Welcome to a year of great books. I'm Laura Miller, Slate's Books and Culture columnist. It's time to choose the last book we're going to be reading in the series. Joining us at this time is John Dickerson, who you know as the political director of CBS News and the host of Face the Nation, but whose Slate Plus members probably knew first

as the magazine's chief political correspondent and a panelist on the Slate Political Gab Fest.

John, thanks for joining us at what must be a crazy time for you.

It is a crazy time. Thank you so much, Laura.

I'm so happy to have the light at the end of the tunnel

be this after the crazy time ends. So you're doing me a great thing. So thank you.

We have a short list of four books that we know you're eager to read, and we'll talk about them

in a little bit. But first, tell me, are you able to read any fiction at all during a year like this?

I mean, I try to because it keeps me sane, and it's, you know, I was a English major in college,

and so it's my first love.

It's what I thought I would be doing.

It returns me to some sort of past before everything got so hectic. But because I also do the whistle stop

podcast, which is intensively, and there's a lot of reading, because it's historical and there are

periods that I don't know so well. I spent a lot of my non-work time

reading histories. So usually I can just kind of get snatches of reading done. I did get

all the light we cannot see read this season, but fiction, unfortunately, takes a big hit

during the campaign year. I can imagine.

So you were an English major, and I know that you're a bit of a trollope fan because we were talking about that earlier.

What's your taste in classics?

Do you get a chance to read them much anymore?

Do you focus on contemporary fiction?

I mean, do you have any favorites?

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