We’re all mood readers

[00:00:00] TARA BAÑUELOS: I will say, you know, even though I'm not the reader I once was, and I chose Idea of You to represent who I was, I still love that book. And if you told me that I should go run off and reread it this afternoon with a glass of crisp white wine, I would say, "Absolutely, sure. Happy to do it."

ANNE BOGEL: "Just for you, Anne."

TARA: Yes, just because you asked.

ANNE: Hey readers, I'm Anne Bogel and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that's dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don't get bossy on 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.

We typically plan and record our episodes well in advance, but this year because of personal stuff in my life, we have been running behind. Because of that, we reached out to our Patreon community with a few invitations for last-minute recording spots that came available because we used up all the margin we had over my absences this winter.

[00:01:13] We received so many incredible submissions. And I really wish I could talk to each and every one of our readers on the show, not to mention all of you who send in your submissions each and every day at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/guest.

Thank you for taking the time to share your reading lives and your reading woes with us. We can't talk to everyone on the podcast, there's just not time, but members of our team read and appreciate each and every submission. Thank you. And thank you to our patrons for stepping up to fill in the gaps.

And readers, we are fresh back from a spring break trip, we being the Bogels, and now that we're on the other side of it, my kids can tell you exactly how many days until summer vacation.

But do you know what we are counting down to at What Should I Read Next? HQ? I imagine you do. It is our 13th annual Summer Reading Guide. This is our team's marquee event for the year, and we are so excited for what's in store for 2024. This is the book list of the year, 42 fabulous reads for wherever your summer adventures will take you.

[00:02:15] Not only is the guide a useful and beautiful tool to help you pick your summer reads all season long or around the year, but we celebrate the start of the season with a huge book party. It is such a nerdy good time, and you are invited.

Go to modernmrsdarcy.com/srg, that's for Summer Reading Guide, to save your seat, pre-order your guide, and get in on the action for the best time of the year. That's at modernmrsdarcy.com/srg.

Now for today's conversation. Cultivating a to-be-read list is an art unique to each reader. Today's guest is looking for supportive strategies to deal with the age-old struggle of too many books, too little time.

Tara Bañuelos lives in Washington, D.C., where she practices law. In the past, she's turned to books as her preferred form of stress management as she's navigated a busy and ultra-demanding career. But recently, Tara's gone through a welcome career shift that's delivered the unexpected benefit of doubling her reading time and finally allowing her to read for pleasure again.

[00:03:17] Being able to read for enjoyment and not just anxiety relief was unexpected, most welcome, and has opened up whole sections of the bookstore to Tara. She's been loving what this has meant for her reading selections and has really reveled in exploring new-to-her genres and discovering backlist titles she missed out on over the past decade and a half or so.

Tara's access to the regional library system in her area means she has a whopping total of 15 library cards that are getting her primarily Kindle access. And if your jaw dropped when you heard that, mine did too.

Look, Tara is not sad about this. But it does mean, or rather, it is one contributing factor that's making her feel overwhelmed by the choices available to her right now.

Today, I'm gonna help Tara really identify patterns, hone in on her reading taste and create a plan for moving forward so she doesn't end up with hundreds of library holds coming in all at once while still not knowing what to read next.

Readers, let's get to it.

Tara, welcome to the show.

TARA: Thank you so much, Anne. Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here.

[00:04:18] ANNE: Oh, well, thank you for answering our call in Patreon. So, readers, this isn't the only episode we'll have like this. But I've had a lot going on personally that has pulled me away this winter, and so we don't have our usual six-week margin in the episode banks. So Tara was kind enough to say, "I can record on short notice." So thank you for doing so.

TARA: I'm happy to. I think I'm always having an internal dialogue when I'm listening to the podcast of, Well, if I was going to submit, I would do these things. And then I saw that on Patreon, I was like, "Well, I think this is serendipity. This is the moment to submit." And so I did. And I picked totally different things than I thought I would. But here I am.

ANNE: Well, that is my great hope for the show. So I'm really glad that that's been a script you've been running in your head the whole time. And I'm so glad we get to talk now.

And we're finding you at a moment of just great change and transition in your life. You're in D.C. The cherry blossoms are blooming. You just celebrated a birthday. All these things, though maybe not so much the birthday, have really impacted your reading life. And I'm excited to hear more today.

[00:05:20] TARA: That's exactly right. I am a spring baby in more ways than one. And it's interesting to be in spring and also sort of undertaking and parsing my way through a professional transition that I thought maybe naively at spring of last year that in one year my life's going to be totally different. And it is. But I also thought maybe that I would have figured out everything including my reading life. And I haven't. So I'm really glad to be here and to be getting your guidance and advice.

ANNE: Well, Tara, I'm so glad that we can talk about your reading life in this moment. As we get started today, I'd love to hear a little more about, I mean, what you're typically doing on a Tuesday morning. Give our readers a glimpse of who you are.

TARA: Oh, this is going to sound so trite, but Tuesday mornings I am typically listening to your podcast while I'm getting my son off to school and cleaning the kitchen and all of that.

[00:06:19] But zooming out a little bit, I grew up in seven different countries, and that is one of the more interesting facts about me. I came to the States for high school and I met my husband there, although we didn't start dating till much later.

I live in DC now, and what feels like 95.6% of the city, or maybe 99.9%. I'm a practicing attorney. I have a four-year-old son who is incredibly precocious and hilarious in the light of our lives.

Last spring, I was debating whether to leave private practice and pivot slightly in my legal career. And I took the leap. I made the decision to leave my old firm right around this time last year and I started my new job in June.

[00:07:14] So now I'm in this new job, which I have to say is delightful. I'm one of the rare attorneys that I know that really actually quite likes being an attorney now. And as a part of all of that, my relationship to reading has really changed.

I really love cooking and traveling, which is perhaps not that surprising given the way that I grew up. I speak French.

I'm always looking to improve my French. So when you are giving sort of recommendations for books in translation, I try to get the French version, and I've had mixed results. Reading them is sometimes difficult, but listening to them in audio is actually quite doable for me.

