[00:00:09] ANNE BOGEL: Hey readers, I'm Anne Bogel and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that's dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don't get bossy on the show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read. Every week we'll talk all things books and reading and do a little literary matchmaking with one guest.

Readers, it is birthday week for my kids' reading journal, My Reading Adventures, which makes it a great time to pick up a copy for the young reader in your life. My Reading Adventures was designed with kids ages 8 to 12 in mind, but teens and adults are also opting for this over the My Reading Life adult journal so they can track their reads in a lighthearted way and put that emoji rating scale to good use.

Whether you're looking to boost a reading life of a kid in your life or get them a fun back-to-school treat, My Reading Adventures is just the ticket. It's available wherever new books are sold. If you'd prefer to go with my original bestselling My Reading Life adult book journal to track your own reading adventures, you're in good company.

Back-to-school season is a great time for new beginnings and fresh starts. So no matter your age, get your fresh copy of My Reading Life now wherever you get your new books. Happy reading and happy journaling.

[00:01:28] Readers, today's guest has a great bookish reputation in her Somerville, New Jersey community. Not only does she create mini summer reading guides for her friends and family, her book club regularly visits her home to shop her well-stocked bookshelves. A career teacher, Annie McCloskey, loves gathering with her book club members for reading and social outings.

She's been a longtime listener of the podcast and I'm so excited to chat about her Lifetime Top Ten Bookmark, her mini Summer Reading Guide she makes for her teacher friends, and what she's looking for in her reading life this season.

Let's get to it. Annie, welcome to the show.

ANNIE MCCLOSKEY: Thank you, Anne, for having me. This has been a bucket list item for me.

ANNE: Oh, that's so kind. I do feel like this conversation has been many years in the making by this point.

ANNIE: Yeah. I filled out a few guest submissions, and I'm excited to be here today.

ANNE: Annie, okay, so we have a history—Just our submission form keeps a history. We're not like making meticulous logs by hand or anything—of the submissions we've received from potential guests to be on the show. And I think you're definitely in the running for the most submissions sent in over the years. I feel like you get a gold star and a badge and a trophy and a conversation on What Should I Read Next?.

[00:02:38] ANNIE: Aah.

ANNE: So thank you.

ANNIE: Thank you.

ANNE: Thank you for your persistence. And I have to tell you, we'll talk more about this in a moment, but it was interesting to see what changed over the years in your submissions and also what has stayed the same for like seven years. And I know we're going to talk about some of those things today.

ANNIE: Awesome.

ANNE: Do you have any inklings as to what those things might be?

ANNIE: Maybe. I think Stephen King might come up today. I don't know.

ANNE: Oh, that's funny. That's not the big flashing light thing that jumped out at me. But I will say that I think this is a good direction we're going to go. And it's really this conversation has been a long time coming. Although we've gotten to connect in real life. So it's not like we haven't talked about books in person before.

ANNIE: Yeah. Right before the pandemic, literally before the pandemic, I saw you at Strand and it was I think I got home after that book talk and school shut down like three days later. So that was my last hurrah, my last trip on the train.

ANNE: That was the last event I did in 2020. It was March, I think, 6th.

[00:03:42] ANNIE: The school stopped on the 13th. I think we were sent home for... I'm using air quotes here. We were sent home for two weeks and bring two weeks of material home to teach from. So yeah, that was March.

ANNE: Well, I'm glad we could go out with a bang and meet then in person because you're not far from The Strand yourself. Can I say that, or is that a disservice to New Jerseyans?

ANNIE: No, that's fine. I'm a good 45-minute train ride. Actually, I moved into a small town last year, and so I can walk to the train from my apartment, get on the train, and get right into Penn Station in about 40 minutes on a good day. So, yeah, I love to go into the city.

ANNE: That sounds amazing. Well, I hope to see you again sometime in New Jersey, in Manhattan, or anywhere else, because I know you get around in the reading life sometimes.

ANNIE: Yeah.

ANNE: We might hear about that, too. Annie, give our readers a glimpse of who you are when you're not hanging out at the Strand.

ANNIE: Sure. I'm a teacher. I guess I define myself as a teacher first and foremost. I'm also a mom. I have two grown children. One of them is actually in Cambodia today. He and his wife are spending the whole summer in Southeast Asia. They're teachers and they're big travelers. And I moved to this little small town in central New Jersey called Somerville and I can walk everywhere. I can walk to my library, I can walk to my grocery store. It's only about a 10-minute ride to school. I do not teach in the same district that I live in, which is a good thing.

[00:05:10] My apartment is quite a library. My friends and my book club shop here often because I did downsize from a big home and I got rid of almost everything. But I did not get rid of probably a single book. So going from, let's say, 3,000 square feet to 900 square feet, the books are everywhere. But they're beautifully curated. I love, I love my apartment. It does look like a pretty library. It doesn't look like a messy library.

ANNE: So you downsized everything but the books?

ANNIE: Yeah. I'm a quilter. So I brought my quilts but I bought new furniture. It's very different. I love that apartment living. I've been able to do more, just walk out the door and travel a little bit more and it's easy to clean. So yeah, I love it.

ANNE: That sounds amazing. Tell me more about your book club shopping yourself.

ANNIE: So I'm at this book club in my town library and they are... I can't even tell you how important these young women are in my life. They're all significantly younger than I am. I'm 58. They're in their early 30s. And we met at the public library and we became truly a found family. There are now, I think about 14 of us. We meet once a month at a library and then we usually have some type of social thing, I mean, almost once a week now.

