[00:00:00] R. ERIC THOMAS: Here For It was a coming-of-age memoir, and this is a coming-of-middle-age memoir. At first, I was like, Yikes!

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.

Around here, we take a personalized approach to the reading life, and the heart of What Should I Read Next? is talking with readers like you about what they love and why, what they don't and why not, and what it all means when it comes to choosing their next read. If you would like to join me for a conversation here on the show, we have just reopened our submission form. It's at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/guest.

[00:01:06] So you know how it works. When my recording schedule is full, we close the form, and when it's time to fill up the calendar again, like right now, we open it. We are scheduling full episodes now. And if you think you'd be a good fit or know a reader who would be, that page is the place to visit. Whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/guest. We can't wait to see what you send us.

Readers, as soon as I finished Congratulations, The Best Is Over! by R. Eric Thomas, I wanted to read it again from the beginning and talk about it with everyone I know and for sure include it in this year's Summer Reading Guide, which I did. That book is out in the world today and I am so excited. You can now grab a copy and read it.

At this point, I first finished this collection of essays months ago and I am still thinking about Eric's insights and stories all the time. He takes us through the heavy and the light with a series of wise, sobering, hilarious, and heartbreaking sketches. It will definitely be on my

best-of-the-year list. And when Eric agreed to join me on the podcast to talk more about his work and more insightful and entertaining memoirs, I could not wait to have that conversation and for you to listen in. I'm so excited to share that today. Let's get to it.

Eric, welcome to the show.

[00:02:22] ERIC: Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure.

ANNE: Oh, the pleasure is mine. I have been looking forward to this conversation and wanting to have it, I mean, really since I read Here For It. But can I tell you about my reading experience with your new book Congratulations, The Best Is Over!?

ERIC: I would love nothing more.

ANNE: Okay. It was in maybe late March, early April in the mountains in North Carolina at this cabin that had this like roaring creek outside-

ERIC: Oh, wow.

ANNE: ...on the deck early in the morning, looking over the creek with a hot cup of coffee and a blanket, because it was that kind of weather. You know, it was like where you can wear a sweatshirt and shorts and still have a blanket kind of weather, just like perfect day. And I think I sat down and I read the galley like front to back, just like looking at it occasionally, being like, "Husband, listen to this. Listen to this. Oh, my gosh." Or him being like, "What are you laughing at now?" Or I'd be like sniffling a little. I just enjoyed it so much and I wanted to talk to you about it ever since. So thank you for making that happen today.

ERIC: Oh, my gosh. Thank you. I mean, it's truly a dream. Like, I'm a little star-struck, but I'm also so envious of your reading experience.

[00:03:32] ANNE: Look, you had to do all the hard work to make my delightful reading experience possible. So thank you for that.

ERIC: Oh, well, it's my pleasure. If my book can go out there and hang out in the mountains and the crisp... I call that outfit the sweatshirt with shorts, I call it the Princess Diana because there was a perfect photo of her wearing an Eagles sweatshirt and shorts and new balance. Anyway, people are like, "Why are you... who cares about this?"

ANNE: Wait, am I Princess Diana in this scenario? I love it.

ERIC: Yes, you are Princess Diana in this scenario. Highest compliment I can give.

ANNE: And friends, if you don't know, this was a Summer Reading Guide pick this year and it is out today on August 8th. I'm delighted to be talking about it more. We are going to get into the book, but first, this is a show for people who love books, like do passionate abnormal amounts. And I'd love to hear a little bit about who you are as a reader. Tell us a little bit about your reading life.

[00:04:30] ERIC: My mother is an educator and she took a number of years away from teaching school to raise my brothers and I at home. She would take us to the library every week and she would let us borrow as many books as we were allowed by the library, which I believe was either 30 or 40 books. So I would borrow 30 or 40 books every week and then demand that each one of them be read to me every night. So we had to return them.

It created in me the shopper that I am today. So it created this bridge between myself and the world through books where I understood the library and I understood collections of books to be places where I could go into any universe. I read about this a little bit in Here For It, that like our physical surroundings, if we didn't live in a great neighborhood, there were a lot of things about the world that said that you can't go anywhere or do anything but books said that's not true. And I have always held on to that.

[00:05:32] You know, I'm absolutely one of those people who takes 65 books on vacation because I'm going to read them all. But I also am sitting in my office right now and I'm literally surrounded by towers of books. One of the happiest things that adulthood has brought is that my husband and I have a wall of bookcases and I was like, "This is the beginning of our Beauty and the Beast library." And that's truly all I've ever wanted. You know, when Belle goes into the library and there's the floor to ceiling to floor book... moving your bookshelves. And I'm like, This is what I want. I want the universe. I want constellations of stories and adventures and viewpoints. So that's why I write. I write because I read and I just want to be part of it.

ANNE: Now, in this episode, we're going to get to hearing about some of your favorite memoirs. So there'll be time for this. But also, I chuckled at the point early on in your book where you talk about moving with your husband and that you found a moving company that specialized in moving clergy, because he is, because clergy have large libraries.

And you talk about how David's books are all clergy stuff, but yours were many, many copies of The Pelican Brief by John Grisham, which I love and recently recommended on this show to Caitlin, who was on her way to New Orleans to elope with her girlfriend. How exciting!

ERIC: Yay.

ANNE: That made me laugh because The Pelican Brief doesn't get a lot of love. But yeah, tell me about a favorite.

[00:06:56] ERIC: Besides John Grisham's body of work, which is phenomenal... I mean, nothing is ever going to be that moment in - what was it? 92, 93, when I remember in middle school cracking open the firm and I'm like... my eyebrows flew off my face. I was like, I didn't know. This is a thriller. Oh, my goodness. And Dean Koontz. And I'm like, "Oh, my God, the world just opened up."

