I’m not afraid of a fifty-hour audiobook

[00:00:00] STEPHANIE VAN PARYS: The Norwegian setting for a hot and humid summer in Atlanta will be perfect. Because in my head I'll be in the cold, but you know, physically I'll be in the Atlanta summer.

ANNE BOGEL: Hey readers, I'm Anne Bogel and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that's dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don't get bossy on this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read. Every week we'll talk all things books and reading and do a little literary matchmaking with one guest.

Readers, our summer merch shop is updated with all kinds of fun bookish items. This year's Summer Reading Guide takes us to book camp, and we've got the shirt or sweatshirt to prove it. Check out our new styles, including a much-requested V-neck, and find the one that suits you.

We've also added an assortment of new stickers perfect for your water bottle, e-reader case, laptop, or anywhere else you'd like to proclaim your book nerdery for all to see. The Read Pendant sticker is fast becoming a favorite, but all the designs are so fun!

[00:01:17] You'll also find links to all of my books, which I see when you order them from our shop. Our archive of seasonal reading guides and even gift certificates for book club membership. Check it all out at Modernmrsdarcy.com/shop. That's modernmrsdarcy.com/shop.

Today's guest, Stephanie Van Parys, is joining me from Decatur, Georgia, where, after working in nonprofit leadership for the past 19 years, Stephanie now has much more time to spend in her beloved garden, putting her horticulture degree to use, and she has big plans for her summer projects.

Stephanie is also a reader, of course, when she discovered in 2020 that she could pair audiobooks with working in the dirt. She never looked back. These days almost all her reading is done in audio format. She is here for my help to get a queue of recommendations to reach for this summer season.

Stephanie's tastes are broad, and she is not intimidated by a 50-hour audiobook. She would especially love to discover new-to-her authors from places other than the US or the UK, which you will hear more about shortly. I have suggestions to keep Stephanie's summer reading in bloom. Let's get to it.

[00:02:24] Stephanie, welcome to the show.

STEPHANIE: Thank you, Anne. I am so excited to be here.

ANNE: Well, I can't wait to talk about books and gardens and other things. Stephanie, tell us a little bit about yourself. We just want to give our readers a glimpse of who you are when you're not book podcasting.

STEPHANIE: That's right. Thank you. Actually, I have been listening to your podcast for a very long time. I'm a completist. And when I have finished a book or have had a book that I didn't quite care for, I will have a conversation with you in my head or in my garden out loud. I'll talk to you. So I feel like we've had this conversation a few times, but I really appreciate being here. I'm excited to be here.

ANNE: Oh my goodness. What I would give for a hidden camera situation right now.

STEPHANIE: Yes. And my neighbors... who knows who's heard me, talking to you in my garden because my garden is right on the street. So who knows? But I live in Decatur, Georgia, which is right next to Atlanta. I live here with my husband, and I have three children. Two of them are at university, and one of them is about to be a senior, which is very exciting.

[00:03:33] Also in our family, we have two corgis, Winnie and Rico, we have a cat and we have a flock of chickens in our backyard. So I have been living in Decatur since 1998, and for that long I've had a garden. That was one of the reasons why we chose the house that we chose because of the big side yard that we have. That's full sun, which is a requirement for growing vegetables and beautiful perennials.

ANNE: Decatur is also home to an amazing literary festival. Is this one you've experienced?

STEPHANIE: Yes, the Decatur Book Festival, which is a nice big festival that takes over the downtown area. My older son is a big reader, and so going to the festival is a big deal. We like to go to all the booths and look at all the books.

What I love about that festival is the university presses that are there. University of Georgia will be there and other university presses will be there. And I always like looking at the books that they print. You find some unique titles at their tents.

[00:04:42] ANNE: Yes. You discover the books that for sure are not all over Instagram.

STEPHANIE: That's right. To be honest, those are the types of books that I do like to read. I mean, I like to read the popular, you know, the books that are all of us in, but I really don't follow them on Instagram. But I also like finding fun novels or nonfiction at those tents.

ANNE: That's interesting. Look, I'm glad you have the Decatur Book Festival to find those books, because we're going to focus on something else today. You've been listening to a lot of audio recently, and I think your garden has everything to do with this. So with that is context, which I know from your submission, thank you so much for sending it in, tell us about how your reading life has evolved in recent years and what it looks like these days.

STEPHANIE: I have been a reader my entire life. I was heavily influenced by my mother, who was a librarian and a reader, and I've been reading for as long as I... and voraciously. No book was too long for me or too short, and have had a vast appetite for just different types of books.

[00:05:47] And then as I had children, as my work life sped up and took more of my time, I found that I was reading less physical copies of books. In 2021 I made the transition to audiobooks. And I had been hearing about audiobooks, you know, from your podcast and from some other podcasts that I'd listened to. I really didn't know people who listen to audiobooks.

I think there were a couple of things that happened that was a perfect storm. One of them was I had a better phone, I was able to get a set of Bluetooth headphones, and I learned about Libby, the Libby app from my library. Then I listened to a podcast where they were talking about reading classical novels, which is something I've always wanted to do, but I did not have the attention span to read a David Copperfield or even a Jane Austen in its full, beautiful form in book form.

[00:06:45] And they said these books were meant to be read out loud. They were read out loud to family members around the fire, and that listening to them on audio was a perfectly legit way to listen to a classic novel. And that was it. That just set the stage for me.

Also at that time it was 2021, and I was definitely spending more time in my garden. We were still in the thick of the pandemic and working from home and just having more time in my garden. And so I put on my headphones and started reading while I was gardening.

It was the marriage of two perfect worlds for me, because there's two things that you can always say about me is that I'm a gardener and I love to read. I was able to put both of those together in my garden to pull weeds while I was listening to a book, and I haven't stopped. So that was 2021.

I just started blowing through all those classic novels I always wanted to read, and then just picking up other books that I probably would never have read in their physical form because I didn't have the time or the attention span to be able to complete them. But when somebody is reading them to you, you're just a captured audience.

And if you're doing something with your hands, which is something I like to do, I always like to have my hands busy, that was just a perfect reading environment for me. So I went from being no audio to now today I am 99% audiobooks.

[00:08:18] ANNE: Oh wow. Okay, we are definitely going to keep that in mind when we recommend books for you today. Stephanie, as someone who really likes to be busy with your hands and be physically in the world, I wonder if you have this collection of sense memories of like what you listen to when. Because I'm not really a gardener. In fact, Will and I have been talking about like, do we maybe want to, like, become the kind of people who care just a little bit more? Maybe. I may ask for tips with that.

But I do have really powerful memories of remembering which weeds I was pulling when listening to Dominic Hoffman read me James McBride's Deacon King Kong and the other weeds I was pulling out of our heads that you would surely know the name of and I cannot come up with right now when I was finishing You Should See Me in a Crown on a really hot summer morning. Like the book is bound up with the memory of the... I mean, I guess that is gardening. Tell me about your experiences there.

[00:09:15] STEPHANIE: I definitely have sense memories when I am in my garden or what was I doing when I was listening to a book. For example, I listened to Stephen King's writing... the book about writing and publishing. And I know exactly where I was in my garden. I was probably planting onions at that time.

And I always have to weed heavily before I can plant anything because I'm in Georgia and we're not tropical, but boy, my weeds do think that we are. So I was preparing the soil and I was likely planting onions at the time that I listened to his book. But yeah.

When I listened to David Copperfield, I was standing at my potting table. I had hundreds of seedlings to pot up, and that's what I would do. I'd go out in the evening. In the spring you can go out at 7 o'clock, and it's cooler, and it's nice to be outside.

I would pot up a bunch of seedlings that I had grown, and I was listening to David Copperfield, and I would look forward to it. Like, "I'm going to go outside and I'm going to pot up seedlings. And not only that, I get to listen to another hour of the 52-hour-long audiobook of David Copperfield. But what fun that was. So yes, 100% I know where I am or where I've been when I've listened to an audiobook.

[00:10:37] ANNE: I love that. Okay, Stephanie, we do think around here that we want to be more yard people than we have been. So we're working on planting some things. But I will say right at this very moment there are a couple bushes in the front yard that have been sitting there for three weeks since we picked them up. They're going to get in the ground, maybe after this rain passes through, but that's what you have to work with.

So what are just a few tips for those of us who happen to be readers who are interested in... I mean, I would say building their skills, but really I think it's a question of welcoming a slight shift in priorities and how I'm spending my time now.

STEPHANIE: I think, to go back to reading, some of the books that I've read in my life have really influenced my gardening philosophy and approach. So, early on, before I had children and we had just bought our house and I had this fresh yard to interpret the way I wanted to, there were books that I read that really influenced me in the approach that I had to my garden.

[00:11:44] And they weren't necessarily gardening how-to books. It was the theory behind it. So early on, I probably read Michael Pollan. There was another author named Sarah Stein. She was a gardener up in New York. Then there was another author named Joan Dye Gussow, who had a garden on the Hudson River.

So part of gardening is being inspired. You are not only out there working the land, but you're doing something bigger. And when you've read about it, you're inspired to go outside and interpret what you've read. Like, what is your role in the environment? What is your role in the gardening world? What is your role in providing food for birds and pollinators? Is that something that's a priority for you? Do you want to provide a stopping point for butterflies, that they have a resting spot, that your yard is a place that provides food and water and a place for them to raise their young?

