A short summer project to rebuild reading stamina

[00:00:00] EMILY HENDERSON: In preparation for this, I reread some of the short stories and essays with the pen in hand, and I was like, "Oh, now I really know this story. I like short stories so much that I don't read them, I guess."

ANNE BOGEL: Well, it sounds like perhaps you really want to do justice to them.

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.

[00:00:50] Readers, our 2026 MMD Summer Reading Guide, the 15th edition, is available now. For instant gratification, you want the digital experience. Go to modernmrsdarcy.com/shop and get your Summer Reading Guide. You'll get the 38-page Summer Reading Guide PDF immediately, and you'll get access to the unboxing experience, where I walk you through the guide book by book so that you can decide how your reading time is best spent this summer.

Now, if you want a beautiful, delivered by snail mail, hold it in your hand, professionally printed 38-page guide, well, this is the second year that has been available. I have already told you these were going, going, gone so fast, and we sold out of that batch. They sold so quickly, in fact, that Will Bogel says we have to order more. So more are on the way.

If you want yours, you still have a chance. Go to, again, modernmrsdarcy.com/shop. What you want to order is the Summer Reading Guide print magazine. It will say very clearly this is the one that's coming in the mail. Go order yours, and it will be in your mailbox, US only, I'm afraid, very, very soon.

[00:02:06] Now, while you're at modernmrsdarcy.com/shop, you can check out our ever-popular Well-Read hat, our awesome tote bags — we're very picky about tote bags, us book people — our book darts, our pencils, our postcards, our new sorority sweatshirts. Lots of good stuff there. All that and more, modernmrsdarcy.com/shop.

Readers, I love a summer reading project, as I'm sure you know, of any style. But when I read the submission from today's guest and her quest for what she is calling a short summer of reading, well, I had to know more, and I wanted to talk about it on the show.

So today, Emily Henderson joins me. She is a mom of four, writer, and runner with a passion for home design, and she loves a project. While Emily came to reading later in life, she's found through trial and error what really works for her, and these days, for reasons we talk about, that's often books in an audio format.

[00:03:05] This summer, though, Emily would love to prioritize daily reading on the page so she can build that stamina back up again. And to do so, she's looking for short reading experiences that will not only get her reading print, but also serve as a satisfying substitute for social media that she wants to spend less time on. Emily is looking for short stories, essay collections, memoirs and essays, and micro histories that deliver the quick bite-sized reading experience she is hoping to log every day of summer break, her short summer.

She'd especially appreciate stories that leave her breathless or make her think about them long after she finishes. I have ideas, and I can't wait to dive in. Readers, let's get to it.

Emily, welcome to the show.

EMILY: Hello, Anne. Thank you for having me.

ANNE: Oh, the pleasure's mine. Thank you for bringing yourself and your reading life and your summer project to me and to our listeners.

EMILY: Yes, I'm excited.

[00:04:00] ANNE: Me too. Emily, let's start by just giving our readers a glimpse of who you are. Can you tell us a little about yourself?

EMILY: Yes. So, 40-something, mom of four, and I live with my family in Santa Barbara, California.

ANNE: Lovely. Emily, you are here today to talk about books, but we'd love to hear what's your life like. Like, what are you up to when you're not talking about books and reading on a Tuesday?

EMILY: I would describe myself as I'm a stay-at-home mom, I'm a runner, and I'm a reader, basically in that order. And so most of my days start at dawn, and I typically go for a run. My oldest is 15, my middle is 13, and the little baby is 3. So I'm kind of in, I guess I would say, two seasons of life in that I have the older teenagers who keep me busy with their emotions and after-school activities and academics and all of that, and then I have the very physical nature of having a preschooler.

[00:05:10] Between juggling that and trying to find time to carve out space for myself and my personal life and meet with friends, that's pretty much what keeps me busy.

ANNE: Emily, thank you for sending in the submission to our form at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/guest. Just sharing that in case any listeners are like, "What is she talking about?" But I gathered from your submission that you are a project person, and not just in your reading life. Is that actually the case?

EMILY: Oh, yes, absolutely. I love a good project. One of the things I said in my submission was that during the pandemic, my husband works in a hospital, and with all the stress of having kids at home for school, I needed to find a way to get out of the house.

