S7 Ep. 12: The Best Books Machine: Lydia Kiesling on Making the Lists—or Not

Novelist and critic Lydia Kiesling joins co-hosts Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan to discuss the creation and the spirit of year-end book lists. She talks about list culture getting its start at the small, online literary magazine, The Millions, and its eventual spread to seemingly every media outlet. The three grapple with the significance of inclusion on these lists, whether they really sell more books, and the ethics of their construction. Kiesling reads from her new novel, Mobility. To hear the full episode, subscribe through iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app (include the forward slashes when searching). You can also listen by streaming from the player below. Check out video versions of our interviews on the Fiction/Non/Fiction Instagram account, the Fiction/Non/Fiction YouTube Channel, and our show website: https://www.fnfpodcast.net/ This episode of the podcast was produced by Anne Kniggendorf. Lydia Kiesling: The Golden State Mobility Others: Books We Love | NPR A Year in Reading: 2023 | The Millions 100 Notable Books of 2023 | New York Times ​​The 10 Best Books Through Time | New York Times A Year in Reading: 2023 | The Millions “Crime,” by Marilyn Stasio, August 19, 2001| New York Times  “‘Terrorist’ – to Whom? V.V. Ganeshananthan’s novel ‘Brotherless Night’ reveals the moral nuances of violence, ever belied by black-an-white terminology” by Omar El Akkad, Jan. 1, 2023 | New York Times Molly Stern The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan Blink by Malcolm Gladwell The Collected Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald  The Stand by Stephen King A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley  The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver  Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy Ali & Nino by Kurban Said The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway 1984 by George Orwell Pod Save America (podcast) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices