Live from Word of South: the books we can’t stop recommending

[00:00:00] ANNE BOGEL: I thought, Chris Bohjalian, you know what I don't want to read about? The Puritans. And then I started reading, I was like, "Oh, you know what I want to read about? This book right here."

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.

This week I'm excited to share a live conversation from the Word of South Festival of Literature and Music in Tallahassee about good books and the go-to favorites we can't stop recommending.

Talking about books and community and experiencing a vibrant book community at Word of South makes me more excited than ever for our upcoming Summer Reading Guide unboxing. We are just a few short weeks away from releasing this year's guide. This is our 13th year of putting the ultimate summer reading resource in your hands, and our team spends all year working on various aspects of this big project.

[00:01:09] Our Summer Reading Guide presents you with 42 fabulous reads to pair with your summer adventures and activities. In the guide, I share books that I love and also give you the details you need to determine which of those titles you may love, which ones belong on your summer reading list.

We kick off our festivities with a live book party where I tell you juicy details about every single book in the guide and give you insights to help you decide which ones are for you. Plus, we answer lots of your questions.

We would love to have you join us. Find out more, save your seat, and pre-order your guide at modernmrsdarcy.com/srg. That's for Summer Reading Guide. Modernmrsdarcy.com/srg.

Readers, today I'm excited to invite you to come along, through the magic of podcasting, to Tallahassee's recent Word of South Festival of Literature and Music, where I had the joy of talking books with festival director Sara Marchessault and Kati Schardl at a live session.

Book festivals are always events I look forward to because they offer so much potential for discovery. Festivals connect readers with writers they already love, new authors they can experience, and often books that capture the spirit of the region.

[00:02:20] Today, Sara, Kati, and I talk about the books we've been reading lately, the titles we can't stop recommending to others, the epic fails when these recommendations fall flat, and what we learn about ourselves and other readers in the process.

We also talk about our summer reading moods going into this season, and I recommend a handful of titles I think they'll each enjoy adding to their summer reading stack. Let's get to it.

Okay, hey readers! Welcome to Word of South. Oh, welcome to What Should I Read Next? Word of South edition.

SARA MARCHESSAULT: Perfect.

ANNE: I'm so happy to be here.

SARA: Me too.

ANNE: Thank you, Sara, for everything y'all are doing.

SARA: Thank you.

ANNE: I haven't been in Tallahassee since middle school. All I remember is the Spanish moss and the little tree frogs in my moved best friend's backyard. It's different than I remember.

SARA: We've changed a lot in the very short amount of time that's passed, I'm sure.

[00:03:20] ANNE: Well, I am so glad to be here. Usually, I talk in my workout clothes by myself, surrounded by Styrofoam foam core to absorb the sound. And this is a lot more fun and also a lot less editable. So this will be very interesting.

SARA: We'll see how we do.

ANNE: Who in here has ever listened to the podcast? I don't know how much to tell you. Okay, so lots of you. We published Episode 427 last week. We've been doing this since 2016. And-

SARA: Congratulations.

ANNE: Thank you. Thank you. Now I'm so excited to talk today. When Sara invited me to do a live podcast, the question was, who should our guests be? And I think you were a little reluctant to...

SARA: I was. I'm usually very busy on Festival Saturday, and I couldn't imagine a scenario where I could put my phone away and step onto the stage for a little bit. But this has been nice.

[00:04:19] My phone is in the room, but not on my purse. I don't need-

ANNE: Can I hold it for you?

SARA: Someone very special has it for me who's not going to let me have it back till this is done.

ANNE: So we thought it'd be really fun to give Sara an opportunity to sit down and talk about books in a break from her duties as director.

SARA: Thank you.

ANNE: And then Sara suggested we invite Kati Schardl.

KATI SCHARDL: I'm more than happy to be here to talk about books because I talk about books all the time to my friends, so it's nice to be able to do it in a more public forum, and with you.

ANNE: Thank you, it's a pleasure. Sara, would you tell us the thought process for inviting Kati?

SARA: The thought process for inviting Kati was (a) we need to have two people in case something crazy does happen and Sara can't be up there.

ANNE: You never told me that.

SARA: That was one of the first things. I said, I will do it, but there needs to be someone else. Then the other thought process was that Kati is a fabulous reader. Mark Mustian actually suggested that we bring Kati. I believe the words were, "Kati is a real hoot."

KATI: Wow.

SARA: So I really think that Kati would be the right person to join you. And I said, "All right, let's have Kati. Let's do it."

KATI: No pressure.

SARA: No pressure, Kati.

[00:05:36] ANNE: Well, we are all at this festival of literature and music with books on our brains. I did a lot of reading to prepare. I don't know if that's true for the two of you, but I would love to hear what it is that you all have been reading to get ready for this festival. I'll go first.

Next in this room, I'm talking with Lauren Groff. It's going to be a great conversation. I've been reading everything Lauren Groff, in part because, you know, I want to be prepared, and in part because once you get started reading an author whose work you loved, and you have an excuse to read a lot of it right now, I just really enjoyed reading and rereading so much of her work, including Florida, is unsurprisingly the collection that I've been lingering with the longest before coming down here. Sara, what have you been reading?

SARA: Well, I hosted A Word of South Book Club at Midtown Reader this spring, and I recognize a few faces in here. Hello, book club members. We read Gator Country by Rebecca Renner, and we read Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff, and we read The Reformatory by Tananarive Due. Rebecca and Tananarive will both be at the festival tomorrow. So that's what I did for pre-reading. I did hear you have to read Anne Hull's book, Through the Grove. So that is one that I'll read this summer.

[00:06:54] ANNE: Okay. Kati, I know that you've been working on your nonfiction MFA. I would love to hear some highlight titles you've been reading from there, or if the semester's over and you really need a break, you are free to take that in a different direction.

KATI: It's about to be over and I will need a break, and I will be asking you for assistance. But during the semester of... well, it's all nonfiction. I've been reading nothing but nonfiction, and it's all been really excellent.

A couple of standouts that I hadn't read before, one is Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo. It's a very immersive look at life in a Mumbai slum. It sounds grim, but it's just one of the most beautiful books. The writing is incredible, the reporting is intensive. It really moved me. That's one.

Then another is Eula Biss, who is just an amazing writer. She's written so many wonderful books, but On Immunity, which is about vaccination. It was written in 2015 and everything she says in this book is still so incredibly relevant today. So that really resonated.

[00:08:03] But also nonfiction that I read for pleasure in between some time that I found was Through the Groves by Anne Hull. And that is a magical book. And she's here at the festival.

ANNE: Amazing.

SARA: Anne is here at the festival. That's right. Diane Roberts will be with Anne Hall. I can't remember when. My brain just went blank. Oh, there you go. 4:15.

ANNE: Thank you. So a festival like this is all about discovery. We get to talk to other readers and get ideas from them. We get to listen to all these wonderful speakers and artists. We get to browse the tents in checkout, especially the bookstore-curated selections they have for us.

But we also come to events like these as fully-formed readers. We, I hope, have an idea of what we like and what we don't. And there's a reason that certain titles snag on our brains and sound really appealing to us.

[00:09:00] I've been thinking about our individual tastes and how we bring that to a place like this. Sara and Kati and I were talking about how one way to really express our readerly identity is to notice those books that we find ourselves thinking about all the time. Those ones that might only be 300 pages long, but you would never know that they were just that thin by how much space they take up in our brains. And also what it says about us when we find ourselves recommending a particular title or five to readers over and over. You know, like sometimes we have those books that we can't seem to stop talking about.

So I thought we'd take this opportunity to hear what some of those books are for us. Should I go? I'll go first. I'll set the tone. Gosh, I recommend books all the time. Maybe I have a long list to choose from, but I really wanted to think about books from the South that have meant a lot to me that I also find myself talking about, not just on the podcast, but just in regular conversations with friends and family and neighbors. I'm always talking about books.

[00:10:10] Two really stood out. I'm a longtime fan of Tayari Jones. I think she's so amazing. She's an Atlanta area writer. She has a novel that's just over 10 years old called Silver Sparrow. Have any of you in here read it? Okay, I see some nods.

It's set about 40 years ago. You can decide if that's historical fiction or not. But it's the story of two Atlanta area sisters. Well, two half-sisters. One is secret and knows about the existence of the other, but the other daughter does not know about her counterpart.

They're connected by their father, but one of those relationships with a girl's mother is a secret. And one, in the other relationship, he's a respected member of Black Atlanta society. But as the story goes on, that secret relationship starts to force its way out into the open, and things get really messy.

[00:11:15] Something I love about her writing, especially in this book, is the way she incorporates very real details of Atlanta history. And y'all, I'm from Louisville, Kentucky, which is... you know, the South is not a monolith. That is its own place. I can almost see Indiana from my house. We're way up at the tip-top. Southern living writes about us, but the tea is never presumed to be sweet. Like, that's what it's like in Louisville.

So I'm not really intimately familiar with Atlanta. I'm not. I'm not intimately familiar with Atlanta history. But Tayari Jones had me Googling going, is that real? Did that seriously happen? Whether she's talking about milestones in the city's history or musicians and artists I recognize from history, but had no idea that they had done these audacious things that get written into the plot. So any story that can get me in the feels and also make me really wonder about history, I'm going to be recommending that all the time.