ANNE: Tara, you're in our Patreon community, and something that I found really interesting just in talking to so many readers right now is how many people are identifying as being in a time of great transition. Sometimes that's about relationships. Sometimes it's about finishing a degree program or starting a degree program. Sometimes it's purely seasonal, time of year, like life feels different in a different season. Lots of people having job transitions.

[00:08:19] Recently in our Patreon community I asked readers to tell me their books for potential inclusion in a mini-matchmaking episode. And listeners, that's when I ask our patrons to tell me three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend, in a bonus episode, I usually answer six to eight queries about what readers should read next.

But I really noticed last time we did this how many readers said, "I've had a big transition, it's affecting my reading life, and help me. Now I need audiobooks. Now I don't read audiobooks. Now I'm reading on Kindle. Now I'm reading in print. Now I have lots more reading time. Now I don't have as much reading time."

I love that we can talk about your transition in more detail on the podcast, just because I know so many listeners are going through that experience themselves right now.

That being said, I'd love to hear more about your particular transition, which I was happy to read in your submission, really feels like it's going from constrained to spacious. We'd love to hear the details.

[00:09:15] TARA: Capacious even, if you don't mind that.

ANNE: Oh, I love it.

TARA: No, it's a very happy transition. I'm going to take it all the way back actually to childhood and say that when I was young, because I moved around so much, and I was an only child, I would say I was fairly lonely, and so I turned to books, which is, you know, not that unusual.

Then I came to high school for boarding school. I love boarding school tales because they're always so ridiculous. I'm sad to say that I didn't have such a ridiculous boarding school experience. But nevertheless, you know, it was a great school. I read so much for school that my leisure reading sort of dropped off. I think that kind of held through college.

And then between college and law school, I read a ton, but I actually had a totally different career. I worked in foreign policy. So a lot of what I read, I literally had to write book reports for famous people. So I would get an advanced copy of some diplomacy tome, and I would take it home and read it overnight and then write a book report about it the next morning. So it wasn't exactly the most pleasurable of reading.

[00:10:29] Then law school you read all the time and I think it might, you know, kind of vacuum out some of the joy of reading, to be honest. But I would read on breaks. And then I moved back to DC to be with my husband and I just had, you know, a very stressful job. I think that was a stressful transition.

I finally decided the way that I was going to sort of come back to reading was I was just going to do it. And I did. And I started reading like... this is maybe 2018. I started reading like 50 books a year, approximately. But because of the stress and anxiety around my job... and you have so many amazing podcast episodes on how people use reading to help with their anxiety, so I won't go too much into that, but I wanted to read things that were really comforting.

So I would just sort of read a lot of romance, a lot of cozy mysteries, and some literary fiction but I needed it to have sort of a clear resolution, if not a happy one.

[00:11:38] Then, as I mentioned, last March, I, you know, started mulling over the idea of leaving my old job and it was like a weight lifted. I could read, watch, listen to everything. Not everything needed to be tied up neatly with a happy resolution. And that just opened my world back up.

I now would describe myself much more as the type of reader as when I was a child, which is extremely voracious or voracious since that's sort of hyperbole. But now I read everything, which sounds amazing, and it is not really a problem at all. So you might be wondering, okay, where can I advise you here?

And it's just sort of maybe trying to find some patterns in everything that I'm reading this year so I'm not so completely overwhelmed about what to read next.

For example, my husband and I, we attend all of the book previews that are available to us through Patreon, and we have a glass of wine, and we cast it on our TV, and it's like the perfect date night. And I'm always adding every single book you talk about, which is great.

[00:12:51] But I think it was Oliver Berkman who said, If you have, on average, this is sort of depressing, but 50 books to read in a year, and I'm going to live for another 40 or 50 years optimistically, that's a finite number of books that I have to read. So I think I'd like to hone in a little bit better and understand who I am as a reader.

ANNE: That totally makes sense to me. And don't worry, we're not thinking, "Oh, poor Tara. She can read whatever she wants." We all know that it's really a journey to hone in on your own taste and understand why you love what you love and what that means for choosing what to read next. Because even 50 books a year, like you were just saying, that is nowhere close to limitless. There's still lots of decisions to make.

You mentioned in your submission that you were really experiencing overwhelm in some specific areas of your reading life.

TARA: I'm probably averaging closer to 100 books now. And if I count it, I haven't bothered to count up books between birthdays of last year to this year, but it's probably well over 100.

[00:13:57] To your point about space and capacity, there is this extra space in my reading life because I've literally doubled what I'm reading. A huge part of that is I didn't used to listen to audiobooks that were fiction. And really through you and your team, I've learned that I actually really like fiction on audio. So that's opened up a whole new world.

Going from someone who needed a tidy, happy ending to going to someone who's like, "Yes, give me the gory murder mystery. Maybe I like horror," it's very startling and confusing. In one way, it's a return to myself. But in another way, I'm game for everything. And that is what I would say is overwhelming, is just not having a direction, when previously I had such a clear and tight list of requirements in the book that I was going to pick up next.

ANNE: We're going to talk about that more. But Tara, that's something we're definitely going to think about and address today. I'd love to get into your books before we get any further into the particulars.

Tara, 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 will continue to explore how to hone in on what you may enjoy reading next. Now, how did you choose these for today?

[00:15:13] TARA: Okay, so every time I listen to the podcast, people say, "I think I'm cheating." And I'm always like, "There's no cheating." But I'm about to find myself saying the same thing. I cheated by kind of giving myself strict parameters. So I picked one book from the quote-unquote, old me, or the person I was from 2018 to 2023 spring, and then two books that I think represent the direction I'm headed in.

The first book I picked is The Idea of You by Robinne Lee. It sort of represents who I was in that five-year period in that it's an extremely glitzy and glamorous romance. While I'm sure there are people listening right now who are like, but that is not a tidy ending-

ANNE: I was thinking it, I'll confess.