But I think I go back a lot to Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Very different from The Pelican Brief, but also set in the sort of, you know... Well, set in southern Florida. So not quite the same geographical area either. But Zora Neale Hurston had this way of capturing voices and capturing stories of people who were not showing up in books a lot at that time that really captivated me when I read it in middle school for the first time, and I kept returning to it.

It's about a woman named Janie who returns to her South Florida town, and she's just turned 40 or maybe a little older. And the town members see her as this failure because she's gone off like a rocket and then she's come back down. And then we get to see all the sort of turbulence and triumph of her life away from this town.

She was involved in these great romances and got caught up in a hurricane. Just a lot of pain, but also a lot of self-actualization. And it's just a beautiful, wonderful book. The audiobook is read by the actress Ruby Dee, and it is phenomenal. It's really one of the best audiobooks I've ever listened to.

[00:08:28] ANNE: I love that description of her work. And yes, audio I think is the way... Is that too bossy to say that's the way to go with Zora? But we're talking about memoir today, and her memoir is incredible, Dust Tracks on a Road. So we can slide that one in too.

ERIC: Yeah. Yeah.

ANNE: Eric, let's zoom out for a moment. Give the reader a glimpse of who you are.

ERIC: I'll tell you what, you know, on our first date, my husband asked me... he's like, "Is there a version of you that's not public?" And I was like, "Oh, yeah." But I never really thought about that because at that time I wasn't writing memoir. I was hosting a storytelling show called The Moth, which is about you tell true stories based on your life. And he was just curious because for him, as a pastor, he is preaching, using obviously the Bible but also using stories from his own life and-

ANNE: Which means stories about your life.

ERIC: Yeah, exactly. He's always like, "I'll let you know if I talk about you." And I'm like, "No, please, I love fame. Just let me know, I will show up in any sermon illustration you want." But it's interesting. I don't feel like I play a character in memoir. But I do feel like I do turn up certain colors in the writing a little bit more. And the two memoirs have been very, very different, which colors get turned up. And then individual stories or essays that I've written, they bring out different sides of me.

[00:09:57] I think one of the things that I haven't really gotten to be the act of writing memoir does this, but the memoir itself doesn't actually get to show this, I really have a deep desire to be sort of in community and to be a convener or a dinner party host or whatever. I think that's who I am off the page. And I feel like, on the page, because it's only my voice, it's like I am actually going to speak to this room full of people. And I think off the page I'm much more interested in sitting around a table, a lot of voices crowding around, not always being the one who's regaling everyone with tales of my exploits and my ridiculous decisions.

ANNE: Memoirist, dinner party host.

ERIC: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

ANNE: I love it. You mentioned that you weren't writing memoir at the time. I'd love to hear how you got into that. And also, I have to share a little nugget from the opening of the book that made me laugh, where you talk about making cupcakes. You talk about how baking wasn't a cry for help, despite what you were saying about the cupcakes at the time of the story. But you've done many things in your life before and since that absolutely are cries for help, including writing and publishing personal essays. That made me laugh.

[00:11:13] ERIC: Yeah, I definitely wanted to undercut myself on page three to be like, "What am I doing? Is this a ridiculous idea? Welcome to my spiral. Thanks for joining." Yeah, storytelling was my introduction into memoir. And it was this idea... and I love talking about this. So I started doing storytelling with an organization called First Person Arts, which is, you know, you just choose a theme or they choose a theme and you tell a true five-minute story to a roomful of people, and at the end, somebody wins.

And the first time I went up there and I told a story for a theme miseducation, a story about failing in my pursuit of college and dropping out of school and feeling like a real mess of a person and trying to find my way back, I felt people lean forward and I felt them care about... I could see in their faces that they cared about what happened to the protagonist of the story. And the protagonist was me.

[00:12:16] And that built a bridge in my brain between the universes of the books and libraries and me caring about what happens to all these fictional people and sometimes non-fictional people and me caring about what happens to me. That set me on a totally different path. And I tell people all the time. Some people were like, you know, nothing really happened to me. And I was like, "Oh, babe, I don't know if you've read these books."

I just had a regular life, too. Like, I did not climb Mount Everest. I did not invent the Swiffer. Those are the two most important things that you can do as a human being is climb Mount Everest or be Joy Mangano, inventor of the Super Mop or whatever it was. I didn't do those things, but I lived a life. And I continue to live a life.

And I think it's important that each of us recognize that our lives are unique and important and that our desires matter and that other people care whether we got what we wanted and care about how we got what we wanted. That has really powered me up to today. For the last 15 years, I've been telling stories live and eventually I started writing them down.

[00:13:28] ANNE: I can really see that mindset throughout your work. And Eric, I mean, this is a great compliment. We haven't talked about the themes of the book yet. But as I was reading, I was thinking the reason that I'm resonating with this so much and enjoying it so much and find it perfectly captures many of the things that I feel like I'm experiencing right now, which I think is so interesting because our paths have been very different in our circumstances. And here we are in the bodies we live in.

But I was thinking like, there's no way that I would have received this book the same way ten years ago. And I imagine that there's no way you could have written this ten years ago. And you can tell me if that's right or not. But it made me speculate that you are one who writes to connect, yes, but also to process things and to figure out what you think and even to identify where you are right now.

ERIC: Oh, absolutely.

ANNE: Yeah. Say more about that.