I had heard about some people running every street in their city, and so I said, "Okay, that's what I'm going to do with my weekends." And I called into our local bookstore, Chaucer's Books in Santa Barbara, and I ordered a... I was like, "Hey, here are some books that I want, but also, can I get a map?" An actual physical street map of Santa Barbara.

[00:06:28] I literally opened it up and I was like, "Okay, I'm going to go run this neighborhood." And I decided I was going to run every street in our city. It took me about 16 months, and it ended up being 500 miles or something like that. But it was just a wonderful way to see my city and to kinda just see it from the street level and really feel like I got to know kind of the whole area, because I literally have been on every single street in the city. So yeah, I'm definitely a project person.

And then a couple years ago, my husband and I bought our house in, let's see, 2011, and in 2023 we decided we were going to take it all the way down to the foundation and remodel it from essentially the ground up. And that was just another project we embarked on, so that was a lot of internet searching. Pinterest and I were like best friends for the entire time.

[00:07:37] We just made every decision. We literally decided where all the light switches were going, what color were the windows, and how big were our hallways were going to be. I have a friend who's about 10 years older than I am, and she always said, "You know, the great test of a marriage is to hang wallpaper together. And if you can make it through that, then you're good." And I said, "Well, we made it through remodeling our whole house, so we must be doing okay."

ANNE: Oh, yikes. I have some wallpaper I'd like to be hung. I don't think I want to do it with my husband. Okay. That's really interesting context since we're talking to you about a reading project today, or I don't know, maybe we'll find out what it is and how committed you are to it after our conversation. But I hope you leave more excited, not less.

Emily, tell us about your reading life.

[00:08:34] EMILY: It's interesting that I became an adult who is literally never without a book, because when I was a kid, I was very late to learning how to read. And the fact that I would kind of hide that I did not know how to read. I got very good at figuring out context clues and all of these things. And it probably wasn't until fifth grade that I really felt like, "Oh, wait, I just read that book and I understood it."

It was still a struggle through elementary and high school, but I was able to kind of work through and then I just really discovered a love for literature when I was in college. I was an English major of all things. And when you're an English major in college, it's a different kind of reading in that it's like Milton and ancient British literature and The Iliad and The Odyssey and Heart of Darkness and all these classics.

[00:09:37] But I also got to take a really fun class called Detective Fiction, where we read Sherlock Holmes, of course, but then Carl Hiaasen, who I still laugh out loud when I read his books. And then after college, it was kind of like, "Okay, now what?"

But I graduated in 2002, and you would have thought like, Oh, I'll be done with reading. But that was the explosion of Jennifer Weiner's books, and In Her Shoes, and all of those books, and they were just like... I don't know if easy breezy is the best way to describe them, but they were just great books to be reading when you don't want to read hard stuff, but they're still well-written, go down easy. I think one of the things you say is like, "Easy reading means hard writing." And I can imagine that that's exactly how those books come to be.

[00:10:35] Now, as an adult, I'm just never without a book. The one thing that has changed in probably the last eight or 10 years is that I'm almost exclusively reading through the audio format. So I just kinda miss reading on the page. I miss that deep work of underlining and highlighting and going to Google and looking up things. I really just miss that deep reading.

So while I listen to 75-ish books a year, I'm kind of wondering if maybe what I'm needing is less actual titles, but deeper reading on the page.

[00:11:23] ANNE: I saw that in a past submission you'd sent in that you said you read X number of books the previous year, and that was too many.

EMILY: Yes.

ANNE: Would you say more about that?

EMILY: There's just so many great stories and I want to consume them all. But that is absolutely unavailable to anyone. I think I find myself not necessarily FOMO, but just like, "Oh, that looks so great. Okay, I've gotta get through it fast." It's almost like this race to read all of the great literature that there ever was.

Then I think there was a year where I was like 75-ish, and I was like, "This was too much," because I felt like I looked back over that list, and I didn't even remember. Like, "Oh, I did read that? I guess I did. I remember that cover, but I have no idea what happened in that book."

[00:12:17] But also, like what I was saying about how being an English major, I still remember the gist of scenes that I remember reading back in college, which was a long time ago. And so I feel like if I slowed down, still read audio because I love that format, but that I replaced some of those books with books on the page, it will help me slow down a little bit and kind of consume the story versus, I don't know, I guess get a deeper understanding.

ANNE: That is really useful to keep in mind. Emily, this is really interesting and great context as we explore what you want in your reading life in the months to come and how I can help. I know you've brought a specific project that I've now referenced several times to the podcast today. Would now be a good time to tell us all about it before we go forward?

