Fiction and memoir, but make it travel

[00:00:00] ANNE BOGEL: Hey readers, I'm Anne Bogel and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that's dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don't get bossy on 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, I'd love to connect with you on the podcast, but I am back on the road this spring and I'm looking forward to meeting some of you in person.

From April 11th to 13th, I'll be at the Festival of Faith & Writing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This is a festival for readers and lovers of literature.

Then I'll be at Word of South Festival from April 26th to 28th in Tallahassee, Florida. This is a gathering of musicians and writers. I'm looking forward to recording a live podcast and being in conversation with Lauren Groff for her keynote event. It's going to be great.

[00:01:08] Literary festivals are so fun and enriching, and I can't wait to see many of these authors myself, and I'd love to see you there, too. If you've never been to a literary festival, we have an episode for you. In Episode 354, called Book Festivals for Beginners, I talked to Christina about getting ready for her first literary festival, and it's a great resource to help you prep for yours.

Get more details about these upcoming events at modernmrsdarcy.com/events, and we'll also put notes in our show notes for you. I hope to see you there.

Now for today's episode. Our guest loves to travel, whether in real life or through the pages of a good book. Joy has traveled extensively and even lived abroad, but now she's finding herself in small-town Georgia and looking to books to fulfill her wanderlust and take her vicariously to places she can't get to right now in real life.

This is not a new genre for Joy. She's loved travel narratives, fiction with travel elements, and especially travel-oriented memoirs, but she's never had a good system for finding the travel reads she enjoys most.

[00:02:07] Joy has decided to make 2024 her year of traveling in her reading, so we're going to find some titles for her today. But an obstacle is that while Joy loves to read, she's picky about the books. She only really likes them when she finds the right thing for her.

Today, we're going to closely examine her loves, as well as a title or two that hasn't worked so well for her, and see if we can then add both fiction and nonfiction travel narratives to Joy's to-be-read stack that she will actually enjoy reading next.

Let's get to it.

Joy, welcome to the show.

JOY: Thank you so much, Anne. I'm so happy to be here.

ANNE: Oh, I'm so excited to talk books with you today. Joy, we want to give the readers a glimpse of who you are. Tell us a little about yourself.

[00:02:49] JOY: Well, I live in Madison, Georgia with my husband, Brian, our one-year-old daughter, and our golden doodle, Honey. We actually only been here for about six months. We just moved for my husband's job from Maryland where we both grew up. So we're still getting settled we're building community. But we really love it.

We especially loved the warm winter. We were looking for a little bit of a warmer climate, and I have to say having lived through the winter down here it's pretty great.

ANNE: I'm glad to hear that for you all.

JOY: Yeah, we loved it. Other things I love besides being warm, obviously hanging out with our friends and family, being active and being outside, hiking, running, walking. On the flip side of that, really love good food. I would consider myself a little bit of a foodie, like baking, obviously reading, and then any good stories that are on TV. Love puzzling, whether that's jigsaw puzzles, Sudoku, crosswords, all the above. We're a big New York Times games nerd family over here.

[00:04:03] ANNE: I was just remembering I haven't done Connections yet today.

JOY: Oh my gosh. Yes. Our big thing is the Mini. Now we have a leaderboard and my husband and I compare times most days and kind of see who comes out on the weekly basis.

ANNE: I love it.

JOY: I love it. Then in our past life before having our daughter, we did a lot of traveling. I did some personally and then we did some when we were married. So that's been a big part of our life, but less so now just with our phase of life.

Then for work, I work remotely as a project manager and as a change manager at Northrop Grumman which is a big company with lots of different sites. What I get to do on a daily basis is basically help the organization implement new technologies to help us work better and make our processes faster.

But I also get to think about how to make sure that we're not forgetting about employees in that mix. Thinking about how the technologies that we're putting into the company are actually impacting people. So I really enjoy that. I think it's a blend of my task orientation and my people orientation and getting to use both of those.

[00:05:15] ANNE: I'm so curious, do you feel like that project manager, change manager role, that mindset that you're in so often for work that I imagine is part of you, what does that mean in your reading life?