ERIC: I love the phrase that you use to identify where I am, because I think that's absolutely it. I think I learned a lot from the way that my husband creates sermons. A mentor told him, like, don't bleed all over the congregation. Don't tell things that are not fully worked out for you. Don't use a sermon as therapy, which I think is very, very good advice. So I don't use books as therapy. But I do use books as ways of drawing a constellation and saying, Okay, I've identified these five stars, these five points in my life, and how do I create a picture out of them?

[00:15:01] And I'm very excited, particularly because there was one point after Here For It came out, I was like, Oh, I'll kind of just write this kind of book for the rest of my life. And then life presented other challenges that reminded me that you can't write the same book. Well, maybe you can. I can't. Maybe I wish I could. So I'm excited about the different kinds of memoir that I'll be able to write as life goes on.

As a reader, I get excited when I get to follow writers into different versions of their lives. Then there's some who, you know, I'm going to read... You know, you read Dave Barry, not quite memoir, but, you know, reflective and personal essays with a lot of humor in them. And as he's tracking life, you're sort of like, this is always going to feel very much like the same Dave Barry that I met in 1990 or whatever. And then there's some people who you don't know who's going to show up on the page. And I think that's really interesting.

[00:16:05] ANNE: Oh, I love that description of a constellation. That's so good. Eric, we are talking about your book. Congratulations, The Best Is Over!. How do you think about this book? Like, tell us in your own words how you describe this collection.

ERIC: Well, my editor, Sarah Wise, had the smartest way of describing it, which is the editor relationship, I wish everyone had that. Because what she does is she looks at it and she tells you what it is. And you don't know. As a writer, you don't always know when.

ANNE: When you say you wish everyone had it, do you mean every writer or do you mean every person?

ERIC: I want every person to have just an editor.

ANNE: Here, friend. Let me tell you what's going on here.

ERIC: Yes, yes. You know, they come in and they give you like a two-page little summary of what they're seeing and then they give you some notes to change.

ANNE: I thought that's what you meant, but the concept of us all having editors in our lives was so delightful. I just needed to confirm like, yes, we're on the same page.

ERIC: Editors for life. This is the new thing. This is where publishing is going.

ANNE: Double meaning.

[00:17:09] ERIC: So she described it, she was like, "Here For It was a coming of age memoir and this is a coming of middle age memoir." At first I was like, Yikes! I was like, But I'm very young and I look even younger. But I do like that it is... It introduced this idea and it really helped me. After she said it, I actually rewrote the introduction, which is now called the Middle. And it really clarified for me that you can sort of just drop into a portion in sort of in the center of a journey and it doesn't have to sort of tie things up or resolve in some massive life change.

But it is about the process of changing as you go and sort of looking around and seeing things change. Just kind of like being... kind of being on a car trip. I guess kind of the central question of the book is like, am I in the driver's seat of this car or am I in the passenger seat of this car? And where are we going? And do I want to go there?

[00:18:12] So I don't know. I found it very freeing to, as much as... You know, I talk about this a little bit in the book. My therapist was like, "Well, you might be having a midlife crisis." I was like 38 at the time. And I was like, "Brian, I'm going to sue you for emotional distress. This is outrageous."

But mathematically, I am moving into the middle of my life. And who knows how long the middle is. So it's actually really freeing for me to sort of write this book and say like the middle is one day where you buy a sports car and get hair plugs. It began before you realize it, and it'll probably be over before you realize it. But it is an expanse that you are in. And what are you going to make of it? and how do you want to feel while you're in it?

ANNE: I remember really rebelling when my friend started using the phrase middle-age to apply to us in our late 30s. I thought, "That describes old people. Don't be ridiculous." But then I started to realize what a great phase that is even if the PR needs work. Like I even want to write one of those New York Times letters of Recommendation for middle age or, as you call it throughout your book, which I love so much more, Why is this mid-life?

[00:19:28] I'm 44, so this really did catch me at a time where I was just like, yes, yes, that is how it is. And I love a book, fiction or non, that can describe my experience back to me in words that are better, in concepts that are more clear than I was able to give that myself. But the way you put it is so good. In that introduction you're talking about, you write about it like this. You say, "Between the best days of life and the worst days of life, between what you thought your life would be and what it is, between two people, there is a vivid and strange expanse in the middle. This is the middle." And I love that so much.

ERIC: I love hearing you read it too. Thank you. I just did the audiobook and that portion was a lot of fun to read aloud. But I was just sort of like, "How do I deliver this?" So I think I want to go back and have you read it. I think that's exactly how it's supposed to be read.

ANNE: Oh, with respect, absolutely not. I want to listen to you, and so does everybody else. And listeners, Eric's books are so great in audio. I have no doubt Congratulations will be. I think, when I reread it when it comes out, that's how I need to do it.

[00:20:34] ERIC: Well, thank you. Yeah, I had a phenomenal director. It really is kind of amazing being guided through your own words, but also your own story and how to perform them. But to the idea of the middle or middle age, it is so funny.

I write about having this experience early in my time in Baltimore, going back to my old church where I hadn't been for 20 years. And I looked around... It was for a funeral. And I looked around and I saw all the people who were in their late 30s, 40s when I was a kid the last time I was there and they all have like a little bit of gray, maybe a hint of a wrinkle, but they all looked essentially the same. They kind of look like they just stepped out of the hair and makeup trailer for a flash forward on This Is US. And I was like, "Oh, these people are middle age and I am perpetually 18 in this space.

I think there's a real power in seeing these people were pursuing their destinies and having families and working jobs hopefully that they enjoyed and going on vacations and selling Amway or whatever people do in middle age. And you can do that too. This is your time. That can be scary but it also... It's just remarkable sometimes to be like, oh, I'm the adult. Oh, fascinating. Oh, great.