[00:12:48] When I read about it, it influences me on what I want to do in my own garden. And that's really most of it is that I'm just interpreting with my hands and with the soil and with the seeds and the flowers that I plant what I've read and that it supports the work that I'm doing outside because I'm making a difference.

If I hadn't read about it, I wouldn't be inspired to do so. I wouldn't know what I was doing. So really simple is, let's say you think, You know, I'd like to do something to support butterflies or see some butterflies. If butterflies are flying through my neighborhood and I want them to have a resting spot, I can provide that right by my mailbox by planting four or five zinnia plants. It's a summer annual. They're very easy. They're drought-resistant. They have beautiful flowers and the butterflies come through. And it's not just the butterflies, it's your bees and your native bees.

So the books I've read are the reason why I garden the way I do. These were books that I read early on that influenced me. I think that's part of it.

[00:14:00] ANNE: Interesting. So reading is not just something that I can do while I garden, perhaps my way in to feeling inspired and motivated to spend more time outdoors. More time outdoors that's not just on the comfortable outdoor sofa reading. Or walking the dog.

STEPHANIE: It is a perfectly legit reason to be outside, you know, relaxing and reading. Doug Tallamy is another writer who-

ANNE: Yes. My friend is very enthusiastic about native plants and has introduced me to his stuff.

STEPHANIE: Yeah. Yeah. So I think I have plants that are sitting on my driveway. Your plants have been sitting there for three weeks. I have plants that have been sitting in my driveway for three years.

ANNE: That does make me feel better.

STEPHANIE: My philosophy is that I should have a place to put that plant before it comes home with me, but sometimes my eyes are bigger than what I have accomplished outside to prepare for them. And sometimes it does take three years.

But this is my year. 2024 is for sure my year to spend more time in my garden. And I already have been, so I have hopes that by the end of the summer, everything that's supposed to be planted has been planted outside in the garden.

[00:15:14] ANNE: I'm noticing that philosophy and practice don't always align. Yeah. That's true for my reading life as well sometimes. Very relatable. Now, Stephanie, you came to What Should I Read Next? with a very specific request that I'm really looking forward to hearing more about and digging into. First, I feel like we need to hear about your books. Are you ready to discuss those?

STEPHANIE: I am.

ANNE: You know how this works. You are going to tell me three books you love, one book you don't, and what you've been reading lately and we will talk about what you want in your reading life right now and what you should read next.

STEPHANIE: Yes. I have three books that I'm bringing to the table today. I've already discussed these with you in my garden, so hopefully I will be able to do this in a way that makes sense for the podcast.

The first book that I am bringing today is a book that I've listened to twice. This novel is called Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett. When I describe this book to my friends, they'll say, what have you been reading? Or is there a book that you've read lately that you love?

[00:16:25] And I will start describing this book to them and then I just start giggling because their faces are faerie. Like, "You're reading a book about faerie?" And I'm like, "Just hold on, just hold on."

I think it takes place either in Victorian or Edwardian times, which is very important. That is a favorite time period of mine. Very dark, very moody, very sense of place. And it's this academic, her name is Emily, and she travels to Norway to a remote part of Norway where she is going to study the faeries. And she has come from a department at a university in England where there is a legitimate department that studies faerie. And it's not fantasy. I wouldn't describe this book as fantasy.

So she is writing an encyclopedia of fairies and this section of the world in remote Norway has not been studied before. And so she's going there to find the Fae Folk that live there and to write about them. This is usually where I start laughing when I'm telling this to my friends because it is about fairies. And it's real. Like this is reality for them and this is the real world for them.

[00:17:38] But she is joined by her colleague who is a man and he's very funny and charming. And I love that about this novel too, about how funny and wry. He has a very wry sense of humor. The book is written a lot in journal form. So she keeps a diary and she's capturing everything that's happening that she's encountering.

And what I like about it is that it's afterwards. So if you think something scary is going to happen and then she's writing about it, you know she survived. So that was good. But what I liked about this book is the strong sense of place. I liked that it was in Norway in a remote area. There was snow and there was rain and there was wind and it felt like the sun went down early.

The audio was really fun. Most of it was read by one person and then there were two chapters that was read by a man. And those were funny. So I liked that it was funny, it was charming. There was a little bit of love in there. It had a strong fairytale element too, which I really enjoyed. So I was entertained.

[00:18:42] I can say that this is the type of novel... they don't happen often that I find these types of books, where from the first paragraph I know that I'm in good hands and I'm about to have a very good story told to me.

Another experience like that was Ten Thousand Doors of January. That was another one where from the first paragraph I said, "This is it. I am in. I don't need to know anything else." I usually go into these books knowing nothing. Very little. I don't read about them on Goodreads. I just go into them cold, and I allow the story to unfold in front of me. And that is one of my favorite ways to read, knowing very little.

ANNE: I've got a copy of Ten Thousand Doors of January just out of reach. You're making me want to pop open the cover and see how it begins.

STEPHANIE: I know exactly where I was. Now, that one I read in book form and I was on a couch on vacation away from my garden and my house. So I could actually enjoy a book without having to worry about everything I needed to do. But if there was a book flight, I would put those two together.

[00:19:50] ANNE: Ten Thousand Doors has beautiful flowers all over the cover. I'm just noticing that. Okay, thank you. That's Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett. Stephanie, what's the second book you love?

STEPHANIE: The second book I chose is very different. It's called O Beautiful by Jung Yun. It is a book that takes place in North Dakota. So no magical realism is happening in North Dakota. It's a book about the oil boom in North Dakota. It is about a woman who grew up in North Dakota, and her mother was Korean, her father was White, and he had been in the service and came back home to North Dakota.

The protagonist, the main character in this novel, her name is Eleanor, and she leaves as soon as she can to go to New York City. She has a career, and then she has a second career. Her second career is writing. She gets this opportunity to go home to North Dakota to write an article about the oil boom that is happening in North Dakota and how it has affected this small town that was very small and now has exploded in population with all the people that are coming and the trials and tribulations that come from this experience, from the oil boom.

[00:21:15] So she goes out there. And from the very moment you meet this character, you think, Huh, she doesn't always make the best decisions. So she's a little bit problematic. And by the end of it, I thought, She was problematic. She wasn't unreliable. She was just somebody who made decisions that weren't always the best and was also very suspicious.

So I finished this book and I thought, "Hmm, that main character was a bit unlikable, and am I alone in thinking this?" Then I listened to an interview with the author and she said it. She said, Yes, the character is unlikable and those are some of my favorite to write. And I thought, "Oh, right. Good. All right." So I got it.

The book is very much like you are reading an article. The author researched this novel over several years. She is from North Dakota. She interviewed people from small-town America who were being affected by the oil boom.

And when you read the book, not only did you read a novel about somebody's internal growth and decisions that she makes, but you also learned something about North Dakota and the situation. And I very much felt like I had just read an article. It was very interesting. It was a strong sense of place. So you very much are in North Dakota.

[00:22:35] There's also a sense of danger, underlying violence. And violence doesn't really ever happen, but there is just this underlying current where you have a small town of people where they were the folks that lived there and then you have all these new people coming in.

So there's this old versus new. There's this level of trust that hasn't been established. There's just a town that's been completely overwhelmed by the people coming in. And then you meet all of these interesting people. People who are working the oil fields but live in their car in a parking lot because there isn't enough housing to house everybody.

So I learned so much. But I also thought that she wrote it so well and then the narrator of the audiobook did a really good job building out the tension and just carefully laying out the words. I thought she interpreted the novel really well.

[00:23:33] I think how it fit me is I loved learning about North Dakota in that way. The writing was really beautiful. I really got into the unlikable character, the situation she put her in, how she interacted with people.

Then she doesn't just talk about how the oil boom has impacted the local town. She also talks about how it's impacted the Native American community that lives in North Dakota.

ANNE: That sounds really interesting. I love Catherine Ho, who voiced that one. She was one of the voices on Banyan Moon, on Days at the Morisaki Bookshop. Those are two of the 2023 Summer Reading Guide selections. She read Counterfeit, a novel with a totally different tone, but a similarly unlikable but intriguing narrator that I listened to in one go on a road trip. Okay, that sounds fascinating.

Stephanie, what's the third book you love?

STEPHANIE: The third book that I have for today is Desertion by Abdulrazak Gurnah. I also listened to this on audio. It is a book that came to me through my book club, so I would never ever, I think, have found this book or this author. It was published back in 2005. So that's something I'm not afraid of a backlist title.

[00:24:52] It's about colonialism in Africa, specifically Kenya, Mombasa area. There's two timelines in this novel. It takes place in 1899 and then there's a second part that takes place in the 1950s.

Again, I went into this novel knowing nothing and I just let the story unfold. And so I was a little bit shocked when the first part ended. I said, Wait a second, I thought this was going to be the story of this novel. But no, it goes into a future time point.

But it is connected. The two storylines are connected through one person. It starts with a man who lives in this coastal city, I believe it's in Kenya, and he finds an Englishman almost dead on the steps of a mosque, brings him home, and the story goes from there.

