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Reading the End Bookcast, Ep.79: 2017 Book Awards and The Woman Next Door

It’s the inaugural episode of our Serial Box Book Club! Plus, a sea update, a rundown of some recent book awards, and our thoughts on Yewande Omotoso’s (Bailey’s-longlisted!) book The Woman Next Door. You can listen to the podcast in the embedded player below or download the file directly to take with you on the go!

Episode 79

Here’s the time signatures for each segment, if you want to skip around!

1:05 – What We’re Reading
4:01 – Sea or Space Update
5:42 – Serial Box Book Club
14:32 – Book Awards!
31:58 – The Woman Next Door, Yewande Omotoso
44:41 – What We’re Reading Next Time

And here are the books we discussed this ep!

What We’re Reading

Mama Day, Gloria Naylor
The Abyss Surrounds Us, Emily Skrutskie
The Fortunes, Peter Ho Davies

Sea or Space

Here’s an article about the supergroups of humpback whales.

Serial Box Book Club

We’re reading episodes one and two of The Witch Who Came in from the Cold. Thanks again to Serial Box for letting us have these episodes to review!

Book Prizes

National Book Critics Circle Awards

LaRose, Louise Erdrich
Future Home of the Living God, Louise Erdrich
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
Commonwealth, Ann Patchett
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, Ibram Kendi
Lab Girl, Hope Jahren

Los Angeles Times Book Awards

Darktown, Thomas Mullen
A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil, from Tahrir Square to ISIS, Robert F. Worth
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy, Heather Ann Thompson
They Can’t Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement, Wesley Lowery
Another Brooklyn, Jacqueline Woodson

Suki Kim on journalism and memoir

His Bloody Project, Graeme Macrae Burnet
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes within Us and a Grander View of Life, Ed Yong
Patient H. M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets, Luke Dittrich
Where the Jews Aren’t: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region, Masha Gessen

Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction

The Woman Next Door, Yewande Omotoso
Barkskins, Annie Proulx
The Lesser Bohemians, Eimear McBride
Stay with Me, Ayobami Adebayo
The Essex Serpent, Sarah Perry

Tournament of Books

We did not love this match-up.

The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
All the Birds in the Sky, Charlie Jane Anders
The Mothers, Brit Bennett
Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi
We Love You Charlie Freeman, Kaitlyn Greenidge
Version Control, Dexter Palmer
The Vegetarian, Han Kang
Sudden Death, Álvaro Enrigue
High Dive, Jonathan Lee
The Nix, Nathan Hill
Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, Max Porter

For This Time

The Woman Next Door, Yewande Omotoso

For Next Time

Master and Commander, Patrick O’Brian

Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour