Reading around the world

[00:00:00] ALLISON VIRTUE: And I don't mind that it's a series. Oh, no more books. What a tragedy!

ANNE BOGEL: Whatever will I do?

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 this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read. Every week we'll talk all things books and reading and do a little literary matchmaking with one guest.

Readers, we reopened our shop this fall after a long absence. We've got great bookish merch. I gotta tell you, it's going fast. But we still got great accessories for your favorite reader. Like our To Be Read Tote that makes for a great sustainable wrapping for a book stack or anything else you're giving.

[00:01:03] We have bookmarks. We have stickers. We also have signed, and if you'd like personalized copies of all my books. We have a zillion copies of Reading People on hand so those are particularly attractively priced. Check them out at modernmrsdarcy.com/shop. That's modernmrsdarcy.com/shop.

Readers, when Allison Virtue told us about her global reading project in our submissions inbox, I could not wait to hear more. Allison is a Los Angeles-based reader, pet parent, and long-term care patient advocate.

After emerging from a significant reading slump a few years back, she is more happy in her reading life than ever. These days, she's devoting a big chunk of her bookish energy to this Global Reading Project.

As part of this self-directed endeavor, Allison hopes to expand her horizons by reading a book written by an author from every country. She has made good headway so far but would welcome my help in building out her reading list for the country she has yet to explore.

[00:02:07] I'm excited to dive into today's conversation and hear more about her project. I'll also share tips to help her more easily discover titles for this project. And of course, I'll share specific recommendations for international reads so she can check a few more countries off her list. Let's get to it.

Allison, welcome to the show.

ALLISON: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here and talk about books with you.

ANNE: Oh, I can't wait to dig into your reading life and your personal projects you have going. Our whole team was really excited about your submission. So thanks for being here today.

ALLISON: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

ANNE: Allison, would you tell us a little bit about yourself so we can give the readers a glimpse of who you are?

ALLISON: Yeah, definitely. So I am 37 years old. I am living in Southern California, Los Angeles County. During my day job, I work as a patient advocate for folks in nursing homes. So my background is in social work and I work day to day with showing up for people who are, you know, living in community environments for maybe the first time in their life in a while and try to do my best to help them resolve any problems they haven't been able to resolve on their own, which is a very rewarding job, but often very stressful job.

[00:03:19] So I'm delighted to have space and time to detox as well, of which it will probably not surprise you to learn that reading is a big feature on that one.

ANNE: That's relatable.

ALLISON: Yeah. But also I live at home with a husband, cat, and two dogs. Aside from reading, I enjoy cooking and baking. You know, I have a reading project to talk with you about. I've also done some cooking projects. I decided I was tired of being scared of pie crust. So I just, for about like two or three months, decided to make a pie crust every weekend until I was not scared of it anymore. And it worked pretty well.

ANNE: That's great.

ALLISON: I now have that in my toolkit.

ANNE: Do you have a favorite recipe?

ALLISON: I use this recipe that's mostly butter crust with a little bit of shortening to give it structure and a little bit of vinegar to crisp it up while it's baking. And that has worked pretty well for me to do a crispy crust that isn't too hard to handle.

[00:04:20] ANNE: That sounds delicious. Oh my gosh, I didn't eat breakfast before we record.

ALLISON: Oh, no. Oh, what have I done?

ANNE: Allison, tell me a little bit about your reading life.

ALLISON: So my dad's mom is a passionate reader, probably the most voracious reader I know. I want to say I was 2 or 3, I got to live with her for a year, with my parents—we were all living in the same place—and there were just so many books around. I feel like that was probably the start of me absolutely loving to read, and it just kept going from there. So I read voraciously.

When I was a kid, it was one of those like the library stack couldn't contain me. And so I was probably earlier than I should have like sneaking the John Grisham books off of my parents' bookshelves because like, hey, they were book-shaped, like, I'm sure I can read them. So a fairly broad reading.

Once I got more control over choosing my own reading life, I definitely gravitated toward sci-fi and fantasy. That's my comfort area. That's my area of expertise. So that's been one of my main identity points.

[00:05:25] And then in about 2017, I hid a really bad reading slump and just reading got hard in a way it had never been before. This year I feel like I really got out of it. It started before then, but it was just a hard thing to go through. But I wound up writing a bit during that time and so I came out of it with a new appreciation of the craft of the story. So I definitely feel like I'm enjoying books in different ways now. And I think part of that ties into the project that I started as well.

ANNE: Oh my goodness, that's a really long time to be in a reading slump.

ALLISON: Yeah, Yeah. It wasn't like I wasn't reading at all during those times. But I can normally pretty easily do about 100 books a year, and I think I was maybe only reading like 10 or 20, which is still, I know for many people are like, that's my reading life. But compared to what I was used to, it was a really drastic decline.

[00:06:21] ANNE: Allison you said in your submission that you have some theories as to why you think yours happened and what might help break a reading slump. I'd love to hear more about that.

ALLISON: I hid a point of a lot of stress in the world and stress in my personal life. And I think my brain needed something different. I think, for me, my brain had too much information in it already. So I think taking in more information got very hard in a way that it hadn't been before. And I think I might have recovered earlier, but then the pandemic happened. So, you know, that also didn't help.

