[00:00:00] ANNE BOGEL: That has so many things I love, except trolls. I don't know that I've ever read a book with a main character troll.

LEIGH KRAMER: She is a great troll. She is one of my favorite characters.

ANNE: 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.

This week we have a special episode for you in what has become something of an annual tradition. Nine members of our team here at Modern Mrs. Darcy and What Should I Read Next? HQ are joining us to share their favorite reads of the summer season.

Before we get into summer reads, fall, despite what the thermostat may say, is right around the corner and our Fall Book Preview is coming up in our What Should I Read Next? Patreon community. It's happening on September 14th. I will share 42 books I've read and loved, I can't wait to read, and that the industry is most buzzing about for this upcoming season. It's going to be a great time.

And it's included with your Patreon membership, in addition to episodes of Mini-matchmaking, One Great Book, Dear Book Therapist, extra book recommendations, and more. It's just $5 a month unless you opt for the generous tier of $10 a month with the exact same perks.

But this is a great way to tangibly support What Should I Read Next?. We could not do this work without our patrons. We are so grateful for you and we invite you all to become part of that Patreon community. Visit patreon.com/whatshouldireadnext to sign up. And don't miss the Fall Book Preview on September 14th.

Now back to our team's summer favorites.

[00:02:00] While everyone on our team brings something different and something special to the work we're doing here, one thing we all have in common is a love of books and reading. In today's episode, our team members are pairing up to discuss what summer reading means to each of us and the type of books we’re typically looking for this time of year. Plus, we each share a book or two or sometimes three that we have really loved this summer.

We mentioned a ton of titles in today's conversation. I imagine you will have already read and loved some of them and will want to add others to your to-be-read list. As always, to help you in those endeavors, you will find the full list of every title talked about today over on our show notes page. That is at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

Now let's get to it.

For our first conversation, I'm joining our What Should I Read Next? community manager, Sara Aeder, and our Modern Mrs. Darcy editor and social media manager, Leigh Kramer, to talk about our summer favorites. From tropes we love and hate to the books we usually reach for right about now, it was a blast, and I'm excited to invite you to listen in.

Leigh and Sara, it's our turn to talk books.

SARA AEDER: This is going to be fun.

[00:03:08] ANNE: Leigh, What does summer reading mean to you?

LEIGH: It means nothing to me. It's just a normal time of year. I am still working. The summer is just normal time. So I am just led by my muse, led by whatever looks interesting at the library and on my TBR cart, and in my Kindle.

ANNE: Okay, so this may not be seasonal-specific, but what kind of books are you reading this time of year?

LEIGH: I mean, it could be anything. I don't read seasonally. Well, sometimes I do, but I also just read a book that was set at Thanksgiving during the snowstorm. So I'll do whatever.

ANNE: When the heat index is 107, that sounds completely perfect to me.

LEIGH: Yeah.

ANNE: Sara, what about you? How do you think of summer reading?

SARA: I'm the same as Leigh. I'm just generally not a seasonal reader. And I know that so many people in the What Should I Read Next? community feel strongly about reading certain kinds of books in certain seasons, but I don't know. No matter what time of year, I'm working and I have, you know, kids coming in and out of the house. And I have yet to find the time of the year where I have large swaths of uninterrupted time to read books.

[00:04:27] ANNE: And what types of books do you find yourself reading this time of year?

SARA: You know, I guess the one thing about this time of year that does make my reading sort of summery is that I am reading a lot of books off the Summer Reading Guide. So in that way, it is inspired. I've had a great summer of reading because of those books. And as we know, the Summer Reading Guide doesn't have a specific kind of book on it. It's got books of all topics and lengths and moods.

ANNE: But pub dates definitely in a certain window. Okay. Well, I am definitely on the record for what summer reading means to me and what I tend to read this time of year, which is a nice mix of new and especially the old that I don't read during the months of the year when I'm really seriously prepping the Summer Reading Guide.

But my summer reading has been really different this year and has because my summer has been different. We took this trip to Europe with Will and our four kids that I talked about on the podcast, and I'm really honestly surprised at what a huge effect that has had on my reading life because I wanted to read books to get ready for that trip. And then my reading was very strange on that trip. We talked about that on the podcast. It came in fits and spurts, and I read fewer books than I typically do in the months of June and July.

[00:05:40] And now I still want to read all those books that you have inspired me to read but also I'm reading very much for the Fall Book Preview. So I'm still doing my backlist, but it's not... It feels like I have more project-based reading than I usually do in the summertime, which in one sense is amazing because it has me focused on these books I'm so glad I'm reading. But in another sense, I'm like, Ah, I just kind of want to read a mystery that came out on August 1st, and I'm sure that I have the time to do that right now.

And usually my summer is made of time when it comes to reading. But for the types of books I'm reading, it's not all that different. In some way is, but it still feels like a really different summer.

SARA: Well, you have a lot going on in your life.

ANNE: I do, and it's really impacting my reading in ways that I think are good in a lot of ways, frustrating sometimes. But, you know, I read a lot of good stuff. Okay, so now we get to hear about y'alls favorites. Leigh, do you want to kick us off?

LEIGH: Sure. The first book I want to mention is Too Like the Lightning by Travis Beaudoin. It is a small town, age gap, contemporary romance, open door. It's really angsty. It made me cry, which is... that's a selling point for me. I know it's not a selling point for everyone, but it just kind of like lives in my heart right now.

[00:07:03] So it's about Andrew, who is down on his luck. He lost out on tenure, his boyfriend broke up with him, and so he drives down to Bulbs, Florida, this rural town, to stay for the summer in his friend's rental house.

So he is driving, driving, driving from Virginia. He finally gets there and this young, hot groundskeeper lets him into the house and Andrew embarrasses himself by starting to just bawl. He just can't stop crying in front of this guy who he's never met before. So, you know, it's an interesting start to their friendship. And then it becomes what they first think is maybe just a fling, but it becomes apparent that they have more of a connection.

And what I really enjoyed about it is that Andrew's loneliness and isolation are exacerbated by the rural setting. But also I just love books that have a strong sense of place, that are paired with emotions. It reminded me a lot of Names for the Dawn by C.L. Beaumont, which I believe I mentioned in a different team favorite books episode. It was just so moving.

There are Shakespeare quotes, there's a lot of symbolism about nature. Coley the groundskeeper is basically sunshine in human form. I just absolutely loved it.