[00:06:25] I went to see the Barbie movie with them last night. We do a lot together. We pet sit for each other. If somebody is feeling blue, you know, we bring flowers or we bring them food. It's an incredible group of very smart young women. And when they come over here, we usually... you know, we'll have book club after cocktails over here sometimes and they're free to shop my shelves.

It's just a great group. I never would have thought that I would like a book club. Never been in a book club just because to me it's a very… reading is very solitary activity and I typically don't like to talk too much about books as much as reading another book. So the time I would take to meet with a book club that's an hour and a half I could be reading. But this group is... they stick to the book topic when it's in the library. We don't wander too far from it.

Plus, I'm interested in what other people are reading. I think that's what I love about your show and I love about talking to readers is, you know, book recommendations as opposed to summarizing your feelings about a book because it's... you know, I don't know. I'm not that good at that. So I love my little book club. Love my little book club.

[00:07:32] ANNE: Why compelled you to give that a try?

ANNIE: Well, I moved in in May of 2022, and I happened to walk into a coffee shop, and my student teacher from, gosh, five or six years ago is now a teacher on her own farther away, she lives in my town. And she asked me what I was reading and she said, "I heard about this book club that's right down the street at the library." So I found out about it and I joined in July. We just had our first anniversary of three of us joining.

And most of the women are not from around here. So that's why it's become sort of found family. They were looking for friendship. They were looking for people to go out in our city, our little, little town with. It's not always easy to just sit at a restaurant or sit at the brewery by yourself. So there's always someone I can call up and say, "Hey, do you want to go apple picking?" Or we went down to our little town, had a pride festival. So it's become very social. But again, because it's a book club, you've already curated a particular type of person, if that makes sense. We're all very similar in terms of that kind of stuff.

[00:08:39] ANNE: When you share a love of reading, you share a lot.

ANNIE: Sure.

ANNE: You could all laugh at the Pride and Prejudice appearance in Barbie together.

ANNIE: It was great. We saw it last night. It was so great.

ANNE: It made me so happy.

ANNIE: We all loved Depression Barbie more than any of them, I think.

ANNE: Yes, I will cosign that. Annie, there are two specific things I'm dying to hear more about in your reading life. And those are your lifetime Top Ten Bookmark and your personal mini Summer Reading Guide.

ANNIE: Yes, my Mini Anne Bogel. My lifetime favorite bookmark is not my idea. I do not claim this as my own idea. But I guess maybe, I don't know, ten years ago my sister's friend who is this elderly woman, had been a lifelong reader and when she died, she had, instead of a prayer card, she had a bookmark of her ten favorite lifetime books. And I just thought that is so cool. So I went home and I started to do it. And I have updated it.

[00:09:40] I'm looking at mine now—and it's from 2021—and I can tell there was a few recent add-ons. But I mean, they're my lifetime favorite books. You know, Rebecca is one of them. That sort of turned me into an adult reader. Charlotte's Web, To Kill a Mockingbird. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer is my only nonfiction on this list. Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Cutting for Stone, which we're going to talk about that later because I can't wait to get into your Summer Reading Guide. Covenant of Water, The Stand, 11/22/63, and then Prayer for Owen Meany. On the back, it says "other new contenders". I'm thinking of putting The House in the Cerulean Sea on this. It's just magical.

ANNE: I have to say. Creating a category for yourself that's new contenders without feeling like you have to take the drastic step of ousting a book from your favorites is so smart.

ANNIE: Yes. Again, I'm throwing so many books on here. I feel bad for your show notes person. I don't mean to throw out too many more books, but you asked and I'm telling.

[00:10:41] ANNE: Shout out to Holly. She does an amazing job every week. Thank you, Holly.

ANNIE: Yes. But I have it in my little file. My kids are going to... No, they know exactly where it is because it's with my will and my life insurance and all that stuff. I mean, this is just as important. So they know where it is. My sisters know where it is. I think it's a great idea. Actually, Dylan, my older son, he's already started to tackle some of these books, which is kind of fun.

ANNE: That's amazing. Is it possible in one of your submissions you called this a funeral bookmark?

ANNIE: Yes, I did. I didn't want it to sound so morbid, but it truly is. That's what I'm doing. Like I'm going to have this done and printed up for my funeral because I think it's... What is your legacy? What is your legacy? People know I'm a reader and I'm a teacher. And if I can put some more really cool books in people's hands, then do it from the great beyond.

ANNE: You know, I don't think I've assembled a lifetime favorites list except in my head for a solid five years. And that makes me want to sit down with a pen and do some brainstorming.

[00:11:42] ANNIE: Yeah. You should do it for your kids, especially. You know, as your kids grow older and just... you know, where was mom at this time and what was she thinking of? Yeah, good school.

ANNE: Is the ten number fast and absolute?

ANNIE: Well, I did have to stand that made it 11. No, I mean it doesn't have to be. I just thought that's kind of... everybody thinks top ten.

ANNE: It might end up being a lifelong dozen.

ANNIE: And again, I could maybe see Heart's Invisible Furies getting dethroned, but I don't know. That was a beautiful book, too. I love John Boyne. He doesn't get enough love, in my opinion.

ANNE: I was just telling a friend this morning that maybe this is the time to finally read The Stand because I still haven't. I was looking at that audiobook on Libro.fm. It's like 45 hours or something ridiculous.

