Karoline Bourdeau introduces us to BetaBooks, a platform where authors open up their writing for crowd-sourced consultation. Plus, we ponder about our own 2025 reading goals, and consider how Spotify is changing the competition for audiobook consumption.

Here’s our Year in Reading, one-hour special episode, featuring your top lit picks of 2024. From page-turning thrillers to memorable memoirs, and even the unforgettable guilty pleasures, you have us covered. AMI’s Dave Brown helps us crank out the list of your best book experiences of the year.

Karoline Bourdeau

• But You Don't Look Arab: And Other Tales of Unbelonging by Hala Gorani

• The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters by Susan Page

• This Summer Will Be Different by Carley Fortune

• The Women by Kristin Hannah

• Dancing in Small Spaces: One Couple’s Journey with Parkinson’s Disease and Lewy Body Dementia by Leslie A. Davidson

Greg David

• Closer by Sea by Perry Chafe

Terry Bray

• The Wandering Inn (Book 1 of The Wandering Inn series) by Pirate Aba

Julie Martin

• The Woman in the White Kimono by Ana Johns

Danielle McLaughlin

• The Anthropologists by Aysegul Savas

Kamini Rodhan

• Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

Aamer Khan

• Vox by Christina Dalcher

• Will Trent Series by Karin Slaughter

• The Love Match by Priyanka Taslim

Carole Yaple

• Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice by David S. Tatel

• Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Kelly MacDonald

• Tuesdays at Mori’s by Mitch Albom

Paul Daniel

1. As Long As the Lemon Trees by Zoufa Katouh

2. The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters by Tom Nichols

3. Consent: A Memoir by Jill Ciment

4. Sandwich: A Novel by Catherine Newman

5. Hope for Cynics: The Science Behind Human Goodness by Jamil Shaki

Sehdeen Lowe

• Every book by Anastasia Wilde

• A Thousand Boy Kisses by Tillie Cole

• A Thousand Broken Pieces (Sequel)

An emergency landing during a flight to Toronto has a group of strangers, including an entire bridal party, snowbound at the quirky Snow Falls Inn in a picture-perfect town. As romances unfold and movies are filmed, they soon realize there’s no place they’d rather be for the holidays. We review this fun, cozy Holiday read with Aamer Khan.