EMILY: Yeah, I think that's perfect.

[00:13:16] ANNE: Okay. What do you have in mind? And I'm wondering if it's a natural extension of what you've been describing just now.

EMILY: During the summer, I want to read a short story or an essay every day for the summer, and what I've been loosely calling this is called Short Summer. And the idea being that the idea of reading a whole novel day after day on the page kind of feels overwhelming right now. But if I sit down, and I'm like, "Oh, I just have like 20-ish pages, 20 to 40 pages to read," I can find that time throughout the day, or even if I just have a good chunk of time while the kids are off at school to sit down.

And then it feels like not only can I get the beginning, middle, and end of a story or a thought or idea from an essay, but it feels like I'm more experiencing it than running through it like I might if I were listening to an audiobook while doing other things like dishes or laundry. I feel like it will force me to sit down, pen in hand, and really absorb the idea of what an author is trying to say.

[00:14:37] The thing I like about short stories is that they're so compact, and so much is expected out of... you know, every word seems to be important, whereas a novel just has kind of like forever to talk. Maybe not forever, but you get what I'm saying.

ANNE: Yes. Emily, some readers would notice that they want to do more deep reading, and they might choose a book and do some deep reading. Would you tell me how the project nature specifically appeals? I'm endlessly fascinated by how readers seek to make their reading lives fun and enticing and make their plans work for them and their personalities. I'm wondering if I'm projecting or making assumptions or if marrying the project with the wider aims is really critical here.

[00:15:30] EMILY: It makes a lot of sense because, like my running project, it was very simple. All I had to do was I needed a map and a Sharpie and a GPS app, which I used Strava, and I just picked a neighborhood and I went. Whereas this project with short stories and essays, it's essentially like I've got this collection of short stories, all I need is this book and a pen, and then I'm off. So it's very simple. And if I just map out one chunk of time, maybe it's like 45 minutes or an hour, to me, a project, if I'm going to complete it, I very much could make things more complicated, but if I want to complete the project, it's gotta be simple.

ANNE: I was instantly captivated by Short Summer. Obviously, the length is a factor here. Tell me about your relationship with short stories and essays.

[00:16:30] EMILY: Well, as an English major, you read a lot of anthologies, and so I wouldn't say that I have a whole lot of current connection with short stories themselves since college, really. I didn't really pick up a whole lot of short stories until one of my selections is a collection of short stories that you mentioned, I think, in one of your Quick Lit things, and I was like, "Oh, that looks cool." And I listened to it on audio, and I was blown away.

Again, it's that economy of language that's required in a short story that's just so wonderful that always draws me to them. But I kind of forget that I like them because they're not that popular. Like, short story collections are not that popular now.

[00:17:21] ANNE: I was just reading something in Publishing News, industry take, where the premise was there has never been a market for anthologies. Period. The end. Readers love short stories, writers love short stories, and also this is not profitable, or it almost feels even viable format, and yet they keep coming out and readers keep coming to them.

EMILY: Yeah. Well, because... Actually, I take that back. Lily King came out with a short story collection a few years ago, and I remember loving every single story that was in it.

ANNE: I still have a bookmark in that from several years ago. Thank you for... This episode has actually made me think, "What are the collections that I've begun?"

EMILY: But again, I listened to them on audio. I just remember loving all of them, but I don't really remember the gist of all of them. In preparation for this, I reread some of the short stories and essays with a pen in hand, and I was like, "Oh, now I really know this story. I like short stories so much that I don't read them, I guess."

[00:18:25] ANNE: Well, it sounds like perhaps you really want to do justice to them.

EMILY: Yes, yes.

ANNE: Which ironically might make you less likely to pick them up because it has to be like the right time. You need the space, you need the pen, you need the chair.

EMILY: Yes.

ANNE: Where an audiobook, you can listen in the car.

EMILY: All the time, yeah.

ANNE: Or whatever it is you're doing.

EMILY: Yeah, yeah. And so I feel like if I have the project connected to it, then I'll make the time. I'll be able to fit that in.

ANNE: Emily, it sounds like you know so much about your reading life. You've read short story collections in the past that you've really enjoyed. I know several of your favorites are going to be essay collections. What brings you to the podcast with this project? I'd love to know what I can add that you feel like you're still missing.