JOY: I think it kind of mirrors the kinds of books that I like. I like books that are action-oriented and fast-paced but also that have realistic people stories and good dialogue, and good characters that are rounded out as human beings.

I think sometimes I find a book that's stronger in one or the other aspect. But ideally when I can have both of those things, I think that is my favorite.

And yes, I think that kind of mirrors kind of the two sides of the coin of the work that I get to do. One is very much schedule and tasks and what are we doing and who are we talking to. And then the next side is, okay, how do we motivate these people? How do we teach them? How do we communicate? How do we influence leaders to communicate XYZ? So yeah, definitely I kind of like that variety in my reading life too.

[00:06:28] ANNE: Interesting. I'm curious about what that might mean about the way you talk to yourself internally about books. Maybe we'll get there later. Joy, I'd love to hear more about the role that reading has in your life right now.

JOY: Just kind of starting a little bit further back, I'm not like all of your guests, I wouldn't call myself a reader forever. But I liked reading as a kid and then kind of lost the joy in the habit along the way. Definitely, I always loved puzzles a little bit more, loved kind of doing something. So I think that's kind of the books that I'm drawn to even now.

A couple of years ago, after I finished my MBA, I decided to get back into books and I said, Okay, I'm going to set a goal for myself. I'm going to read two books a month and making a 24 for the year. You know, found your podcast, found a lot of different ways to find books, and really found what books I liked.

Ended up reading 50 books that year. So it's really been more of a recent thing for me. Had a book club during the pandemic, which was helping to keep all of our sanity, I think. But yeah. So now I kind of know a little bit more of what I like.

[00:07:35] And I really do like those books that remind me of puzzles that are either really plodding and fast-paced and kind of twisty of, you know, they've got a psychological element. Psychological thrillers are my jam. I loved The Push, for example.

Or I really like books that, you know, they might be a little bit slower, but you really need to know about the people and the characters, you need to know about their motivation, you need to know about their relationships and just kind of have that same kind of tension and that puzzle of, okay, I need to figure this out.

I think that comes to just kind of, again, the phase of life that I'm in. I read mostly before I go to bed at night. I really need something that I'm looking forward to reading rather than just totally going to sleep. And that also kind of focuses me totally that I can't get distracted.

[00:08:32] I also like nonfiction that's a little bit journalistic, especially about things that I think are particularly interesting, like science and health and psychology and things like that. So, yeah, just anything where I'm trying to figure out like, how does this work, how is this going to end up?

So for writing, for me, I enjoy good writing, but I almost want writing to kind of fade into the background. I don't love overly flowery language generally, but I also want it to be good. I want to learn some new words. I want to get some vocabulary in there. I want good dialog. I just don't want to be distracted by the way that someone is writing. So that's a little bit about kind of what I look for now in books now that I've got a little bit of a better idea of what I enjoy.

ANNE: Joy. Thank you for that snapshot. And I'm so glad to hear you found your way back to being a regular reader. How's that feeling to you?

[00:09:27] JOY: It feels great. I've learned now that I really do like reading. I just have to be really picky about the books. So it feels good when I'm reading a good book.

I think it's also made me a very moody reader. I don't have any problem with putting a book down if I don't immediately like it or at least want to know more about it. But again, maybe phase of life, maybe impatience.

But yeah, I think now that I realize, okay, I do like books, I do like reading, it's more of just finding the right thing that that's just been really, really freeing. And I can say confidently that I'm a reader and then I like books, it's just that I might not like all the books that people recommend to, for example.

ANNE: Joy, you mentioned your love of travel, and today we're really going to focus on what you said in your submission, which is finding more travel narratives that really suit you. And I think our best way into that is to talk about what you really love. Are you ready to talk about your books?

JOY: Yes, absolutely.

[00:10:27] ANNE: Joy, you know how this works. You're going to tell me three books you love, one book you don't, and what you've been reading lately and we'll see what we can find that you may enjoy reading next. You don't like all the books, but maybe we can find some that you do like today. Joy, how did you choose these?

JOY: I really tried to choose one book per kind of genre or type of book that I like. Again, I like a variety, so I tried to kind of choose one from each area.