[00:08:29] ANNE: Okay, so for readers who aren't familiar with your reading taste, how typical is this of what you tend to love?

LEIGH: I would say this is like a quintessential Leigh romance.

ANNE: I was thinking this is a Leigh book.

SARA: If you didn't bring a romance, I would be very disappointed.

LEIGH: Romance, angsty, made me cry, symbolism, strong setting, characters I love. Yeah.

ANNE: I love it. That's a great title, too.

LEIGH: Yes. And the title has a lot of meaning. So once you start to read, you will see the connection there.

ANNE: Love it. Sara, what about you? What's a book you love this summer?

SARA: So my first book that I'm going to talk about and I'm going to admit cheating a little bit because I got to make the pairings, the groups for this conversation. And I said, "I'm going to talk about a romance. I want Leigh in my group."

LEIGH: I'm honored.

SARA: There's some behind the scenes. My first pick is called Unorthodox Love by Heidi Shertok. And Anne, you brought this book to my attention because you know that one thing I'm always looking for is Jewish books and specifically Jewish books that talk about things other than the Holocaust. That's my category. And you shared it with me and my first reaction was, "Oh, no." I did not think this book was going to be for me.

[00:09:57] The premise is that Penina is a 29-year-old Orthodox woman working in a jewelry store, and her new boss comes in who is a hot secular Jew, Sam, and shenanigans ensue. I was worried, to be honest, because as an Orthodox Jew myself, I was concerned about how the book would portray Judaism. Very often, modern contemporary culture looks down on traditional practice, and I knew that that wouldn't work for me. And also, what does it mean that he's secular, she's orthodox? Is she going to move away from her Judaism for him? I loved this book.

I loved Penina. She is so real. She feels like someone I've met. I loved how it portrayed her Jewish family, which is dysfunctional but loving. I thought it was really accurate. It didn't dumb down the references and how it portrayed Judaism. It really expected a lot from the reader.

And one of the things I really loved about this book is that I am not often a romance reader. I want to be. I love the fun covers. I love knowing that there's going to be a happy ending, but I hate miscommunication tropes.

LEIGH: Oh, yeah.

[00:11:14] SARA: And when the entire book could not happen because someone could just say, "Oh, hey, I like you," and the other person could say, "I like you back," but for the entire book they just don't say that, it drives me nuts. And I felt like this book had a real struggle at the center, which is that her Orthodox Judaism was important to her and it was not part of his life, and how are they going to end up together.

LEIGH: That's such a great internal conflict. Well, and it's an external conflict, too, because it's like, how do they see the world? How does that affect their beliefs? Like, what kind of compromise can they possibly reach? I mean, this is why I love reading romance, because now I want to know, like, how does the author make it work.

SARA: I think you’ll like it.

ANNE: I'm so glad you enjoyed this and I'm so glad I finally got to hear about it. Because, Sara, you've teased it a couple times like, "Anne, I have to tell you about this book, but not till we talk together with Leigh." So thank you for finally filling me in.

SARA: And thank you for bringing it into my life, Anne.

ANNE: I'm so glad. I mean, I can't take any special credit there. I just thought like, Oh, this is the kind of book that Sara says checks her boxes. And I'm glad that it turned out to be a good fit.

[00:12:23] Okay, I'm going to share one that I already shared on the podcast in my conversation with Annie McCloskey the first week of August, and it is Happiness Falls by Angie Kim. This was such a wonderful reading experience this summer. I had the kind of experience where you sit down with a book on a Saturday morning and you finish it on a Sunday afternoon and 400 pages have gone by and you're just so satisfied with how you spent them.

This comes out August 29th. They got moved from September 5th. I'm curious as to why. But this is a literary mystery that had a voice I just loved. It's also a story of a complex, complicated family—another thing I love.

The story begins when a father vanishes in a D.C. area park. His non-verbal, although Angie Kim has a lot of words to say about nonverbal and what it means to be non-verbal. But his son, who cannot speak, who is 14 years old and autistic, is the only one who witnesses what happened to him. But he can't tell anyone what happened.

The family just knows that he comes home with blood under his nails and extremely upset, and they don't know why. In fact, the first words of the book are "we didn't call the police right away". And for the first section of the book, the narrator's wrestling with like, "Might things have been different if we did call right away? At first, we didn't think something was really wrong or we didn't want to believe something was desperately wrong. So this is what we did instead." And this is how the human brain can paper over danger. Oh, I just loved following along with Mia as she was working through these questions herself.

[00:14:02] But it's set during the pandemic, she's a 20-year-old college student who was at home in 2020 because of it. Her twin brother is also home. They're close, but they don't tell each other everything, although they do have that weird twin mind-meld energy going on sometimes. And she talks about that. But when the father disappears, the whole family is turned inside out, internally and also by the police investigation.

And we just get to see how this Korean-American family has worked and what's brought them joy in the past and what has been really, really hard. And what conflict that perhaps isn't entirely resolved is contributing, possibly causing the current situation. I loved it so much.

So I haven't read her previous book, Miracle Creek, but I've heard that in that one as well she incorporates elements of music and the arts. In this book, we see language therapy and philosophical/psychological theories as they try to figure out what happened to this father. I loved it so much.

It reminded me of a lot of books that I really enjoyed in the past. I felt like it had elements that I recognized from Monica Wood's The One-in-a-Million Boy and Rebecca Makkai's I Have Some Questions for You, Liz Moore's The Unseen World, Jean Kwok's Searching for Sylvie Lee, and yet I've never read a story like this and I loved it.

[00:15:26] SARA: It sounds like such a good experience. Actually, because you mentioned that you loved the book on Annie's episode, my mother-in-law was going through her Book of the Month picks and I said, "Oh, choose that one. I heard it's great."

ANNE: Oh, I didn't know that. Well, I'll be curious to hear what she thinks. Leigh, I know you will never pass by an opportunity to share more than one favorite. So what did you bring for another book?

LEIGH: This is very true.

ANNE: I love that about you, to be clear.

LEIGH: So yesterday we had a team meeting, and I teased that I was reading a book, but I wasn't going to talk about it because I thought I would finish it in time to discuss today. And that is Something Close to Magic by Emma Mills. It is a cozy fantasy about a baker's apprentice who gets caught up with a bounty hunter, a troll, like an actual troll, and a prince named Hapless. And there's adventure, palace intrigue, this really interesting, magical system. There's a found family, great banter. I read it with a smile on my face. I really hope it will become a series. It was just so, so delightful. If you enjoyed Sangu Mandanna's The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, this would be a great one to pick up.

[00:16:46] ANNE: That has so many things I love, except trolls. I don't know that I've ever read a book with a main character troll.

LEIGH: But she is a great troll. Like she is one of my favorite characters. She says that she is older than some trees and rocks. And she's like walking through the forest, she's just like, "I'm older than that tree, older than that rock." And then she points at a rock and she's like, "Not that one." It's just so fun. We love Quad.

ANNE: That sounds adorable. Thank you for bringing it to my life.

LEIGH: Any time.

ANNE: Sara, what about you? What else did you love this summer?

SARA: For my second book, I'm going to go with a nonfiction pick. This is a book called Young and Restless: The Girls Who Sparked America’s Revolutions by Mattie Kahn. Oh, I just realized that both of the books that I'm speaking about today are by debut authors. That is fun. That's fun. A fun coincidence.

[00:17:42] So in this book, Kahn writes about how teenage girls have been at the center of America's biggest struggles for change and rights from labor walkouts in Lowell, Massachusetts to the civil rights movement, to climate change activism. And she talks about how young girls are often discounted.

For example, one of the most famous examples that she gives is that we all know about Rosa Parks and her heroism, and her refusal to stand up on the bus. But many fewer people know about Claudette Colvin, who nine months before Rosa Parks sparked a revolution, refused to stand up on a bus. And she was 15 years old. And she didn't do it casually. She was doing this to be an activist. But the powers that be decided that as a teenage girl and as a pregnant teenage girl, she would not make the right face for what they were trying to do.

I didn't know about, for example, when Kahn is speaking about the movement for women's suffrage. Of course, I know about Susan B. Anthony, but I never heard about Mabel Ping-Hua Lee, who was 16 years old, a Chinese immigrant who actually led the Suffrage parade in New York. She was the first Chinese woman to get a Ph.D. in economics in America. Really, really incredible woman who when women were granted the right to vote, didn't even get that right because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, she was still disenfranchised.

So it was really informative, but also written in very accessible prose. Kahn was previously a magazine writer. It's under 300 pages, so it makes a great book to throw in your bag when you're in the mood to learn about, you know, young women and the radical change that they're capable of.

[00:19:22] ANNE: That was on my radar because of a conversation I had with a podcast guest. And now I'm trying to think which episode that is. But I'm so glad you mentioned it. Thank you. Also another really amazing title.

Oh, it's my turn. Okay. I'm going to tell you about another book I loved, not another reading experience that was exceptional with a book that I don't think I would have liked in any other circumstances. But first, the book I loved, Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur. This one just came out in June.

This was not on my radar until we had a Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club conversation with Erica Bauermeister about No Two Persons, and she mentioned that she was reading it. And I needed an audiobook, so I downloaded the full-cast narration. It has Jason Culp, Cassandra Campbell, Joy Osmanski, Allyson Ryan, Sura Siu. I really enjoyed it in that format.

But this is a messy family drama. I think we could fairly call this a juicy, big-hearted family novel. I love the episode I did with Amy Jo Burns with a narcissistic patriarch who is both a famous, like world-renowned oceanographer and also someone who drives his family to the brink because he has bipolar disorder. And he likes to manage his meds in such a way to prolong the manic episode as long as possible.

LEIGH: Oh, wow.

[00:20:49] ANNE: It's dramatic. It's really dramatic and tough for everybody involved, except for Adam, the patriarch, who's like, "You all need to chill out. This is fine. I'm a genius. I know what I'm doing. Just go relax your little self and leave me alone and let me do what I want to do."

But he's approaching 70. He decides he's going to throw or rather he's going to coerce his daughter-in-law into throwing a big bash birthday party where everybody's going to toast him and lord him and give him the credit he is due after all this time. You know, because 70 is a big deal. But it's not that he's old or anything. It's really important that everybody acknowledge both.

Meanwhile, his two children who are polar opposites, one is a contemporary artist who I almost just described as a struggling artist because he has been for a long time, but she has just gotten to get some long coming renown for the really inventive works she does. And the other is a real estate mogul who's felt overshadowed by everybody else in this family for a long time, has a lot of childhood demons to overcome. And that doesn't really make him fun to be in the proximity of in the story.

[00:21:56] But into this dramatic family milieu comes an outsider who is related by blood to the Gardner clan, the blue bloods who live on the coast. She decides, "You know what? I'm going to get to know them and see what I think. Maybe not tell them yet, but decide if this is a family I want to be a part of." And she is different from them in so many ways. It is quite a summer.

I love this because the messy family, of course, but also arts, politics, midlife reassessment and reinvention. Those are all themes, especially the art in midlife that I find myself really drawn to these days. And this novel has it in spades.

SARA: It sounds really intense.

ANNE: It's got a sense of humor, though.

SARA: Okay.

ANNE: I mean, it's a mess, but a comedic one.

LEIGH: This is like the quintessential Anne book. We're talking about like the quintessential Leigh romance, quintessential Anne, messy, complicated family book.

ANNE: This is definitely on par for me. And if I didn't already say this is what I love to read in the summertime, this is what I love to read in the summertime. This has been so fun. Leigh and Sara, thanks for sharing your favorite summer reads. I hope fall is looking just as bright for you and we will look forward to seeing what happens next in your reading lives.

[00:23:14] Readers, I loved talking books with Sara and Leigh. And even though the three of us do this all the time, it was extra special to capture this conversation for the show.

Next, you'll hear from our resident spreadsheet wizard, Donna Hetchler, and our Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club community manager, Ginger Horton, as they talk about summer reading slumps, unintended deep dives, and the titles that stood out for them this season.

GINGER HORTON: Hi, this is Ginger Horton. I'm really excited because today when this episode is planned to air, we are also having our best book of summer in the book club, but that is member-driven. So I am talking about this book today and later today. If you are in that book club community, you will be also talking and sharing this book. So what a fun day!

Hey, Donna, how are you?

DONNA HETCHLER: Hi, Ginger. I'm good. You know, I was just thinking that this is kind of typically what we do on a Friday afternoon, but this time we're being recorded. So I just think it makes it extra special. But I'm lucky enough that I get to talk books with you all the time.

GINGER: That's right. We meet lots of Fridays to talk about everything from book club metrics to lots of books and movies, which I think that will be reflected in our conversation today.

DONNA: Definitely.

[00:24:26] GINGER: I love it. I don't read a whole lot differently in the summer on purpose, but I do read differently on accident because of the kinds of books that are out there in the world, in a lot of Mrs. Darcy Book Club Community, on the Summer Reading Guide. I feel like my enthusiasm is often up in the summer because there's so many good choices.

That being said, I traditionally go through a major summer slump. This has been true for me for the last, oh, six or more years that I've been tracking. And I don't sweat it anymore. But that just did not happen this summer. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about why once I get into the books that I've loved. But yeah, I don't deliberately read a whole lot differently.

What I do notice that I tend to do is I read a lot more nonfiction. I think some of that is because I'm maybe traveling and I want to read something that's taking place in that space. The Summer Reading Guide often does a really good job of recommending some nonfiction books that were totally not on my radar. So I think it's a part of my reading life that sort of rears its head in the summer that is not atypical of the rest of the year, but for some reason, it seems more robust in the summer. What about you, Donna?

[00:25:31] DONNA: Well, Ginger, I feel like you passed on your reading slump affliction to me because that is what has happened to me this summer. I won't go into it here because I talk about it on a Patreon bonus episode with Shannon and Anne, but I think I'm just coming out of my slump. I've been reading books that are related to movies, so you're going to hear that theme throughout all my picks today.

GINGER: I love it. I absolutely love it. Well, without further ado, I mean, really, what am I here for? When I'm listening to an episode of What Should I Next? I'm here for the book. So without further ado, let's get to it.

I've kind of had a little bit of a theme this summer. Anne graciously let each of us team members who wanted to contribute a book to the Summer Reading Guide. And my pick was The Postcard which we read for book club. We just talked last week with a translator. It was a fascinating conversation about books in translation. But I said in my blurb, "This is the book I did not want to recommend because it's hard and heavy, and even so, I could not put it down."

And that theme continues for me here today. At the end of the summer, the best book that I read is a book that I think I said to several team members, "I don't even know if I want to be on this episode because I don't want to talk about it. But if I'm being honest, this is how the reading life works sometimes, is the best book that you read is not maybe the book that you were most excited to read. And that is Prince Charles by Sally Bedell Smith. I did not expect to honestly get to this book as soon as I did. I did not expect to love this book. I could not put this down.

[00:27:01] This is more than 500 pages on a subject that, to be frank, I have a little blasé on Prince Charles. You know, best wishes to him in the world, but I didn't really care so much. Here is why I bought this book. I do not mind telling you I bought this book for the endpapers. That is the sole reason I bought this book. I thought it would stay on my shelf.

DONNA: That is so huge, Ginger. I love that comment.

GINGER: I saw the endpapers on Instagram and I was obsessed with this beautiful full-cover photo of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles. And for some reason, it came to me used from Amazon. I set it on my shelf... not even on my shelf. On my coffee table. It didn't even make it upstairs to my proper shelves. I picked it up one weekend and I barely put it down. I was fascinated.

His life was indeed more interesting than I thought. I appreciate some of his early environmental work well before it was cool to be an environmentalist or to be involved in conversations about climate change and global warming. He was definitely on the fringes of that. So I really learned a lot about him.

[00:28:03] But the main reason I loved this book is Sally Bedell Smith is such a fantastic writer. Now, she is a softball writer when it comes to the royal family. She is not putting them through their paces. She is very kind and I was very aware of that throughout. But man, can she write! Just this prose sings, and yet it's never boring, it never flags. She keeps the pace moving.

It read like a novel. I mean, this was absolutely fascinating. If you're the kind of person who loves a character-driven novel, there was conflict. There's so much in this. I don't want to recommend it, but I loved it. I loved this book, Prince Charles.

But really what it led me to was to remind myself that I had also on that coffee table had the big chunky Babel by R. F. Kuang sitting on my coffee table. And my mind started thinking after Prince Charles's coronation in May, which is why I bought this book with the beautiful endpapers, about colonialism and empire, particularly the British Empire, which we Americans are an outcropping of.

[00:29:04] So I, in a quick succession, took down Babel. I then read Inglorious Empire from that. It basically was a refutation of Empire by Niall Ferguson. It seems to be coming up everywhere. So I have been on a deep dive this summer about empire and colonialism, and I've learned a lot and it's a lot to grapple with.

That does not feel like typical summer reading for you. I am always here for a deep dive. And it kind of started with this biography with the pretty end papers. And I really love when that happens with the reading life—when you pick a topic and on purpose or not on purpose, as is the case for me, you really just keep turning the pages and keep turning over new books and keep turning over new ideas and chapters. It's almost like this diamond that I've seen all the different facets of it throughout my summer reading.

And these are big chunky books too. So my summer reading slump has really been saved by the 500 page or more this year on, you know, who's reading about Empire in the hammock? This girl, this girl, that's who's doing that. So...

[00:30:09] DONNA: I love it. I did not expect to come away from this conversation wanting to be reading a book about King Charles, but that's what I'm taking away.

GINGER: There you go. And that is exactly right. Donna, thank you for correcting me. The book is entitled Prince Charles because it was written pre-coronation, but he is now King Charles. So thank you for that historical fact check back in real-time.

DONNA: No worries. All right. Well, there are two books that I loved this summer that I wanted to recommend to people. And like I said, I have a movie theme to my reading this summer. So the first is Foster by Claire Keegan. This is a novella. And I picked it up after watching the independent movie The Quiet Girl, which was just so lovely.

By the way, I didn't even realize those two things were connected. I was looking up more information about The Quiet Girl and realized it was based on this novella. It's about a young girl. It's set in Ireland. She is sent to some relative's house when her mother is giving birth to, frankly, yet another baby in the family. So she's one of many children in this family. But she goes and lives with this other couple and she is the only child there. And to see what happens when she is in that kind of situation is so beautiful and moving and heartwarming. I just absolutely loved it.

[00:31:36] The second book really takes a turn. It's a thriller and it's called Going Zero. It's by Anthony McCarten, who I had never even heard of before. But it turns out he is a screenwriter. That's why he decided to pick this up, because I'm like, "Well, if he's used to writing movies, this is going to be a fast-paced book." And it was.

So the movies he's written are really kind of all over the map. He wrote Bohemian Rhapsody, that movie about Queen.

GINGER: Oh, I loved that movie.

DONNA: I did, too. And then he wrote The Theory of Everything. I don't know if you remember that one from several years back. But just really two very different. And then this thing is completely different where it's like a page-turning thriller.