Also, I chose a Kentucky writer, Silas House. He's not from my part of Kentucky, but I do love his work. He got a lot of press for his most recent one, Lark Ascending, but I'm going to go back to Southernmost, which is this beautiful story about a Tennessee fundamentalist preacher whose community enters this horrific flood. And when it does, he welcomes two gay men into his home, and his congregation, they freak out.

[00:12:37] He's so disillusioned by their reaction that he has a very public reckoning with it, where he really talks to them about how hurt he is by what he sees in his community. This is captured on video. It goes viral. He decides he has to get out of town, and he hits the road to go to Key West—that's the southernmost—to deal with some unfinished business from his past.

Now, what I've learned talking to books about readers is sometimes when you call prose beautiful, a lot of people will think like, Oh, that means it's boring and pretentious. So I was about to tell you his prose was beautiful. That's not going to work for you. Pretend I didn't say all that.

But he has a way of telling a story that is so captivating where you want to know what happens next. Also, you find yourself thinking about the deep emotions of the story long after you turn the page.

SARA: Those are good ones.

KATI: Yeah.

ANNE: Have you read them?

SARA: I haven't, but I'm going to now.

ANNE: What about you, Kati?

KATI: I have not. This is books that I keep coming back to myself. Well, one is one that I also just recommend to everybody and have given away like six copies. And that is Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. It's one of the best books I've read in the last however many years, and I have read it more. I've read it like three times.

[00:14:06] There's so much humanity in it. Her characters are so beautiful and perfectly drawn and the narrative arc is just so graceful how it moves through the landscape and this dystopian landscape and draws the characters together. It was one of the most beautiful reading experiences.

The first time I read it, I was like, "Oh, I'm never gonna have this first-time reading experience again, but I am gonna read this again." So that's definitely one.

Another one is Still Life by Sarah Winman. I cried at multiple places throughout that book, just from the sheer beauty of the writing... and the story, I mean. And again we have disparate characters coming together. It's about art and beauty and family, found family and real family.

It has a touch of magical realism, which I like. It's just like an amazing book to read. That's another one that I've recommended to several people and actually have given away a couple of copies. I mean, if I want someone to read a book that I find wonderful, then I will often just give it to them so that they don't have to think, Oh, I've got to finish reading this and get it back to Kati.

[00:15:29] So those two stand out.

ANNE: Those are beautiful books.

KATI: Yeah.

SARA: I recommend an old book that I probably read for the first time when I was 14 or 15. It's The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley. I love that book. It's the story of King Arthur's court from the perspective of his sister and his wife. And it's a big, huge... some of you have seen this book. It's very thick. It's very long. It's everything I love in a book to read in the summer. I have recommended it to people who've loved it, and I've recommended it to a couple people who didn't. So it's definitely kind of a mix.

Lately, I've been recommending the book Yellow Face by R.F. Kuang. Kuang? Kati, do you say the U?

KATI: Kuang.

SARA: Kuang? Thank you. That book is an escape in every single way that's possible. The person who's telling the story is not really a nice person. She does things that are kind of shocking, which I think is what makes it so entertaining for me.

[00:16:39] Has anybody read it? I'm seeing some nods. It was definitely kind of a [gasps]. I didn't want to put it down, and I read the whole thing really fast. It was just what I needed at that time. Around the holidays, I was helping at Midtown Reader. They just needed somebody to come on hand. They will let me hang out at the bookstore. They're very nice.

But that was the book that several people came in and I said, Oh, well, you should read this one because it's fast-paced, it's really entertaining, and it kind of makes you learn a lot. I learned a lot reading that book. And I also sort of hated the narrator, which I am finding as I get older that that's not a bad thing. I kind of enjoy it. Yeah, it feels a little risque, like I'm not really in their corner. So that's what I've been recommending. I have lots more.

KATI: Oh, yeah.

ANNE: Let's hear them.

SARA: Well, I have to mention this one book, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra. Have you read it?

ANNE: Mm-mm.

SARA: I felt like that book threw me into adulthood in a very big way, where I started to pay attention to that there are terrible things that happen in the world that I don't know about, and they're happening right now in this century.

[00:17:55] I did a lot of googling. There were a lot of beautiful words in that book that I didn't know about. But there is this one character who's, one of the main characters in the story, who draws pictures of the people who are disappearing from his village and he puts them in the woods. And every piece that's written about the work he does just sucked me in and made me hold my breath.

He wrote this beautiful part about drawing portraits of these two boys that went missing from the same family. It's a very moving story. It's a hard read, but it's worth it to kind of propel you into remembering that there are big things that we need to be aware of. I'll stop with that.

ANNE: Do you want to sneak in another one, Kati?