ANNE: Well, I'm curious to hear what those areas are. What is the first book you love?

JOY: The first book I chose is called We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz. This is a book — it's fiction — about two friends, Emily and Kristen, who are traveling in Chile, which is somewhere that I've been and lived and so had an instant connection there. So they're traveling, and the last night there, something terrible happens, of course.

So the rest of the book is really about what happens as a result of that night, circumstantially, with their friendship and then even within Emily's own mind, and her internal workings of looking back on that event and processing it.

[00:11:41] So it's definitely a psychological thriller. That's the first kind of book that I really enjoy is, again, kind of, you know, The Push, We Were Never Here, you know, these kind of fast-paced books, but that have a very strong psychological aspect to them.

Then I think it was just a bonus that because of the travel involved in this book, there was a strong sense of place as well. So enjoyed that as well.

ANNE: So that one represents your psychological thrillers. Joy, what's the second book you loved?

JOY: The second book I chose is called French Braid by Anne Tyler. This is a story about a family living in the Baltimore area over several generations. Of course, again, with being from Maryland in that area, I also really loved that connection of place.

So kind of near the start of the story, the family is at Deep Creek Lake in the 1950s. There's parents, there's three kids. And as the book progresses, you see those three kids become adults, and you kind of see these short anecdotes of their lives interacting with one another and kind of seeing them as individuals grown up.

[00:12:51] Then at the end of the story, you see one of those kids as a grandparent during the pandemic. So you kind of see full circle this entire span of characters' lives.

One I mentioned I don't love, you know, flowery writing, but I do remember that the writing in this book was really well done and beautiful and just easy to read. It just flowed really well. The characters were just really real.

It felt really true to the way that people and humans behaved, their dialogs, the way that they behaved. It was funny, but it was also very realistic. And I kind of like the way that books can do that well.

Then also, you know, you're seeing across time, but you're also seeing from different perspectives throughout the book. I feel like there is definitely lessons about sometimes our one perspective in a certain amount of time is not the whole picture about people. So I just really enjoyed kind of that overarching lesson from the book.

[00:13:56] It ended with a really heartwarming tone, which I appreciated too, because with people stories and family dramas, there's some uncomfortable moments. So I really enjoyed that there was a heartwarming feel to it.

ANNE: How do you categorize this kind of book? What kind of label do you put on it?

JOY: I would put this as kind of the less plotty, but still very tension-filled, character-driven stories, ideally about family. You know, it's hyphenated, all of that.

ANNE: It doesn't have to be a punchy description. I'm tracking.

JOY: Yeah. No, definitely this is something that's more character-driven and less about plot, but still has that puzzle element of "I'm invested in this family and I need to know what happens to them". It kind of reminded me of, The Dutch House, which is similar.

[00:14:53] It takes place over a long amount of time. You're seeing a brother and sister as kids and then as adults, and then it's older adults. There are certain things that happen, but it's really about who they are as people and their relationship with one another and their growth or lack of growth and all of that. So, yeah, I would kind of put those in the same category of kind of more character-driven, long-term stories.

ANNE: I love it. I love it. That'll work. Joy, what's the third book you love?

JOY: The third book that I like is called Nature Fix by Florence Williams. First of all, that name Florence Williams I'm very jealous. It's just flows off the tongue. Beautiful. This book is a journalistic nonfiction book about really the research on nature and why nature's good for us.

The subtitle says Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative. As someone who already likes hiking, already likes being outside, I was told I was like, yes, tell me all the reasons why I should do more of this.

[00:16:00] But yeah, I found it really easy to read. It was nonfiction, but it almost sounded more like a narrative because of the author. She shared about her own travels of kind of going around to different parts of the world and about learning about nature and the research that had been done in different parts of the world about nature.

So it read really easily, even though it was nonfiction. I just really found the nuggets that were told really fascinating and things that I still today constantly think about. I was trying to think of an example today, and I have so many because it's just so much.

But one example, she kind of goes through the five senses in the book of, you know, how does nature benefit each of the senses? Hearing, seeing, touching, all of those. And the one for sight was all about fractals. Fractals are repeating patterns that you see out. They can be manmade or natural, obviously.