So the setup of the book is that there are ten people who are competing to win $3 million, and basically they have to avoid being found. They're kind of like going off the grid. And the company that's trying to track them down, they are doing a beta test of a tracking system that the government wants to buy and just seen how people try to go off the grid and yet can't really escape, you know, cameras and phones and all the ways that we can be tracked, and then seeing how this company finds them was fascinating.

[00:33:07] By the way, I will note that the one contestant that they really have trouble finding is a librarian. So I just absolutely love that. I'm like, of course, of course, the librarian, they cannot find.

GINGER: I love it.

DONNA: They're so clever.

GINGER: Of course.

DONNA: But I would recommend this book for anybody who's a fan of Michael Crichton books. I think they would really like this one. And it just came out this year. It just came out a few months ago.

And then I thought I would mention Whalefall by Daniel Kraus. It came across my radar because Imagine Entertainment just bought the movie rights. So hopefully it'll be a movie someday. But it's about a diver who is stuck in the belly of a whale—I think that is such a wild premise—and he has like one hour of oxygen left and he's trying to escape. So sign me up. I'm all in on that one.

GINGER: I want to read that.

[00:34:04] DONNA: And then the last one I will recommend is Patrick Stewart has a memoir coming out in October called Making It So. And I am a huge Star Trek fan, and he is my favorite Star Trek captain, Jean-Luc Picard. I love him. I mean, he's done a lot in his life. He's a very, you know, beloved stage and screen actor. And I just think his memoir will be very interesting. So those are two that are on my radar.

GINGER: I kind of want to read those all. And, Donna, I mean, you know my reading life pretty well. None of those are anything that were on my radar before today. So, so fun.

DONNA: That's the beauty of these conversations. I love it.

GINGER: There's the beauty.

DONNA: Well, it was great talking to you about summer reading, Ginger.

GINGER: You, too. I'm sure the conversation will continue.

[00:34:52] ANNE: Ah, that was so great. I definitely added a few of those titles to my own very long list today. Next up are Will Bogel, who serves as our What Should I Read Next? all-around operations guy and podcast producer in conversation with Book Club community administrator Brigid Misselhorn. I can't wait for you to hear what they talk about today.

WILL BOGEL: We talk a lot.

BRIGID MISSELHORN: We do. We work together a lot here at MMD.

WILL: And I think it's that customer service that ends up us talking so much.

BRIGID: I agree.

WILL: So me doing a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff where we actually work pretty closely with Book Club things because we're always trying to troubleshoot and help people resolve just small, usually weird things that don't occur to everybody. But as much as we talk, we don't talk about books a whole lot.

BRIGID: Very rarely. So I've been looking forward to this. I was really excited when Sara paired us together for this episode because I don't know that we have a lot of reading overlap, but I feel like a few of the books that I read this summer you're going to really enjoy

WILL: Oh, really? Okay. That's my impression too, is the reason we don't talk a lot about books is because I just sort of assume that we're not reading the same things. That might not be entirely fair, but-

[00:36:06] BRIGID: I think for book club members who know me or have listened to my episodes on What Should I Read Next? probably know me well for liking cozy mysteries and romance and sci-fi and like a lot of genres. And I'm going to actually say that I don't think any of the books I'm going to talk about are actually part of those genres.

WILL: Oh, really? Is that normal?

BRIGID: No, it isn't much of a surprise. Like normally in the summertime... So, you know, we're here talking about summertime reading. And normally in the summertime, I'm looking for like super entertaining, fun genre books that I can't put down, like super plot-driven. And some of my best memories are from summer reading.

Like last summer I read The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi, and I was sitting under a nearby beach pier. It was just like quintessential summer reading for me because it was fun. It was like a mix of like Jurassic Park meets Godzilla. You know, it was like reading a big summer movie blockbuster. And I like a page-turner because I'm usually a really slow reader. So those types of books help me read faster.

[00:37:11] But this summer has been really different for me. I'd been reading a bunch of books that were kind of like good, but nothing knocked my socks off. And then I was reminded, I think it was in a recent What Should I Read Next episode where Anne and a guest were saying that... and I'm totally paraphrasing this. But something like sometimes books in different genres and styles that we don't normally gravitate toward can really be noteworthy reading experience. So I was kind of keeping that in mind, and I did try some books outside my wheelhouse and I found some really fun winners.

How about you? Like, what do you usually look for for summer reading?

WILL: I think traditionally I have read a little more nonfiction, but I want something with a plot and I want something that moves forward. But there's that narrative, nonfiction, storytelling. Maybe it's a mystery, maybe it's a thriller, but it's a true story. You know, something that kind of grabbed me from the news or whatever that I want to dig into a little deeper.

You know, somebody is great at that is like Mark Bowden who wrote Black Hawk Down, which is the first book of his that I read, and was just so impressed with how he covers geography and people. Like there's just a whole lot going on in that story. And to be able to do it well, I was like, "Oh, this guy is great." And then he's written about Pablo Escobar and the Silk Road. So he's one of those guys that just find a topic, he can dig into it and does a really great job of explaining something you had no knowledge of.

[00:38:41] I do a lot of that kind of reading and then also kind of anything outdoorsy. That can be fiction or nonfiction. I think I've talked on the podcast about, you know, some... I've read like some forest fire books and that kind of thing that kind of gets me out. Even if I'm not outdoors, imagining sort of the outdoors.

BRIGID: Nature writing. That's cool. So how about you tell me about one of your favorite books of the summer?

WILL: I brought a definite favorite. So you're saying that you felt like you stepped out a little bit. This is square in my wheelhouse. So it's called Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park. So this book by Connor Knighton, who is a CBS Sunday Morning correspondent. He's a TV guy, a journalist. He's done all this stuff. I don't think he's divorced. I think he gets left by his fiancée before the wedding-

BRIGID: Oh.

WILL: ...and all of a sudden, his life is just in shambles. So he's coming up on the hundredth anniversary of the centennial of the national park system, and he pitches CBS the idea to go out and see all of the parks in one year.

BRIGID: Oh, I love this.

[00:39:52] WILL: Which is mostly this personal project. Like, "I've got to get out of here because she just left me and, you know..." He's like, "All my friends know. I had all these plans for the future and they're just halted." So he basically moves everything into a storage unit, like gives out... He's homeless and he spends the entire year on the road, hotels, and rental cars, and whatever going to all of the national parks.

