There are so many books being published every month, so how can we boil a year's worth of titles down to a few bests?

Last Thursday, the New York City bookstore Housing Works hosted a reading that included: a fable about a book that comes into being as it's read, an essay about Fiona Apple and obsession, a monologue about the nature of truth and theater and a howling wolf, scenes from a novella about natal charts and witchcraft, and a true story of breakfast in a psychiatric ward.

Podcasts are an incredibly personal medium -- we often listen to them alone, usually on headphones, with hosts’ voices sounding like they’re inside our own heads.