ANNIE: Yeah. I'll tell you that book... I know you also do not like The Gore, and I'm fine with The Gore, but it has to be purposeful. And The Stand, I finish that book and it's like 1,040 something pages, I literally closed that book and know exactly where I was sitting and I went, "I want more. I don't want this to be over yet." That's crazy. Who feels that way?

[00:12:51] ANNE: That is high praise book.

ANNIE: A thousand-page book. We'll get into Stephen King more with one of my favorites but I just think he's... and people have said this—Again, I think it might have been Laura Tremaine—he's our generation's Charles Dickens. I just think he can tell a story like no one else.

ANNE: Okay, well, I've read two, maybe three books by him. Do you care to comment on that? That feels like a confession.

ANNIE: No, no, no. I mean, he's so prolific. But again, if you're afraid of the horror, there's a lot of horror out there. I love it. But it is for the tough, thick-skinned. I mean, it's got horrible, horrible things happening to very good people and little people and... Oh, gosh. But again, it's a genius book and... Well, yeah. But I don't tell people to read it unless you have an iron stomach for that kind of thing.

ANNE: Now I'm laughing remembering Lamar Giles on the podcast talking about how he wrote that as a very young child.

ANNIE: Good Lord.

[00:13:52] ANNE: That makes me want to go back and re-listen. Now, Annie, tell us about your mini Summer Reading Guide.

ANNIE: Okay. So this started about, I don't know, maybe eight years ago. My teacher friends, they all know I've always got a book in my hand, a book in my purse, a book in my car. And a lot of my teacher friends only read in the summer, and that's fine. So they would come up to me like June and say, "Hey, do you have any good book recommendations?" And you have to ask the person, well, what do you like?

So I started to sort of give people little slips of paper with books on them that I thought they would like. So then I finally decided maybe six or seven years ago to do a little document, make a little Google doc, and end up being just in categories. I mean, it is small. It's maybe five typed pages.

I go back from June of that year that I do it to June of the previous year and just go through my reading journal and I pick out all of my four or five-star books and then I put them in silly categories and very basic, you know, nonfiction, thriller... literary fiction always ends up being that's kind of what I read the most of. Audiobooks, too, because I think there are so many books that are better on audio than in print. And then I just type it up and I send it out to my teacher friends. And now it's grown to be family. And then teacher friends will say, "Oh, can I send it to my friends' book club or my sister's, you know, cousin? So it makes way around places, I guess. And it's really fun for me.

[00:15:22] ANNE: It sounds fun and it sounds like a really fun opportunity for you to get to reflect on what you've enjoyed and think about if other people might like it. No surprise. I love that kind of stuff.

ANNIE: Yeah. Unlike yours, where it's sort of new releases and what's coming up, I mean, I could be putting books in there that are from 1990. If I loved it, it's going in the guide.

ANNE: Oh, I love it. What were some of the picks from 2023 that were especially well-received?

ANNIE: Oh, Lessons in Chemistry, Extremely Bright Creatures. Oh, I love the J. Ryan Stradal series. I don't remember if I finished Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club before the guide came out. I loved The Barrytown trilogy. So I finished... Again, on audio, Marin Ireland is the best. I recommend all the Fredrik Backman books on audio as opposed to in print. I don't say that with very many books. Those are the ones that people really liked.

Again, the thrillers. People do love the thrillers and I don't read a lot of them, but I did like The Paris Apartment. I thought that was a good one.

ANNE: I haven't read that yet.

[00:16:29] ANNIE: Mad honey. Jodi Picoult was good. I think that's how you say her name. I loved that.

ANNE: Well done.

ANNIE: That was one of her best books. I loved her early work, and then I was like, liking her stuff lately. And that one I just absolutely thought she nailed that book.

ANNE: Well, those sound incredible, and your teacher friends are lucky to have you. If you primarily read in the summertime, and we do have so many students and teachers in our community where that is the reality in their reading life, you want to make those month counts.

ANNIE: Yes. Yes. Yes.

ANNE: It's so fun for everybody that you can have a part in that. Well, Annie, I'm really excited to talk about the books that you love. I don't know that any of these are on your Lifetime Top Ten bookmark, but we're going to get into some of what I assume are your four and five-star reads, just five-star reads. How did you choose the books we're going to talk about today?

ANNIE: So the last one I'll talk about is on my Lifetime Top Ten. So I'll leave that for last. But I went to Annie Jones' Reading Retreat in February. Her Bookshelf in Thomasville has a Reader's Retreat. And the first two of these books there actually were the ones that were put in my hands, one by Annie and one by another retreater.

[00:17:41] ANNE: Oh, that's so fun. The best kind of souvenir.

ANNIE: Yeah It was a wonderful experience. It's Thomasville, Georgia, is in the middle of nowhere. And he's very upfront about saying that. It's not a very easy place to get to and I am so glad that I went. So that's where two of these books came from.

ANNE: I'm so glad you did too. Our team member, Bridget, was there. So I feel like I've gotten to hear about this in all the ways.

ANNIE: Oh, she has the coolest clothes. Oh, my gosh. She was the best-dressed retreater.

ANNE: Well, you're a teacher, Annie. Bridget will tell you that she has strong art teacher energy. Lots of black, lots of rainbows, lots of sparkles.

ANNIE: Yes, she does. Lots of rainbows. Yes, yes, yes. She's a delightful person. Oh, my gosh. I felt like she brought people... She would walk into whether it was the lunch place or the hotel lobby, she just seemed to bring people to her. Like she was just a magnet of fun.

