

Ben Katchor – 26:40

• The Life and Art of Andrew Ducrow & The Romantic Age of the English Circus – A.H. Saxon
• The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s – Alan M. Wald

Kathe Koja – 18:05

• The Old Guard Book One: Opening Fire – Greg Rucka & Leandro Fernandez
• The Old Guard Book Two: Force Multiplied – Greg Rucka & Leandro Fernandez

Kathe’s 2021 goals

• She’ll know it when she sees it

Tess Lewis – 38:50

• Beowulf: A New Translation – Maria Dahvana Headley
• Circe – Madeline Miller

Tess’ 2021 goals

• EEG – Dasa Drndic, Celia Hawkesworth (Translator)
• Belladonna – Dasa Drndic, Celia Hawkesworth (Translator)
• Doppelgänger – Dasa Drndic, SD Curtis & Celia Hawkesworth (Translators)

Ellen Lindner – 22:15

• Make and Mend: Sashiko-Inspired Embroidery Projects to Customize and Repair Textiles and Decorate Your Home – Jessica Marquez

Ellen’s 2021 goals

• Young Heroes of the Soviet Union: A Memoir and a Reckoning – Alex Halberstadt
• Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism – bell hooks

Margot Mifflin – 42:25

• How We Fight for Our Lives – Saeed Jones
• In the Dream House – Carmen Maria Machado

David Mikics – 11:20

• The Bright Book of Life: Novels to Read and Reread – Harold Bloom
• A Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
• The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann

David’s 2021 goals

• Oblomov – Ivan Goncharov
• Freedom: Volume I: Freedom in the Making of Western Culture – Orlando Patterson
• The Hill of Evil Counsel – Amos Oz
• True Grit – Charles Portis
• The Ravine: A Family, a Photograph, a Holocaust Massacre Revealed – Wendy Lower
• Philip Roth: The Biography – Blake Bailey
• The Golden Age of the American Essay: 1945-1970 – edited by Phillip Lopate

Otto Penzler – 36:55

• Eddie’s Boy: A Butcher’s Boy Novel – Thomas Perry

Woodrow Phoenix – 29:20

• Entryways of Milan / Ingressi Di Milano – Daniel Sherer (Author), Grazia Signori (Author), Lisa Hockemeyer (Author), Fabrizio Ballabio (Author), Matthew Billings (Photographer), Paola Pansini (Photographer)
• Krazy Kat: the Complete Color Sundays 1935-1944 – George Herriman
• Becoming Horses – Disa Wallander

Darryl Pinckney – 25:50

• All the Wrong Places: Adrift in the Politics of the Pacific Rim – James Fenton

Darryl’s 2021 goals

• Dichtung Und Wahrheit – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Alta Price – 24:10

• Having and Being Had – Eula Biss

Alta’s 2021 goals

• Strange Beasts of China – Yan Ge, Jeremy Tiang (Translator)
• A Brief History of the Movement – Petra H?lová, Alex Zucker (Translator)
• Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over – Nell Painter
• Revelations – Ruben Quesada
• More by Juli Zeh

Steve Ronin – 40:00

• Ready Player One – Ernest Cline
• Ready Player Two – Ernest Cline
• The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life – Mark Manson

Steve’s 2021 goals

• King Bullet: A Sandman Slim Novel – Richard Kadrey
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead – Tom Stoppard
• The Complete Girls with Slingshots – Danielle Corsetto
• Northlanders: Book One: The Anglo-Saxon Saga – Brian Wood
• Spangle – Gary Jennings
• Big Damn Sin City – Frank Miller
• Apocalypse Burlesque – Supervert
• How Not To Love in Quarantine – Supervert
• The Dark Reign of Gothic Rock: In The Reptile House with The Sisters of Mercy, Bauhaus and The Cure – Dave Thompsn
• New York Rock: From the Rise of The Velvet Underground to the Fall of CBGB – Steven Blush

Dmitry Samarov – 3:45

• Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
• Suttree – Cormac McCarthy
• Underworld – Don Delillo
• F*ckface: And Other Stories – Leah Hampton

Dmitry’s extremely tentative 2021 goals

• Ulysses – James Joyce

Michael Shaw – 37:55

• S. J. Perelman: Writings – S. J. Perelman

Michael’s 2021 goals

• A Mile and a Half of Lines: The Art of James Thurber – Michael J. Rosen
• The Fergus – Tori Grant Welhouse

Stoya – 7:45

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon

Stoya’s 2021 goals

• The Light of Other Days: – Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Baxter
• The Land of Laughs – Jonathan Carroll
• Anything she can find in Serbian

Benjamin Taylor – 10:55

• The Glorious American Essay: One Hundred Essays from Colonial Times to the Present – edited by Phillip Lopate

Benjamin’s 2021 goals

• Tom Stoppard: A Life – Hermione Lee

Jeff Trexler – 20:40

• Superman Smashes the Klan – Gene Luen Yang & Gurihiru
• Strange Adventures, Vol. 1 – Tom King
• Constitution Illustrated – R Sikoryak
• The Lehman Trilogy – Stefano Massini

Jeff’s 2021 goals

• The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov

John Vercher – 35:40

• Where the Dead Sit Talking – Brandon Hobson

John’s 2021 goals

• Luster – Raven Leilani
• Leave the World Behind – Rumaan Alam

Sheila Williams – 36:15

• The Wright Sister – Patty Dann
• Nine Bar Blues – Sheree Renée Thomas

Gil Roth – 43:00

• 88 Names – Matt Ruff
• The Periodic Table – Primo Levi
• Speak, Memory – Vladimir Nabokov
• Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate – Daniel Mendelsohn
• XX – Rian Hughes
• The Last Samurai – Helen DeWitt
• Experience – Martin Amis
• The Complete Poems – Philip Larkin
• Essays After Eighty – Donald Hall
• A Perfect Spy – John Le Carré
• Self-Portrait – Celia Paul

Gil’s 2021 goals

• The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present – Edited by Phillip Lopate
• The Glorious American Essay: One Hundred Essays from Colonial Times to the Present – Edited by Phillip Lopate
• Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018 – Peter Schjeldahl
• Philip Roth In Memory – Joel Conarroe, Claudia Roth Pierpont, Norman Manea, Bernard Avishai, Nicole Krauss, Janis Bellow, Judith Thurman, Julia Golier, Edna O’Brien, Andrew Wylie, Benjamin Taylor
• Nabokov in America: On the Road to Lolita – Robert Roper
• The Fire of Joy – Clive James

Podcast: Play in new window | Download