What I liked about this book is that I don't read a lot of novels that are set in Africa, and I certainly not at this time period. And I've read some more by him since then, and I really like his work.

I like the sense of place. I thought his writing was beautiful. It was concise. It was clear. It was a joy to listen to. I learned so much about the different characters. I learned about the culture of the different people who have immigrated to this area and how they've impacted the culture that takes place. Then later, one of the characters goes to England.

[00:26:18] The theme of the book is desertion, so it explores different ways of desertion, you know, leaving the country or a government pulls out of a country or the husband might leave a wife type of desertion. So I like the theme of the novel. But I started listening to it and immediately thought to myself, "Oh, this is going to be good." The author knows his craft. He's very skillful. And I always enjoy a clear and concise story.

The location of the novel was also very interesting to me, both the historical 1899 and then later into the 1950s.

ANNE: I'm so glad your book club put that in your path. Stephanie, tell me about a book that was not a good fit for you.

STEPHANIE: This book I've definitely discussed with you multiple times. So the author is Emily Henry. And I've read three books by her. I've read Beach Read, and I liked it. I read People We Meet on Vacation. That one was okay. Then I read Book Lovers, and that was one that I listened to.

[00:27:27] There was a point in that novel where I just wanted to throw the audiobook across the room. I know a lot of people love her novels and I get why, but I realized that they're not for me. And there's a few reasons why they're not for me.

One of them would be it's very floral. So there's a lot of flowery language. For example, sample sentence would be something, "Her skin was the color of a ripe peach that was just plucked from a tree". It would just be a lot of that happening in the novel where it was just comparing like to the lavender crimson sky and the... there were just too many words.

I like concise, clean writing and it was a little bit too flowery for me. That was one of the reasons. And then the storyline just didn't grab my attention, the love story wasn't strong enough for me. And then miscommunication between two people is not a romantic trope that I enjoy.

[00:28:28] So much can be cleared up if you just clearly communicate with people and you tell them how you feel and then boom, the story's over, but you're in love and you're happy for the rest of your life. But, you know, page after page of that, it was hard for me. So that book was not to my liking.

There's one other important reason why this novel and novels like it are not for me. The sense of place, the setting takes place in people's heads, in their minds. I've learned that the books that I don't enjoy as much are ones where there's a stream of consciousness happening and you're hearing the person thinking through their thoughts.

So something happens and then they spend however many paragraphs working through whatever it was they just experienced. And that is writing that is not for me. I would much rather have it through dialogue or through action. That is a characteristic of a novel that is not for me.

[00:29:32] ANNE: Stephanie, what have you been reading lately?

STEPHANIE: There are two books that I've read recently that I really enjoyed. Slow Horses by Mick Herron was really fun. I do like a mystery or kind of a detective whodunit type novel, and I thought that was done really well. I liked how it wrapped up. It was a good book.

Then the other one that I read recently, and these are both by audio, The Known World by Edward Jones. I had that book on my shelf forever. One of the things I'm doing this year is getting those books off my shelf and listening to them as audio.

The Known World was so interesting. It takes place in Virginia before the Civil War and it addresses issues of slavery, but it's also a very complex story that involves a lot of characters. The story was really rich in detail, and I liked how it resolved itself.

ANNE: You know, that's a Pulitzer winner from 20 years ago that I haven't heard anyone mention in ages.

[00:30:35] STEPHANIE: I can see why it was a Pulitzer winner. It's one of those novels that, again, you don't read very many of those. It was really well done.

ANNE: Okay. Something I think that is really interesting is in your submission you were adamant that you wanted to find a certain kind of book. And that kind of book has not appeared at all in our conversation. So with that in mind, tell me, what are you looking for in your reading life right now? I'm super interested to explore this.

STEPHANIE: I am looking for books that have been translated.

ANNE: Why? You must have read some that we didn't talk about already. What appeals to you about reading books in translation? And look, I'm not questioning the premise at all, but I'm interested in the fact that we haven't talked about them yet.

Are you finding them hard to find? Have you had some memorable experiences in the past? Do you not know where to get started? What are you thinking right now?

STEPHANIE: I have definitely had memorable experiences in the past. I do find them difficult to find. People don't really talk about translated books in the arena where I hear about books.

ANNE: And also there's the... they call it the 3% problem that in the United States a very slender percentage of the books available for purchase are translated novels or available on Libby, which is where you're getting your audiobooks.

[00:31:54] STEPHANIE: I do have subscriptions to other reading apps.

ANNE: Oh, that's good to know.