[00:21:56] ANNE: Eric, I was describing how I felt so seen and also explained in this book. I would love to hear your process that takes you to a place that feels accessible and approachable to so many readers, even for those who have dramatically different lived experiences like myself. Now, you've talked a little bit about what I think we could call the hospitality of memoir, but I'd love to hear more about how or whether you do consciously seek out that kind of connection with your audience.

ERIC: That's such a great question. And it's been one of the real, for me, miracles of publishing. I get DMs and emails from people who say like, I'm nothing like you, you know, I'm a white mother of three from Kentucky.

ANNE: It's mother of four, Eric. Other than that, yes.

ERIC: Well, I'm sorry. I wasn't even just using a...

ANNE: I know, I know.

[00:22:55] ERIC: But like all different kinds of people say, like... and it's amazing how many people... This is with gratitude, not a knock against people, who say like, we're nothing alike but I saw myself in your story. And that is so remarkable because my whole life has been the opposite message. And I think so many of us feel, oh, I am not like other people or I am sort of alone in my journey, or all my friends seem the same but if they really knew who I was, they'd be like, "Oh, you're weird. You're different."

So I think kind of sort of for me leaning into this idea that every person lives at the center of their own story. So if I live in the center of my story, it empowers all of us to think differently about our own stories, to think with empathy. I think stories are empathy engines. They create these bridges between us. So when I say the truth in the most specific and vulnerable way, it not only sort of gives you an insight into my life, but I think it invites you to think about your own life.

[00:24:12] And I learned that from live storytelling. I learned that from sitting in an audience and listening to other people tell fascinating things that I had no relationship to. And then I think, Oh, well, you know, somebody is talking about this difficult relationship they have with their dad. And then I think, what is my relationship like with my dad? Oh, it's not difficult. Well, in what ways am I not seeing him fully as a person and etc., etc., etc..

So I don't know. I learned really early on that specificity was really the key and that being able to say, I don't have all the answers, I don't know what I'm doing here and I'm going to share that with you, makes everything possible.

ANNE: That's so interesting because it's counterintuitive how we would think that speaking in broad terms would be the one that most opens the doors for others to identify their own experience, you know, and to find that way for connection. But it is the hyper-specific somehow that lets us really say like, "Oh yes, that is what it's like, even though it looks perhaps completely different in our own lives."

[00:25:16] ERIC: Yeah, Yeah. I learned so much from reading Jerry Lawson. I learned so much from... I listen to Glennon Doyle's podcast a lot. We're not very similar people. We're on very different journeys. And yet it's the little nuggets of the specific that become so universal.

I love when people talk... I don't have kids. I love when people talk about their kids and they talk about the little questions or idiosyncrasies or frustrations, because for whatever reason, I'm like, "Oh, life is like that. That is so true." And I'm like, "Eric, you don't know. You don't know about socks or palms or whatever." Who knows! But it opens up my mind in such a different way.

I think it's just the revelation of the human. And I think if I were to try to and write a memoir that was like, okay, well, I had this audience for my first book I've got to write to, like isn't it weird how we all live in the same house and we all have the same number of kids and we all do this thing, no one would want to read it because it's not true. So I don't know. It's such a fascinating, like you say, counterintuitive thing.

[00:26:21] ANNE: Eric, there are two moments in your book that I think about more than any other, and I'd love to hear a little bit of your behind-the-scenes take on them. You already introduced us today to your therapist, Brian, who I love so much just based on Congratulations, The Best Is Over!. But I go to therapy. I have for a long time now. And you describe going to see Brian and how you think of the opening 5 minutes as being the top of the show monologue. And I think about that every single time I see therapy on my calendar now. Please say more.

ERIC: Oh, my gosh. I love it. I love it. I've had a number of therapists and every time... You know, one of the things I've had to train myself not to do is not to perform at therapy because that's not useful for anyone. But I do like to... just kind of like you got to get the water temperature right, you know? So you're coming in off your day and off your emails or whatever and they're sitting there all cool and placid like nothing has ever bothered them. And you're like, Okay, well, you got to get a little bit more anxious because we're not going to meet in the middle if you're just like, "Hey, how are things today?

I'm like, No, you got to get frenetic. So I have to do a little bit of... a little top of the show. A little like, So what's going on in the news today? You know, a little Jay Leno. I love that because it is part of getting into the therapy place but it is also chiefly complete nonsense. And I just like it. I like a little bit of banter. Sometimes I will let it lead me into whatever I need to talk about. Sometimes I will just do 5 minutes of type comedy and then be like, "Oh, we're done."

[00:28:04] ANNE: And this is how you become your therapist's favorite, right? Because that is the goal.

ERIC: It truly is. It truly is. And I write about this in the book. I don't go into therapy to make him laugh. But if he does laugh, what am I going to do? Get sued? Making your therapist laugh is the best feeling in the world because it's like I've won. Also, they're trained not to laugh. So you're like, That's a real laugh. That person is fighting against every impulse that he's feeling and he's losing because I'm so funny. That is the best feeling in the world. I'm like, No more problems. I'm good. I'm cured.

ANNE: Something I love in your book is the way that you co-mingle the heavy and the light so naturally and so elegantly, which leads us to another essay from your book that I think about all the time. And that is Jericho, where you write about getting a call in the middle of the night from your mother who's been in a car wreck, and you show up on the scene because she needs you. Would you tell us more about that?

[00:29:11] ERIC: Yeah, I'm so appreciative of this is something that stood out to you. I was very nervous about this one.