[00:17:00] You can see them in trees. If you look at a tree, you can see the way that the trunk breaks into branches and then each of those branches breaks into further branches and into twigs. You know, there's certain patterns and almost angles at which a tree does that.

Basically, the research says that just by looking at fractals, that repeating patterns in trees, it actually lowers our stress. So it's just amazing that you could just look at a tree and it's good for your health. Just really fascinating nuggets like that. So, you know, really interesting. And then also really practically motivating just to do something about it. Just to, you know, make it a priority to get out in nature on a regular basis. So really enjoyed books like that.

ANNE: Do you think of this in your mind as journalistic nonfiction, or is there a different signifier you apply?

[00:17:55] JOY: Yeah. I would say journalistic nonfiction that generally focuses on health, psychology, and science themes. Those are my wheelhouse. I do enjoy other kinds of journalistic nonfiction, but I would say, like, if I can be learning something in that realm, that is probably my best-case scenario.

ANNE: Interesting. It's not super important we nail those down. I'm just personally curious. Since you said three kinds of books, I want to know what they are, Joy.

JOY: Yeah, journalistic nonfiction, especially about themes that I'm interested in. ANNE: Joy, now tell us about a book that wasn't a good fit for you.

JOY: The book that I chose was Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid. This was a book club pick, and so I did finish it, but otherwise may not have. And yeah, it had all the elements of things that I

would have thought I liked. It was very plotty, it had a very strong sense of time and place, and there was even family, sibling drama.

[00:19:00] But ultimately it came down to the characters. The characters just didn't feel fully developed. I realized from reading that book that something can be as plotty as can be, but I don't really care about what happens if I don't feel like I know the characters or I know why they're doing what they're doing, or just can't buy into the fact that they're real people. So that was it for me.

ANNE: I'm noticing that you're saying with great confidence you need to buy into the characters if you're going to care about what happens to them.

JOY: Yes.

ANNE: How did you figure out that was so important to you? When did that dawn on you?

JOY: It probably came to me slowly that, you know, there were some books like Malibu Rising and others that some people just raved about, like, Oh, I can't believe that that happened and then that happened. And I would read it and just be so underwhelmed because of the characters.

[00:20:00] And then on the flip side, I think there were books that I really enjoyed. I think I've already mentioned it but The Dutch House. We got into some book club brawls, not really, but discussion about, you know, was that a good book or not? And had some people just say like, Oh, The Dutch House, it was just so boring. Nothing happened. And I was like, "Yeah, things happened." And got up in arms and I decided to reread it. It's like one of the only books that I've read, but I listened to it on audiobook.

So Tom Hanks is definitely not going to make me like it any less. But really just still was like, "Yeah, no, I just really like it." I think there was enough happening and I think the characters were just really interesting people and just felt so real. It just made me so reflective of life.

So I think it just came out through discussions with people and realizing, Okay, there are some books that have a lot of action and everyone else seems to like them because of that but I just can't get into them and vice versa.

[00:21:02] ANNE: You've just been puzzling it out, asking yourself, what's going on? What's going on here? Why do I feel this way? I love that. Okay, thanks for sharing that with us.

JOY: Yeah, of course.

ANNE: Joy, what have you been reading lately?

JOY: A couple of things. One of the books that I read not too long ago, because I was trying to find some travel narratives on my own, was Grandma Gatewood's Walk. It's the biography of the first woman to hike the Appalachian Trail in 1955. So it was a biography on her life, and obviously that first pilgrimage, but also her subsequent journeys in the US. Really interesting lady.

A lot of the premise was around what made her do it. She has a crazy backstory. I think she had like 12 or 14 children and not a very good marriage, it sounds like, there may have been abuse. So anyways, a lot of what drove her to kind of leave her entire family into these crazy excursions.

[00:22:03] It was really interesting. I was really inspired by her. I don't really feel like I got quite the answer I was looking for the end, but still, I think it's just a testament to how mysterious and interesting people are that they can do these crazy things, and then they can come and go and we still don't quite understand why they did them. So that was a really interesting book. That was by Ben Montgomery.