KATI: Yes. First, I want to say also, if you like Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven, read all of her other books, too. Very good. But Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. It's a big fat book and it's just chock full of gorgeousness and brilliant storytelling and heart-opening characters.

[00:19:07] I'm going to read that one again too when I'm back to reading fiction. It's very different from All the Light We Cannot See. It's very different because it kind of is speculative. It has speculative fiction elements and it bounces back and forth in time. But just the narrative of these cha... And these characters are so fully drawn and so human and so lovely. I wanted to spend time with them.

SARA: Can I say something about that one, Kati? The audiobook for Cloud Cuckoo Land is so entertaining. There's a very funny, humorous voice on all those parts with the character who wants to be something else. Remember, he wanted to be a bird. It's delivered in an extremely comical way. I recommend the audio for that one, too. Yeah.

ANNE: Thanks for that tip. And if this is an invitation to champion Emily St. John Mandel, do you all know she has a book set in Florida? The Lola Quartet is a-

KATI: I didn't know that.

ANNE: ...one that I haven't read for many years. I read it in Florida, fittingly. But it's got a Lauren Groff kind of motif with the exotic pets have been freed into the canals and they have grown huge and they are just like slithering out there in the dark in your backyard waiting to get you at any moment. It's just this ominous thing that hovers over the book.

[00:20:40] And... oh gosh, I don't remember the details of the plot, except there's a young woman pushing a stroller in the very beginning, and the narrator reveals that there's something like $170,000 taped to the bottom of the stroller. When Emily St. John Mandel drops that nugget, I thought, "what is happening? Gosh, I want to know."

Something I thought was really interesting about that is you see that what seems so particular to Station Eleven is actually an author's way of writing.

KATI: Exactly, yeah.

ANNE: Okay.

KATI: She's very deft that way, I think.

ANNE: I think so. Sara, you said you have lots. You want to sneak in one more?

SARA: I have one more. This is another author name that I sometimes mess up. It's the guy from Vermont, Chris Bohjalian? Bojalen?

ANNE: Bohjalian.

SARA: Bohjalian. There it is. You know, my last name is very difficult to say, and I actually take a lot of pride in trying to make sure that I get people's names right. So thank you.

[00:21:39] So I recommended his book, The Double Bind, to one of my sisters, and she didn't really like it. But that book was one for me that was just, oh my gosh, this poor girl. You know, I could not put that one down. But I find that his books are often sort of that gripping, suck you in. I still think his best one is Midwives, and that's one of his older ones.

The one... oh, of course, I just spaced it. There was one about Salem, was it? Or was it another town? There was a witch one recently with a young woman on the cover. What was the name of that book?

ANNE: Hour of the Witch.

SARA: Was it just The Witch?

ANNE: Hour of the Witch.

SARA: Hour of the Witch, okay.

ANNE: I thought, Chris Bohjalian, you know what I don't want to read about? The Puritans. And then I started reading, and I was like, Oh, you know what I want to read about? This book right here.

KATI: He did make it... yeah.

SARA: It was a good story. I enjoyed that one. I like his work a lot, and I enjoy that kind of take me into a place where I'm going to learn about a time period, something I didn't know about a time period that I do care about.

[00:22:36] Some of his stories about, maybe it was the Skeleton Key, World War II kind of era, left some scenes in my head that were, again, sort of, whoa, I never knew that I maybe needed to know about that, but now I do. And I forgot the other one. I'll have to come back to it. Just left my head.

ANNE: We'll edit that in later.

SARA: Yeah.

ANNE: All right. So it is true confession time. We've been talking about books that we love and recommend to others all the time. But I don't know if you all have ever had the experience of recommending a book to a friend, where later they come back to you and go, Why? Like, I just don't get it. Which can puzzle you. Or sometimes, I've heard from readers, this happens, can make you feel very wounded and misunderstood. So it happens to the best of us.

But I'd love to hear about that. I'd love to hear about some books that you recommended enthusiastically to your fellow readers where they said, "Sara, Kati, why?" and what you thought about that.

[00:23:41] I have lots of experience recommending books to people and then having them come back and tell me out of duty, "Man, this was good," or "that was terrible," or "what were you thinking?" So I've had a lot of opportunities to think about why the reason for the mismatch.

I think a lot of times it's a question of... Well, you know what, we'll get into that in a moment. We'll get into that in a moment. I'll let you go ahead. Sara, tell us about an epic fail. Do you want me to frame that differently?

SARA: No. I did feel like this was an epic fail. There was a book by Emily Danforth called Plain Bad Heroines. I enjoyed that book immensely. If you've read that book, then you might know why. The book is a story within a story within a story, and the author lays out, or whoever designed her book, laid out the pages with all of these in-depth footnotes.