[00:19:06] EMILY: I guess maybe direction on what am I missing in the literary world that's either classic or contemporary published that maybe I wouldn't know about in terms of short stories or essay collections. I think there are more nonfiction essays out there. Those are a little bit more readily available. But I guess it's more direction, like, "Hey, here's something that maybe you hadn't thought about." Or if you're hearing something in my responses that's like, "I think you might want to try this author."

ANNE: Okay. So do I get to be the outside POV who looks at what would enhance this project? What might you want to read that you haven't even considered yet?

EMILY: Yeah. I think that would be really... Especially when it comes to nonfiction.

ANNE: And I hope that talking about it helps it feel even more immediate and makes you even more excited to get started.

EMILY: Yeah. Absolutely.

[00:20:00] ANNE: Okay. So we know where you're going in the future. We're going to flesh that out a little bit with identifying some more potential titles. But first we're going to look back at what you've enjoyed and haven't enjoyed in the past.

Emily, you know how this works. You're going to tell me three books you love, one you don't, and what you've been reading lately before we come back to Short Summer and your options there. How did you choose these books today?

EMILY: Well, I had to narrow it down to it being short stories and essays, so that made it easier because I haven't read too many of them. I was introduced to a short story collection by you called The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck. This is a collection of interlinking short stories, mostly set in New England.

The way it's structured is in what's called a hook and chain, which is actually what poems or songs are done, where the first and last line rhymes, and then the middle lines are all couplets. So that's how he structured these short stories, where the first story is kind of a standalone in the beginning, and then there's what you'd call couplets of short stories in the middle, and then the last short story is connected to the first short story.

[00:21:24] And I thought it was just a really interesting way to organize a collection. But the theme of all of them kind of being set in a similar area, discussing first love and all of that does kind of make them feel... Like, it doesn't feel like they're all willy-nilly short stories. They're just all kind of together, even though they're different stories, but they follow similar themes.

The title story is about two musicians, Lionel and David, both very talented, and they fall in love traveling through New England recording American folk songs. And this is set back in 1916. They do it on these wax phonographic cylinders, which when he was describing it, I was having a hard time thinking of it until I read the second story where she described them as looking like toilet paper rolls. Which was a really... I was like, "Oh yeah, now I have a good image."

[00:22:25] What I liked about these two interlinking stories is that the last story almost answers the questions of, like, how do you really know someone you love, and kind of the intensity of a first love. And there's one really great line that Lionel is kind of telling this story of his youth when he's in his 80s, I think, and he says, "You know, I look back on that time, and it's not with sadness or grief," but that he looks at his life like it could've been an inch longer. And I thought that was just such a beautiful way to... I guess you're looking back and being like, "Oh, that could have been different." And just a beautiful line that kind of encompasses everything.

It's also beautifully written. These stories are great. Again, I think those short lines talk about how compact a short story has to be, but also kind of open. Even though it's one line, it opens up a whole world that maybe you didn't know was there.

[00:23:31] And to me, I love the ending of a short story that kind of leaves you breathless and leaves you with a little bit of an ellipsis that is still satisfying. Like you don't feel like, "Oh, I want to know more." You're like, "Oh, but there's this whole other story." Like the story kinda keeps going without you, I guess that's what I think. You're lingering or thinking or wondering, and that's what I love about that one.

ANNE: Okay. Well, I'm really glad that worked for you. Emily, what's the second book you love?

EMILY: This is a collection of essays. It's called The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green. This came out in 2021. I felt like I couldn't escape the cover. I felt like it was everywhere. Maybe that's just because we were all home during the pandemic.

[00:24:25] Honestly, it's a joyful book. It's like 40-ish very short, two to three pages of essays of... I guess, would you call them essays? They're reviews of things like the internet and Diet Dr Pepper and Halley's Comet.

Green writes with such a joyful melancholy about him. He's just so aware of the bittersweetness of life. One of the lines I loved was, "We all know how loving ends, but I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I'm here." And I just think that's just such a wonderful sentiment to be like, "Look at this world that we're in."

And there is a little bit of COVID talk in there, so if people aren't ready for that, they might not want to go there. But I really liked it, because I'm kind of in a space where I want to look back at COVID and be like, "Wow, that was a really big thing that happened in our world. Let's think about it."