TARA: Yeah. I would say this. I would say that, without spoiling anything, it's an unusual ending for a romance novel or maybe even a literary novel that's romance-inclined. But everyone's okay, right? It's not the ending you were hoping for, but you know, No one is like dead on the side of the road. There isn't six more in the series that you have to buy and read to find out what happens next.

[00:16:28] There is sort of a resolution and I think it represents sort of the outer limits of untidy endings that I was able to tolerate in my old life. I also think it represents romance and glitz and drama and pop culture. There's all of that in that book.

But also, interestingly, it's quite well-written. Previously, I had these type parameters. I wanted cozy mystery, romance, easy to read, unputdownable, and also decently well-written sentence to sentence. So it made it easy to pick my next book.

ANNE: You're right. This would not be a romance novel, though there is definitely a love story at the heart of the plot. Actually, it was because of our podcast guest, Claire, that this was on my radar and I got to read it winter before last, I think, and really enjoyed it.

Okay, Tara, let's think about why you enjoy this. So everybody was more or less physically okay at the end. Not more or less. Everybody was physically okay on the end. Nobody died. You said glamorous and glitzy. Like those are things that are fun for you.

[00:17:33] TARA: Yes. I think it spoke to the part of me that was formerly a junior associate in New York City in Manhattan. I remember first I was a summer associate. I probably didn't know how to dot an I on a legal document. I got to go to Shakespeare in the Park and I sat down and Meryl Streep was on my right side. And then I sat down for dinner and I was next to like Pedro Pascal or something crazy like that.

My life is not like that anymore. It is nowhere close to that glamorous. But I think this book spoke to the part of me and the part of most of us who kind of want to be young forever and what it's like to be young for a moment. So I did. Yes, the glamor and the glitz and all of that did speak to me.

ANNE: And this book was very emotional.

TARA: It was, but I think it was emotional in a way that I could navigate. You know, in my day-to-day at the time, I worked with pretty heavy... you know, I worked with crime, whether civil or otherwise and I worked with sort of heavy topics.

[00:18:44] This was definitely an emotional and heavy topic kind of from a place of privilege. Everyone was not only physically safe at the end, they were probably financially secure, had jobs they liked. You know, the problems were the nature of the heart rather than sort of basic needs.

ANNE: And this definitely didn't feel like taking the problems of your profession home with you?

TARA: Not at all. No. It felt so far removed at that point from what I did day to day.

ANNE: Fair to call it escapist?

TARA: Yes. Yes. I think so. I think at one point, without giving too much away, they're in Saint-Tropez and then they're in Paris or whatnot. It sounds great to me.

ANNE: Okay, so that's The Idea of You by Robinne Lee. Tara, what's the second book you chose, as a love, that is?

TARA: I will say, even though I'm not the reader I once was and I chose Idea of You to represent who I was, I still love that book. And if you told me that I should go run off and reread it this afternoon with a glass of crisp white wine, I would say, "Absolutely. Sure. Happy to do it."

ANNE: "Just for you, Anne."

[00:19:46] TARA: Yes, just because you asked. The second book I picked is Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor. Again, I'm very bad at describing and setting up books without giving too much away. So I will go with the less is more approach and say that the Washington Post referred to Deepti Kapoor as the Mario Puzo of India or the next Mario Puzo.

It is a crime novel, sort of an organized crime novel in parts set in India and kind of where India is today in terms of its development and sort of a power on the rise. I, myself, am Indian. I became American two years ago when I chose to naturalize.

But for all of those countries and all of those international experiences, I've remained proudly Indian. So I love reading novels by Indians, but also the Indian diaspora. And I like own voices writing. So I think this is true of lots of people but I appreciate when authors are writing about a culture that they are in some way a part of.

[00:20:57] I think I've now listened to countless interviews with this author because I'm fascinated by her. But I understand that this story is sort of loosely based on a true story, very loosely based, and also that she was somehow tangentially a part of that story. So she might have dated someone in this organized crime/political family.

The other thing that I really enjoyed about the book was it was well-written, and it was pacey and plotty and it was just you sort of wanted to keep turning the pages. I picked it also because I felt very strongly about it.

I was listening to a different bookish podcast and one of the reviewers had originally given it five stars, but then downgraded it to three because I think she was criticizing it for being sort of complex and hard to follow. And I felt extremely upset by this to the point where I think I had to stop listening to the podcast for several weeks. I think having that strong emotion about a book that I read well over a year ago now is telling.

[00:22:06] I'll just add that it is the polar opposite of Idea of You in terms of it's got three sort of main characters. And one of them is very much, you know, fighting for survival on a very base level. Like, food, insecurity, and then also safe, you know, insecurity as to their safety. So yeah, it felt like a good emblem of the shift that I've made.

ANNE: I'm curious about that strong reaction. I imagine we're going to explore that more in just a moment. Tara, what's the third book you love?

TARA: The third book I love is Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton. I imagine that this is popular among many. What this shares with Age of Vice is that it's sort of bonkers storytelling. When you start it, you have no idea where it's going, and there's twists and turns and it's quite pulpy in a way that you just wouldn't expect.

But what this has that Age of Vice didn't was I found the humor to be quite cutting and observational. The story was propulsive, and I was completely immersed in it. And I was empathizing with a lot of the characters, but I was also laughing out loud, because a lot of the ways in which she described people is so universal.

[00:23:24] And I think she would occasionally sort of couch that, you know, it was a key way. I should step back and say that the book is about a nonprofit organization in New Zealand that's focused on the environment and an American billionaire and what happens when they sort of collide and then potentially combust.

Eleanor Catton in part sort of ascribes certain behavior to being Kiwi, but I think there's other parts that are incredibly universal and sharply observed. And it was just a delight to read.

ANNE: That sounds like a perfect reading experience for you. Now Tara, tell me about a book that was not a good fit.

TARA: I am very bad at not finishing books. I struggled to find a book to bring for this category because so often when I don't like a book, it's just because it's very poorly written in a way that is somewhat accepted. So I'll read something and I don't like and I'll go on Goodreads and it has like outrageously low reviews. So I tried to bring something here where I might have diverged a little bit from everyone else's thinking.