So I think my mind needed something different. I think writing was a really great way to start to get stuff out instead of putting stuff in I guess would be a way of putting that. But then slowly but really picking up, what happened this year was I started tracking my reading and I hadn't done that before.

[00:07:20] I do have ADHD. I think my brain just gets very excited about having a task and having a goal. So seeing the number go up is just enough to be able to pick that up a little easier.

And then audiobooks have also been huge. Being able to put reading into times when I'm doing something else also really helped me get my book consumption back up again. You know, it's a different pattern than reading physically. So being able to read while driving or being able to read while doing the dishes or vacuuming, that has also made a big difference in just getting me back in the habit. And then once I'm back in the habit, it's easier to keep growing again.

ANNE: Yeah. I appreciate you talking about your big slump and want to normalize that like, yes, these happen and that is okay. With that in mind, when you find yourself in another reading slump, what do you think you might do next time?

[00:08:21] ALLISON: Number one is be kinder to myself and don't panic.

ANNE: Oh, that's such a good place to start.

ALLISON: Yeah. I think that part of the thing that was hard for me, it was like I was a reader and then I felt like a fraud. Like, Oh, no, I'm not reading anymore. I know it's silly, but still. But now it's like, okay, fine. If I go down, it'll come back. It'll be okay.

But also I think looking at how do I make it easier? It's okay if it's just not something I want to be a part of my life. But if it's something I do want to be a part of my life, how do I make that onboarding as easy as possible?

So like, I know I've heard parents, you, joke about just leaving a book out on the coffee table, and like hopefully it'll grab the kids' attention. But, you know, just like doing that for myself, for my own future self of like, Hey, maybe this looks interesting.

ANNE: I'd like to see good stuff laying around.

[00:09:16] ALLISON: Yeah, yeah. So it's a little treat, little treat for me. And then also for me, I kind of think of like there's my comfort zone reading, and my three faves are all my solid comfort zone reading. And then there's my reading for growth, you know, reading to stretch. My project is definitely my stretch reading. And so maybe it's also time just to go back to the comfort zone reading and like really focus on that too.

ANNE: Thanks for sharing that. I appreciate it. And I hope that date doesn't arrive too soon. But reading slumps are normal, you're ready for the next one.

ALLISON: Mm-hmm, life happens. Sometimes you just have to adapt.

ANNE: Indeed it does, and yes, we do. Now, you mentioned how you love a good plan or a big project, whether it's pie crust or in your book life. So we get to talk more about your global reading project now.

[00:10:09] ALLISON: Yeah. Speaking of having a plan and having it be very satisfying. You know, I think one of the seeds was actually a very old episode of your show. I also discovered your show this year, which probably has helped with increasing my reading life. But while I was listening through the backlog, there was someone and they had a project of reading about like years and reading historical books.

ANNE: Oh, it was Tara.

ALLISON: Yeah, Yeah.

ANNE: That is Tara Nichols. A century of good books. And it's hard to choose. Like I love every conversation we have here. But yes, that's one of my favorite episodes. Listeners, that's called A century of good books (in a single year). It's Episode 168. It's from 2019. But please go listen to it today if you haven't heard it yet. You'll be glad you did. Okay, so that was inspiration for you, but you embarked on a totally different project.

[00:10:59] ALLISON: I did, yeah. I liked the idea of a great big project, but I was like, What do I actually want to do? And I've been wanting to read more internationally. So I went, Well, what if I read a book by an author who lives in every country? So that would really get me around. How many countries are there? That was my next question.

ANNE: A surprisingly difficult question to answer.

ALLISON: It is. Yeah. Yeah. So I very quickly realized after getting a quick answer, which was a little less than 200, but that is a far more complicated question that can be answered easily. I think thinking about that question has been an unexpected benefit of this project.

But yeah, it's very easy to just read the books that easily come into your life that are recommended to you by friends that are on the front, you know, bookshelf of your local library. And I wanted to really dig in to trying to read more internationally to get an idea of a snapshot of the global world we live in.

[00:12:06] Part of the joy of living in this time is that this is more accessible than ever. So I wanted to start digging into that. So I actually got a very cheap globe from Target that's just like white.

ANNE: Oh.

ALLISON: And I've been coloring in each country as I read a book from there, which has brought me great joy. Sometimes when I am struggling with a book, it's like, I'll get to color the country. And it just keeps me reading. But yeah, it's been so good.

I've been reading things that I haven't read before and getting pictures of the world that just weren't, you know, colored in my brain, to use the metaphor. But, you know, it is drawing a richer picture of places I haven't been or hadn't thought about a lot. I know it's just scratching the surface, but it's been very satisfying already and I'm definitely looking forward to continuing it.

ANNE: What's your timeline for this project?

[00:13:04] ALLISON: So that's the question, right? So it's a little less than 200 books. And I'll admit when I first looked at that, I went, "Oh, I can read like a hundred bucks a year. This is like a two-year project, which hubris. Pure, pure hubris.

Because I can read about 100 books a year but I can't read a hundred books a year that are using story structures I'm not familiar with, you know, using language and local slang I'm not familiar with, using plotting and, you know, narrative forms that... I can read a hundred comfort zone books. I cannot read 100 growth books. So, so far I've been knocking out 1 to 2 a month, which isn't bad, but that makes it like a 20-year project, 15 to 20 years, and I'd rather it not take that long.