STEPHANIE: I do tend to go to Libby first. But I have Audible and I also have Libro.fm.

ANNE: It sounds like... this is me rubbing my hands together in anticipation. It sounds like you may be in a position to just want to explore some of the possibilities of translated works.

STEPHANIE: Yes. What I like about them is they write differently. The authors, they just write differently. You know, their language is set up differently than English, and so they tend to write differently. For example, a book that's translated from French, you can tell that the author is a French writer because they phrase things differently. They also set up different scenarios. Things are normal for them that may not be normal in the United States, just cultural or relationship or how they approach a situation. And I like when that comes through.

[00:33:00] The translated novels that I have read, I have enjoyed pretty much all of them, the ones that I've read. Like Water for Flowers was one, The Postcard last year. I've listened to a few that were translated from German. The Eighth Life, that was good.

Oh, and I tend to read a lot of books that come from either they're American authors or they're from the UK. And I would just like to broaden my reach. And I think translated novels would be a really fun way to do that.

ANNE: So I hear what you're saying. You are walking around the world with an American brain, and the opportunity to not do that, to try something different in the pages of fiction, whatever kind of story it may be, is really appealing.

STEPHANIE: Yes.

ANNE: Okay. Also, tell me about the length here.

STEPHANIE: I am not afraid of a long book. Some of those classics are 50 hours and that's okay because I'm listening to them and I'm pulling weeds and planting a lot of plants during that process when I'm in my garden.

[00:34:03] So a lot of the time that I will be listening to these novels is going to be taking place when I'm outside. We're hitting the summer season and during the summer I'm outside in my garden two to three hours a day. So I have the time to wrap my hands or wrap my ears around a longer novel. The length doesn't matter to me. It can be short, it can be long, or it can just be normal medium.

ANNE: Okay. It sounds like you're really at a fun place, Stephanie. I mean, for both of us. I'm going to try to thread a needle here because you love a long audiobook, and I want to give you some of those to try to see what you think, to spend a lot of time with out in your garden.

Also, there are so many wonderful translated works that are very short. There's a preponderance of short fiction that you can try, and you can, like, really go wide with your tasting. But if an audiobook is only four hours long and you're going to get through it really quick...

STEPHANIE: That's okay.

ANNE: Okay.

STEPHANIE: Yeah, it's fine. I've read short ones, long ones, really long ones. Yeah, that's not a... because I don't have to sit still and read it. Somebody's reading it to me. And if it only takes four hours, then that's a short little sweet book that I can read in a day and then I can move on to the next one. And that's exciting too.

[00:35:25] I can spend a long time with an audiobook. At the same time, the Libby app is telling me that five people are waiting for the next book that I have queued up. So if I get through them faster, that's fine as well.

ANNE: I'm glad to hear that. Something I'm wondering about is if you need to avoid first-person point of view. And that's not something I remember as a reader, necessarily.

STEPHANIE: I don't like... for example, The Desertion was first person, mostly. And Emily Wild she's saying, I, I, I, I. I don't mind a first person. It's just when I am going through their emotions with them, and it's a lot of the book where we are deep diving into everything that just happened, talking it through, that's not where I am right now.

ANNE: You don't want to hear somebody figuring out what they think about something on the page.

STEPHANIE: That's right.

[00:36:26] ANNE: Stephanie, I have to say, knowing what you enjoyed, The Eighth Life is a title that sprung immediately to mind. I'm glad to hear that you have experienced that 41-hour audiobook.

STEPHANIE: That's right.

ANNE: And that it was a hit for you. While we're speaking of incredibly long audiobooks, have you read Kristin Lavransdatter?

STEPHANIE: No, but my mother loved that book when she was a kid.

ANNE: We are going to make this our first recommendation.

STEPHANIE: Okay, I love it.

ANNE: There is a new edition out. It's out from Penguin Classics, I think. They put out these beautiful deluxe editions in print, but they often have corresponding audiobooks. This one is new. It just came out the end of last year. So this is the whole trilogy packaged together, which means it is over 47 hours.

STEPHANIE: Yes!

ANNE: But the things people say about Kristin Lavransdatter are like how no other book in the past, in contemporary times, has portrayed the medieval world in such sparkling rich fashion.

[00:37:36] This is the epic of a young girl, who I believe is a farmer's daughter, growing up in medieval Norway. And you watch her grow up in this period. So her father is doting. Her mother is... This is me thinking if the word "depressed" applies. But her mother is certainly a different kind of presence in their family.

And she's growing up in the structures and expectations of the period she's living in. And it's all written in such detail that in one sense feels exhaustive, but also it feels very rich and colorful. It doesn't feel like, can we get to the point already?