ANNE: Eric, I think about this every day. Like every day.

ERIC: Oh, wow. Wow. See? Oh, my God. I got to praise my editor who was like, "Keep this in. Say the hard thing." But also just sort of that is the message of life. Say the hard thing. Like Laura Tremaine says, "Share your stuff: I'll go first. It's a lesson I always have to remember.

So in this story, a couple of months into the pandemic, my husband and I bought a house in suburban Maryland area that I felt unsafe in, even though it was resolutely safe. But it felt like I didn't belong in this area politically, racially. Just it wasn't a space made for me. And my parents live in this redlined neighborhood in downtown Baltimore, where there is always sort of the specter and sometimes the reality of violence.

So Jericho is this essay that's about this juxtaposition of feeling unsafe in the suburbs where there's nothing but deer who eat my hostas and foxes and feeling... having to be and perform being at home and belong in this neighborhood where there's real violence and there's... you know, my parents' cars have been hit. My mother's locked outside the house. It's like a real chaotic scene.

[00:30:34] One of the things that was so interesting I wrote in my first book about a time that a car ran into my parents' house and drove right through the wall. I always tell people they're like, That was wild. I was like, Well, that was the first of three times that my parent's house was hit by a car. And they're like, "Where do your parents live?" And I'm like, "Oh, they live in the Indy 500. They live in the middle of the track. It's so weird. But it is this neighborhood that kind of defies belief but it is also so typical in so many places in America.

The essay kind of climaxes with an interaction that could be very typical. I sort of stumble upon this scene and I surprise a police officer. And in that moment, I sort of realized, Oh, I have underestimated, I've misread who I am in this scenario and how the scenario could play out, and I have to do something very specific to get out of this place. And... I don't know.

[00:31:37] In a book that is about wrestling with coming home and where you belong and where I belong in this country, in my life, the interaction that I had at three in the morning on the street in downtown Baltimore really crystallized some of the things that are always going to be a part of my life, but maybe not my burden to carry. So I kind of leave a little bit of that in this essay and I try and move on.

ANNE: Thank you for sharing more about that. And yes, say the hard thing, it's so interesting to know that that is the credo behind so much of the book. And I'm so grateful it was there. And it was such a generous story to share, I think, just because that's a hard thing to talk about. I'm so grateful you did.

ERIC: I appreciate that. You know, when I came home from that night, I took a beat and didn't really even tell my husband about this encounter that I had because it was truly terrifying. And then later on, I sort of shared it with him. And I asked myself, like, 'is this something that goes in the book?' later on, years later. And I get nervous sometimes that the core reader or the reader who sees herself in my books is going to feel put off by these kind of experiences or... I don't know.

[00:33:00] So it's really gratifying and generous of you to sort of express the way that this essay kind of stands out. It reminds me that we can tell the truth about the world that we're in and what we're seeing, and that I can say, Hey, I felt this experience and it felt very terrifying and strange to me, and it is because of who I am and the context that I'm in. And it doesn't mean that this is the only way that it could be read. It just means that you are receiving my reading of it with generosity. And I appreciate that. That's really powerful.

ANNE: Oh, gosh. Any words I have to say about Jericho are so completely inadequate. I'm so grateful I got to read it. And thank you today for sharing about it in your own voice. I feel like that's the only thing that matters here. And just as we talked about how reading the specificity of others' experience is what feels so good and true and valuable, I really appreciate being able to understand this... Well, I mean, not to understand, but to begin to have the door cracked open to what this very specific evening in your life was like. I don't have the right words, Eric, but I'm so glad it's in these pages.

[00:34:21] ERIC: Well, thank you. Thank you so much. It's incredible. It's beautiful to be in a place with readers where you don't have to do a PowerPoint of like, here's why this might have been hard. And instead, you can just say, "This is my experience. This is what I found hard," and the reader meets you halfway. And that's a real miracle. And that's amazing. So I appreciate it.

ANNE: That is amazing. Would you say more about... I mean, life is the heavy and the light altogether. And yet it seems like for this to be the easy reading experience it was, that was really hard to put together. Maybe I'm wrong, but like you run the gamut from Jericho to celebrity eyebrows. How do you even... I don't even know what to ask. How do you do it, Eric? How do you think about approaching such a thing?

[00:35:16] ERIC: This book was the hardest thing that I've ever had to write. I would say to my husband every day, I'm like, "I'm never writing another book. I'm never doing this again. I don't know why I do these things to myself." I don't know why it was so hard because it wasn't just like, "Oh, I am revisiting hard things and I'm sad." It is I am terraforming the surface of my soul. I don't know. I don't know.

It's funny because the book I wrote before this, Kings of B'more, which was a young adult novel, I wrote it in a month, joyful the entire time, laughing, crying.

ANNE: I did not know that. Whoa.

ERIC: Yeah, just dancing on the ceiling. Yeah. Just an easy experience that felt soul-filling and beautiful. And this one took a year and a half and it took a lot of different drafts. And that's what it took. But I will say that my north star is always joy and always reaching for some sort of joy. The top of the show monologue in therapy is about sort of dithering until I can say the hard thing. But it is also setting for me an intention, which is I want to always be able to reach back up to this place of lightness and joy and communion with other people.

So I felt empowered by Sarah Wise, my editor, and also by the readers who I encountered in my first couple of books to really go to the harder places. But I am always sort of... there is a bully that's pulling me back to the surface because I think sometimes in the lightness it is also shining the light of truth on the hard thing. Sometimes the hardest thing is the jokes you crack after the saddest story you've ever told.