I also just read Yellowface by R.F. Kuang. This was definitely in the psychological thriller bucket and also had a lot of commentary on racial issues and the publishing industry. I just found it really riveting and interesting and funny.

Speaking of characters, I really enjoyed Juniper as a character. It was clear that she had a lot of blind spots. And yet her lack of growth just really felt really real, just really consistent with who she was. Enjoyed that.

[00:23:02] Then the last book that I read recently is That Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon. She was just on the show, and I heard about this book on the show. I'm not a huge historical fiction person, and this is actually one of those things where I'm often talking with someone and they're ranting about a historical fiction, and then I'm not as into it. But I really, really liked this one.

I think it is because it's in such a different time and place. I think it's 1750s to the 1790s in New England and through the book you're just learning about all these crazy laws and things at the time as the U.S. is just getting set up and also learning about these characters.

I think I just really enjoyed kind of the escape of this book and kind of felt like I was traveling back in time and to a different place. So yeah, I really enjoyed that one as well.

ANNE: Thanks for sharing those. Joy, what are you looking for in your reading life right now?

[00:24:02] JOY: I'm really looking for a little bit more around travel. I mentioned it briefly before, but yeah, I spent a lot of my, especially my 20s, traveling. I lived in Chile after graduating college and I lived in Argentina a little bit after that. Then I got my MBA in a hybrid program that brought me to Spain a few times.

I just love travel. I love living abroad. I love kind of that exploration of a new place and just that whole experience. I really want in my reading life to have a little bit more of those kinds of stories.

You know, that could be memoirs, that could be fiction, really. They can fall into any of the buckets that I mentioned that I like. That's ideal. But yeah, I'm looking for a little bit more of that and some of that escape because, you know, I don't see us doing a ton of international travel in the very near future with our phase of life, but I really just want to kind of scratch that itch and have that

experience in my reading life.

[00:25:10] ANNE: Okay, we will see what we can do. Joy, let's stop and recap. So you love We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz, French Braid by Anne Tyler, and the Nature Fix by Florence Williams.

Not for you was Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkins Reid. It was very plotty, which you love, but you didn't think the characters were fully developed. You weren't fully invested. And we talked about that.

And then lately, you've been reading Grandma Gatewood's Walk by Ben Montgomery, Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, and The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon.

And we're looking for travel narratives because it might be the closest you get to travel any time soon with your phase of life. This is something you've been doing in the past. I presume it's something you'd like to enjoy in the future. Is that right?

JOY: Yes. Yes, absolutely. And I still have dreams of like, oh, I see all these things on social media about traveling with little babies. Like, maybe at some point I'll be brave and do that, but not right now.

[00:26:07] ANNE: How has Google served you or your fellow readers in terms of finding travel narratives?

JOY: Not well. I really haven't asked people about recommendations because it's just such a niche genre. I have found a couple of things, probably through Google that I've read, more along kind of the memoir pilgrimage that I've enjoyed. But yeah, I have not found a whole lot.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong because usually it's like a whole treasure trove of books when you kind of have a broad search. I just have not found books that sound interesting or that are, I guess, well-known enough to be at my library. That's the big thing. I'm definitely a library person.

So maybe there are some books out there, but they're just a little bit more quiet or niche. So I have not found a whole lot.

[00:27:11] ANNE: That's interesting to me because I mean, like you said, you love reading and I think you love reading about travel, but you're picky about the books that you really enjoy.

JOY: Yes.

ANNE: Okay. Now, we have talked about travel reading before on the show, so I do want to point listeners who share this interest back to an episode from summer 2017 with Claire Díaz-Ortiz. It's called Obsessive readers and bookish kindred spirit angels. That's Episode 82, and we talk about books that can take you really around the world, because Claire has been everywhere.

Then just last summer we had a very niche travel episode called A Summer of European Reading with Corin Cook. That's Episode 385. She wanted to replicate the experience of Europe in the summertime that she got from some of her favorite films that she thought did that really well. So readers, go check out those episodes if you're interested.

But today, Joy, we're thinking about your specific tastes and what you love, and what that could mean for the travel narratives you pick up.