[00:24:36] I have If We're Being Honest by Cat Shook. I think you might have recommended this at one point.

ANNE: I did. This is in the Summer Reading Guide.

TARA: Okay.

ANNE: I really enjoyed it. And that doesn't mean you did too. Let's hear more.

TARA: So the book itself is about a family and they're sort of right at the beginning, a secret is on... you know, at the funeral of their grandfather, a secret is shared. That is a very poor setup, but hopefully, you can save me from that in a minute, Anne.

What did I not like about it? One, I know one of the books that you loved is, I think it's called The Rachel Incident, a book by Caroline O'Donoghue. I haven't read that yet, but it's on my list. The author is actually a podcaster and her podcast is called Sentimental Garbage and it's one of my favorites.

And in it, she talks about something that her editor always gets on her for, which is head-hopping. This idea that you should be able to show sometimes how characters are feeling. Well, I don't really know what her version of head-hopping is, but what I took it to mean was that it's annoying for a reader to have to like jump from person to person and sometimes you need to be able to sort of put something forth in a single point of view.

[00:26:00] It's really ironic that I picked this book and I didn't like it for the head-hopping because the other two of the three books that I loved are also told from several perspectives. So I can't quite identify why I didn't enjoy that about this except that, first of all, I didn't, and perhaps this is cultural, I didn't find the secret to be that explosive. And then I just got tired of switching from character to character to character.

Even though their perspectives were different, there just wasn't enough time to sort of settle in with any of them long enough to empathize or sort of grow to have any strong reaction or feeling. It was hard to care. And so that's why I didn't enjoy that one.

ANNE: So the head-hopping did not work for you. And I do want to call out that there is a decided difference between head-hopping and the way that happens in If We're Being Honest. And listeners, if you're not familiar with this book, there is a large cast of characters, and Cat Shook changes perspective sometimes like four times within a parag... like a single paragraph.

[00:27:07] So I heard you say that you didn't like this book because you didn't feel like you had the character development that you wanted.

TARA: I think that's right. And I will say, you know, I was looking at Goodreads for some of the other negative reviews to see if I was alone in this. And a lot of people talked about how they were confused. And I wasn't confused at all. It just felt like a lot of work for me to do as a reader without a ton of payoff.

So I think that if there's gonna be something interesting structurally, I kind of want it to be a murder mystery or something with... you know, there's like an aha moment or a twist. But just to do it for people's feelings felt... yeah, it felt pointless a little bit to me. That seems harsh, but I can't think of a better word.

ANNE: That seems like something that's really good to notice about yourself as a reader. I imagine that the readers who loved If We're Being Honest, really appreciated the symphonic portrait of a family. And yet, the secret is the thing that allows you to see the whole family in disarray.

[00:28:12] And I know because you told me in the submission that you really liked a book that was like a composite sketch that you really enjoyed. So I'm like holding both these things in my mind right now thinking like, where are we going to tease out the difference?

But you saying it lacks character development tells me and I think I can hear you processing tells you that you really value that in a story. And you felt like you had to do a lot of work, but you didn't have the compensatory payoff. And I'd really encourage you to ask, like, what would payoff have looked like?

And I imagine it's going to have emotional stakes. You love books that are thought-provoking is what I'm seeing. And like, whatever this prompted you to think about, it wasn't satisfying. What else are you noticing, Tara?

TARA: I think that's spot on. I would just add that despite moving around so much and having exposure to so many different cultures, Southern culture is somewhat foreign to me. Even though I live in DC and I have lots of friends from the South, I find that I'm continually asking about things about their culture.

[00:29:11] And it wasn't that long ago that I sort of learned, maybe it was a couple of years, that 'bless your heart' can mean different things in the South.

ANNE: No, it only means one thing. It means 'I pity you'.

TARA: Yes, exactly. I don't feel like she was inviting me in to understand any of those sort of cultural differences in a super accessible way. Maybe there was some assumed knowledge, which I now have given my friend circle. But it didn't have sort of the sharp observational takeaways of an Eleanor Catton, which I realize is a tall order.

It's sort of like either character development or yeah, some sort of takeaway about humans in that experience. And to your point about it being a combustible secret, yeah, I think I had a hard time... When you say it, it's so obvious that any secret in a family can sort of be very destabilizing to the whole family. But I certainly had a hard time understanding why it would be so destabilizing two generations down, like the grandchildren, for example.

[00:30:21] So, yes, all of that, and perhaps there's this cultural twist to it of if I'm going to read something about a different culture, I want to be invited in to sort of understand it or come away feeling like I understand it a little bit better.

ANNE: Okay, that's really interesting. So this book assumed a lot and didn't feel particularly hospitable to you from a cultural standpoint. Meanwhile, I'm over here noticing that Eleanor Catton is very aware that she's writing... Well, first of all, she's like a brilliant writer. And also, I imagine is well aware that she is writing for an international audience.

TARA: Exactly. I have been to Australia, but I've never been to New Zealand and everything that I know about it, I've learned from TV shows. And yet, I felt like when I put that book down, I certainly understood what she wanted me to understand about sort of Kiwi culture.

ANNE: Yes, and I really appreciated her orienting me, because I haven't been to that side of the world at all, except in fiction.

[00:31:15] TARA: And I think perhaps Deepti Kapoor, in her own way, situated you really well in a sort of a rising India where there is organized crime. And I know nothing about organized crime in India, but the broader themes of how she was describing India, I was home in November and I thought they were really apt and maybe hard to hear as an Indian, but still quite accurate and accessible.

ANNE: You know, I'm thinking about world-building now, and a lot of readers don't think to consciously employ that particular phrase unless they're reading science fiction or fantasy. But now I'm really wondering... I mean, I think this is true for a book in general, but especially for some readers, that the world itself has to be believable.

And you really felt like you got that and you understood the world you were in, in Birnam Wood, in Age of Ice, in The Idea of You. Like you got where you were in that glitzy and glamorous, uber-wealthy realm. Like you knew where you were. And you didn't feel like you knew where you were in If We're Being Honest.

