Welcome to another episode of the Short Stacks. This week we're doing something a little bit different. It's New Year's Eve after all, so we wanted to make it special.

I brought back past guest and friend of the pod, Lauren, aka literary Lauren, and she and I are going to be talking about our

top five reads of 2018 and the books were most excited about reading in 2019.

Oh, I didn't even do this. I'm your host, Tracy Thomas. Before I dive into anything else, I just want to say thank you to everyone for listening to this show.

The Stack started in 2018, kind of on a whim.

I just wanted to talk about books that other people weren't talking about,

and I reached out to some friends and said,

if I make a podcast, will you come on?

And now, here we are, you know, 35,000 downloads later.

And I'm just so grateful for all of you

for listening to the show, for reaching out,

for commenting, for following, for liking,

for whatever you've done.

Thank you so, so much.

The show has been so special to me,

and when I started it in April,

I couldn't have imagined that it would have grown

as much as it has.

So thank you again for telling your friends and thank you

for allowing me to have listeners who aren't my mom, my brother, and my husband.

Okay, now let's talk about Patreon.

Patreon is a website where you contribute to the work we're doing on the show.

...