"Certainly the story is well known, but given author's propensity to post photos of himself wearing running shoes in Iowa, potentially relevant again starting next year?"

"If you’re only going to read one book this year about an aging Iowa pastor being quietly reflective, then this is the one for you! No one builds a sentence like Marilynne Robinson."

"This novel, based on the story of King Lear and set in an Iowa farming community in the late 1970s, has a phenomenal narrator. Ginny never betrays her voice; she’s initially naive and always straightforward. Yet she manages to drop deft charges of insight on virtually every page. A devastating and gorgeous account of fathers and daughters, husbands and wives, toxic masculinity, corrosive secrets…and an abiding heroine."

"Why do the lives of writers seem so… train-wrecky? Mary Flannery O’Connor was no exception. She survived the back-to-back snake pits of the Iowa Writers Workshop and the Yaddo colony only to find herself trapped at home with her strong-willed mother and crippling lupus. The life of this Southern Gothic belle makes the somber existence of Emily Dickinson look like a barrel full of monkeys."

"I just love this book. When I was halfway through it—right around when one of the three daughters tries to talk to her father and he goes out into a storm—I was like, “Oh my God, this is King Lear.” I was so impressed with how Smiley was able to take such a classic tale and put it in rural 20th-century Iowa. It’s beautiful, it’s crushing, it’s everything King Lear is—and it’s effortless. I was blown away by the imagination, intellect and talent it must have taken to do that."

"I grew up mostly not having cable. Consequently, I watched a lot of reruns of British comedies that ended up on our local PBS station in Iowa: Are You Being Served, Red Dwarf, and Doctor Who, to name but a few. This educated me on the intricacies of British humor. [Holy Grail] is the funniest film I’ve ever seen, hands down. Irreverent, absolutely silly, witty, and smart. Plus, it’s set in Medieval times, which, as you can see from my first pick is also a sweet spot for me. If you don’t like this movie, we may not be able to be the best of friends."

"I really like Fargo a lot. It has everything. I love the Coen brothers. I love Frances McDormand, I think she’s just an extraordinary actress. She’s so funny in that movie, as Marge. I’m from the Midwest, I’m from Iowa; so obviously that accent’s really heightened, but it’s something that I hear every time I go home. It’s something that feels like very much where I grew up; that backdrop is exactly where I grew up. It’s definitely exaggerated but yeah, there’s definitely that, “Oh, oh my gosh” where I come from. And when I go home and after I have a couple of beers you’d probably hear it come out: “You betcha!” [laughs]"