[00:32:12] TARA: Yes. And I can't think of one off the top of my head, but there are many amazing Southern novels that make me feel like I'm understanding that world a little bit better or understanding my friends who are from the South a little bit better.

I think this was set in Atlanta. I can't remember. But one of my very good friends is from the Atlanta area, Georgia. And I don't know that I got anything away from this book to even say to him, I read this book about, you know, kind of where you grew up. Like, is it like this? It felt like it could have maybe been said anywhere.

ANNE: Like that sense of place wasn't present in the pages for you?

TARA: No.

ANNE: But you would have liked it to be?

TARA: I think so. I think I don't get to travel as much. I mean, I still get to travel a lot, and I'm fortunate in that. But being a working mother, I'm not jutting off to Saint-Tropez like the characters in The Idea of You. And so...

ANNE: That's what fiction is for.

[00:33:13] TARA: Yes. And I definitely use fiction as a way to be more empathetic and understand the world around me. And particularly living in the U.S. in D.C., which has a southern culture, I would have loved to have gotten something from that book related to that or some really pithy lines about things. But yeah, I didn't. Maybe I didn't give it enough of a chance, but I did try.

ANNE: I'm really thinking about how you're describing this and how I do feel like that's a culture that... I mean, I'm from a border state, not a small southern town, and yet I felt like I understand that world and I felt like I understand that world before I began the book. And now I'm seeing how that really impacted my reading of that novel.

TARA: I think so. I think if I had grown up in a different place, it might have been more accessible to me.

ANNE: Okay. This is why we got to talk about books though.

TARA: Yes.

ANNE: And I want to state that you love a good pithy line that didn't just slide right by.

[00:34:11] TARA: I do. Some people love flowery prose and things artfully worded. I love wit. It's unsurprising that one of the places I grew up in was London. And so I like dry wit and I like observational humor.

What you said about world-building also really resonated with me because I do think about world-building as related to romanticy or fantasy or sci-fi, but it does ring true for sort of the more literary fiction I read or fiction more generally.

I also notice in listening to your podcast, some people will reference books and say that, you know, the whole entire first book was world-building and they're impatient with that. But that is not something that ever bothers me. I feel like I have a lot of patience for world-building or, you know, building that sense of place or that... maybe it is character development. I'm here for it and I can sort of wait for it, even though I feel every book that I brought today is very page-turning.

ANNE: Tara, what have you been reading lately?

[00:35:16] TARA: Okay, a lot, but three that have sort of stuck with me. One is The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan. This is a book set in Ireland. It's about a couple and sort of the long march to their wedding. And I loved it.

I think what it shared with Birnam Wood was this sort of pithy, witty, dry, observational humor. I don't even know if humor is the right word. But sort of just these wry observations about the characters, but also in my mind, the human condition. I loved that.

I also recently read The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels, and I was surprised by how much I loved it because the internet tells me there were some plot holes. But I loved it anyway because of the multimedia aspect.

It was so cool to see the transcripts and the emails. You know, my day job, I'm an investigations lawyer and so I'm often looking at transcripts and emails. And so it's sort of this full 360 moment of previously trying to avoid anything remotely related to my job and now reading this and enjoying that format.

[00:36:33] It's also quite dark and it didn't bother me in the way that it might have five or six years ago.

Then the third book that I've read recently that absolutely gutted me, like I was weeping for days in the best way was Evil Eye I believe by Etaf Rum. This is about a Palestinian American, again, navigating sort of her marriage, but also her cultural identity and other things and her motherhood.

It resonated with me and it... I don't know much about Palestinian American culture and it brought me in and I felt like I could understand it and understand the challenges she was facing. But also as a young mother myself, a lot of it resonated. A lot of her anxiety about the way that she was showing up for her children seemed very universal.

ANNE: I appreciate hearing about those. I love seeing the assortment of what you've been choosing to experiment with now that you are able to enjoy these books that you wouldn't have even picked up five or six years ago.

And I am noticing what you're saying about dry and observational wit and how, like, you weren't even sure if humor was the right word because it's so very dry. I feel like this is a lot about what you're looking for.

[00:37:45] Tara, what are you looking for in your reading life right now? What bubbles to the surface?

TARA: Well, I will just share with the listeners that I sent you a couple pictures of my physical TBRs. And when I was making them, I thought I'd have like 12 books and I think I have something like 50. My library holds, I'm very fortunate, as I said, that I live in the district. And as a result, I have access to some, I don't know, 14 library consortiums on Libby. So I have like 150 library holds.

So I think what I want most is that I plan on watching the summer Modern Mrs. Darcy unboxing. And I would like to be able to watch it and enjoy it and not add every single book to my TBR.

ANNE: Yes, that's such a great goal.

TARA: Which is, I think, where I was headed without your guidance. So, yeah, I mean, I'm open to anything, but I would like to maybe end today not being as open as I am at this moment.

[00:38:55] ANNE: I heartily affirm that. That sounds great for you. Also, my mind is snagging on something you said, which was 150 library holds, what?

TARA: I think so. I think that's right.

ANNE: No wonder you're feeling overwhelmed. Okay, paint me a picture of your library management system or availability. What do I need to know about you and your relationship with the library, Tara?

TARA: Okay. Well, previously when I was in private practice, I barely used the library because I was such a mood reader. I would finish work on Friday that I would go upstairs to my room and be like, "I need a book." And I had all these parameters, right? It had to have a happy-ish ending, decently well-written, just sort of a happy space.

Then I would find it and download it to my Kindle, either through the library or Kindle Unlimited or whatever. But because I couldn't wait, I didn't have time to put things on hold or queue things up, and I didn't have the capacity to think about it.

[00:39:53] This whole hold system is quite new to me, like six months new. And the freedom that I got from being in DC, I might have taken it overboard, but in Maryland, you can put on hold things that are not released yet so that you can be higher up in the queue. So that does explain quite a large proportion of the holds because I have… I think it's like Joe Piazza's new book and other things that I heard about from the Spring Preview and the Winter Book Preview.