[00:25:32] ANNE: Yeah. Okay, so that's an example of an essay collection you loved. The John Green collection is really varied. He talks about Diet Dr Pepper and Wintry Mix and the Indy 500. Some of the things he discusses are on the surface fun, I almost want to say frivolous, but I don't know that joy feels frivolous right now, because he loves Diet Dr Pepper. But some from the jump are deep and moving. What is it about that reading experience that you really loved as a reader?

EMILY: I think it's just the bittersweetness. I think some people look at bittersweet as like there's some negativity around that. I've always looked at it as like that is the juice of life, where you can encompass something so light and Anne, like you said, frivolous along with deep and heart-centered. And that is what life is. And I think that's why I'm so attracted to that kind of writing in nonfiction, that it's like you can talk to me about something that's hard, but it's also beautiful at the same time. That something that is good doesn't always have to only be joyful.

ANNE: So you liked the bite-sized complexity?

[00:27:03] EMILY: Yes. Yeah. And I also just like John Green as a person, too. He seems very relatable to me. And so maybe that's why it's like I kind of felt like I was reading the inside thoughts of a person I just enjoy knowing, his public persona obviously, but I think I just like that part of it, too.

ANNE: Okay. That's good to hear. What did you choose for your third favorite?

EMILY: This is kind of more of a collection of nonfiction essays that's like, I would call memoir, like a memoir in essays. And it's This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett. They're all previously published, or they are addresses or speeches that she gave. So previously published in like The Washington Post or Vogue and other outlets.

[00:27:58] I'll just touch on two of the essays. One of them is The Getaway Car. This one is like part writing advice and part really... Like if you're somebody who likes to know about wonderful authors like Ann Patchett, you get a lot of juicy tidbits of what her life was like before she was Ann Patchett, capital Ann Patchett.

And the way she describes the whole idea of like you have this wonderful idea for a novel in your head, and it's just so perfect, and it's the greatest work of literature, and then getting it on paper is like impossible. And so I love that. And David Sedaris, if you can take a compliment from David Sedaris, says that this was the best essay he's ever read about writing, which I thought was pretty high praise coming from him.

ANNE: Whoa.

[00:28:55] EMILY: Yes, it was wonderful. And then the title essay, which is called This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, it actually begins by telling a lot about divorce and how her parents' divorce and her first marriage kind of falling apart. And it's done in a way that is respectful. It's not like a big rant. It's very interesting to follow along the story.

And then she basically ends with she was in kind of like a long-term boyfriend situation who also had gone through a divorce, and then they were there together for 11 years, and they end up getting married based on the fact that he had some kind of medical emergency, and she had to go fly and see him, and it was a whiteout snowstorm, and it was very cinematic and romantic. And then you're like, "You know, this is how this happy marriage kind of began."

[00:29:54] Then also throughout the essay collection, she touches on this relationship with her current husband, Karl, and you kind of... You don't get just the beginning of the marriage. You also get how you get there in the other essays that are in the collection.

I just found them really well written, but they also kind of flow together even though they were written totally separately for different magazines. I think also people who liked Ruth Reichl's Save Me the Plums, and the reason is because it reminds you of the time when magazines were king. These gorgeous magazines. There's an essay in there of her writing for Gourmet. And I love magazines. I wish magazines would come back in a big way, but we might be past that. But if you are somebody who liked Save Me the Plums, I think you'll definitely like this one as well.

[00:30:53] ANNE: Okay. Well, that's an interesting comparison, and now I want to reread both books. Emily, would you now tell me about a book that was not a good fit for you? And I'd love to hear what it was that didn't work.

EMILY: Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert. This is a collection of essays on... It's kind of like looking back at the '90s and 2000s, and feminism of that era, and kind of looking back essentially like, "Hey, maybe we weren't so good to women back then," is kind of the gist.

It's a wonderful book for nostalgia, especially the way she talks about the comedies of the early 2000s, and the way she kind of talks about women and feminism and the way they were treated. If you like culture discussions, those parts are done really well. But I didn't feel like this author had... I don't know. I struggled with knowing, "Okay, what did she come here to say? And what does that mean about our current situation?"

[00:32:08] I think the essays that I like both touch on a theme that's interesting, but they also bring it forward to like, okay, well, why now? Why are you writing this now? I think that's important when I'm reading a good essay, especially when it's about an idea that's not a personal essay. It's an essay about big ideas. I want to know, well, how does that reflect on my life and how I think about things? So I think that it was kind of missing a thesis, I guess.