So as you're reading, there's little dots here and stars here, and you're supposed to jump around and read the footnotes, and it was very distracting. It was almost like she wrote all those backstory pages and then found a way to put them into the book. I loved it.

[00:24:48] It took me forever to read. I thought it was so interesting that I'm learning about all these different plotlines at the same time. I bought it for all three of my sisters and not one of them loved it. I got like, "Oh." Then I also gave it to Mark Mustian, who started the Word of South Festival, who many of you know, and Mark kind of handed it back to me and said, "Mm, no." And Mark will read almost anything. So for Mark to say, "Mm, no," and my sisters to not get as excited, I did feel like that was an epic fail.

ANNE: Okay, two things. I listened to the audio.

SARA: Did you?

ANNE: I had no idea what I missed, and I'm not sure if I should be disappointed or not. I'm not sure what your sisters would think about that, actually.

SARA: I don't know.

ANNE: Maybe your sisters should have listened to the audio.

SARA: Maybe they should have done the audio. Did they leave all the special footnotes out of the audio?

ANNE: I had no idea. They just read me a story.

SARA: Okay. Well, it definitely jumped all over the place because of those footnotes and it felt choppy and, you know, suddenly you're reading this whole history of this girl's school and you're wondering, do I really need to know this? But I thought it was great.

[00:25:53] ANNE: This book is horror-light. I'm a scaredy cat. Y'all, I had actual nightmares about Yellow Jackets. If you've read it, you know what I'm talking about.

SARA: That scene was pretty creepy. I don't always jump into those things either. Actually, our book club picked The Reformatory. I was very nervous about reading that book. And it ended up being more like a ghost story that I was okay with. And it didn't go some of the places I was worried it might.

ANNE: Some of her books I have definitely had to put in the [freeze?].

SARA: Sure. Keep it away from me. Yeah. I hear you.

ANNE: Okay. So you recommended this book to three sisters and Mark, and the best you got was huh.

SARA: Nobody liked it.

ANNE: Muse upon that, please.

SARA: It did not stop me from recommending books to people. I actually just brought Mark the Tananarive Due book, The Reformatory, and said, try this one in case you wanted to check this out. So I will continue to recommend books.

I have not, since that book, bought the same book and sent it to all my sisters as a gift. Perhaps I will do that another time. But instead what I've kind of done the last several years is really embrace the Icelandic tradition of a book for Christmas Eve. And I do have a lot of fun picking books out for my loved ones and making sure that they get a book from me for Christmas. It's kind of the gift they know they can count on.

[00:27:14] You know, I'm not super upset about them not liking the book. I do feel a little bad for Emily Danforth. She obviously worked very hard on that title.

ANNE: What do you think, Kati?

KATI: I have a couple. One is The MaddAddam Trilogy by Margaret Atwood, which, you know, I have friends who are huge Margaret Atwood fans. I thought they would love this. I absolutely loved it. I devoured it. I purchased it, I gave it to two friends for Christmas one year, and they both were like... and I'm like, "Oh, have you read it? Have you read it? I want to talk to you about it." And they're like, "Oh, no."

Then one finally told me, she said, "Well, it's not like The Handmaid's Tale. And I said, "No, it's not. It's a different story. And it's a different world. And it's a different dystopian tale." And they were just like, It's the excuse that you get sometimes. I just couldn't get into it, which is a legitimate thing to say. Sometimes books are really difficult to get into.

[00:28:17] It took me three tries to get through Poisonwood Bible, but by the time I got into it, I couldn't put it down. I think it's like a certain time or you have to be in the right headspace to be able to connect.

The other one is one of my favorite books of all time that I've read repeatedly since I was a kid. And that's The Once and Future King by T.H. White. It's an Arthurian tale. It's the basis of the Disney movie The Sword in the Stone is the first portion of this book.

So basically it's about King Arthur who's being fostered in this castle and Merlin comes to be his tutor and starts changing him into all these different creatures. So he becomes a pike in the moat, and he becomes an ant, and he becomes a hawk in the muse, and he goes on a goose migration. I mean, it's one of the most beautiful, natural history kind of learning experiences. But it's also very beautifully written, and it's very funny.

[00:29:21] I gave it to one of my best friends, and her literal reaction was "Meh. Meh." And again, she couldn't get into it. And I understand that but I couldn't understand it. It kind of wounded me a little bit. But you know, we all have very individual tastes in our reading. I did ask her to try it again sometime, so maybe she will do that.

ANNE: Had you really realized before that y'all had different tastes when it came to books?

KATI: Not really because we had been swapping book recommendations for years. But this one didn't land, and it was kind of because I loved it so much. And it kind of took me aback.