Others are digital copies of books that I own because sometimes I like to flip back and forth. Yeah, I don't have a system. My system is I want to read everything in the world, but I am also a mom and a daughter and a wife and a lawyer and that's not possible.

ANNE: Okay, now I'm really wondering if we need to have some kind of listener-sourced episode about y'all's library stories and library management hacks, tips, tricks, best pieces of advice, best practices. I'm wondering if there's something there. I think maybe.

[00:40:58] Tara, I know that you also really love your local independent bookstore that you have there in DC, and I know you buy some books as well. What? I don't want to come in with a bossy brush, but do you know what you're feeling like you're needing with this relationship you have with your 15 library cards? Not with the library, but with the 15 cards.

TARA: You know, I'm kind of at peace with the 15 library cards. I have a very good relationship with my independent bookstore, both actually and metaphorically. But I will say, my approach going forward with the physical books is that if I love a book, I'm going to buy a physical copy to put on my shelf, sort of like a trophy.

With the Libby holds, I don't really have any desire to go back and clean up anything I've added because as they're coming in, I'm reading them and I'm mostly enjoying them. I would like to be a little bit more discerning going forward.

[00:41:56] Like I said, when my husband and I got super excited for the Summer Book Preview, I would like to be able to sit and listen to all of the books that you're describing and be like, yeah, that one's not for me, and maybe not add another 50 books. It's more about stemming the future tide, I think.

ANNE: Do you enjoy doing the management in this part of your reading life? That's not a rhetorical question. Some readers really enjoy it, some readers don't. How do you see yourself?

TARA: I think I enjoy it. I think there's something immensely pleasurable about sitting at your desk doing dreary lawyer work that hopefully your listeners are imagining is dreary now and see like, Oh, something's ready and someone thinks come off holds. I don't mind the management of it.

And I think in some ways it feels liberating because in the past I had to read so immediately because I had a couple of hours on Friday and maybe could sneak 20 minutes for lunch and I just didn't have the ability to plan my reading because I didn't know when I would have time to read or any of it.

[00:43:03] This also relates to the ability to be really abundant in my reading life where before it felt really constrained by the time limitations.

ANNE: Time out for everyone to say, if you're a new listener or a longtime listener, I would encourage you to go back and check out our episode we have with Kari Sweeney in 2018 called Revolutionizing your reading life, 10 minutes at a time. It's Episode 153.

And that 10 minutes at a time refers to the time that Kari spends every morning managing her library holds requests, seeing what she wants, what she's reading, if she wants to add to them, if she needs to postpone any or put any on hold. She talks about it all. Go listen to that. It's a great one.

Tara, I am not suggesting that you need to like get in and do any internal tidying, but I am wondering what you want going forward. It sounds like the main thing you are using your library holds allotment for is putting holds on books that you know are coming out that have not yet been released. Is that accurate?

[00:44:07] TARA: I think so. Or books that I know I want to read that I just want in a different format. So, you know, things that I'd previously decided, Oh, I would never listen to that on audio. And then I see a blog post that says it's great on audio, for example.

I sort of said that nothing about the hold management overwhelms me. And I think that's true. Nothing about managing the app overwhelms me. But I think there is something overwhelming about going from being this very precise.

I've always been a mood reader. So there is something that's confusing about having something planned to read next, and then you get there and you're like, "Wait, no, the last book was more depressing than I thought it would be. Now I need something happy."

So it's weird to sort of bridge the gap between being like, to use another guest's term, an extreme mood reader to a more planned reader. And what's overwhelming about having all these books to read is just not feeling like I know myself as well as I once did as a reader. And so not knowing like, okay, these are all available, which one do I have the best shot at enjoying?

[00:45:21] ANNE: It sounds like you're putting most of these books on hold just in case, just in case you're going to want to read them when the hold becomes available.

TARA: I think so, although I basically have unlimited holds. I mean, in the sense of because I have access to so many library systems, sometimes a book will come in and I'll reread the synopsis and I'll be like, Oh, this was this was me in a crazy moment of just adding everything to the TBR and I will let it lapse or sort of like give it back to the library.

But more often than not, it will come in and I'll read it and I'll enjoy it. I'm not helping you very much, but this is really coming from someone who felt there were a really picky... I guess the best analogy I can give you is I've gone from being like a really picky toddler who wouldn't let their foods touch on the plate to like this, you know, culinary wonder kid who will like eat absolutely everything from crickets to, you know, lab-grown meat.

[00:46:25] And I'm fine. I'm really excited to be here and I don't want to go back to being a toddler who won't let their foods touch on their plate. But I would like some theme... you know, hopefully in the three books that you give me, we identify... and we already have identified some of the things that I really like. So now going forward, I can look for those things and ask myself those questions before I add more. Because I think I now have enough things to read for like four years.

ANNE: All right. Tara, let's see what we can do. First of all, thank you for sharing your bookish journey with us. It's so interesting to hear stories of how readers are navigating transitions and also the issues they're bumping up against, the questions they're asking themselves, just the challenges they're finding pop up that they're needing to navigate. We really appreciate you letting us inside your life and reading life to see what you're doing there. We're really excited for you that you're reading all the things.

[00:47:21] Crickets to lab-grown meat. I won't ask which book is what there. But yeah, being able to read anything has its challenges because you still have to read one book at a time. You still get to read one book at a time. And choosing one book from everything is really tough.

So narrowing it down, let's revisit what you love. So Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, Age of Ice by Deepti Kapoor, and The Idea of You by Robinne Lee. Not for you, If We're Being Honest by Cat Shook. I really appreciate your insights as to why you didn't feel like that was a good fit.

And then, what you've been reading lately, The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett, The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan, and Evil Eye by Etaf Rum. The thing's really standing out to me in your reads. We talked about how you feel about a strong sense of place and world-building.

You know, I don't think we discussed this as much, but I believe that all the books you've really enjoyed you found to be really thought-provoking. You mentioned specifically that you kept thinking about the book, that you learned a lot, that you found yourself lingering over the characters' dilemmas. Does that ring true for you?