And he did not get it into like 52 spots or whatever to be on the show all the time but they did give him a cameraman. So he did these sort of occasional reports from the road. And then he wrote this book, which was. just amazing. And like, mostly... This is probably an editor, but I'll credit him for just the concept.

So the chapters, instead of going chronologically by park or alphabetically or by the order that they were added to the park system or whatever, they're all like topical. So the first chapter is called Sunrise, and so he adds a park to sunrise. And then he's got one on sound and Volcanoes. Volcanoes seems pretty obvious, right? But one of the chapters is called Food. So he has two specific national parks that he relates to food.

BRIGID: That are noteworthy because of food. That is fascinating.

[00:41:07] WILL: And he tells this story of the people he meets and the things that are actually there in the park. And then also like in his year, what it's sort of meant to him. It was just a way of looking at the parks that had never occurred to me. One of the chapters, Home, he talks about home, which has just a reminder, we were not the first people in most of these places.

BRIGID: Wow, that sounds really great. I'll tell you why, because I don't know if you know, but our oldest is just starting fourth grade.

WILL: Fourth grade.

BRIGID: And here you get your free pass, your family pass to the national parks. So we went to one this summer, Sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan. And we had been to Everglades and Key Biscayne recently as well. So we're kind of doing this family National Park project ourselves, trying to see how many we can get into for free, complimentary because we have a fourth grader. We'll have another fourth grader in a couple of years if we don't get them all done off the list. But we will really try.

WILL: If you don't get them all? I don't think you're gonna get them all.

BRIGID: This first time around?

[00:42:08] WILL: Yeah, I'm impressed that he got them all in one year. But it was funny. Not quite in like Bill Bryson sort of funny. He's not written that way. "Walk in the woods is like one catastrophe after another. Let me tell you how... Let me tell you the funniest parts of all of this." But he has just a great... it might be a wry wit that actually I just read the other night. He said the best way to enjoy a Hampton Inn breakfast is a near-death experience the night before, you know, where you just savor everybody.

You know, just these funny lines, the little perspective. And there was not too much of woe is me, my life is a shambles. That's part of the story for sure. But, you know, it's mostly about how great an idea... you know, America's greatest idea.

BRIGID: It sounds so great. I'm definitely going to have to work that one up for our travels or our hopes of getting some more national parks this year. It's funny because the first book I was going to talk about is more nature-centric.

WILL: Oh, you do?

[00:43:11] BRIGID: It's not a nonfiction, no. But yeah, this book I actually found it and it's super quick and very captivating. And I found it thanks to some friends, Hunter, he's @shelfbyshelf and Juliana @heyjulianahey on Instagram. And it's a literary fiction which, like, normally that is not for me for the most part. And it's called Open Throat by Henry Hoke. Have you heard of this one?

WILL: No.

BRIGID: Oh, it's so interesting. The tagline for the book is A lonely, lovable, queer mountain lion narrates this star-making fever dream of a novel. I mean that line-

WILL: What?

BRIGID: Yes, right? But normally, like the descriptor fever dream and the genre fiction would be like, okay, this probably isn't for me. But because both Hunter and Juliana, who I love their reviews on books and friends that I trust, had both said it was just so great that I was like, I'm really intrigued by this premise of a mountain lion, right? Also, it happens to live under the Hollywood sign near all the hiking trails.

WILL: Okay.

BRIGID: So just the setting alone was just like, I got to pick this up. And I read it in a day. And that is so very rare for me. But it also helps because it's, I think, only 147 pages. But I'm really glad I gave it a try because I just loved it. It's really visceral. It's wild. It's super touching in a way that I would not have expected. It felt like watching a nature documentary. I know you like watch those ones. And they're narrated by like Morgan Freeman or Benedict Cumberbatch, but instead the mountain lion is narrating it. Like, you know?

[00:45:01] And also his just observations on humanity and the environment, I don't know. It was just fabulous. I specifically was thinking, "I think Will might like this."

WILL: Okay. I am definitely intrigued.

BRIGID: That's Open Throat by Henry Hoke. I haven't read anything else by this author, but it was a really interesting read and I haven't stopped thinking about it. I read it a month and a half ago and I can't stop thinking about it.

WILL: I love it. While you are sort of giving the lead up there about how it's literary and all this stuff, I thought, "Wait a minute. Is it possible that we both read the same book?" Nowhere close. But I did just read Birnam Wood, which has come up a number of times in What Should I Read Next? circles. Holly, at first, I think, mentioned it to Anne when she was in New Zealand a while back. And then we had a New Zealand guest, Nadia Sussman, two weeks ago, I think it was on Episode 390.

BRIGID: I loved that episode.

WILL: So she picked it as one of her favorites. And of course, listening to those episodes as I'm mean, editing them and stuff, I'm like, "Oh, I actually might want to read this," which happens a lot. Like there's a lot of them. But it's a book that we like. Anne had it. She had just read it, you know, I was like, Okay, I'm going to pick this up. And it is a literary eco-thriller I think might be the way to put it.

[00:46:30] So the first third of the book is very character driven and you kind of get to know these people and their motivations and whatever, and then it really picks up steam as like they get out into there like three hours, four hours outside of Christchurch and is near National Park so it's pretty isolated and all this stuff and then things go down is basically what happens.

BRIGID: Things go down.

WILL: Things go down. It was a serious page-turner, eco thriller. One of the things that Anne and I talked about was the ending and whatever. And I got to say I didn't find it quite maybe satisfying, but I definitely loved the ride. Like getting there was great.

BRIGID: Oh, that sounds fun. Yeah. I've heard you guys mention it, and I thought, "Is this one maybe for me? I have to look more into that one. And the cover is so striking.

WILL: Very striking. I had not heard of Eleanor Catton, but this is her third book. She won a Booker for her previous work. And I'm like, Oh, I definitely should pick up those others because, yeah, it was great.

BRIGID: I love that, yeah, when an author has a backlist. This next one that I read also is an author that's new to me, but not a debut. And this one is called Charm City Rocks by Matthew Norman. I found this one thanks to another What Should I Read Next? alum and book club member, Kari. This goes back to like me trying things outside my wheelhouse. I never would have picked this one up because one of the main characters has the same name as my child. I don't know about you, but that is like a deal breaker for me.

WILL: A little weird. Yeah.

[00:48:06] BRIGID: I have a hard time with that. But I know Kari, and I know we have very similar tastes, and I thought, "I got to break this reading rule." And I'm really glad I did.