And I learned that sitting around family dinners. I learned that at funerals. I learned that in the darkest moments where you're just sort of sharing yourself, sharing stories, and then you're also sort of like and you know, he was really annoying. And then everybody cracks up, you know, because that is the truth for me. That is what life is. It's like that line from Steel Magnolias. Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion. And that is exactly what it is for me.

[00:37:39] ANNE: I just rewatched that recently. It holds up. And laughter through tears, mm-hmm. Eric, I imagine that we've touched on some of the themes that you consider to be part of the constellation that you're addressing in this book. But would you tell me a little more about the constellation?

ERIC: Yeah, it's so funny. We divide it into two halves. The first chapter is called Homecoming, and I think is, for me, about a couple of things. It's about sort of coming home again and whether you can come home again meeting yourself. It is about approaching and then entering middle age. And then it's about making friends and finding community. It ends on this really beautiful high note where we go into this beautiful possible year, a year where everything is possible, the year 2020.

ANNE: Oh, I laughed so hard through my tears.

[00:38:37] ERIC: Just like I had so much hoped. But I see it as the end of the first act of the musical Into the Woods, where you're like, Oh, everything great? I then you're like, What? Oh, no. The second half is called Homegoing. So for me, the first half was about seeing myself at home, seeing myself in Baltimore. The second half is also about seeing myself in America at a really complicated time. It's about gardening. I spent a lot of time gardening. My editor was like, "There's too many plants in this book." And I was like, "Um, okay, I don't think so." I turn it into a real Adam and Eve, you know, green thumb, Johnny Appleseed kind of guy for a minute, which was a real struggle. And then it's all phases of life.

I think when I look at that constellation as a whole, it is both journeying and then rooting. I think there's something extraordinary that happens when you enter your 40s. A lot of my friends who are around the same age as me have expressed that you know yourself in a different way and you know the world in a different way. But then things start to change a little bit. Your body starts to change, to react differently. You know, people are getting older, things are shifting and moving out of your reach or moving closer to you. I think it's extraordinary. I think it's scary. And I wanted to write about the extraordinary and the scary of it in equal measure.

[00:40:02] ANNE: And is that how we get a smashed cupcake on the cover?

ERIC: It is. But I tell you, I love talking about this cover because... so Rachel Ake is the cover designer for this book and for Here For It. So we had a completely different introduction that was really just a rumination on having the best day of your life. It set the book up in one way. So she read the book, she came up with a couple of different designs, and the one that they presented to me was essentially what you see, this smash cupcake.

And I said to my editor, I got so excited, I was like, "Wait a minute, where did this come from?" And she's like, "Oh, you know, it just seemed like, oh, the party sort of like, you know, party foul, the party's over. And I was like, "No, I went through a cupcake phase. And she was like, "What?" And I was like, There is this phase where in my mid-20s where I didn't know what I was doing in life, so I just made thousands of cupcakes. And I told her the whole story that's in the introduction. And she was like, "Oh, maybe you should put that in the book." And I was like, "I should put that in my book."

So there is something about... these designers are so smart and they really understand something deeper about your work, and it's amazing to see it. So Rachel intuited this like cupcake energy, and that allowed me to like, write my cupcake story into the book was just incredible.

[00:41:28] ANNE: That is amazing and it's such a great cover. I'm so glad you're happy with it. And it's so interesting to hear... I mean, we all, I believe, know and hear about how books are a collaborative process. But wow, that's not the kind of collaboration I was expecting. That's amazing.

ERIC: Yeah. I've never encountered anything like this. But yeah, I rewrote my entire introduction from first word to last based on the cover of my own book. I was like, "Oh, this is what this book is about. And it opened the book up for me. And now, of course, I get to have cupcakes at my different book tour stops. I'm very excited about that. My whole life is cupcakes again.

ANNE: That was so wise. Thank you, Rachel.

ERIC: It's really.

ANNE: Eric, something I loved about Congratulations, The Best Is Over! is that... I mean, it was so entertaining. Like, this was a one-sitting read for me. I just wanted to be there with you and hear you tell me all your stories. That's what it felt like reading this book. And yet it was also so insightful and thought-provoking and wise.

I've been thinking of the different categories of memoirs I enjoy. So your book got me thinking about other memoirs that might fall under the insightful and entertaining category. So I have some ideas that I could share, but I'd love to hear, like, do you think of your memoirs in categories? Like, what are they and what are your favorite kinds?

[00:42:50] ERIC: I mean, this is the question they always ask you in publishing. They're like, what's on the shelf next to it? They literally ask you, what's on the shelf next to your book? And I'm like, I guess other books by people with the last name Thomas. I have no idea. They don't like that answer. But I do.

I do think there can be a bittersweetness. But there is also like... I like a memoir where I laugh, but it's not like... you know, standup comedians sometimes will write essentially joke books, and those are funny. But I do like feeling like you're getting some meat and you're also getting real laughs. So I think a lot about it.

I learned so much from Jenny Lawson. Broken (In the Best Possible Way) feels very much like one of the blueprints for this kind of memoir where you're having a great time, but you're also like, Oh, wow, She's going through it and she's telling me about it and she's taking me with her, which her talent is just beyond my comprehension.

[00:43:54] ANNE: That's such a good example here. I love it. And I hear you. I appreciate learning about all kinds of weird things that I didn't know would be fascinating once I really dug into it. I'm in the frame of mind now to think about the books that I feel like invite me into someone else's lived experience and get to hear over their shoulder as they're going through it.

You mentioned gardening, and that makes me think that one book I really enjoyed along these lines is The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, which we talked about on this podcast. A guest, Shauna Niequist, talked about it and made me think like, Oh, I need to read that. He's a poet. So he's wonderful at making all the words fall in exactly the right place. But this is about the simple things we often overlook compiled from the small joys he recorded in his life for a year.