And we watch her grow up. It reminds me of some other epics that I don't want to name-check because they're so different in tone, but ones from other parts of the world where you do see young women grow up and fall in love and navigate romance and marriage and the tensions of having the life you want to pursue and how difficult that is given the realities of the time.

Especially hearing how you have really enjoyed listening to some long classics on audio, like that time you spent potting to David Copperfield, and especially with this new beautiful edition, and one book 47 hours, I think you'd be glad you spent your reading time in this way.

STEPHANIE: I'm so excited. The Norwegian setting for a hot and humid summer in Atlanta will be perfect. Because in my head I'll be in the cold, but physically I'll be in the Atlanta summer.

ANNE: That contrast sounds amazing.

STEPHANIE: Yes.

[00:39:10] ANNE: So the original was written by Sigrid Undset in the Norwegian. The translator here is Tiina Nunnally, and there are two voices on this new deluxe edition. That's Nina Indes and Stephen Graybill.

STEPHANIE: Wonderful.

ANNE: You've liked some of those dual-narrated books, so I hope this one is a win for you. Okay, now you told me perhaps off the record that you really enjoy books written in French originally, and I'd like to surface a quartet for you.

It's the series that begins with A Winter's Promise called The Mirror Visitor Quartet by Christelle Dabos. Is this a series you're familiar with?

STEPHANIE: I am not.

ANNE: This one's translated by Hildegarde Serle, who is one of my favorite translators. There are a few that I know and enjoy, and I keep an eye out for those works that they're translating. Oh, and that's kind of a genius move.

If you're interested in exploring translated fiction, and you really like the way the words fall, the way the sound, that is of course credit to the original author, and also to the translator, who has an eye out for the kind of works they want to translate and also their own skill set writing these books.

So if you like the translator, take note of their name and see what else they have available. That's something I do now with Hildegarde Serle.

[00:40:20] Now something kind of magical about these books is that they are available on Libro.fm and Audible as the quartet. So that means you can get four books that are all substantial on their own for just one credit. It's over 60 hours.

Now, some people will think like, Oh, that would make me feel like I wasn't accomplishing anything if I had to listen for an hour to listen to like 1.5% of the work. But for some of you, you're thinking, wow, that's the best bang for my buck if you're paying for credits that I will get in my entire lifetime.

This whole series is narrated by Emma Fenney. This is an internationally best-selling YA fantasy series. And I want you all to know that and also I want to say that this series has huge adult crossover chops. There are characters of all ages in these books. And many, many adult readers have read these not realizing at all that it is technically a YA series. Many teens have read this, I think, not realizing that either. Don't let that bother you, but also I want you to know. But it's been a big hit with readers of all ages, especially those who enjoy intricate world-building.

STEPHANIE: Okay.

[00:41:29] ANNE: It has unusual settings, really unique characters. It's very original and it's really page-turnery. Several of the books end on big cliffhangers, which made people a little mad, frustrated, or giddily anticipating the next book. But today's lucky readers have the whole quartet ready and waiting for them. So just know when you're like, "What? I can't believe she left..." like you can just pick up right there.

The first book is A Winter's Promise, and it introduces us to a young woman named Ophelia. She has this special gift — she can move through mirrors. She's old enough to become engaged when the series starts, and her family chooses her future husband because that's how things work. And they have political alliance in mind, and yet their choice is puzzling. But she can't really question it because the consequence for rejecting your parents' choice of your betrothed is banishment. That's a big deal.

So she proceeds as though she's going to move forward with the wedding and she's not really liking what she's finding out about the man. But as she begins to try to figure out, because that's her plan, she's going to move forward with it and also she's going to figure out what is going on. And as she does, she enters this world that she didn't know was operating just beneath her of cutthroat politics and dark intrigue with super high stakes. How is this sounding to you?

STEPHANIE: Yeah, it sounds great. It sounds great. I love it.

[00:43:00] ANNE: But it's French. It's French. So you can imagine what this novel might sound like if you, you know, picked up the latest American-written book at Barnes & Noble, and also that's not what this is.

STEPHANIE: Yeah. No, I'm very excited. I like that there's four books, that it's translated from French, and the story sounds wonderful.

ANNE: I'm glad to hear it. Okay, next, I think we're going to go to Poland. You mentioned that you liked books that also had a sense of humor. Even titles like The Eighth Life, which are so hard, also have a sense of humor. There's humor in Christelle Dabos.

I'm curious what you will think about the words of Olga Tokarczuk. She's a Polish writer. She's a Nobel winner, a Man Booker Prize winner. Are you familiar with her works?

STEPHANIE: I just bought a book for my son's birthday and I think that's the author that he chose.