So, Charm City Rocks is about Billy. He's a single dad and a music teacher. He lives above a record store called Charm City Rocks, and it's in the Fell's Point area of Baltimore. He ends up meeting, through kind of wacky circumstance, one of his favorite musicians of all time, a woman named Margot Hammer, and she's a former rock and roll drummer from the 90s. So it's got the whole nostalgia thing. It was really fun.

It reminded me of like some of my favorite movies and books that have that celeb and normal person trope, like the show Starstruck. That's one of my recent faves and that romantic comedy, which we just read in book club. It has very strong Nick Hornby, High Fidelity about boy vibes, you know, because of the whole record store. So it was just really fun.

And like the last 25% of the book feels like the movie It's Complicated, the Nancy Meyers movie. So it was just all these things that I love. It also had soft pretzels and behind-the-scenes music sort of stuff. It was a fun one. I would think would be perfect for fans of Kerry Winfrey or Nick Hornby, any of those types of books.

WILL: That sounds fun. Although that is not the other book I thought you were going to talk about. You said you just finished one. Like literally you just finished one of your favorite books of the summer.

[00:49:40] BRIGID: Minutes before we got on this call. I read all of these on audio this summer, these ones that I mentioned but this one I finished minutes before we got in our call. And it is wow. This one is a horror book. And I would never, never in a million years think I'd be bringing a horror book here because normally I'm just too much of a scaredy cat. I do not like horror. I do not. Especially I do not like serial killer things.

I'd seen this one on Instagram kind of making the rounds and it sounded so good, I picked it up and then I read it in two days. Again, slow reader here, but wow.

WILL: Wow.

BRIGID: So this one was very creepy and scary. It is called Dead Eleven by Jimmy Juliano. And this is a debut. I don't want to say too much about it. But I will say R.L. Stine is kind of the tagline of it. He's on the cover. It is very much like a grown-up goosebumps. I think it would be perfect for people who like the movies Groundhog Day or Palm Springs, but wish that they were horror about grief. I don't know how else to say that.

WILL: Okay.

BRIGID: It is so out of my realm normally. But it was very good. Like also had a 90s nostalgia to it. That seems to be a theme for me this summer. And it is perfect for people who love Stranger Things, I would say, or Stephen King books. I would recommend to definitely check out any content warnings on this one if you have any reservations. But even the cover alone, it's like a VHS tape in a ripped old box. And the setting is Door County in Wisconsin, and it's an island there. I won't say much more because it was a wild ride.

[00:51:34] WILL: Okay. You just said Groundhog Day, which has me thinking of Bill Murray's line, Me, me, me again. But I would say this doesn't sound like me at all, except I did read a horror book earlier this summer from the Summer Reading Guide. It was called Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Do you know this?

BRIGID: Oh, I loved Mexican Gothic and I enjoyed her The Island of Dr. Moreau. Kind of redo that one. I haven't read this one. Tell me about it.

WILL: So this one is definitely a horror story. The plot is there's this classic horror movie and someone's decided to redo it. And in the process of filming the first one, basically, everybody mysteriously dies.

BRIGID: Oh, haunted movie. Oh, that sounds good.

WILL: Haunted movies. So someone has brought it back 25 years later or whatever and said, "Hey, we're going to redo this." And the one surviving cast member who was a child in the first movie ends up back on set as a journalist reporting on this and people start mysteriously dying.

BRIGID: Okay. Now I'm going to have to read this, Will.

[00:52:42] WILL: Oh, my gosh. It was so good. It was very creepy. Very, very creepy but not... I don't remember it being gory or even exactly like jump scary. Like just wild what is happening? This is very, very creepy. This is weird, like, unsettling kind of thing. Actually, it's similar to Birnam Wood. I didn't love the ending. But it wasn't like she didn't stick the landing, I just... Like there was a twist at the end, and you're like, "Oh, that's what's happening," and it didn't pay off. I didn't like our results or whatever.

But yeah, it was very edge-of-my-seat reading. I flew through it partly, probably because it was scary and all, and I was like, "I'd like to get this done." I was like, "I want to know what's happening here. I'm going to move through this quickly." But it was great. And actually, I should go back in and check out Mexican Gothic now that you mention it.

BRIGID: Oh, yeah, I definitely recommend it. Her writing is so lush, at least in Mexican Gothic. I really enjoyed that one, even though, same, I read it as fast as I could so that I could be done reading it because it scared me.

WILL: Yeah. Oh, that's great. So we obviously have more in common with our reading lives than I had realized.

BRIGID: This is very true and this has been really fun getting to chat summer reading with you and kind of find some of our overlapping Venn diagram reads.

WILL: That's right. We'll have to do this more often.

BRIGID: For sure. This was lovely.

[00:54:11] ANNE: Finally, we have our Modern Mrs. Darcy cohost and contributor Shannan Malone, catching up with our media production specialist, Holly Wielkoszewski, about the books they've loved most lately. Let's hear what they have chosen.

SHANNAN MALONE: Hello, Holly. How are you?

HOLLY WIELKOSZEWSKI: Hey, Shannan. I am great. I'm so glad to be here with you today.

SHANNAN: I'm so excited to talk to you about your best books of the summer. What were they?

HOLLY: Well, there were so many, Shannan. And actually, I've had a really good summer of reading. Summers for me often tend to be kind of unintentionally thematic. A lot of times this ends up being like a series that I binge like William Kent Krueger's Cork O'Connor series was last summer, or when I was younger, like the Jack Ryan books.

But this year I am calling it over in the Storygraph where I tracked my books the unintentional air of climate fiction since apparently I seem to be reading a lot in that genre. So the books I'm going to talk about are all kind of related, but my pick that I'm going to lead with today is actually a nonfiction book. It came out on June 20th, and it is A Traveler's Guide to the End of the World: Tales of Fire, Wind, and Water. And it is by David Gessner.

[00:55:31] Let me tell you a little bit about why I like this book. David Gessner is a nature writer and historian who has been on my radar for a while, although I have not actually read anything by him prior to this book. Next up is one of his titles called All The Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West. But I want to read more Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner before I read that book. So I'm going to come back to him in the future.

But basically what David Gessner does in this book is he grapples with this question of climate change and weather, and I think a lot of the strange things that a lot of us are starting to see around us. And he poses the question, what is the world going to be like when his daughter reaches his age, which will be in 2063? So that's kind of the framework he's bringing to it.