[00:28:09] And I'm just keeping in mind that the books that you have loved have fallen into three primary categories. You've liked the psychological thrillers, the less plotty but tension-filled, character-driven stories, and journalistic nonfiction, especially when it's about health, psychology, and science.

I do want to ask one question. So some readers who love vicarious travel, they want to read about travelers, and some readers are looking for stories that are deeply embedded in a certain culture, not necessarily those visiting, but stories that are about being there. Do you have a preference there?

JOY: No, I like both of them. I like the kind of the pilgrimage, like I am passing through, I'm from one place, I'm going to another, here's my journey. I do like those. But I also like, you know, here is a totally different place and a totally different way of living and just kind of getting a slice of life through a story there.

[00:29:11] ANNE: That's helpful, and I have some ideas for you. Let's start with a classic of the genre. You're a heavy user of your library, and your library is going to have this. I'm thinking of Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck. Is this one you've picked up before?

JOY: No.

ANNE: So many of us had to read Steinbeck in high school or college. It's not that we don't know that this work exists, but we can be like, Oh, ho, hum, you know, like, that book's there. That book's always been there. How interesting could that be? Enjoy. This is a book that many people, when they finally come to it are like, "What have I been waiting for?"

In this story, he talks about wanderlust. Like right at the beginning he's like, "You know, when I was young, I always wanted to travel, and people said, 'Don't worry, you'll get older, you'll grow out of it.' So I got a little older and I hadn't grown out of it yet, and people said, 'Wait for middle age, don't worry, you'll grow out of it.' And you got some middle-aged and he still wanted to travel." And he said, you know what? I guess some of us just have this urge. So he talks about that wanderlust that you might find relatable.

[00:30:11] But in addition, the inciting event here is that he said a dry spell in his writing, and he decides the reason is that he's writing about America, and he clearly doesn't know his own country anymore, or he wouldn't feel like he didn't have anything to say.

So he decides he's going to hit the road on a big trip to get acquainted, and he's going to do so with Charley. Charley is his French poodle. And lovers of dog stories, Charley features prominently in this narrative.

So in this story he goes... he actually starts in New York. You might imagine it was California. He goes to Connecticut. He goes all throughout that part of the country, through the Pacific Northwest, down into California, over to Texas, more of the South, and back to New York.

He travels almost 10,000 miles talking to people, seeing what it's like sleeping in his camper, telling these stories. And, this is a work of nonfiction, but I need you to know that this has now been pretty conclusively shown to be just as much tall tale as true tale, but as a work of literature, it holds up.

[00:31:11] These are not places that you can visit in the same sense today, but knowing that you enjoyed The Frozen River because it took you to a specific time and place, I don't think that's an obstacle necessarily. Your library is definitely going to have this. And maybe the audio as well, audiobook listeners.

If you want to go a little more niche, or for readers who love Travels with Charley and want more of the same, he has a lesser-known work called The Log from the Sea of Cortez. Enjoy! This is going to be harder to find from your library depending on your specific library. I can't say it's a slam dunk like Travels with Charley will be in so many places.

But this is journalistic kind of sciency nonfiction that details a six-week trip that he took with his friend, a marine biologist whose name is Ed Ricketts. This man was a character, and he inspired many of the fictional characters in Steinbeck's writing. When you read it, if you're familiar with Steinbeck, you'll be like, I'm recognizing some things here.

[00:32:08] But in 1940 they took a six-week trip together where Ed Ricketts was doing his marine biology research. And Steinbeck was kind of along for the ride, although they did share this common interest. Steinbeck, he was interested in what was going to happen in the water.

So they go to the Sea of Cortez from the title. But that's the Gulf of California. That may be how you know it and how Californians know it. This is the account of their days. Lots of descriptions of marine life and a fair amount of philosophizing. It sounds like that may be in your wheelhouse. How do those sound?

JOY: That sounds great. I was going to ask if it was nonfiction, but yeah, so they're both nonfiction. ANNE: I mean, yeah, they're both nonfiction.

JOY: Okay.

