Friday Mood Recs: What bucket list book should you read this year?
The ones I love, the ones I don't, and what's on my TBR
I’m not sure if this is Substack specific or a broader vibe shift in literary online spaces, but this seems to be the year that many of us readers are turning our attention to books we’ve always meant to read. Perhaps it was a somewhat lackluster publisher year in 2024 (although the great books were great!) that has turned so many readers’ attention to the backlist. But I think more than that, we are collectively feeling a desire to be in the presence of great writers of the past and a need to challenge and fulfill ourselves more intellectually and artistically.
Whatever the cause, I’m very into this movement and am hoping to read a few perennial TBR toppers myself this year. For today’s Mood Recs, I’m offering some recommendations for particularly great, often long, essential reads that I think are well worth your time. Just for fun, I’ll also include two to skip and my personal bucket list books that keep catching my eye this year.
Before I get into my recommendations, one related programming note: and I will be covering Emma by Jane Austen for the final season of Novel Pairings. After five wonderful years of the podcast, limited time has gotten the best of us and its the right moment to move onto other projects. But we are so excited to be closing out with a recap series of one of our mutual favorite books—and the very first book we covered together back in 2020! These recaps will be available to everyone on the main feed, and we’d love to have you join us to celebrate Novel Pairings and, of course, Jane Austen’s 250th birthday! If you want additional content, including Footnotes episodes with close reading discussions for every reading section, classes, and Zoom discussions, head over to our Patreon and become a Classics Club Literature Scholar. Our Emma season will start in March so there’s plenty of time to find your book, gather your annotation supplies, and get your TBR in order!