So I am trying to pick up the pace a little bit, but it'll take how long it takes. And that's kind of life I think. But we'll see. We'll see how fast I can make progress on this.

[00:14:08] ANNE: Well, I'm glad you're not rushing yourself and that you're giving yourself time to really appreciate these books that you're thoughtfully choosing to help you color in that Target globe and truly broaden your literary horizon.

ALLISON: Yes. Yes.

ANNE: Okay. So, Allison, how can I help you today?

ALLISON: So I would love any tips you have about finding international books and places to look. Because part of what I've been trying to do with this project is read books from authors who... My initial goal was someone who grew up in the country, still lives in the country, or at least lived in the country as of the time of writing the book. But I very quickly became aware that access to the global publishing market is not possible for some people that remain in country.

[00:15:04] Like I recently read a book from Djibouti. Djibouti does not, as far as I am aware, have an English-language publishing industry in-house. So the author did grow up there but lived in France and wrote the book in France. So learning that has just been growth for me.

But ways to try to access the publishing industries that are out there but that I won't necessarily find by doing a quick search of the book into Google. And any suggestions just for like thinking about international publishing and global books and global literacy and those sorts of things.

ANNE: Oh, those are such great questions. And listeners, I know many of you have embarked on similar projects or you're elsewhere in the world or you have tips and ideas. We would love to hear those in the show notes or on Instagram. So please share. But Allison, I have three suggestions for you.

ALLISON: Yay.

ANNE: The first is there's a great blog about a similar project that has existed for more than ten years. Her project is more complete, but it's written by a UK-based reader whose name is Ann Morgan. She actually did a Ted Talk about her project and she wrote a book about it that you can get on audio in the U.S., although you won't be able to color in the globe for that one.

[00:16:15] But it's called A Year of Reading the World. And to go to it, it's ayearofreadingtheworld.com, archives are all there. And one of the tabs you may want to check out, in addition to the FAQ and what she did, how she approached the project, what her parameters were, how she decided how many countries, there's also a tab called "The List", which is a record of all the valid book recommendations she received before, during, and after her 2012 year where she read the world. Because she did do it in one year, actually.

And her FAQ answer to that, how in the world did you do that in one year? She said it was really hard and she had to be very, very organized. She planned way ahead and read like a machine.

ALLISON: Yeah, I am odd. And having just sampled this project, I have no idea how. That's amazing. And I had no idea this existed. So I clearly did not Google my project very much. But oh, what a great resource!

[00:17:18] ANNE: I don't remember how I came to it back in the day, but I do know that it took me a lot of googling and different search terms to find it now in 2023. So don't feel bad about the Googling. And definitely her way of doing this has no bearing in how you should hear that word in quotes that we're kind of like mentally X out embark on your own project. But I do think you'll find this a really nice resource.

You'll see that some countries have two recommendations and some have 20, but I imagine that you will find some titles here that you might not have stumbled on elsewhere. And if you start to panic thinking like, "How am I going to find a book for Bahrain? I don't know." This site can help you.

ALLISON: There's an option. Oh, that's great.

ANNE: That is a year of reading the world. Next, I have a very great tip from our team member, Holly Wielkoszewski. Listeners, you may hear her name in the end credits of every episode. She's our media production specialist. Now, Holly started by saying this is probably an obvious tip, but she thought she called it out anyway. This was not remotely obvious to me. I'm so glad she shared it.

[00:18:21] So she said that one of her best tips is to follow international independent bookstores on Instagram or subscribe to their email newsletters. And we'll talk about Holly more today because she's currently traveling the world, getting to see lots of places working as a digital nomad for our team. And we get to vicariously experience all these great places in bookstores through her pictures and firsthand reports to our team meetings. And I'm loving that.

But she gave an example that, like, she found one of her favorite books of last year through the Unity Books Auckland Instagram account. And that's just one of many. And she says these local Instagram accounts often feature books by local authors or events featuring local authors, whether that's from the city, the area, or the country, but that are local in that sense to that store.

She also said that paying attention to national awards like the Aurealis Award for Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy can put books on your radar that you wouldn't have discovered otherwise.

[00:19:18] ALLISON: Oh, that is so clever. Thank you, Holly. Good idea. So I have been in a little bit of a social media no, but I made my first Instagram account for this project. So I have now an account to follow these great international bookstores with.

ANNE: And while it can be really difficult to Google like what is a book written by an author in Sri Lanka, it is not hard to find a bookstore in a region on the Google.

ALLISON: Yeah, no, that is a great point and a great tip.

ANNE: And finally, I think you mentioned, and I do hear from a lot of readers, okay, now that I identify these international books, how do I get them? I used to recommend Book Depository all the time for this, and sadly, they are now defunct. But Blackwell's in the UK is filling that hole for many, many readers. And Blackwell's has been around for longer than Book Depository has been gone, but many readers have just been delighted to be a customer long term or just since Book Depository is no more.

[00:20:21] So, you know, if you find the perfect book but don't know how to get it, you won't be able to get everything, but I think you're going to be able to get close to everything that's on your radar.