ANNE: A magnet of fun. Oh, what a high praise! And just the Reader Retreat experience sounded amazing. And I love that you can bring these books from that weekend here today.

[00:18:45] ANNIE: Yes.

ANNE: So you know how this works. You're going to tell me three books you love, one book you don't, what you've been reading lately, and we'll talk about what you may enjoy reading next. I think I know the direction we're going to go with this based on all your submission history. But let's jump in. What's the first book you love?

ANNIE: Okay, so the first book I loved is called Stealing by Margaret Verble. I got this from the Readers Retreat. Actually, it was an Andy Jones Shelf Subscription. Margaret Verble is a member of the Cherokee Nation. So she writes what she knows.

The story is about a little girl named Kit Crockett. She lives with her dad. Her mom dies... I think she's pretty young, maybe four or five. She lives in the middle of the country. She has, at the beginning of the book, a pretty idyllic childhood. Her bookmobile comes every week and she loves to fish and she's very self-sufficient. Her father is a very loving father. She writes all these beautiful memories about their Sundays together and how he's a whittler so he whittles these little statues for her.

And then it goes awry. There's an incident—I won't talk too much about it—in her town, and her father is put in jail. Then, unfortunately, this is the part that's true to history, she is taken away because she's a Cherokee girl and she's taken away to a boarding school that's supposed to... I don't know what they wanted to say, convert them to Christianity. But she's taken away to a boarding school with a bunch of other young indigenous girls. She suffers abuse, which is awful. That part's really hard. And if you are a sensitive reader, it has sexual child abuse, but it's easy to skip or skim.

[00:20:31] But what I loved about this book is Kit, because she's writing the book to the reader and her voice is young and it's so wise, but it's also true. Like you can believe that this child is writing this book. So I give Margaret Verble a lot of credit for writing with the voice of a child. But it's a beautifully written book that obviously is written for adults.

I love Kit. Kit is a character that stayed with me, and I read a lot of books, stayed with me for months, just months and months after I closed that book. So I don't know why it hasn't gotten more press, because there is a lot in the news about these schools that these children were put in. But I think it should get more press. And that's another reason I wanted to pick it for your show because I think it's wonderful.

ANNE: Well, a book that you wish more readers knew about is a great book to bring here. So thank you for bringing that one.

ANNIE: I mean, what's so fun and fascinating about this book is it goes from the idyllic childhood she foreshadows that she's going to be in the school. So the chapters go back and forth. And the event that leads up to her father's imprisonment, it's a... she doesn't get into that too, too much. But there's some misunderstandings. There's a lot to this book other than, you know, girl grows up, girl goes to a terrible place, girl is triumphant. There's a lot along the way.

[00:21:59] And again, for people that don't like super sad things, there is a sense of triumph. Kit is adorable. I think people have compared her to Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird just because she is this little country girl who just is so smart and navigates her way around adults and makes observations about adults that are... that's just so funny and spot on.

ANNE: That's also interesting. Okay, I'm going to keep that first-person narrator in mind and the voice as we think about what you may enjoy next. Annie, what is the second book you love?

ANNIE: So the second book I love is a really tough book. So it's called The Trees by Percival Everett. It's heavy into political commentary at the end. So I'm going to keep to the topic of the book and let people draw their own conclusions. But it takes place in present day in Muddy, Mississippi. Two White men from the same family are found killed in their homes about one day apart. Their families definitely have big roots in racism. They do not mince words about that.

So I think their parents or fathers were Klan members and they're found killed. Also, a Black man is found next to their bodies also dead. There's some mutilation going on, some stuff. But the next day in the morgue, the Black man, both times, disappears. He's dead and he's not there anymore. So state investigators come down. And the story ends up sort of shifting a little bit into the supernatural because it shifts to the horrible lynching death of Emmett Till 60 years before this. And their family is involved in Emmett Till's murder. So it becomes a little supernatural.

Then the other part that I loved was the relationship between the two investigators. They come down to Muddy, Mississippi and they find themselves in this predominantly racist town. They are both Black investigators. And the back and forth between the two of them, like their witty banter takes this terrible situation and just makes it really entertaining.

[00:24:21] There's a woman in here called Mama Z and she's like this witch doctor lady, and they just have this uneasiness about her. So there's all of that supernatural element to her. It just builds. There are more and more racist attacks. They also go out to Los Angeles where there are some Asian-Americans that are found murdered.

So it's definitely a book on racism. It's a book about the violence that has occurred. There's a few very powerful pages in print where one of the scholars who comes to this town to try to figure things out, he comes across file cabinets full of lynching victims. So the author has chosen to write a name on every line. So for about four pages, you are just flipping and there's just a list of names of lynching victims. It's very powerful.

So something I wouldn't have picked up if it weren't for Lexie at the Reader Retreat. I just loved it. I grew from this book. I learned from this book. It's a tough book to read, but again, I think, first of all, Everett is a very prolific writer and I haven't read anything else by him, so that's on my plan.

[00:25:44] ANNE: Lots to look forward to. Annie, is it characteristic of your reading life to say that books you love are ones that help you grow and learn?

ANNIE: Yeah. Yeah. That's a big thing. Yeah. Whether it's even learning, like in this case... in both books actually, learning about the children that were taken to these schools and learning about the number of lynchings and the violence in the South. I mean, we all know that happened. But to read it in the volume that it happened in, yeah. And also learning not just about an event, but learning about people through my books, I think that's really fun, too. I like to learn from what I read. I think that's a good catch, Anne.

ANNE: Well, that's good to hear. And also, we've talked some about how some books are so hard to read for readers. I'm just in awe of writers like Percival Everett who can do the writing of these books. It's such a gift to all of us. And I know it must come at great cost. I know. I don't know anything, Annie. I imagine it comes at great cost. But I'm so grateful that these works are now out in the world for us to read and grow and learn. In some, but certainly not all senses here, just really enjoy and appreciate.

Annie, what is the third book you loved?

[00:26:58] ANNIE: My third book is on my Lifetime Favorite list, and it actually might be my lifetime favorite book. Although that's really hard to say because... But I think it is. All right. So I have read-

ANNE: Oh, that is the laugh of recognition.

ANNIE: I have read this book four times, and it's a big book. It's 11/22/63 by Stephen King. I recently listened to it for the podcast because it had been maybe two years or so. I've read it twice and I've listened to it twice. The narrator is great.

I think the thing I love about this book the most is what other people might not love about this book the most is that I am truly in love with Jake Epping. If Jake Epping jumped off the page, I would marry Jake Epping. I've always said this. He is just so... He's kind. He's smart. My friend who's a therapist, said, "Annie, I know why you like Jake. He's a man of action." He's a man of action. He stands up for what he believes. He's just lovely.

He is the star of the book. He does time traveling. He's going back in time to try to stop the Kennedy assassination, which people think that's what this book is about. And it is. But it's a love story. It's a love story between Jake and the love of his life, Sadie.

Also, Stephen King throws in a lot of Easter eggs in this book. I mean, there are characters from It. Cujo's in there. Shawshank Redemption gets in there. It's a glorious story. There's a lot of history. There's a lot about the JFK assassination. But it mostly makes you feel like you're traveling back to 1958, which is when he lands in Maine.

[00:28:43] He's also trying to fix some things in his own life. But as we all know, they talk about the butterfly effect, everything he does meets with a challenge. Also, he always says in this book the past is obdurate and it's not easy to make changes. I don't know. I just love, love, love this book. It's so many different stories. And he just does a beautiful job in developing characters in this book.

There are funny scenes. I can't eat... I don't know if anybody's ever read it out there, but you'll never eat pound cake again without laughing. He tells off... I'm a teacher. So he tells off the Board of Education because they're trying to really enforce morality and that, you know, Zadie can't do this and he can't do that. There's this one woman on the Board of Education is trying to police their private life. And I love that scene where he kind of gives it right back to her. But yeah, I love Jake Epping. I think that's why I love this book so much.

[00:29:45] ANNE: I haven't read this in years, but I'm only just realizing how many Easter eggs I would have missed because I've never read It.

ANNIE: And my friend said the same thing. She's like, I saw Shawshank and I know that movie was mentioned in there. I'm like, Yeah, it was just the prison was mentioned, not the movie, but yeah, yeah. I also think it has mass appeal. My children read it in their teen years, loved it. My daughter-in-law has read it. A lot of people that I will say, "Oh, what's your favorite book?" and I tell them that's one of them, and they've gone on to read it. So I think it has very wide appeal.

ANNE: I'm glad to hear that. Now, Annie, tell me about a book that was not right for you.

ANNIE: Oh, I wanted to like this book so much. This was one of Annie Jones's Shelf Subscription recommendations. It's called The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li. Probably saying that wrong. It was so dark in a not nice way. It's in post-World War France I think in the 1950s.

There are two young girls, Agnes and Fabienne. I actually wrote their names down cause I don't remember the girls. That's how much I didn't care about these girls. Fabienne starts telling Agnes these stories verbally, and they're dark, and she just seems so ugh yucky. And she convinced her to write down these stories because her handwriting is better. And then they end up manipulating all sorts of adults, the mailman in town who's a sweet guy.

[00:31:09] Eventually they get this book published and it launches under Agnes' name, not Fabienne's. And Agnes then kind of launches herself into a semi-stardom role, I guess, and she becomes this young literary genius. And actually, you know, Fabienne is sort of the brains behind it.

But what I didn't like about this book, it's not the story. The girls were so mean in a truly nasty, evil way. And maybe that's part of the teacher in me. I just don't like to think about children—and they were children—being inherently just bad. This Fabienne, I don't know if that was the author's intention, and maybe it was, maybe... And she does write bad characters really well. But I couldn't stomach it as much as I can stomach a lot of horror. I did not like this relationship. It was manipulative and it was nasty. I couldn't get past that if that makes sense.

[00:32:13] ANNE: I'm just thinking about how a lot of things you've read that have been very hard have also been books where I can easily imagine you growing and learning and benefiting and seeing that the hard things are told with purpose.

ANNIE: Yeah. This was not. Yeah. Yeah.

ANNE: Yeah. Okay, I will keep that in mind. Annie, what have you been reading lately?

ANNIE: Well, I'm making my way through the Modern Mrs. Darcy Summer Reading Guide, and I'm loving that.

ANNE: Oh, that sounds like fun.

ANNIE: I think my favorite book of the year came out of your reading guide, and it's No Two Persons, Erica Bauermeister. I've told lots of my reader friends I think that's my favorite book of 2023 so far. Currently right now at the moment sitting in front of me, I'm reading the center, which is good and different for me. I'm about to read Covenant of Water because I'm cat-sitting for my son and I will be spending a week in his apartment with nothing to do other than read.