ANNE: It's interesting how we're not always able to tease out what is unique about our experience with a book. We might not have realized we read it at the exact right time for it to be deeply meaningful or informative. Or maybe it's something simpler. Like you just didn't realize that you had a lot of patience to let a story develop, or at least more than your friend did.

KATI: Yeah, exactly.

ANNE: All right. Well, I'm glad that y'all can still be book buddies.

KATI: Oh, yeah.

ANNE: Even if that one didn't work out. You know, I just had an interesting experience talking with a reader recently about a book set in the South that made me realize that I had an understanding of Southern culture that was very different from hers because it's not from this part of the country.

[00:30:46] But on the podcast, every week, readers tell me one book that they don't like, which we have to be really careful and respectful about because we're asking them... well, we. It's often the royal we. I'm asking them that Not because it's an invitation to just throw things at the wall and vents and talk about how this author's writing trash, but really because I think the truth emerges in contrast in the reading life.

Like, a lot of times you might not realize that you really have a lot of patience and appreciate watching a story develop slowly, or that you really like beautiful writing about the natural world until you find that missing in a book, or until you hear a friend say, like, Oh, that's not for me.

Those can be things that can make you realize, like, "Oh, that really is for me. I didn't know that was something unique about me."

So we do some rerecording sometimes, I do a lot of coaching and encourage people to share, like, well, why wasn't it a fit, this book you didn't like? Was it because It didn't suit your taste? Did you read it in entirely the wrong time? Like, is this a story about a broken family that you're reading right after your dog died? Like, you know, that is bad timing, friends.

[00:31:54] Was it not what you expected or hoped for? Did you need an airplane read, and it turns out that this is one where you wanted a dictionary? Do people still read with dictionaries? Please say yes.

SARA: Yes.

ANNE: I can't Google on my phone because then I get distracted while I'm reading. But the book that she... So people can tell me why books didn't work for them before I actually recommend it to them. So it's really helpful to ascertain what they like.

Also, sometimes we're so much clearer on why we didn't like a book than why we did. If a book works for us, it works for us. But if it didn't, sometimes we can be like, Oh, I know exactly what was missing or exactly the element that bothered me.

So I was really curious to talk to her because she said that she really didn't feel like she understood the world of If We're Being Honest by Cat Shook. Have any of y'all read that book? Came out last spring. Okay, just a couple heads shaking. Okay.

This is a contemporary Southern story about a big family. It opens in this little small town in Georgia at a family funeral where I think it's four siblings have come back to town with their spouses, their companions. They're going to see people that they used to be involved in, they're hoping to find relationships, but they're all coming back home for this family funeral.

[00:33:17] And the best friend of the 80-year-old patriarch who's died drops this bombshell at the funeral, and the family's just like, "What?" And it sends them real. He says, the 80-year-old friend says, "Your grandpa and I have been lovers for a long time in this small Georgia town." That's a revelation for people.

I think no matter what the nature of the relationship was, you know, you don't think your grandpa has secrets like that. It's a whole thing. I thought it was so much fun. The author just really bounces you around in everybody's head. You get everybody's perspective. It's hard to do well, but I really enjoyed watching her do it.

But this reader, not from Georgia, not from the South, didn't know this world, told me, like, "I didn't understand... like, why are they bringing casseroles?" And I was like, "Oh, sweetie, like, I just..." I didn't understand what I knew about the story world and what I took for granted until somebody who didn't get it pointed out to me what I knew. And so it's really interesting to have conversations like that-

SARA: Yeah, that is fun.

ANNE: ...to make you go like, Oh, I just had no... I didn't know I knew things.

SARA: The cultural reference was lost on me.

ANNE: Yeah.

[00:34:35] SARA: I'm from Vermont. I thought that we brought casseroles no matter where we lived, but maybe not. Maybe they were just relatives.

WOMAN: What was the name of the book?

ANNE: If We're Being Honest by Cat Shook. Then I end up recommending books to my husband all the time. I mean, y'all, I try not to recommend books to people unless they ask. It'd be very rare for you to say something and me to go, Oh, you know what you should read? I'm gonna ask you first, because we don't... I don't want you to not read something because I tell you to do it. For some people, that's just not gonna work for you.

But we have a lot of books in my house, and sometimes my husband will finish reading a book, and I'll say like, "Hey, I need a book. What do you think I should read?" In which case, we'll have a conversation.

But a longtime love of mine is Maggie O'Farrell's This Must Be the Place. I've read it multiple times. I love the story. I've read everything she's ever written. I keep Googling to find out, Maggie, when's the next book? It's been a few years. I'm ready. Bring it, please. Is this a book y'all are familiar with?

KATI: Yeah, I love her work.

[00:35:41] ANNE: Well, Will, not so much. Yeah. This is five stars to me. It's everything I want in a novel. There's lots of different voices. It takes place from, I think, maybe the 40s to the contemporary day when she's writing it. You hear from lots of different perspectives.