ALLISON: Yes, that is a useful resource to have because there was one book, I think it was a smaller island lake nation, and I had found a book I was interested in and I found a print copy of it and it only shipped from New Zealand. And shipping costs from New Zealand are a bit steep. So to fly it from New Zealand to Southern California.

ANNE: And books in New Zealand for New Zealanders are also not cheap.

ALLISON: Right. The pain of living on an island where planes and boats are required to get you things.

ANNE: Well, Holly saw that by visiting the island. So, you know, just tuck that idea in your pocket as well.

ALLISON: Yeah. I mean, I guess if I have to. You know, if I'm paying a whole bunch to fly a book to me, why don't I fly me to the book?

ANNE: That doesn't sound half bad.

ALLISON: No, it does.

ANNE: I think that's definitely one way to take your reading project to the next level, Allison.

ALLISON: Yes. Oh, yeah. Clearly. My small project just became a much bigger, more exciting project.

[00:21:30] ANNE: Allison, I hope you find those tips helpful for embarking on your project. But I think what we're doing today is finding some titles for you that may also suit your project.

ALLISON: Yes, definitely.

ANNE: Well, to do that well, I think first we need to talk about your books. Are you ready to dig in?

ALLISON: Oh, absolutely. Always.

ANNE: Allison, you know how this works. You're going to tell me three books you love, one book you don't and what you're reading lately, and we will talk about what you may enjoy reading next for your global reading project. How did you choose these today?

ALLISON: My books that I loved, I went with books that are just incredibly in my wheelhouse. So they're all speculative picks. They all kind of have the themes that I find easy and lovely to read about. So they are not global reading project books, but they bring me great joy.

And then I also tried to pick, of the many books that bring me great joy, ones that I think could use a little bit more of a spotlight maybe, and that I haven't heard on your show before. So that was my selection criteria.

[00:22:41] ANNE: I love that approach. All right, let's do it. Tell me about book one.

ALLISON: So book one is going to be Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger. Darcie Little Badger is a native author from the United States, and Elatsoe is an absolutely delightful young adult book in a slightly more magical America.

So when we meet our protagonist of the book, she is playing with her dog of... Oh, I'm going to get the numbers wrong, but the spirit is right. So it's her dog of 17 years, 12 of them living. And she is trying to teach her now ghost dog how to play fetch with a cheap plastic skull because she thinks a floating skull would be absolutely hilarious. But her ghost dog mostly just wants cheese. And that's the dog's motivating goal.

And it's just you learn that our protagonist can see and talk to animal ghosts. Our protagonist is also native. She live in Apache, and she kind of is just going through her life until—and this is not a spoiler, it's like the first chapter stuff—her cousin pops up in her dreams saying, "I am also a ghost and I have been murdered." And then it's kind of a murder mystery as she's trying to figure it out.

[00:24:00] But I think the thing that really sold me on this book and got it from a solid, fun read to like in my tears of favorite books was she then goes downstairs and talks to her dad and is like, "The ghost of my cousin told me he's been murdered." And the reaction wasn't like, "Oh, that's a bad dream. Drink some Pepto-Bismol and go back to sleep." It was like, "Well, we're going to have to do something about that, and this is now a family project."

So it is not the teenage protagonist running off on her own. It is this incredible family unit of support as they are trying to figure out what happened to her cousin. And just for family coming together, communities coming together along with a warm-hearted and comedic beat just really made this an absolutely delightful reading experience for me.

[00:24:51] I listened to it first on audio, and this is one that I bought the physical book because I wanted to be able to throw it at people, not shove it into their hands and be like, "Read this, read this, please." It's an absolutely beautiful physical book. Good read on audio. Good physical book as well.

ANNE: Oh, that sounds amazing. I'm happy to hear about it today. Allison, what is the second book you love?

ALLISON: My next book is Thud! by Terry Pratchett. Terry Pratchett is a beloved British author. So I think he's a little bit more well-known. I discovered him, I think, in my early 20s. And just his mix of humor and his character work and his way of very kindly poking at the real injustices of the world just completely won me over. I've read most of what he's written.

But a question that a lot of people get is, where do I start with Terry Pratchett? And the book that I picked of his is my answer to that, except it's completely wrong. Because the book I read first is called Thud!. And Thud! is one of the last books he wrote. And it is in the kind of continuity of it. It's like three-quarters of the way through a series. So that's like not where you should start a book.

[00:26:15] But Terry Pratchett has been writing for so long that his first books are a little bit rougher. So Thud! was an absolutely amazing place to start for me because there's this character who is new to the scene. And so you're meeting our protagonist through the eyes of this newer character.

So for a long time my answer to like, where do you start reading Terry Pratchett, was well, I started with Thud!, but probably not Thud!. And like giving different recommendations. But I was recently talking with some and they were like, "I started with Thud! too." And then someone else was like, "Oh, me too."

ANNE: Really?

ALLISON: Yeah, a whole bunch of us, just, you know, picked this book up off our library shelves and didn't know what it was, but it wound up being this surprisingly good intro to the series. Because you're starting and the main character's thinking, "Oh, I was so messed up in the past." So then when you go back and read the first books, you're like, "Oh, he wasn't lying. He was really messed up." But you know where he's going. And it's like, "Oh, okay, I can follow along."