ANNE: Okay. Do you happen to know if you like that in your short stories as well?

EMILY: Like the author came here to say something?

ANNE: Yeah.

EMILY: I think so, yeah.

ANNE: Okay.

EMILY: I like to try to figure out, like, okay, what is this author trying to do?

ANNE: Ooh.

[00:33:02] EMILY: And I guess that could encompass what are they trying to say about the larger world, or even just about these characters. Like, what are we trying to represent here?

ANNE: That's helpful. Emily, what have you been reading lately?

EMILY: Lately I read a great collection called Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein. This is kind of another look back at the pandemic, and it's like part cultural criticism, part memoir, where Naomi Klein was confused with another famous Naomi, and that may have caused some consternation in her life.

I really liked the author. She describes the mirror world. I found it useful to think of that idea as developing empathy for whatever I'm railing against right now. There's somebody on the other side of that mirror who is railing against the same thing, but from the other direction. And I feel like reading these essays that were really well-written and also interesting and definitely a topic for our time, it helped me kind of develop that empathy for the other side of the mirror.

[00:34:16] ANNE: Okay, that's very interesting. So, Emily, you loved The History of Sound, the short story collection by Ben Shattuck, The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green, and This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett. Not for you was Girl on Girl by Sophie Gilbert, and lately you've been reading Doppelganger by Naomi Klein.

Emily, we are finding options, short stories, and essay collections for your Short Summer project, a short story or essay every day over summer break, and you want to discover great stuff but also prioritize daily reading on the page. You mentioned in your submission, too, that you are hoping these short bursts of reading will be a much more satisfying substitute for social media. I imagine you're not the only one thinking along those lines right now.

[00:35:05] EMILY: Yes, I would like to go back to the days where I spent my time reading with books on the page, because that's actually something that probably, I would say, when I got into social media more is probably when I stopped reading on the page more. Now that I think about it, I'm realizing this in real time, if you can tell.

ANNE: Okay. Well, that sounds like an important observation. I mean, there's so much that you could possibly read, and we both know you are well aware of that. But something I really have in mind is what you said in your submissions, that you like short stories that leave you breathless. In your submission you said, like, the ending of Passing by Nella Larsen, or Joyce Carol Oates' Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? And also essays that make you think about them long after you finish them, like These Precious Days by Ann Patchett.

So I think I have an idea of what kind of reading experience you're going for there, but do you want to say more about that? I mean, how am I capturing it, like mirroring it back to you? Am I getting it right?

[00:36:13] EMILY: Absolutely. I think that the most satisfying part about reading a short story that does leave you in that "oh my gosh" moment is just that it... like I said before, it's like the story just keeps going on even though it's done, and I can still experience it even after I'm done reading.

ANNE: And also maybe that it still matters?

EMILY: Perfect. It still matters, yes. And at the end of a good essay, it still matters. Yes.

ANNE: We are not going to load up your TBR with 30 different titles today, but we always invite readers, request, beg readers to send in ideas for further books that you or readers who really resonate with what you're saying that you will enjoy, may enjoy reading next, and to go to whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com and comment in show notes, or sometimes people tell us on Instagram.

[00:37:10] So with that in mind, I'm going to share that you said in your submission that you love essays that take a specific thing that happened to the author and manage to make it universal. You love commentary on culture or investigative journalism, pop culture, literary criticism, true crime, politics, and many more fields.

And you love obscure micro histories of something like... you tossed out bananas in your submission. So readers, I'm just going to get us started today, but I'm sure you have so many more ideas. Bring 'em. We want to hear 'em. Can we jump in?

EMILY: Yes, let's go for it.

ANNE: First, I want to give you two resources. The first is Episode 452 of What Should I Read Next? with our guest, Jessica Crockett. It's called Get a Little Taste of a Lot of Good Stuff, and it aired in fall of 2024, but you could listen right now. It's evergreen. She wanted to talk about short stories and exploring more short stories, and we talked about all kinds of collections and standalones that she may enjoy reading next.

[00:38:11] So I recommend listening to the episode, but also you can go straight to the show notes and you can see the full list of titles we talked about. So even without listening, that's a good resource for those interested in exploring more. Now, that is short story specific, not essays.