[00:48:22] TARA: I think so. I think that's important to identify because I was reading 50 books a year from 2018 onwards and probably before too. And there's so few books that stuck with me because I was looking for a formula in what I was reading, but also in the book itself.

There's a lot of books that are probably on my Goodreads where I couldn't tell you what it's about. And in this sort of new space, being able to sort of linger with a book or have the characters stay with me for a few days is sort of another luxury.

ANNE: And you said characters. I've noticed that you really like to see your characters grow and develop and that it seems like you enjoy having an emotional connection to the stories you're reading.

TARA: Yes, I want to care what happens to the character. I don't particularly need to like them or agree with them, but I need to feel propelled to turn the pages to make sure that they're, you know, if not okay, on their way to something. I like to want to be on the journey with the characters, yes.

[00:49:30] ANNE: That says a lot about you and what you want in your books, Tara. I hope that does help you as you decide what to read next. Also, we heard many mentions of your love for a good pissy line of wit, of observational humor. You mentioned that you particularly enjoy the British style and sense of humor.

TARA: I do, you know, funnily enough, because, you know, Cat Shook's book was all about kind of your grandparents or a grandfather patriarch. I have a larger-than-life grandfather who would always sort of read speeches to me out loud and would pause and say, "You know, why was this line compelling?" And I always thought it was bizarre and quite frankly exhausting.

But I think I've internalized some of it because when I see a great line, I want to highlight it and I want to save it or put it on a post-it and come back to it later. So yes, I'm not looking for flowery prose or the perfect description. But if there's something about the human condition well told, I'm here for it.

[00:50:34] ANNE: I've got ideas. You want to see what we can do?

TARA: Yes, please. I'm so excited.

ANNE: We're gonna pluck a little bit from where your loves and misses in your reading life are leading us to and also a little bit from your own shelves because you mentioned that you did send me that photo of what they look like now, especially after your birthday trips to your local Indies. So let's take a look.

Also, I'm relying on what you said in your submission that you are really interested in finding a new British mystery series. I have one that I think seems promising. Can we start there?

TARA: That would be great. I will say, I don't know if I remembered to write this down, but I was looking to replace a British mystery series that has a "will they" or "won't they" between the two investigators. So that's a tall order, but I'll throw it out there.

ANNE: You want the will they or won't they element?

TARA: I find that I do like it. As a former romance reader, I'm never unhappy with a romance subplot.

[00:51:30] ANNE: One that I had in mind for you is the long-running series from Mick Herron called... it goes by two names, Slow Horses and Slough House. Some people know it because of the adaptation, not because of the books. Do you have any familiarity with this series?

TARA: I do. I am on book six, I believe. And I just have to say it's a spot-on recommendation.

ANNE: Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, I'm really glad you already know this one. It did seem like it would be a good fit for you.

TARA: Yes. I love them. I loved the New Yorker article about him. I love the Apple adaptation. I'm a Stan, so we're already on a great track, I think.

ANNE: But it doesn't find you anything to read. Okay, now for a British book with a TBD series element. I'm wondering about another book that's set in the same world, except instead of being with the Slow Horses, you were with the talented top-tier investigators. Are you familiar with the Alias Emma Series by Ava Glass?

TARA: I am not.

[00:52:33] ANNE: I'm glad to hear that. There are only two books so far. So series might be like a tall description for just two books. Alias Emma was a 2022 spy thriller and our team member Donna put it on my radar. So if you'd like to read like Donna, this is her recommendation.

This is set in London and in the series opener called Alias Emma, there's a British spy whose name is Emma Makepeace. That is not her real name. But her charge is to keep a handsome doctor safe from the Russians. She has to transport him across the city. And you know what CCTV is like in London. But she needs to cross the city of London and get across the Thames without being detected by a single one of the hundreds of thousands of CCTV cameras.

It sounds impossible, but like, somebody's gonna die if she can't do it. I mean, it's definitely gonna be her, probably her charge. That's untenable. Like, she has to get her handsome Russian doctor to safety.

So this has a fast-moving plot, likable characters. It's really good on audiobook. I know you like that. And the second installment just came out in the fall.

[00:53:34] Oh my gosh, but also, I'm just realizing the perfect series for you is so good that I'm certain you've read it. Have you read Deborah Crombie's novels?

TARA: I have not.

ANNE: Oh my gosh. Okay. Tara, you have like 18 books in front of you. I haven't thought about this in a long time. Okay. Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James are your investigators. And when we meet them like 20 years ago, for those who have read the series from the beginning, oh gosh, I think Gemma James is new, and she's the one showing up to the site with coffee. Like, that's her job. And Duncan Kincaid is the investigator at Scotland Yard.

You could jump in with the latest one. It's called A Killing of Innocence. But for you really enjoying that character development over all these books, you go on quite a journey with their characters. Like do not read the blurbs for the new books. You have an idea where the series is going to go but don't even read that because there'll be spoilers there for you.

I want you to start at the very beginning with A Share in Death, which, oh gosh, was set forever ago now. A share in death because somebody turns up dead in the pool at a swanky timeshare in Yorkshire. And Duncan is, I think, on vacation, an overdue vacation that the poor overwords guy really needs. But of course, somebody turns up dead in the luxury pool, and he gets pulled into the investigation.

[00:55:00] So that's book one that came out forever ago, but now there's something like 17 books in the series. Duncan and Gemma have a really nice working relationship that then gets charged. Did that sound like bad…? That sounds like-

TARA: No, it sounds-

ANNE: No, no, no. Tara, I want it to be like, and then it gets charged. So have fun with these. Deborah Crombie, this is her Kincaid and James long-running mystery series.

TARA: Sounds amazing. Sounds right up my alley, and is hitting on a lot of things I love: British authors, British settings, will they, won't they, mystery. I'm excited. Oh, and that I can listen to it on audio is very tantalizing.

ANNE: Yes, you can. And the books alternate perspectives, at least the early ones do. I started reading the print ones as soon as I could get my hands on them many years ago, where I got into the e-galley path and not the audio path. But I do hear that readers are continuing to enjoy those books on audio.