ANNE: That will not keep you busy.

ANNIE: Yes. So yeah, I would say the center is what I'm currently reading and I'm about to jump on to Covenant of Water when I finish that.

[00:33:18] ANNE: That sounds like an incredible reading week or month, however long it takes you. Annie, what are you looking for in your reading life right now?

ANNIE: Well, a couple of things. I was thinking about this in the middle of the night last night I was thinking that I did ask for narrative nonfiction, which I really, really want. But I wouldn't be opposed to an Anne Bogel magic wand find something cool I didn't know I wanted. So if I could write a recipe, I would say to narrative nonfiction and an Ann Bogel mystery pick because I miss reading nonfiction.

And in my submission, I wrote that I loved Hidden Valley Road, Columbine. I love reading nonfiction that reads like a story. And I don't even care what the topic's about. I mean, I didn't care that much about the Hidden Valley Road family of schizophrenics, but I sure did love that book. The school shooting, obviously, that's sort of near and dear to my heart. And Dave Collin is an incredible author. I'll read anything he wrote.

Oh, Jon Krakauer, love him, too. But I don't really have any other go-to narrative, nonfiction books, or authors. So that's what I really would like. I'm pretty good at picking literary fiction for myself. I don't read a lot of two-star books because I don't finish them. Or if I do pick them up, well, I take so many recommendations from vetted people like yourself, like my friends, like my book club, all kinds of... my library. So for me to have the book in my hand, it's already jumped through a few hoops. But yeah, I would like an Anne Bogel surprise nonfiction. No pressure, though. No pressure.

[00:34:56] ANNE: All right, rolling up my sleeves. Let's see what we can do. That sounds like a lot of fun.

ANNIE: I don't know how you do this. I don't know how you do this. I just don't.

ANNE: Annie, the books you loved: Stealing by Margaret Verble, The Trees by Percival Everett, and 11/22/63 by Stephen King. Not for you was The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li—the girls were mean. Lately, you've been reading Summer Reading Guide books, No Two Persons by Erica Bauermeister is, as of now, your favorite book of 2023. And you've got a nice stack waiting for you while you cat-sit for your son this week.

We are going to investigate narrative nonfiction, because, Annie, when I reviewed your past submissions and they were numerous, there were more than a dozen... If I wanted to give myself some leeway, I could say, let's recommend one book for every submission. You repeatedly, going back to 2017, said, narrative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction. And the specific titles that you loved did have some ebb and flow to them. But the drumbeat of nonfiction stories that read like novels was ever-present. So I'm glad that that feels like something you're looking for today. Also, the Anne Bogel mystery pick. Yeah. Let's start with narrative nonfiction and then do a mystery pick. Is that good?

[00:36:22] ANNIE: Awesome. Can't wait.

ANNE: Okay. First of all, we've talked about so much great narrative nonfiction on the show. And many of those books seem like they'd be great for you. So you're patron and you can review our super-secret spreadsheet vault that has the love's not for use and recs in every episode, all in one place that's searchable, scannable, all that jazz. It's available anytime.

But off the top of my head, books that go along with the themes of the novels and nonfiction you've enjoyed would be How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith, anything by Doris Kearns Goodwin, anything by Isabel Wilkerson. I was just thinking about The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester this morning. Those are books I talk about all the time on the show because they're so great and so many readers loved them, including and especially me. So that's a great place to start.

But for you specifically today... here's a question for you. Does memoir count? Is that cheating? Of course, it feels like a story because it is.

ANNIE: Yes, but I'm not a huge fan of celebrity memoir.

[00:37:24] ANNE: Okay. Well, I have a specific one in mind. I mean, I feel like we could talk about these all day, but I was wondering about Heavy by Kiese Laymon published in 2018. Is this one that's on your radar?

ANNIE: I think I read that book. Tell me about it a little bit, Anne.

ANNE: This is, oh, I mean, a hard and heavy and brilliant and beautiful and generous story about a Black man growing up in Jackson, Mississippi. And the thing that you might really remember about this book is it's told in the second person, you, you, you.

ANNIE: I have not read this book.

ANNE: Okay. Well, this is written in the form of a letter to his mother. So his mother is the receiver, the "you" at the other end of all his musings here. "Musings" is the wrong word. It almost feels like confessions and truth-telling. It has a really stirring opening. He begins by saying, "This isn't the book I wanted to write, and it's not the book I wanted you to read." But he does describe the book he wanted to write, and it's a story of overcoming and triumph and fixing fixable things, and being healthy and happy and whole.

[00:38:30] And he says, "Mother, I know you would have loved it, but that would have been a lie, and I wrote you this instead." And he describes the family that they came from. He was raised by his mother, a single mother in Jackson, Mississippi. He describes their family of two and their larger family by saying, we have always been a bent black Southern family of laughter, outrageous lies, and books.

In this introduction, as he talks about his family and he talks about himself and he talks about his mother and what she knows about him, he really hints at what's to come. It really is such a stirring intro, Annie. But you know that you're going to hear about racial violence and sexual assault and poverty and obesity and anorexia and gambling. But you also know this is going to be a story about words and writing and stories. Like more stories.

ANNIE: Oh, this sounds amazing.

ANNE: I really think, given what you love, that this does sound like a really promising pick for you. And we were talking about, first of all, Everett, I really feel also like I'm a White woman reading the story.