[00:27:19] So I have much more sensible recommendations of where to start reading Terry Pratchett if you don't want to start reading in the middle of the series. But if you don't mind a little bit of chaos, it's worked for a surprising number of people, would be Thud! by Terry Pratchett.

It's in his Discworld series, which has been fleshed out over a lot of books. It's a very rich fantasy world, and this particular is in his Nightwatch series, which is kind of his sci-fi version of a cop show, except it's a bunch of very kind of ethical misfits who are trying to do their best to keep a big fantasy city running safely. And Thud! is about the tensions between the dwarves and the trolls within the city.

And the thing about Terry Pratchett is that as I'm describing it, I'm going, this is all literally true, but it is also not at all the heart of the book. And I don't have a good way of really getting to it but it's incredibly funny and it's incredibly warm-hearted. And I think both of those things just really make him work as an author for me.

[00:28:35] ANNE: Okay. Thank you for the recommendation. And I know that so many readers are intimidated by an author who has dozens and dozens of books and they don't know where to start. So thank you for giving us that unexpected way in.

ALLISON: Yeah. The chaos pick. Give it a try. See if it works.

ANNE: I mean, hey, if it works for a half dozen readers you know, why not?

ALLISON: Absolutely.

ANNE: Allison, what is the third book you love?

ALLISON: My third book is The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, which has a very special place in my heart because it really was one of the first books to break my reading slump. So picking it up again was one of the first reading experiences where I was just like, "Oh, this is easy." Like, "Okay, I'm really enjoying this." Which is kind of funny in retrospect because it is not like the first book I recommend to people if they're not fantasy readers, because it is absolutely like the author loves language and went hard on language construction and so like people's names. It's a lot of a blur. So you kind of got to be okay with not necessarily knowing the names of the people and the names of the places and picking it up as you go. There is, I think, a family tree in the back or something like that.

[00:29:53] The Goblin Emperor is the story of a seventh son of an emperor who was absolutely never going to get the throne and so was relegated to a small castle and grew up kind of abused and in really hard situations. And then a catastrophe—again, this is not spoilers, this is the start of the book—lands him on the throne. All of his brothers and the Emperor father are now dead.

This is an incredibly young—I think he's 18 when the book starts—and a very not educated, sheltered, kind human... well, not human, goblin, who has wound up in charge of this elven kingdom. The core themes of the book are about building connection and building community and how to go from isolation into healing and growth. Which was not what I was expecting from a political fantasy novel.

[00:31:02] But it is a story where kindness triumphs. It was just such a satisfying read that when I finished it, the emotional arc of it was just so profoundly soothing. And it made me so happy that in this incredibly rich worldbuilding. You know, very complex political fantasy structure and all of that, I feel like many times those books are about how the worst of people comes out and tooth and claw and all of that.

And just having a version where it was just as complex and there were schemers and backstabbers, but that there was space for kindness and loyalty and being better than the past that brought you there. I just love that narrative theme. It's what got it a place in my favorites.

ANNE: Oh, that sounds amazing. That sounds like a right book for right now for all kinds of readers.

ALLISON: Yes. I cannot recommend it strongly enough if you are okay with, you know, three people having very similar names and you just kind of got to roll with it for a little while.

[00:32:06] Also tip for anyone starting with the audio. The very first character voice that is said is terrible, but that character doesn't last very long and it is not how the rest of the book is voiced. When I started, I pushed play, and then two seconds later I pushed stop and was like, I guess I'm reading this one in print, and then read the whole thing in print. And then later was like, "Maybe I'll go back to the audio." And it turned out that horrible character was only around for a brief period of time and was about a fairly horrible character. So I understand the choice a little bit more, but it was not a good introduction to the audiobook for me.

ANNE: Well, thank you for the heads up so that audio files don't necessarily need to be turned away from poor introduction to the audio.

ALLISON: Yes, exactly.

ANNE: Allison, I'd love to hear about a book that was not a good fit for you.

ALLISON: Yes. So this book I picked because it was something that could have been on my global reading project and initially seemed like the sort of thing that I would like. And while it is a very solid book and there are probably many people I would recommend it to, it wound up not being at all the right book for me.

[00:33:17] That book is The Anomaly by... I am just realizing I did not practice this name at all. Henry, somebody. I'm sorry, Henry. But he's a French author, and he wrote a fascinating book about there is a terrible storm and a plane lands, and then a couple of months later an identical copy of the plane lands. And it's this question of like, why did this happen? How did this happen?

The book itself really digs into the lives of the people that suddenly have duplicates or have been duplicated. But I just found myself getting kind of mad at it for a couple of reasons. Reason number one is because I think I'm a sci-fi fan and I got the feeling that this author did not normally write science fiction. So it was sold as a science fiction thriller but it's really a philosophy book in science fiction clothing.

Like there was a bunch of scientists and they sat around asking philosophical questions. They did not actually do a lot of science. So I was just a little annoyed at that plot construction. And I understood what the author wanted to do, and like I said, there's probably many people that would appreciate it, but I was not one of them.

[00:34:38] And then the other thing was just subtly I didn't like how women were treated in the story. It felt like the men got to be full people on their own, and the women mostly had to deal with the problems that men brought into their lives. That just got kind of tiring to read about.

