Hey everyone, David Kern here. Welcome to a very special episode of Close Reeds.

This is the episode in which we reveal the books that we are going to be discussing on the show next year.

That's right, it is the Great Winnowing 2024, which is really recorded in 2023, but it's the books for 2024.

This episode was recorded live in front of a audience at the Close Reads on the Road event in Atlanta, Georgia, back in August.

At the end of this episode, however, there is a bit of an addendum. So stick around for that, because we did tweak, just small tweak, a couple of things that we talked about on this episode.

So make sure you listen to the addendum that I added there at the end to get the full picture.

Of course, by now you have probably seen the post on Substack or on Facebook revealing all of the books,

but it gives you a little bit of more context on how some things changed, put it that way,

that you might have heard, especially if you were at that live episode recording.

And also if you are listening to hear what books got excluded from the list, then there's some back and forth on that as well.

So the addendum might help with that as well.

Before we get into the episode, though, I want to talk about our sponsor. This episode of

Close Reeds is brought to you by you, the wonderful, stupendous, magnanimous, kind, loving people who

listen to Close Reeds. Last week, I got a text message from Haley Croft, one of our wonderful listeners who's

become a dear friend saying that a number of you banded together, like Robin Hood and his

merry men in Sherwood Forest or something like that, and raised some money for our shop here in in concord goldberry books knowing that there's a lot

of construction down here and our numbers are down and somehow the news got out about that and that

you raised a not insignificant portion of money to help us get through this season and I just want to say thank you so much for that.

It was an incredible surprise and we feel so, so loved. We feel I was telling somebody that the money

is incredible and the notes that came with it are just as incredible because they show that

you find what we're doing here to be meaningful. You think that it matters, whether it's the shop

or the show. And that is incredibly special, incredibly rewarding and incredibly challenging.

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