[00:39:37] ANNIE: Right. Like, how dare I?

ANNE: Right. Right.

ANNIE: But also I want to grow and I want to learn. I'm not going to put my head in the sand about this. I think this sounds awesome, especially that it's nonfiction, it's a memoir. Who was the author again, Anne?

ANNE: Kiese Laymon. He's such an amazing storyteller. And this is such a story, especially for me to read, because this is not my life and this is not my world. And I'm really grateful that he cracked the door open... No, flung it wide so that I can step inside through the pages of this book. I really think it could be a good fit for you.

ANNIE: I think it is a good pick for me.

ANNE: There's so much we could talk about. Okay. I may slide in an extra or two.

ANNIE: I'm not in school, so go for it.

ANNE: The next one I want to put on your radar... I'm really curious to see what you would think about this one. It just came out in April. It's called The Best Minds by Jonathan Rosen. Does this sound familiar?

ANNIE: It does not.

ANNE: Okay. The subtitle is A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions. You just said that you really enjoyed Hidden Valley Road. You didn't seek it out because the topic is handed like... But you sought out a compelling true story and found it. But this does definitely traverse some of the same territory.

[00:40:49] So the author and his friend Michael grew up down the street from each other in... it's either New Jersey or New York in the 70s in secular, Jewish upper-middle-class families. They became fast friends. They ended up going to Yale together. They're both known to be brilliant by their peers. Both wanted to be writers when they grew up.

But then a year into Michael's first job at a consulting firm, a very lucrative, plush consulting job, because he decided he was going to earn big money for ten years so he could fund the more carefree, full-time writing career that he then wanted to have. A year into his professional life, he started having paranoid delusions like severe ones. During one encounter, his mother locked herself in a closet to protect herself and called the police.

He was subsequently diagnosed with schizophrenia. So Michael is encouraged to rest and to take a low-stress job but he doesn't want to do that. He's one of the most brilliant students at Yale University. So instead, he enrolls in Yale Law School and he excelled, though he needed help to do so. He met and began dating his future fiancée. He graduated. He had a glowing profile in The New York Times that highlighted what he, as a person with schizophrenia, had accomplished. It was a real story of overcoming.

[00:42:03] That led to a big bucks high-profile book deal and an even bigger movie deal. Like Brad Pitt was going to play him on the big screen.

ANNIE: My gosh.

ANNE: But then less than three years later, he brutally murdered his fiancée at home. So this book is an account, a long account of all that I just gave, the nutshell summary of... and more, of course. It's very much the author wrestling with what happened both personally and culturally that led to this tragedy. Like, personally, what could he have done differently? What should he have done differently? What are the obligations and limits of this friendship and a friendship in general? How could this crime have been prevented? What part could he have played? Should he have known? What should he have done? Like he's wrestling with all these things.

But culturally, how do we care for and treat those with mental illness in a way that is safe and good for them and safe and good for society as a whole? How does our collective emphasis on success and achievement burden us and harm us? That's not something we talk about a lot.

ANNIE: Right? Can we be honest about the strengths and limitations of the best minds? And that is the title, but there's a double meaning to it. Like he's talking about the best minds, like him and his friend Michael. But also the best minds, the wisest minds, the most educated minds who make decisions about how to manage people's mental health, especially when they are mentally ill and the stakes there and what we are to make of it when things go terribly, horribly wrong.

ANNIE: This is amazing.

[00:43:32] ANNE: I'm so curious to see what you think. I really like how this feels... heartfelt. I feel like I use the word generous a lot. Maybe that's something I really appreciate in nonfiction and fiction, Annie, you know, when people are willing to tell the truth in uncomfortable ways because it matters.

ANNIE: Yes. I like the way you said that. Yes.

ANNE: But the way he wrestles with these issues that matter to all of us and matter acutely to some in particular, particularly those living with schizophrenia, is really thoughtful and wise, and I think it could really pull you in as a reader.

ANNIE: I like the sound of that. That sounds great.

ANNE: Okay. I'm glad to hear it. Okay, real quick, I'm not sure if you will love or hate The Teachers by Alexandra Robbins. Do you know about this?

ANNIE: Okay. I'm turning my head to my left and it is sitting on my little... I have many TBR little shelves, but I bought it because I think I will like that book. I'm interested in that book. If I'm not mistaken, does it focus on the teachers during COVID or is it just about teachers?

[00:44:32] ANNE: COVID matters, but with a longer lens. It's really documenting how the profession has changed in recent decades, especially since that Department of Ed report in 1983 and the trajectory in the profession since then, with closed profiles.

ANNIE: I really want to read that book. It's on my list of books to read.

ANNE: The opening line is "you may think you know what's inside, but you don't". But I wonder if that applies to you.

ANNE: You're a fourth-grade teacher.

ANNIE: Well, I don't know. Everybody's different.

ANNE: One of the profiled teachers is an East Coast fourth-grade teacher.

ANNIE: Oh, that's funny

ANNE: That would be fascinating to hear your insights on. And then given your fiction loves, Timothy Egan's new book, the historical thriller A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them.

ANNIE: I just put that on my list. Oh, I want to read that book. Yes, yes, yes.

ANNE: I'm glad to hear it. Okay, the Anne Bogel mystery pick. We're going to do one old and one new. Is that okay?

ANNIE: Oh, yes.

ANNE: Okay. So when you were describing The Trees, I kept thinking of P. Djèlí Clark. And if you haven't read Ring Shout, I'd love to put that on your list.