So even though it was a book that kept me engaged and I read all the way through, by the end of it, it just didn't feel right. I wasn't left with a good taste in my mouth. So ultimately didn't work for me. But I do see why it is beloved.

And side note, I wound up reading also a recommendation from you Fresh Water for Flowers for my book on France. And I really enjoyed that one. That was a delight. So there was a French redemption in there.

ANNE: I'm glad to hear that. Allison, what have you been reading lately?

[00:35:31] ALLISON: So I recently read Mammoths at the Gates by Nghi Vo, which is a fantasy series of novelettes that I have just been admiring and reading so fast whenever they come out. They're like delicious little snacks of books.

It's about basically a fantasy world where we are following a kind of monk archivist that is going around recording the histories and stories of the world. All of the novellas stand apart from each other, and so you can pretty much pick up any of Nghi Vo's novellas and read them. And Mammoths at the Gates was just released, and I was absolutely just like, yay, you got to read that.

Then I recently also have been on a nonfiction kick, which has been a lot of fun. I've started using StoryGraph for book tracking, and I found out that I read about 75% fiction, 25% nonfiction, which was a really interesting thing for me to learn about myself because I don't think I could have told that to you. But it's been nonfiction times.

[00:36:37] So I recently read Strong Female Character by Fern Brady, who is a Scottish comedian. But she writes very frankly about being diagnosed with autism as an adult and what it meant for her growing up without that diagnosis and her life making sense in retrospect.

So it can be a very hard story at times because, you know, her not understanding what was going on with herself was heavy to read about at times. But it was absolutely just riveting to hear her tell her story and tell it very frankly. And then her very unique comedian voice, she does have a sense of how to build and break tension and all of that.

For anyone who really enjoyed Hannah Gadsby or Ten Steps to Nanette, I would recommend Fern Brady's Strong Female Character.

ANNE: Okay. Thank you for that. And Allison, we are looking for books for your Global Reading Project. What parts of the world are you specifically focused on now?

[00:37:40] ALLISON: I haven't read that much yet. So, so far I have gotten France, Sweden, Algeria, Nigeria, Kenya, Djibouti, USA, Japan, and I just finished my book for Canada. But Asia and South America are really underrepresented right now. I have picked out a book from Belize that I'm going to be reading. Aside from that, pretty much anything is open game.

I know that my favorite books all kind of have... you know, they're a little bit more comfortable. There's a focus on like people coming together and things like that. But my Global Reading Project is really about discovery, so definitely are welcome to go outside of my comfort zone for the international picks. But if you can think of something that is, you know, kind of in line with my favorites or even just interesting sci-fi fantasy from a country that I don't have yet, I would also be very excited about those.

[00:38:40] ANNE: That sounds like fun. Let's see what we can do.

ALLISON: Okay.

ANNE: To review your books, you loved Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger, Thud! by Terry Pratchett, and The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison. Not for you was The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellie. Apologies if I'm butchering that French. And you really did enjoy Freshwater for Flowers by Valérie Perrin. And lately you've been reading Mammoths at the Gate by Nghi Vo, and as part of your nonfiction kick, Strong Female Character by Fern Brady, which is just the best title.

ALLISON: Yes, absolutely.

ANNE: Now let's see what we can do for your global reading project. Allison, here's what I think we're going to do. I want to leave you with more than one global science fiction and fantasy pic because you love those books. So I'm thinking we're going to do three of those. But first, can we go to Iceland and Germany?

ALLISON: Oh, absolutely.

[00:39:38] ANNE: Okay. Let's start in Iceland with Reykjavík by Ragnar Jónasson and Katrín Jakobsdóttir. And it's translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb. And we did talk about this book in our recent Fall book preview that we did for Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club members and our patron in What Should I Read Next? community.

So some of you have heard about this before and heard me say that my husband, Will, loved this book. I liked it. Oh, Will loved it. Some of you write in and say, "Tell me what Will is reading because he is my book twin." So there you go.

I think the story behind this is also really interesting because it was written by Iceland's prime minister.

ALLISON: Ooh.

ANNE: She says, well... although with the help of one of Iceland's best-known and bestselling author.

ALLISON: All right.

ANNE: But the interviews, if you want to Google them... I know you're doing a lot of global reading, but if you want to read some journalism too, she said that, Look, every politician needs to have something to take his or her mind from the daily business of politics. And I've been reading crime fiction all my life. So it's in my DNA.

[00:40:42] She says that crime fiction for her is a bit like psychotherapy because it's about solving crimes and finding justice. So it's very therapeutic for her. So this story has a very strong sense of place. With your global reading project, if you want to visit new-to-you places and see what it's... you know, experience being in that country, this is a great book for that.

It's set not in the present day, though, but in 80s Reykjavík. And in the very beginning of the story, something comes up that takes the characters back to reinvestigate an unsolved disappearance from 50s Reykjavík. The writing here is so great. The translation also seems very good to an American reader because it reads so wonderfully and smoothly.

There's some really interesting things happening with the names in the book that I think you'll notice. But something that's so fascinating here is that you... I imagine I might be wrong. I don't know all that much about what it's like to live in Iceland now or in the 80s.