Okay, can I give you a British standalone as well?

TARA: Yes, please.

[00:56:01] ANNE: I am interested in hearing what you think about The Woman on the Ledge by Ruth Mancini. This just came out in January. This is a... I think it's fair to call it a thriller. It's a really plotty mystery. I think there's a possibility that it will make you mad. I think there's a stronger possibility you'll enjoy it. So it's for fans of really plotty, pacey, intricately plotted mysteries.

You do get to understand the characters and their motivations. Their motivations are really, really important to the story. But you don't spend a lot of time with their interior selves.

In the opening pages of this book, a woman falls to her death from a really fancy high-rise in the city of London. It's a bank. She falls off the 25th floor. She dies. A woman on the scene is arrested for her murder.

And as readers, we're watching this unfold and we're convinced she's innocent. It's clear to us that she's innocent. She did not commit this crime. And yet, it becomes clear to us, the readers, and to the detective on the case, that she's hiding something. She seems to be protecting someone, but we don't know what she's hiding.

[00:57:11] And we don't know who she's protecting. It doesn't make sense to us. Like, she's not guilty but something weird is happening, and we don't know what it is.

As the story progresses, and we bring in more characters, and we visit different timelines, we slowly come to see... what really happened, and way more importantly, why it happened. I listened to this on audio. I thought it was great in that format. It's narrated by Annabel Scholey.

This book has a lot of London texture to it. Like, characters are always meeting up at the monument, and they're going to certain locations, and they're zipping across the city, and it took X number of minutes. The Thames was on their left, and the party was on... There's a lot of like.. you can visualize being there if you know, and you can Google if you don't. How does that sound, Tara?

[00:58:05] TARA: You had me at fancy skyscraper and someone falls. So, I mean, I've always wondered why that doesn't happen to more people in London, honestly, but just right up my alley again.

ANNE: All right, I'm glad to hear it. Now we're going to visit the books already on your shelves. Especially given what you said about sense of humor, there were lots of titles that really jumped out at me. Family Family by Laurie Frankel, Wellness by Nathan Hill. That's a satire where I think you'll appreciate the observational humor and the wittiness there. But two that I really want to highlight are The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives and The Bandit Queens.

Okay, let's start with the Bandit Queens. This is by Parini Shroff. This is a book where the premise sounds grim, but the tone is like caper-like. So the setup here is that in this small Indian village, there's a resident named Geeta who has lost her no-good husband. The truth is that he abandoned her. But for reasons, the village gossips believe that Geeta is what they call a self-made widow, which means basically that she offed him so that she could live in happy, contented peace with no no-good husband to care for.

[00:59:23] So Geeta herself has just let them talk. She feels like nobody's feeling sorry for her. Actually, they kind of look up to her. They're a little bit scared of her now. And that's made her daily life better. People have treated her with respect because they think she's a murderer, which isn't quite what she would have expected to happen, but she's not like... she's not eager to set them straight.

But she's not the only village woman who has a husband that she would be better off without. And soon she finds herself fielding lots of hints that then become explicit requests from women who want to become self-made widows like her and want her help.

So I hope you can see the potential for comedy here. It would be easy for a story like this to become macabre, but the humor is sharp and funny. There's definitely some dark undertones, but I think there's a lot here that you would appreciate.

[01:00:17] Then let's talk about The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives. This is by Lola Shoneyin. We're talking about these together because they make a great pair. Similar themes, different cultures, very different ways the story is carried out.

But this is a contemporary Nigerian novel that focuses on the household of Baba Segi, where everybody's happy enough. He has three wives, and they have children, and they've all learned to live in relative harmony. But then he takes a fourth wife. She's much younger. She's pretty. She's a university graduate, and that means she has way more education than his existing wives. And her arrival really upsets the family dynamics. It had been peaceful and stable, and now it's chaos.

This story is told from multiple points of view, they rotate, and we get to know each woman's personality and also her personal history. How does she become one of Baba Segi's wives? And how does she relate to the other wives? And what are the tension points? And what do they enjoy about being here?

But we get to learn all of that as matters come to a head, and we find out why a fourth wife, how did she get there, and what did she intend to happen? What did she think was going to happen? It's not what you think.

[01:01:26] The wives really steal the show here. This is a funny book. I wouldn't say this is dry wit. This is more like, oh my gosh, you could laugh out loud at this one, or just drop your jaw in shock. I think I did that more than once and just went, I can't believe she just said that.

But The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives, The Bandit Queens, they're both on your shelf right now. How do those sound?

TARA: They sound great. And I feel like you've reignited not only my passion for these books, but also just, you know, now I know why I bought them. They both sound terrific.

ANNE: Okay, I'm so glad to hear it. Tara, of the books we talked about today, so glad to hear that you already know and love the Slow Horses series, we talked about the Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James series by Deborah Crombie, the first book in that series is A Share in Death, we talked about The Woman on the Ledge by Ruth Mancini, and we talked about The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives by Lola Shoneyin and The Bandit Queens by Parini Shroff. And oh my goodness, Tara, I realize I skipped right over Alias Emma and sequel by Ava Glass. So of those books, what do you think you may read next?

[01:02:35] TARA: I think I will start with Alias Emma, but I also will make time for, in the relatively near future, both the other British mysteries. But eventually, I plan to get to all of these.

ANNE: Oh, well, I can't wait to hear what you read next and what you end up thinking. And I'm really excited for you as you move forward out of your time in transition. Although, is there really such a thing? I'm excited about your reading future. Thanks for letting me be a part of it.

TARA: Well, yes. Thank you so much for having me. I look forward to seeing you somewhat virtually for the Summer Book Preview. And I plan not to add every single book in that to my TBR or my library holds. I promise. That's a promise that I'm making to myself, to you, and to the listeners.

ANNE: Thanks Tara. I enjoyed our conversation so much.

[01:03:24] Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Tara today and I would love to hear what you think she should read next. Find the full list of books we talked about on the show at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

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