ANNIE: I have not.

[00:45:39] ANNE: Great. It's scary. But you're not scared of the scary stuff. If it works like that. Doesn't work like that?

ANNIE: Yeah.

ANNE: You know what I mean.

ANNIE: Yes. Yes.

ANNE: This is a dark, historical fantasy novella. It takes place in Prohibition, Georgia. Which kind of reminds me semantics-wise of Money, Mississippi. Although money is real. But in this town, Ku Klux Klan members literally become demons after watching the birth of a nation. So a bootlegger and a motley crew of scrappy fighters set out to save the world from this hellish nightmare come to life.

ANNIE: That sounds good. And I do like that little fantasy element. I don't read a lot of fantasy, but for example, Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, that was pretty strong fantasy. But I do like that just little bit of fantasy in a book.

ANNE: Just a drop of unreality?

ANNIE: Yes. And I do like the word dark and scary. As you know, I like those words.

[00:46:39] ANNE: All right. The other Anne Bogel mystery pick is a book that I just finished coming out this September from Angie Kim. It's her new novel, Happiness Falls. I don't know if you read her debut, Miracle Creek.

ANNIE: I did not. I have want to read. I did not read that. Tell me about Happiness Falls.

ANNE: Well, we were just talking about the best minds. And this is also very much the story of a party to a crime, wrestling with what happened and what could have been done differently, and what happens next. So I would call this a compulsively readable literary mystery. And is reminiscent of so many books that I have read and loved like The One-In-A-Million Boy, Searching for Sylvie Lee.

I don't believe I Have Some Questions for You was entirely your taste, but there's something about the narrative voice that feels similar in Happiness Falls. And yet, while it does remind me of those books I loved, it felt entirely like its own fresh new work. This story is full of hard things. So I know this is okay for you. But listeners, there's a lot of content warnings applying to this book.

But it begins when a father vanishes in a D.C. area park, and the only witness to his disappearance is his 14-year-old autistic son, who also has Angelman Syndrome, which means practically that he does not speak and he lacks the means to verbally communicate with his family about what he witnessed or about anything else. It's not that he can't speak because of shock. He does not speak.

[00:48:09] So what begins as a missing persons case blossoms into another potentially more ominous and threatening to the family investigation. And our first-person narrator for this book is Mia. She's a 20-year-old college student who was at home in 2020 when this action unfolds because of the pandemic, as she wrestles with what she did and didn't do when her father first disappeared and the things she witnesses in her family. She's a twin. So she talks a lot about the knowledge she has of her twin, but perhaps the things that they hide from each other.

We just go deep inside the workings of her Korean-American family, as she is telling us in this confessional, it feels like a truth-filled I'm grappling with the reality and what it means and what to make of it and how to cope with it during these bewildering three days after her father disappeared. I hear Angie Kim knows a lot about music, that she's talented in that realm. So elements of music and also numerology and language therapy and more end up in this story.

[00:49:15] If you're not comfortable with ambiguous endings, readers, this story raises a lot of questions and in some sense I think would be really satisfying if they were all answered. Some of them are answered in ways that I thought were really interesting and compelling. And oh my goodness, a book club could discuss this for days. But as it goes in real life, there's a good amount of ambiguity at the end. And I know some readers are gonna want to know that before deciding whether or not to pick this up. Annie, how does that sound to you?

ANNIE: It sounds amazing. I'm okay with ambiguous endings. In my hallway at school, we have two or three classes with non-verbal autistic children, so that is also an interest of mine. So that element is going to be fun for me to read. I do like the idea of Mia narrating it. That sounds really great.

ANNE: I love this. It has a great opening line. It's something like, "We didn't call the police right away." But from the very beginning you have this ticking clock and you know something horrible has happened, but you don't know the details. I just raced through it so I could find out what happened next. All right, Annie, we covered a lot of ground.

[00:50:23] ANNIE: We did. This was fun.

ANNE: I'm so glad we could finally have this conversation. Now, I was going to say I'm going to ask you a hard question, but maybe it's easy. Maybe you already know what you're going to read next that's not in your cat-sitting stack.

ANNIE: Well, actually, I could easily bump into the cat-watching list. I'm going to read all of these. Number one, I think nobody ever tells you that. I'm literally going to read all of these and probably before school starts. But the one that really spoke to me was Heavy. That really hit me as something I want to read.

ANNE: Oh, I'm glad to hear that.

ANNIE: Also, I think Happiness Falls, but I'm literally going to read all of these and... Oh, you're good at this.

ANNE: You're so kind. I really enjoyed our conversation. And thank you for listening all these years and for coming on the show and opening up about your reading life with me and with all of us. We're grateful.

ANNIE: It was awesome. Thank you so much, Anne.

[00:51:15] ANNE: Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Annie and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next. Find Annie on Instagram @AnnieMcCloskey422 and find the full list of the titles we talked about today @whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

Following our show on Instagram is another great way to connect with our reading community. Find us there @whatshouldireadnext. I'd love it if you'd follow me too. I'm at @annebogel. Lately, I've been sharing all kinds of pics to go with our Anne and Will's European Reading Adventures episode. I hope you enjoy them.

Join our email list and we'll send updates right to your inbox. Sign up at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/newsletter. Make sure you're following in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks to the people who make this show happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by Will Bogel, Holly Wielkoszewski, and Studio D Podcast Production. Readers, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading." Happy reading, everyone.