It's the story of a complex family. It's actually got a really interesting plot. It's about a movie star who's like, "I've had enough of this fame. I can't handle it anymore." And she disappears herself, which I don't think you could do now. But you can do it when Maggie O'Farrell sets it in the story. But it's just wistful and it's about relationships.

It's called This Must Be The Place and it's about finding the place, metaphorical and physical, where you belong. You know, I'm married to this man in a relationship, you know, like she's writing about these important things and He's like, I mean, it was fine. Three stars. I was like, "Well, Okay. That's really good... And that's fine. The people we love don't have to love the books that we love.

[00:36:45] That's luckily not how relationships work. I mean, be honest, sometimes do you wish that was how relationships work? You could have such great dinner conversations.

But that really got me to think about more like, what is it more precisely that I enjoy about this particular work? Like why does it mean so much to me when it doesn't mean as much to people I love? I just would invite you to consider those gaps, like real opportunities for inside and interesting conversation instead of a miss. Yeah. I don't know what your sisters would say about that.

SARA: My sisters would be willing to try anything that we could eventually talk about. They also know that they all have my permission to put a book down if it's not right for them, which I think is one of those things where it's, I don't expect you to finish this, but maybe give it a start.

And I am giggling over here, by the way, with the husband talk. My husband is not a reader, and I never thought I'd be married to someone who was not a reader. We do find other things to talk about, but all the books I recommend get an eye roll and "maybe some other time".

[00:37:52] ANNE: So I hear you saying that you're still trying.

SARA: Oh, I am definitely still trying. Absolutely. "Oh, you liked that movie? I'm going to buy you the book." It doesn't work.

ANNE: Hope springs eternal. Look, Sara, we will talk to you about this. We will be the receptacle of your... All right. So I'm from Louisville. It gets hot. It's not this hot yet. So when I'm down here, it's really easy to believe that summer is coming. And I would like to hear your summer reading mood. Kati, how are you feeling about the coming season?

KATI: My summer reading mood is going to be fiction, fiction, fiction, because I've been reading nothing but nonfiction for the past year, and I have the summer off from the MFA program. So I am looking for recommendations, but I do... a couple that I'm looking forward... actually what I'm looking forward to read are nonfiction books. I guess I'm in the groove, but The Wide Wide Sea by Hampton Sides-

[00:38:55] ANNE: Oh. I just downloaded that audiobook.

KATI: Yeah, I really want to read that. Then Amitav Ghosh has a new book out called Smoke and Ashes. It's based on all the research he did for the Ibis Trilogy, which is about the opium trade. But this is a non-fiction book about the history of the opium trade, looking at how it was a colonial institution, basically, that was imposed for economic reasons that did not necessarily benefit the people who were involved in it.

I mean, he's such a great writer anyway that I'm sure it's going to be really good. But I'm hoping that you will give me some fiction recommendations.

ANNE: All right. We all heard her ask, right?

KATI: I did. I'm asking.

ANNE: Sara talked about Yellow Face by R.F. Kuang. When you were talking about that Amitav Ghosh's book, Babel by Kuang, came immediately to mind. It's a fantasy story, like a historical fantasy.

KATI: Got it.

ANNE: And it incorporates those elements you're talking about, like colonialism and the opium trade, and also this really interesting mechanism by which... oh gosh, it's been a while. What is it? Words and silver bars are turned to... Wow. On the podcast, I wouldn't start talking about plot details I don't remember. There's a magical element, a lot of them unfolds at Oxford.

[00:40:25] Based on what you said about the stories you've enjoyed, I don't think a historical fantasy would be out of bounds for you.

KATI: Absolutely not.

ANNE: So that's like page-turner that's also really smart and deeply thoughtful and also happens to do a lot with footnotes.

SARA: It does. And I loved that book. I second that recommendation for you, Kati.

KATI: Great. I just wrote it down. Give me some more.

ANNE: Oh, some more?

KATI: Yeah.

ANNE: Okay. Let's think about what you're... No, let's think. Well, what are you looking for? What kind of books do you like to read in the summer? Fiction, fiction, fiction is...

KATI: Right. I know that's very broad. In the summer, I like a book that I can sink into, you know, because I have the time to do it. And other than that, I mean, I will read just about anything, to be honest.

ANNE: Well, you mentioned that it took you a while to get into The Poisonwood Bible. I'm wondering about her more recent work, Demon Copperhead.

KATI: Oh, I love that.

ANNE: That was a good fit for you?

KATI: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think Poisonwood Bible was difficult for me to get into just because of the context of my life at that time. But, I mean, I did keep going back to it because I love her work. And once I got into it, like I said, I couldn't put it down. It was a page-turner, so yeah. Demon Copperhead, very original and amazing book.