ALLISON: I don't. It's true. Yeah, that's not in my knowledge, wheelhouse.

[00:41:47] ANNE: And yet the authors make it very clear that during the time period of this novel, everyone knew everyone. You knew what your neighbors were up to. You knew when they went to work. You knew what they were probably doing at home. Like everyone was accounted for in this tight-knit community. So for someone to disappear, it just seemed impossible. And it's really interesting how they set that up and make you understand what it was like to live in this place.

And it's so interesting how the prime minister, as she's writing, is incorporating real and historic events from history in the pages of their novels so they matter to the story. Like there was a historic Reagan Gorbachev meeting that happened in Reykjavík that appears in the pages of this book.

So you get to see both the country evolving technologically and politically, and you get to read this crime story. Well, two, actually. And I hope that you'll find both of those elements, the place, and the mystery, fascinating is my hope. How does that sound, Allison?

[00:42:51] ALLISON: That sounds wonderful. I didn't actually mentioned this earlier, but my dad's mom, who loves reading and was a big inspiration for me, her reading happy place is murder mysteries. So I have a great deal of residual fondness for murder mysteries just because it's something that someone I love loves a lot. And so I love it, too. So I'm very excited for both this, you know, a fun crime story, but also a real look at a place in multiple times. That sounds wonderful. I'm very excited.

ANNE: Well, I think it's also interesting that crime fiction is some readers' bread and butter. But it really is outside your comfort zone. And I hope this is an enjoyable and illuminating way to step off the path a little bit.

ALLISON: Yes. Yes, I think so.

ANNE: Now we're going to go to Germany for a book that does have a classic German sense of humor. It's called Barbara Isn't Dying by Alina Bronsky. You mentioned in your submission that being cued into the publisher, Europa, you think is going to help you in your global reading quest. This is a Europa title.

[00:43:54] We should say this is translated from the German. I'm not expecting you to read it in German. The translator is Tim Mohr. But in this story, which has a very Friedrich Bachmann kind of vibe and sense of humor, we meet a man named Herr Schmidt.

And one morning he wakes up and he discovers nobody has made the coffee. So the only obvious reason to him can be that his wife has died in the night because there's no other possible explanation. They've been married for decades, she makes the coffee every morning. That is what she does. That is her job. Like what in the world? But it turns out she hasn't died but she is sick, and this completely rocks his world because he doesn't know how to move through the world without his wife making everything happen for him.

So as the story progresses, we see this curmudgeonly older husband learn to do things that he has never thought twice about doing for himself, like let alone for someone else, because he's been married for decades and he hasn't had to think about it. So at the very beginning of the story, he sets out on this big adventure to figure out how to buy coffee that he can put in his coffee maker so he can have his morning coffee. And he needs to learn how to cook a potato.

[00:45:06] ALLISON: And we talked about vacuuming while listening to audiobooks.

ANNE: He has to figure out how to run the vacuum. And like those very practical, like how do I keep my house running skills are just the beginning of the adaptations that he and his wife are going to have to make to keep living and to keep being in relationship together. And this really becomes a story about unexpected community and found family. It's a little grim at times, but also has a really offbeat sense of humor.

ALLISON: This sounds great. Yeah. You've picked up on a lot of the themes. It's like you're good at this or something. That’s speaking my language. I love stories of people whose life gets turned upside down for some reason and then find a way through with people coming together. That sounds delightful. Yay. I feel like I've said "delightful" so much, but it's all true.

ANNE: Well, I won't argue with that. And you're not on a race to figure this global reading project, but this is just 182 pages. It's a slim story. You will not spend six months reading it.

ALLISON: Fabulous. That is very helpful.

[00:46:10] ANNE: Allison, I thought it would be really fun to leave you with recs for science fiction and fantasy, your wheelhouse, your comfort zone for your global reading project. We already talked about our amazing team member, Holly, who has a lot of insight into both this genre because she loves it and science fiction and fantasy coming out of this part of the world because she is also reading books that are set in the places that she is visiting, which are overlapping these areas of the world where you don't have a lot of books right now on your radar.

So she gave me a long list of science fiction and fantasy picks that she thought might be good picks for you. And I'm excited to share three of them because we can't give you just one.

ALLISON: Let me tell you, my life more books, not a problem. So please, please. All of them. Thank you, Holly. I'm so excited. Let's do this.

ANNE: Famous last words, Allison, but-

ALLISON: Fair.

[00:47:03] ANNE: In that case, let's start with my turn into a twofer. And that is Lobizona by Romina Garber. And I say twofer because this is the first in the two book, Wolves of No World Series. This is... you know, we could call it fantasy. We could call it fiction with magical elements. Regardless, it's inspired by the Argentinean folklore of the author's home country.

This is a fast-paced, gorgeously written YA novel that has a magical school for witches and werewolves that, to many readers, feels very reminiscent of Hogwarts. And it features a 16-year-old girl who's living with her mother undocumented in Miami, and they are hiding away from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

But when the mother gets taken, the daughter sets off in search of answers and she gets involved in a world that she thought was only mythological. But it turns out, next thing you know, she's infiltrating this magical school for werewolves and witches and uncovering family secrets she never dreamt of and learning true things about herself that she never dreamed were part of her identity. How does that sound?