What I liked about this book... there were a lot of things that I liked about it, but it was, I'll say the least, depressing and perhaps most realistic climate change book that I've read because he really looked at it through the lens of stories and places and people, not just facts and statistics and numbers. And I really enjoyed the way that he told these stories.

[00:56:45] Something else that was really meaningful to me about this book is I have personal connections to a lot of the places that he profiled. Like he writes about living in Colorado during fire season. And I viscerally have had the experience of living in both Montana and Colorado, where you have a backpack by the door in fire season in case you have to leave suddenly. He also wrote about some other places I've spent time.

But ultimately what I think this book for me, it balanced a sense of hope with a sense of reality. And it looks at things like memory and legacy and futility, as well as action and power on the personal and the individual, and societal level. Just really loved it. So that's my pick.

SHANNAN: That sounds very interesting. Especially since I have a kid, I have thought about what the Buddy Man will live in as an adult. It's been so hot this summer here. Like we've had record highs. So, yeah, I've been thinking about that. That sounds very interesting.

[00:57:54] HOLLY: I'll give you a bonus pick that's related to this. It is a fiction novel. It's actually something that David Gessner mentions briefly in the book itself, but it was also a book that was very briefly mentioned by Jeff Speck when he was on the podcast talking with and a number of episodes ago. And this is the Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.

It was published in 2020, so I think it's kind of been under the radar or maybe overlooked a bit because, you know, 2020. But this is a fiction book. And I think if you read the nonfiction and you feel like, Man, I'm not sure what's going to happen, I know it's going to be out there, this was a really enjoyable look at the power we have to change and some of the ways that might happen. And it's written with humor and the structure is missing.

I'm an economics nerd and I totally kicked out about the chapters talking about currency policy and political systems, all from a fictional perspective. So that may sound dry to some readers, but if you want a pairing, then I feel like these two books work really well together as a book of fiction and nonfiction that deal with this tricky topic that we're all facing at this point in time.

[00:59:08] SHANNAN: Nice. That's one of the things I love about sci-fi fantasy, well, certain ones, where they bring solutions and provide a little bit of hope that there can be a future. I think that's one of the reasons I love A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers.

HOLLY: Absolutely. I think that there are parts of this book that you would really enjoy for that very reason, Shannan. There's one chapter, specifically, Chapter 85, which is just a list of projects from different countries all around the world, fictional projects, as well as some that actually exists that I know of that I've read about in the news that are all designed at things like reforestation and bringing the solar energy and bringing back endangered animals. It's almost overwhelming and it's literally just a list of projects and it's just like they're so helpful. And I feel like this could be the chapter that eventually led to the world of Becky Chambers.

SHANNAN: Wow.

HOLLY: Yeah, it made me smile. So those are some of the books I've been really enjoying this summer.

SHANNAN: Awesome.

HOLLY: How about you? What has your summer reading looked like? Do you have a book you want to tell us about?

[01:00:20] SHANNAN: Well, actually, I am here representing all the members of our community where any book that you read during the summer is your best book of summer. I don't exactly have one book to recommend. I was in a reading slump this summer, and for a while I only read two books that were three stars. Three stars means I liked it, but definitely does not merit best book of the summer award. So nothing I read this summer is best book of the summer.

However, on Wednesday, July 5th, Anne posted to the blog 20 heart-pounding heist novels. And she said, "Whether you're in need of a page-turner or looking to bust out of the reading slump, these heist novels fit the bill." She included The Heist, which is Book 14 of the Gabriel Allon series by Daniel Silva.

I'm happy to say that I really do enjoy the Gabriel Allon series. I've read them out of order. In fact, at the last best books of summer, Anne mentioned that she was excited to read Portrait of an Unknown Woman, which is book number 22. So after she mentioned it, I went and looked it up. You know, it's about spies, intrigue, art. And Gabriel is an art restorer as well as an Israeli spy.

I enjoy books that deal heavily with art. So I read book 22 this year, and I've read 1 through 3. And over the summer, after I got out of my slump, or actually The Heist helped me get over my slump, I read that one, which was number 14, and then I went ahead and read The Collector, which is number 23. And I am currently reading The Rembrandt Affair, which is number ten. So people, you can see that you can read these books out of order and it's perfectly fine.

[01:02:29] HOLLY: That sounds like a great summer collection. And any time that there's a series that has books numbering in the 20s, I am a fan because I'm like, "Oh, well, then I'm going to have a whole run of these. It's going to be great." And knowing that they're out of order too, that you can get them from your library whenever they come in. I remember Anne mentioning this title and thinking about it, but now I'm going to have to go back and put it on my list. So I'm glad you found something that helped you break out of that slump a little bit.

SHANNAN: Yes, I did. And I mean, I would say that some of them are close to four stars and some of them are more three and a half stars, depending on my mood and the storyline and things like that. But I'm happy to report that I am out of my slump. And if anyone out there is in the slump take Anne's advice and maybe read one of these heist novels and try the Gabriel Allon series. I do enjoy it.

[01:03:25] HOLLY: I love it. Well, and there's good news because summer is not over yet. So you still have time.

SHANNAN: Right.

HOLLY: There might be some dark horse out there that you haven't yet experienced. So I'm excited to hear.

SHANNAN: Well, I do have an ARC or Advance Readers Copy of The Girl in the Eagle's Talons by Karin Smirnoff. It is the seventh book in the list, this Salander series. So I am looking forward to that. I don't know when it's going to come out, but I am planning on reading that in the next couple of weeks.

HOLLY: Nice. Well, I'm excited to hear how that one goes for you, too.

SHANNAN: All right. Thank you for being here with me, Holly.

HOLLY: This was so much fun.

SHANNAN: Happy reading, everyone.

HOLLY: Happy reading.

[01:04:17] ANNE: And that's it. Readers, I hope you enjoyed hearing our team's summer favorites as much as I did! As promised, we've rounded up the full list of the titles mentioned in this episode at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com. We'd love to hear from you in the comments section which book (or books) you can't wait to read next.

Let us know about your favorite reads of the summer so far on Instagram. Tag whatshouldireadnext in your post or story so we can see what's been getting 5 stars lately in your reading life.

Follow along with my Instagram reading updates @AnneBogel. Make sure you're following us in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, wherever you like to get your podcasts, so you'll be ready to listen every week when we release a new episode on Tuesdays.

Join our email list for weekly updates on the show and other literary entertainments. Sign up at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/newsletter.

Thanks to the people who make this show happen. What Should I Read Next is created by the team you just heard from, particularly 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.