[00:41:52] ANNE: That came out recently enough that it makes me glad for you that you have actually been able to read fiction these past little years.

KATI: I sneak it in when I can because I just have to. It's like salt on my food, you know?

ANNE: What about the new enormous Abraham Verghese that came out last August?

KATI: I actually have read that.

ANNE: Really?

KATI: I did. As soon as it came out, I got it from the library and I'm like, Okay, I'm just going to pretend to do this nonfiction reading because I really have to read this. It was really... it was beautiful.

ANNE: Okay. We'll talk later. I'll ask you lots of noisy questions. Noisy?

KATI: Nosey.

ANNE: Nosey, quiet questions. We'll get you a list. Sara, what about you? What's your summer reading mood?

SARA: I usually go for lighthearted in the summer. I will read flighty, happy things, and then I'll mix in some historical fiction. I have a pile of books this summer that I've already acquired, and I'm not super excited about any of them.

Two of them are very popular books. Let Us Descend, which I will read at some point. And Jesmyn Ward came here not too long ago, so I went to hear her speak. It was lovely.

Then the other one is Tom Lake, which I've kind of been hanging on to because Ann Patchett doesn't produce a work every few years, so I sort of want to savor that. And I'm not really in a savor mood just yet. So that'll happen over the summer.

[00:43:17] I also have the Book of Doors. It's on my bedside table right now, and I kind of started it, but haven't really sunk my teeth into it just yet. But I'm kind of feeling that feeling where it's like, Oh, I've got these great books, and I'm excited to read them, but not right now. I think I want something else, but I don't know what the other thing is.

I did just finish the audio for Less Is Lost by Andrew Greer. Sean. Thank you. It was really funny and also very sweet and touching. I found that that's kind of what I wanted. Then I did the audio for I'm Glad My Mom Died. Not as funny as I thought it was gonna be. It was pretty intense. I also couldn't stop listening to it. I really wanted to hear that she was gonna be okay. But Less Is Lost is kind of more the mood I'm looking for right now. Yeah.

ANNE: That Jennette McCurdy is a devastating book. So well done, not light-hearted. Yeah, that's my wheels. No.

SARA: I think I was able to finish it because the audio was maybe only six or seven hours. So kind of knowing this isn't a big ask. Unlike Covenant of Water, that one... I did that on my road trip last summer. It was beautiful.

[00:44:27] ANNE: If you can wait just a few weeks, Stephen Rowley has a new one coming out called The Guncle Abroad where he revisits the characters from his phenomenally popular novel and like invites you along on a vicarious European vacation. So it tugs on the heartstrings because there's grief and new life side by side, but also like escapades in Europe. Oh, with money. Like I was totally Googling all the fancy hotels in that one.

SARA: I would absolutely love a European escapade with a little bit of heart strain. That sounds good. The Gungle Abroad. The gung...

ANNE: Yes. Why does that sound wrong?

SARA: Yes, it does sound wrong.

ANNE: That's exactly what it's called.

SARA: All right. All right.

ANNE: I think it's May 21st.

SARA: Okay. It's coming up.

ANNE: My husband is reading Tom Lake right now, which I love. So he's just doing his thing and I'm not asking any questions, but I'm very curious to find out how that lands.

I've been thinking about what I'm into for my summer reading mood. I was asked this the other night and I said like, Ooh, I want something that just feels really good and absorbing and also doesn't make me work too hard.

[00:45:37] But I also like books where I feel like I have to work for it, but I love doing the work. I love doing all the Googling. It feels like a joy to Google Elizabethan England or whatever it is. I didn't expect to say Google so much.

I don't necessarily want a book where I have to map out a timeline for it to make sense, but a book that makes me want to know more and that invites me to really sink into it. I don't mind a story that I can't read in the checkout line on my phone at Target. I don't mind that at all. But just immersive and evocative and books that take me places. You know, which could just be a state of mind is what I've been thinking of.

All right, y'all, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for talking books and reading with us at Word of South. It's been a pleasure. Happy reading. Enjoy your festival.

Hey, readers, I hope you enjoyed your vicarious trip to Word of South in today's episode. We've got a handy roundup of links and titles discussed today over at our show notes page. Check that out at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

Keep up with all our happenings at What Should I Read Next HQ by subscribing to our newsletter. Sign up today at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/newsletter.

Make sure you're following in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribing is a great way to support our show with just one click, and it means you'll automatically get every new episode right in your podcast feed.

We are on Instagram. Find our show's page @whatshouldireadnext. If you're sharing your photos from Word of South, be sure to tag us in your posts or stories. We would love to see your shots. You'll find me on Instagram @AnnBogel.

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.