ANNE: But Travels with Charley, you could do some googling if you're interested, he took a lot of liberties with the real life inspiration for these stories.

JOY: Gotcha. No, that sounds super fun.

[00:33:03] ANNE: Next, I'm wondering about a book on the opposite end of the spectrum, at least publication-wise. This is just out February 6th. You said that you really love writing to fade into the background, and you don't want the way someone is writing to be a distraction. That can be a little bit of pause because this is so beautifully written.

The book is How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir by Shayla Lawson. Shayla Lawson is an award-winning poet. They also have a debut collection of essays called This Is Major that was a finalist for several awards like National Book Critics Circle and the Lambda Literary Award.

Lawson is a poet. Part of me thinks, oh, is that right for you? But part of me thinks, The gift of a poet is they know how to make the words fall exactly where they need to be. And I'm flipping back through my mind and this book feels, in so many ways, like Shayla Lawson is sitting at the table telling you things. Not like they're laboring over, like, all the adjectives and adverbs. So, Joy, you know, I thought about it and I'm inclined to go ahead and say, just check this out.

JOY: Yeah.

[00:34:16] ANNE: So How to Live Free is a memoir in essays. I like this for you because Lawson has traveled to and lived in a lot of fascinating places, and also a lot of places that might not make you say, Oh, I've always wanted to go there. Like you don't say, ooh, Bloomington, Indiana, the same way you might go, Ooh, Venice.

But Lawson really makes you feel the significance of each place, both as a place and to the narrative here, because really, the travel, the location is a jumping off point to talk about deeper themes in their life and all our lives.

They call their work here a decolonial travel memoir. It begins in Minneapolis and then carries the reader to Venice and the Netherlands, Bermuda, Zimbabwe, and also places closer to home, closer to us like Amherst, Los Angeles, and yes, Bloomington, Indiana.

[00:35:13] This is from Tiny Rep. It's one of my favorite publishers. Every imprint has a personality. We've talked about that a lot in Patreon. Tiny Rep describes themselves as a highly curated imprint dedicated to publishing both literary fiction and nonfiction that highlight and amplify unique and diverse voices, and complex and honest work that not only reflects the current conversation but also pushes it forward.

So for a book that has that travel element, you love that it's very much about a real person sharing real human stories that are thoroughly fleshed out, how does that sound?

JOY: That sounds really interesting. I like memoirs and essays. It almost kind of reminds me a little bit of French Braid because it wasn't a totally chronological story. It jumped around a little bit and kind of told these snippets of life. So, yeah, I think I'd really like that one.

[00:36:02] ANNE: Yes. You get vignettes in French Braid that add up to the story of a family. JOY: Mm-hmm.

ANNE: Okay. I like that comparison you drew. Next, I'd like to do more journalistic nonfiction. This book came out in May 2020, so even those who love travel narratives and keep an eye out for them could easily have missed this one because of the publication timing.

This book is by Maggie Downs. It's called Braver Than You Think: Around the World on the Trip of My (Mother's) Lifetime. This is a book very much about solo travel and also about the loss of a parent.

As Downs' as mother is entering the final stages of Alzheimer's, she quit her job as a newspaper journalist, and she decides that she is going to set out to travel to the places that she and her mother talked about traveling together. Like specifically, she talks about how they used to love reading National Geographic's together and making a list of all the places they wanted to go based on that, just so you know what their inspiration is.

[00:37:03] So as she's grieving her mother's absence and then her death, she goes to Bolivia and South Africa and Uganda, Rwanda, Egypt, Thailand, Cambodia, India. She hikes the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. She goes all these places, and she does it always with her mother in mind. The title comes from words that her mother always told her as she was growing up and as an adult too, that you are braver than you think. How does that sound to you?

JOY: That sounds really fun. And specifically the places... I mean, for both of the last two books that you've mentioned, the places that they go sound really interesting and sounds great.

ANNE: I love it. And then I feel like we need to toss in some fiction as well. I have to tell you I am not entirely sure that this is going to be a great pick for you.

JOY: Let's go for it.