And his little essays range from short paragraphs to longer meditations about everything from pickup basketball games to conversations with his mother to his garden. And my favorite essay in this book is the one where he talks about taking a tomato plant onto a flight and how everybody was just like him fussing over his baby, like, "Oh, what do you have there?' "A cute little tomato plant." "Oh, what are you going to do with that next?" I enjoyed it so much.

And when you were talking about all the gardening stuff in Congratulations, it brought it to the top of my mind for me.

[00:45:18] ERIC: I love that. I mean, if I could write like... I mean, I have a couple of writing icons. I'm like, Oh, I want to steal your voice, like Ursula in The Little Mermaid. And one is Roethke. Like poets. Poets. Oh, my goodness. When I'm really in my best writing practice, I start my day reading poetry. I'll read Jericho Brown or I'll read Russ Gay or read Mary Oliver or, you know, a couple of others. Morgan Parker. Because I am not a poet and that is not the way that I exist to the world.

So it opens my mind up in such beautiful ways. To use a garden metaphor, it acts as a soil aerator and a fertilizer, and it access sunlight and water. It's remarkable. The way he describes things... If I could write The Book of Lights, oh, my goodness, I'd never write anything else. I'd just release it every year, like Mariah Carey doing the Christmas album.

ANNE: Another one I really love is Bess Kalb. She wrote Nobody Will Tell You This But Me. This is about... I think it's called something like a [inaudible 00:46:24] linear love story. It's about her grandmother's life. Her grandmother was a character. And the voice she uses is so interesting. Like on the second page of the book, her grandmother is speaking from her own funeral and she's telling the readers it's a terrible thing to be dead. But she relays for much of the book many of the conversations, like almost as though they're transcribed that they enjoyed every day when they spoke on the phone. And they're tender and ridiculous and incredible, like really thoughtful and also sometimes laugh out loud, funny. And I love a book like that.

[00:47:01] ERIC: I do too. And I'm always so impressed when people have a lot of dialog in their books because, you know, I'm very okay with people saying that conversation went kind of like this and then giving it a little bit of lift. But the really capturing voices is remarkable and makes the read experience for me so much better.

It reminds me of... two books come to mind for me. One is, of course, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. Truly one of my favorite books. He moves to France with his husband. He doesn't speak French. And it's sort of about being this fish out of water. But he also comes from this very funny Greek family, including his sister, Amy Sedaris who is an incredible comedian and actress in their own right. But his voice is for his siblings. Amy and his youngest brother and his parents are so specific and so vivid. I just can't get enough. I feel like I know them when they show up on the page.

[00:48:00] And I also thought of Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, which is a graphic novel memoir about growing up. She grew up in a funeral home. Her parents ran a funeral home. It's also her coming of age, realizing that she was a lesbian and coming into her own in that way. But it really sort of centers on this very weird, unique experience of living at a funeral home in the early 70s and watching her idiosyncratic parents try to make their marriage work as they made their business work. And seeing it in the form of a graphic novel is just so unique. I would love to read more graphic novel memoirs.

ANNE: You know what else I was thinking of when you were talking about how joy is the buoy that you find your way back to in this book is Elizabeth Alexander's memoir, The Light of the World. Do you know this one? Somehow we're talking about the poet memoirs today. She is a poetry professor at Yale. It's just such a pleasure to read.

[00:49:00] So this is, in some respects, a really sad story. The light of the world in this book is her husband, who died years before this story was written. He was an incredible man, born in Eritrea in East Africa. He came to New Haven as a refugee from war. She was American, born in Harlem. But both for artists. There's a really vibrant painting on the cover of the book, and that is his work. And she just describes the joy they experienced in their life together. And their homes-

ERIC: Oh, wow.

ANNE: ...is this just amazing, vibrant, multicultural extravaganza with guests always coming and going and food and friends and music and art. It's a sad book because she's looking back and talking about what it was like to lose him. But he died, I think, of a heart attack on the treadmill at age 50.

ERIC: Oh, my gosh.

ANNE: But it's really a celebration of their time together. So while it sounds like a grief memoir, which in some respects it is, it's also such a joyful celebration of life. I mean, I don't even think about the two coexisting so much as being just interposed directly on top of each other in this work.

[00:50:04] ERIC: Oh, I love that. Grief memoirs and grief-adjacent memoirs are something that I find so fascinating and beautiful. I am very much here for a grief memoir that is like, we're going to solve the entire way through and feel closer to the world around you. But also I get very excited when there's a grief memoir that also it reminds you of the way that life shimmers. I'm not familiar with that one. So I'm absolutely going to pick it up the minute we stop talking.

It reminded me a little bit of One Long River of Song by Brian Doyle. And it's a book of essays. He passed away at the age of 60 from cancer. He wrote these essays just on wonder and finding wonder in the small interactions in life, the small details of life, you know, the pleasure of bearing witness to being alive. I get so excited when people are able to, because of the way their lives work or because of something that has happened to them, are able to sort of see through the fog of life and see to the sparkling nugget in the middle. And then they give that knowledge to us. It feels like something we shouldn't have almost. You know, you have to live through the trauma to get this knowledge, but we get to have it. So those kind of books I hold on to so tightly.

[00:51:35] ANNE: I've heard such great things about Brian Doyle. And Eric, I have never read any of his works. That sounds like a good place to start.

