The Great Winnowing of 2026 (for 2027)

Heidi White (0:04)

I'm Heidi White.

Sean Johnson (0:06)

And I'm Sean Johnson.

David Kern (0:07)

And you are listening to Close Reads Podcast for the Incurable Reader, on which we are discussing what books we're going to discuss on the podcast next year in the Year of Our Lord 2027 It is the great winnowing episode of 2026, the books for 2027, the winnowing episode of 2026 It's one of our favorite episodes to record.

We here, it's one of your favorite episodes to listen to. And here we are at the end of August, August 31st, recording about what books we're going to start talking about in like three and a half months. Heidi, how are you?

Heidi White (0:39)

I'm so great. Like the winnowing episode, we just have like a yearly countdown to this one.

David Kern (0:45)

I know, right?

I think about it like March or May, and I start kind of thinking, I guess I need to put that on the calendar just to prep ahead, to do some producing. And, you know, then it pops up, and I think, I guess we got to go ahead and do that, because what we do is we record the episode and where we decide. Then we got to order, I got to make sure I have copies of all the books, like new copies, nice copies. Graham takes photos, he designed the graphics, and then we have a special release. I don't call it a ceremony, but it's a whole event on Close Reads Online.

Heidi White (1:16)

A day long Close Reads annual holiday.

David Kern (1:19)

That's right. It is. That's right. It's like the NFL Draft or something.

Heidi White (1:22)

Yeah, the NFL Draft.

David Kern (1:23)

Yeah, it's better than the NFL Draft, Sean. It's up there. It's closer to Super Bowl than the NFL Draft. Agreed.

So Sean, how are you?

Sean Johnson (1:31)

I'm great. I'm doing really well.

David Kern (1:33)

You stuffed a lemon pound cake or something in your mouth right as I was starting. And actually what happened was I saw you stuff it in your mouth and then I thought, let's start.

Sean Johnson (1:41)

Let's see if you can get through it. It's a thick slice of homemade bread with a bunch of butter on it.

David Kern (1:47)

Oh, I see.

Heidi White (1:48)

It's not actually lemon.

David Kern (1:49)

It's just that golden buttery color was shining.

Sean Johnson (1:53)

I mean, lemon pound cake would be great too, but I'm living the life, yeah.

David Kern (1:56)

So this episode could take a while. I mean, we'll see how it goes. We might even have to do two episodes. Who knows how long it's going to take us.

Sean Johnson (2:05)

I brought multiple beverages in with me. I'm upset.

David Kern (2:08)

I got a full bottle of water.

I grabbed a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup and I got some chips. It's almost dinner time. I'm hungry.

Sean Johnson (2:16)

And I am underprepared. Yeah, yeah.

David Kern (2:21)

What do you have, like a protein shake or like a...

Sean Johnson (2:24)

And joy in my heart.

David Kern (2:25)

Do you have some kind of like bean pods or something like that? No, I have none of that.

Heidi White (2:33)

Like I said, I'm underprepared.

Sean Johnson (2:35)

Just some bone broth powder or something.

David Kern (2:38)

Okay, so what happens here, if you're new to the show, well, welcome if this is your first time enjoying this episode. What we have is I have created a spreadsheet. And on that spreadsheet, which I have not shared with Sean and Heidi, are 37 nominees.

I have the titles, we've got the author, we've got the year published for most of them. I couldn't, I ran out of time on all of that. But I've got all the page counts and then I allocated a number of weeks for all of those titles that I think we'd have to take on the show. You'd like to cover them. Also, then I've got some notes added to it. So I'm now going to share, I'm going to drop this Google Doc into the text, into our Close Reads text thread, the three of us have. We'll go through all of these titles. We're going to go through some first impressions, I guess, from you guys. While you guys look it over for the first time though, I'm going to say a few goals that I like to keep in mind as we're thinking about these things. So one of them is that we have to do a reread. That's become a new tradition. So there are a few books on here under one of the, under column or line, row 17 in our spreadsheet has a couple of options that have been suggested, have been nominated by our listeners. So we'll have to discuss that. Also, we could potentially discuss some other ones as well. So we're going to have a reread. We also have to give the audience a choice to vote title. So we're going to choose five from here to... All right, I'm sending it to the other one.