[00:48:20] ALLISON: You probably could have just said school for werewolves and witches and like hats. But no, no, it sounds amazing. I love the grounding in Argentinean folklore. This is exactly the sort of thing that I probably would have picked up even if I hadn't decided to try to read around the world. So I am delighted to be able to jump into that. And I don't mind that it's a series. Oh, no, more books. What a tragedy!

ANNE: Whatever will I do? Well, I'm glad to hear it. Next, this is a collection that Holly has already read and absolutely loved. It's Tauhou by Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall. This collection is out of Aotearoa New Zealand. This collection is also short. It's just over 200 pages. And it feels like part poetry, part short stories. It has a bit of an experimental flavor to it. I love the premise.

[00:49:24] So the author wants to explore the multiple roots of her ancestry, which is both Māori and also Coastal Salish. That's British Columbia. So to do this, she imagines a world in which Vancouver Island and Aotearoa sit side by side in the ocean.

ALLISON: Oh, interesting. Okay.

ANNE: I know. Isn't that fun? So with this backdrop, she explores themes like ancestry, womanhood, indigenous families, forced relocation, post-colonialism. And also there's this return to the idea of home and whether it's ever truly possible to go there. How does that sound?

ALLISON: Oh, that sounds fascinating. Something I've been thinking about is like going from reading speculative fiction to the global reading project, I found some unexpected lateral skills of... you know, reading sci-fi and fantasy sometimes you just kind of have to jump into a world and learn it as you go.

[00:50:26] And this world is our shared world. But reading other cultures has some of that same skills of like, being okay with the discomfort and, you know, learning as you go and things like that. And this just feels like an amazing melding of those two, of it is this cultural exploration, but it has that speculative element as well. I'm very excited to see where this idea goes.

ANNE: I'm so glad to hear that. And we're going to end in Sri Lanka, if that works for you.

ALLISON: Oh, it absolutely works for me.

ANNE: We have a book that's newly published in the U.S. by Vajra Chandrasekera. It's called The Saint of Bright Doors. Now, Vajra Chandrasekera is a prolific author of short stories, but this is his debut novel. It's actually the first standalone novel in a three-book deal with Tor. If you know the personality of Tor.

ALLISON: I do know the personality of Tor. Excellent. Excellent. Okay.

[00:51:22] ANNE: Well, here, if you like Tor, I'll give you their description. This book sets the high drama of divine revolutionaries and transcendent cults against the mundane struggles of modern life, resulting in a novel that is revelatory and resonant.

But in more practical terms, this is about a young man who was raised by his mother with an end in mind from his earliest days, and that is that he's supposed to grow up and assassinate his father. They're obviously mortal enemies. But he doesn't want to be part of that plan. So he leaves home for the big city where, among other things, he investigates the mystery of the bright doors of the book's title and where they might lead to or come from, because it's not really clear which is which.

When you talk to readers about this book, they'll throw around phrases like a confusing masterpiece. I'm definitely willing to bet it's like nothing you've ever read, even while I expect you might find it reminiscent of works you're familiar with, like Neil Gaiman's American Gods or Tamsyn Muir's Nona the Ninth.

[00:52:23] This book has a drifty, dreamy quality to it with a highly inventive and often unpredictable plot and lots of disparate elements all coming together in ways that don't always feel obvious. This book has been described by the author's writing peers as a master class in worldbuilding. And knowing that science fiction fantasy is your home and knowing that your global reading project is about adventure and discovery and trying new things and being surprised, well, I just want to say I'm keeping all those things in mind. How does that sound to you?

ALLISON: You have gotten so many circles of the Venn diagram and dragged them together to find this amazing central piece. Yeah. No, I'm so excited. It sounds like a great story. It sounds like it's a really interesting narrative structure. I actually recently did just read Tamsyn Muir's theory as well and really enjoyed getting into like the narrative structure of that. So the fact that you pulled that as a comp was like, Oh, okay. So sounds like an amazing convergence of a lot of things that I love and I'm going to look forward to getting into that.

[00:53:36] ANNE: Okay. Well, maybe you just answer the question that you know I'm about to ask you. But first, let's recap.

ALLISON: Of the books we talked about today, and they were Reykjavík by Ragnar Jónasson and Katrín Jakobsdóttir, we talked about Barbara Isn't Dying by Alina Bronsky. And then our science fiction fantasy recs, they were Lobizona by Romina Garber, Tauhou by Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall, and The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera. Of those books, Allison, what do you think you'll read next?

ALLISON: Oh, I have such an abundance to choose from. You're not wrong. I am very interested in The Saint of Bright Doors. But Barbara Isn't Dead also is really, really catching my attention. The realistic answer is I'll probably plug these all into my library app and see which one comes up first. But I am excited to read all of them and color in some more spots on my globe as well.

ANNE: I love that visual and I'm excited that you're excited. And thanks so much for stopping by to tell us about your Global Reading Project and talk about your reading life today. It's been a pleasure.

ALLISON: Thank you so much for having me. It's been a delight. Might as well just throw that in one more time. Thank you, Anne.

[00:54:53] ANNE: Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Allison, and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next. Find Allison and her reading project on Instagram. We have included that link in our show notes along with the full list of titles we talked about today.

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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.