ERIC: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was my introduction. A friend recommended it to me. And it's so funny. Like, you open the cover and it's... the page is also by Brian Doyle, and there's like 20 books here. And I was like, Well, where've you been? What's going on? But, you know what? There's a lot of books out there. If you get introduced, no matter what time, it's the right time, I think.

ANNE: I think so, too. Eric, we've talked about books that nestle up on the shelf maybe next to you, Congratulations, The Best Is Over!. But I'd love to hear about any upcoming books, memoirs, or books of any flavor that you're excited about reading or if there's one you've already read and just can't stop recommending to everybody. We'd love to hear about that too.

ERIC: I love this question. I have a couple that kind of run the gamut. So I know that... I hope this doesn't create pressure for him. But J.P. Brammer, he wrote a memoir in the form of an advice column. He wrote a book called ¡Hola Papi!. And it was about him coming of age in Oklahoma. I know that he is working on a graphic novel memoir. I believe it's sort of more about his childhood in Oklahoma and then moving to New York City. I'm so, so, so excited about it.

He's sharing just little tidbits of it. And I'm like, parched. I'm like, "Send it to me. Just send me the pages. I just want to see it." So that's J. P. Brammer. I don't think it has a release date. I don't even know if he sold it. He just put it on Instagram and I'm like, "It's a book. I'll find it sometime."

[00:53:12] ANNE: I haven't read him yet. Thank you for that.

ERIC: Oh, he's great. I think he's so funny. I hope that we are sort of on the same kind of shelf. I would be very honored to be in his company. There's a book by one of my former coworkers from Elle magazine, Mattie Kahn, and it's called the Young and Restless. It came out earlier this summer. It looks at different social movements in America through the lens of teenage girls who Mattie points out are usually or almost exclusively the catalysts for these different movements, from the American Revolution to the Civil Rights Movement to more recent movements.

Nobody is writing more vividly and more interestingly about young women in political spaces than Mattie. She's interviewed political leaders for years for Vogue and for Elle and a couple of other spaces. And this is her first book. I've been so excited about this book for so long. And I love a book that I can bring to the beach and it's got a gorgeous cover and it looks like I'm smart and-

ANNE: But really you just want to be entertained.

[00:54:19] ERIC: Yeah. Exactly. It's an entertaining book that I come away and I'm like, Oh, wow, I have some tidbits for the dinner party. So I'm very excited for that. So once I finish my book tour stuff at the end of the month, you know, go up to Provincetown with my copy of Young and Restless by Mattie Kahn and impress everybody. So those are the things I'm excited about.

ANNE: This was not on my radar, but I think I need this for myself and for a certain 18-year-old young woman interested in politics in my life.

ERIC: Oh, my gosh, absolutely. It is the perfect graduation gift. It is the perfect welcome-to-college gift. It is the perfect gift for yourself. I think it's a phenomenal book. I'm excited for Mattie.

ANNE: I'm excited for these recommendations. Eric, thank you so much for talking about your reading life and about your new book with us today. I'm so excited for everyone to read it. Readers, it's now available wherever you get your books. Oh, Eric, I was about to ask you a very difficult question, but you know what, I'm going to do it. Hardcover or audio?

ERIC: For this one or in books in general?

ANNE: This one.

ERIC: This one. I'm going to tentatively say audio because I was directed by an audiobook narrator and director named Adenrele Ojo. She brought out things in me and in my voice that I was like, "Am I an actor? Is Viola Davis in the room? I did some impressions that who can say? Don't know. Meryl, on your trail, expecting a nomination. So I think audio is a good time. I apologize to everyone who listens to it. I had a little bit of a sinus thing going on, but they say you can't hear it. But now that I've said it, you will listen for it. And I've cursed to myself, so why did I say that?

ANNE: Because we want to know how the books we love to read get made.

ERIC: Mm. Mm.

[00:56:08] ANNE: We want to know what your life was like when you were doing this audiobook. We want to hear about the director and the sinus thing.

ERIC: Oh, gosh, it was incredible. So he sat up in a booth and they have a chair for me to sit on, but I felt like I wasn't giving enough energy. So I stood, and then I was like, Oh, these shoes feel weird. So I took off my shoes. So I'm barefoot, standing in this booth like I am Janis Joplin recording this audiobook for 8 hours a day for three days. Just like on my bare feet, screaming it to them. Adenrele is on Zoom and in my ear, but she can't see me. So I posted photos and video of it on my Instagram. And you can see me gesturing and doing all kinds of weird voices. And she was like, "I didn't know you were doing all that." And I was like, "Oh, am I not supposed to do all that?" She was like, "Yeah, you can just use your voice." I was like, "Okay, well, that's one way of looking at it."

ANNE: Thank you for anticipating my question, which was, Oh my gosh, can we see this?

[00:57:10] ERIC: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Check out my Instagram, a little bit farther down, but you'll see there's photos of me with the microphone and the headphones like I'm recording, We Are the World. My Instagram handle is @oureric. Check that out.

ANNE: I love it. Eric, thanks so much for taking the time, and congrats again on your new book coming out. I'm so excited for everyone to read it and glad it's out there.

ERIC: Anne, thank you so much. It's just always such a pleasure to hear you. And now it's such a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you.

[00:57:39] ANNE: Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Eric today, and I would love to hear about the memoirs you have loved and found delightfully engrossing. Find Eric at his website rericthomas.com and on Instagram @oureric. We'll have those links in our show along with a full list of titles we talked about at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

One of the best places to keep up with all things What Should I Read Next? is on Instagram. We've got a page for the show there @whatshouldireadnext. And you can follow me too @annebogel. We love seeing your posts about what you are reading next. Tag us in your post and story so we can follow along.

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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.