At the start of this podcast, Erin, Eric, and Alex asked a simple question: Is Jonathan Franzen good? After fourteen episodes, the answer is clear: Yes, he’s good (most of the time). But which Jonathan Franzen books are good? In the season one finale, we rank all of Jonathan Franzen’s books, answer a few listener questions, and reveal what’s next for the podcast.

In the final book-focused episode of our first season, critic Leo Robson joins us to discuss Jonathan Franzen’s most recent collection of essays, The End of the End of the Earth. It’s a more focused book than its nonfiction predecessor, Farther Away—nearly all of the essays revolve around nature and, in particular, birds. But is that a good thing? (No, it’s not.)

There are some non-bird things in this book, most notably a repellant essay about Edith Wharton that focuses on her attractiveness. And there is at least one decent essay, the title essay, which covers Franzen’s time aboard an Arctic cruise ship and is his take on his frenemy David Foster Wallace’s most famous work of nonfiction, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.” But mostly, this is a book about Jonathan Franzen’s only friends: the birds.

As we enter the home stretch, novelist Gabriel Roth joins us to discuss Jonathan Franzen’s second essay collection, Farther Away, which was published in 2012. A bit of a grab bag, Farther Away consists of twenty essays about a host of random subjects: the history of the novel, environmental degradation, Alice Munro, New York, the word then, among many others. But mostly, it’s centered on two subjects. One is the recent suicide of Franzen’s friend David Foster Wallace, which haunts the most recent essays. And the other is Franzen’s growing obsession with birds, which permeates nearly every paragraph in this pretty long book. Even if you know that Franzen loves birds—and you surely do—you’re not prepared for just how much bird stuff is in Farther Away.

Discussed in this episode: Does this contain Franzen’s worst piece of writing ever? Is it normal to have a crush on your cousin? And just what is it with Franzen and the birds, anyway?