[00:37:54] ANNE: It's been a couple years since I've read it, so I'm filtering through: How much do we know? How much do we know? How much do we know about these characters? But when you're discussing plotty novels and strong sense of place, I was thinking of Chris Pavone's work Two Nights in Lisbon. He's a bestselling thriller writer. I think your odds of the library having this are good.

But this story does, in fact, take place over two days or two nights from the title in Portugal. It has a strong sense of place. There's lots of specific locations you can Google. But in this story, a woman wakes up on her honeymoon in the Lisbon hotel room, and her husband is gone.

She assumes the worst for reasons and just gets more and more concerned and goes to the Portuguese police in the American embassy. And they're like, "I don't know, he's a grown man. It's not been that long." And she's like, hello, "We're on our honeymoon. We're supposed to leave. This does not make sense. Something is wrong."

But then the people she turns to for help discover that the two of them, the married couple, both changed their names ten years ago, and they're like, "We don't know what's happening here, but we don't want any part of it."

[00:38:55] Meanwhile, she's thinking, okay, "I need to pay the ransom myself or it's not going to happen." But the amount of money they want is exorbitant. And she knows where she can get it but it's not going to be a good idea in other ways.

So we have a ticking clock, an interesting place, very, very plotty. I'm wondering if you're going to feel like you know and understand these characters enough to feel deeply invested, but I'm hopeful.

JOY: It definitely sounds like a good enough hook to keep me engaged to get to know them. So yeah.

ANNE: I hope so.

JOY: So yeah, I think so.

ANNE: And something I like about this as well is not only do you have the... I mean the story takes place over a very short time period, but you get their backstories. Like why did they change their names all that long ago? How did they get together? What is really happened? What do they really want? What are they trying to accomplish? And how did this whole scenario, like, how did that come to be?

Also, we find out the back in New England, I think Ariel owns a bookstore, and there are some bookstore scenes that are just really fun for book lovers.

JOY: Yes, love it.

[00:39:57] ANNE: Finally, I'd like to toss in a fictional pick that's more quiet than plotty. And that is Euphoria by Lily King. This is a novel that's very much inspired by the life of real-life anthropologist Margaret Mead. It follows the fictional character Nell Stone and her husband, who are scientists working in the jungle of New Guinea.

They meet another researcher, and the three of them quickly become a trio, and they do some truly groundbreaking, important work. But also relationally things get really messy, which endangers their work, their relationships in really realistic ways that I think you could enjoy reading about. So I'd be curious to hear what you think about that as well.

Now, that is not about travel in the tourist sense that we've been talking about mostly. This is more like watching a character enter into a new and unfamiliar culture and find their bearings and observe and see what it means to be in this place and with these people.

[00:41:03] JOY: That sounds really interesting.

ANNE: I'm glad to hear that. Okay, Joy, we covered some ground today. Thanks so much for telling us about your life, your reading life, and what you're looking for. We talked about Travels with Charley and also the lesser known The Log in the Sea of Cortez, both by John Steinbeck, the 2024 release How to Live Free in a Dangerous World: A Decolonial Memoir by Shayla Lawson, Braver Than You Think: Around the World on the Trip of My (Mother's) Lifetime by Maggie Downs, and then we ended with two fiction titles, Two Nights in Lisbon by Chris Pavone and Euphoria by Lily King. Joy, of those books, what do you think you may enjoy reading next?

JOY: Oh my goodness. Well, I'm going to put them all in my library holds now. But I'm torn between How to Live Free because it just sounds really interesting and I like the essay approach and the travel there. But then I also am really drawn to Euphoria because, yeah, being in one place and kind of just the digging into characters, doing life in a new and different place also sounds really fun. So I will just read whichever of those two gets to me first from the library.

[00:42:21] ANNE: I think that's a great way to decide. And I just want you to know, and all lovers of travel fiction to know that there are some great titles coming up this summer that will have featured in the Summer Reading Guide. Already read them, already love them. These books will take you around the world. So there is more to look forward to.

Joy, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for talking books with me today. JOY: Thank you, Anne. It's been such a delight talking with you.

[00:42:46] ANNE: Hey, readers, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Joy, and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next. Leave your suggestions and check out the fullest of titles we talked about at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

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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.