It's a new year, and we're so excited to be joined by HIllary Kelly, a book and TV critic at Vulture, The New Yorker, and LA Times. Angela and Hillary talk about the books they missed in 2021, and what to look forward to in 2022. They also talk about the hype machine, talking about books others pretend to like, how doing a profile of Claire Vaye Watkins helped her get over her own fears, and why she doesn't know what books about happy people want from her. Books discussed in this episode: Bewilderment by Richard Powers I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins Night Bitch by Rachel Yoder Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch by Rivka Galchen Happy All The Time by Laurie Colwin So Long, See You Tomorrow by Richard Maxwell Middlemarch by George Eliot Hillary's favorites from last year: Night Bitch by Rachel Yoder Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch by Rivka Galchen Hillary's picks for next year: The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O'Rourke Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage by Heather Havrilesky Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation by Maud Newton The Candy House by Jennifer Egan To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara  Thanks so much for listening! In two weeks, we'll be speaking with Wajahat Ali, author of the forthcoming Go Back To Where You Came From.