ANNE: Amazing. Okay, maybe you can borrow from him. So I have two in mind for you. The first is Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. Is this the one?

[00:44:11] STEPHANIE: No, but I've heard about this book and I'm so excited.

ANNE: Oh, I'm glad to hear it. So this is a little bit difficult to describe, which I think says nice things about the book. It's a mystery, detective story, thriller. It's not not a fairy tale. And it has a quirky protagonist who doesn't like to refer to people by their actual names. Like, she won't call you Stephanie. She'll call you, I don't know, like Bigfoot.

She studies astrology in depth, she knows a lot about that. She spends her Fridays translating William Blake poetry. The plot revolves around a series of deaths in a small Polish village that has everyone all astir, trying to figure out what on earth is happening. But our protagonist is convinced that she can get to the heart of the matter, and she is sure that Animals, capital A, Animals, are responsible, and she launches an investigation to figure out what's going on.

[00:45:09] It is at once like oddball, and eccentric, and profound, and funny, and moving. There's a lot here that's not often packaged together that is in this book, and it's also so good on audio. It's narrated by Beata Poźniak. It's 11-ish hours, so not like it can keep you busy for a month or maybe a week if you're spending all your days gardening. But it's also not going to be gone in an afternoon. Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. How does this sound to you?

[00:45:39] STEPHANIE: It's perfect. Lovely.

ANNE: I love it. Okay, we're gonna build on that and say if you enjoy that... I would start with Drive Your Plow.

STEPHANIE: Okay.

ANNE: But she also has a book that was just published in the U.S. in 2022 that is being called like her magnum opus. Critics are saying things like, we'll read this for centuries, and it's over a thousand pages long. So I hope that combination appeals to you.

It has a different translator. This one's translated by Jennifer Croft. This one, I'm sorry to say, goes back further than your beloved Victorian and Edwardian eras. It's set in the middle of the 18th century. This is biographical and historical fiction.

The story revolves around the man from history, Jacob Frank. He was a Jewish merchant. And in the middle of the 1750s, he proclaimed himself to be the Messiah. This is the kind of meaty sweeping saga that I think could keep you really good company in the garden.

[00:46:44] Jacob Frank is the character at the center, but there are a dozen significant characters that you will get to know well in the book and many, many more minor characters, and you will get to know them. I mean, that sounds overwhelming. If we gave you a list at the beginning, you'd go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. But as the story goes on in a very real way, you get to know everybody, and you get to hear from different voices and their experience in their life, and also with this man.

You know, he proclaims himself to be the Messiah, but one of the reasons he's so popular is he's like, "Oh, the traditional morality that's not a lot of fun. Like, whatever. That doesn't matter now. Let me tell you what you really can do and come follow me and we'll have a ball together."

I mean, I think this is a book that will stick with you for a long time and not just because you're going to spend 36 hours listening to it. How does that sound?

STEPHANIE: That sounds wonderful. And that is the book that I bought for my son for his birthday. So he's going to read it in book form and I'm going to listen to it.

ANNE: Oh. I wish that I had my hidden camera so I could listen in on those conversations. How about this, Stephanie? You can tell me about them by email. That will be significantly less creepy.

[00:47:50] STEPHANIE: Yeah, yeah. That'll be perfect.

ANNE: This one has dual narration again. It's Allen Lewis Rickman, not the actor, and Gilli Messer. And I hope you enjoy it.

STEPHANIE: I will.

ANNE: Okay, of the books we talked about today, let's see how these ones we honed in on at the end sound for you. So we talked about the Norwegian book, Kristin Lavransdatter, the French Quartet by Christelle Dabos, and then the two novels by Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk. Of those books, what might you listen to next?

STEPHANIE: I think I'm going to go for the Kristin Lavransdatter, and then I'm going to follow it with the bones, the wheels of the farm, or the bones of the cow, or whatever that one is.

ANNE: Drive Your Plow.

STEPHANIE: Ride the plow one. But I have been wanting to read Kristin Lavransdatter my entire life.

ANNE: This is your moment.

STEPHANIE: It's my moment.

ANNE: Meant to be.

STEPHANIE: And I love it. Yeah.

ANNE: I love it too. I can't wait to hear what you think. Stephanie, thank you so much for talking books with me today.

STEPHANIE: Thank you, Anne.

[00:48:53] ANNE: Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Stephanie, and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next. Stephanie is on social and has her website. We put all those links, including her Instagram accounts, in our show notes. That's also where you'll find the full titles we talk about today. All that can be found at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

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Thanks to the people who make this show happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by Will Bogel, Holly Wielkoszewski, and Studio D Podcast Production. Readers, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading." Happy reading, everyone.