You're listening to Reading Glasses, a show about book culture and literary life designed to help you read better.

I'm author and book devour, Mallory O'Mara. And I'm Brea Grant, filmmaker, and e-reader. Hey, guess what?

Mallory, guess what? What, Brea?

It is one of our most popular episodes of the year. It's our best books episode. Here it is. We've been training for it all year. Plus, we're going to do the top books that the Glacters picked as well. It's a big episode for us, so we will just dive right in. Yeah, and don't want folks, we have the return of the most popular member of the reading glasses team. I finally found it. The slide whistle is, of course, back in time for our biggest episode of the year. But before we get into the best books, Briah, what are you reading? Well, okay, so I told myself, I said, I'm going to cut myself off.

I'm cutting it off.

I'm not going to read any more 2025 books.

There's no way I'm going to find one that's up there with the ones that I have read.

And then, motherfucker, I started reading the new R of Kwan.

And I'm not finished with it.

And it's really good. Are we saying Catabasis or catabasis? I think it's catabasis. But I am basing that off nothing. I, for some reason, when it said dark academia fantasy, I thought, I don't know. And then I opened it up and it was like 13 hours to read. I was like, I'm not going to like this book. And so I kept skipping it. I kept skipping it. I bought it. And then at some point the other night I couldn't sleep and I was like well, let me just open this thing up.

Cut you 15 hours later.

So good.

It's so good.

And if I had finished it, it would be on my top of the year.

Wow.

And I'm so bummed.

There's always one book like this.

I still have like 12 hours left.

It's so many, there's, it's such a long, it is a, this is a thick boy.

It is. would be on my top of the year. Wow. And I'm so bummed. There's always one book like this. I still have like 12 hours left.

It's so many, there's, it's such a long, it is a, this is a thick boy.

It is, uh, almost 600 pages. Oh man, a honker. I'll tell you how it starts because it's incredible. this woman is like drawing a pentagram and she's like I'm going to go to hell to go get this professor that I need in order to write me a letter of recommendation in order for me to finish my graduate degree. Very relatable. And she's, of course. And she's building. And it's kind of just about like how dumb academia is. And she's like, you know, I have to do this because it's like if I, otherwise, I'm not going to be all this useless work for this degree. and then this guy who she's like really who irritates her shows up and he's like, ah, you know, I have to do this because it's like, if I, otherwise, I'm not going, it's going to be all this useless work for this degree.

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