We also did a Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club. We called it our own curated short story collection in 2024, and we listed a bunch of short stories for our readers. I'll share that link in... I'll share it with you, Emily, and I'll share it in show notes for those who are members. But I'll just toss off a few. We shared a George Saunders story, a Jhumpa Lahiri story, Weike Wang, Joanne Harris, Deesha Philyaw, and we shared The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury. I think he could be such a good classic author for you to explore, but we can say more about that in a moment.

[00:39:04] Emily, I'm definitely keeping in mind the idea that you want a story that leaves you breathless. I'm imagining that something that could look like is there being a change in perspective or understanding at the very end that makes you go, "What? What just happened?" Like maybe sends you back to the beginning, or something that makes you think, "Oh, I was sure it was going this one place, and I realized I didn't understand anything at all."

EMILY: Yes, exactly. I love a story that does that.

ANNE: Okay. In that case, I'd like to surface a crime collection, or how about a short story collection by a crime fiction author, Laura Lippman, for you called Seasonal Work. Is this one you know?

EMILY: No, not at all.

ANNE: Okay. Well, it came out maybe peak pandemic. It came out a few years back. But she is a well-known Baltimore area crime writer who is prolific. She has published a book a year as long as I've been paying attention to her work for 10 or 15 years now.

[00:40:05] And some of these stories have been previously published. Some were written specifically for the collection. So, as she was pulling these together with her editor, she said that really the stories fell into three different buckets. There's a section about Baltimore, and also, if you're a longtime reader of Laura Lippman, she has written a Baltimore PI protagonist named Tess Monaghan in multiple books.

So there's a section about Baltimore and Tess. There's a bunch of stories about girls and a bunch of stories about infidelity, which she calls the old crime staple. And she especially liked that the stories about infidelity addressed every point on the triangle: the unknowing other woman, the betrayed spouse, and also the cheating spouse, and there were some fun dynamics there.

[00:40:53] Something else I like about her is that she's very conscious of something that I heard you hint at, that novels may be easier, but short stories feel like a high-wire act, and you really have to deliver in less than 20,000 words, or for some of her stories, less than 5,000.

But she is so good at portraying what seems like an ordinary domestic kind of tale and turning it into something, to satisfied readers, deliciously dark and pleasantly off-kilter just in the course of a couple of sentences. These are tightly written on an individual level. They are all very varied, but hang together really nicely as a collection.

The beginning story, "Seasonal Work," is based on something she saw as a journalist when she was new in the field, and she said it was never proven that what she thought she was seeing was actually what she was seeing, but she believes it to this day.

[00:41:49] But it's about a family on the take posing as holiday helpers. It starts with this heartwarming scene that becomes something else, all narrated by one of the kids who's involved. How is this collection sounding to you?

EMILY: It's perfect. I love crime fiction anyway, and this would be a new author to me even, and it sounds great.

ANNE: Okay. I am glad to hear it. Now, I don't know if this is good news, bad news, or just news, but this collection is really great on audio. It has a full cast of narrators, but they have definitely chosen who will narrate each story with care. And if you want to mix it up, or... You know what? You can make the call, but it's been found to be really satisfying on audio for many readers.

EMILY: It's good to know, because my new favorite thing is to listen on audio while I'm reading on the page.

[00:42:48] ANNE: So you can have the experience of the audio, but also gain those benefits — I mean, this does sound like school, but I guess you were an English major — of doing the deep work of reading and writing and marking up?

EMILY: Yes.

ANNE: Okay. I love that for you. More stories with a little bit of a twist. I love So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan for you. Have you read anything by Claire Keegan?

EMILY: No.

ANNE: Okay. She's an Irish writer working now who really, I think, blew up on this side of the Atlantic with Small Things Like These, and her short story collection, Foster, that was packaged as a short little novella with an intro.

So both are so worth your time. Foster is a short story. Small Things Like These is a novella. But she's widely admired for being just one of the best writers working today. I loved Foster personally. I mean, I love all her work. I love her work. So I read Small Things Like These, and then I read Foster, and then I came to So Late in the Day and was expecting bittersweet, heartfelt, moving... Somehow her stories are bracing and gentle at the same time.

EMILY: Mm.

[00:44:01] ANNE: But then I read this collection, So Late in the Day, which is different. It's more like, "Gasp, what just happened? Oh, my." I didn't know Claire Keegan got dark, but this story collection gets dark.

The subtitle of this book is something like Stories of Men and Women. It might actually be, importantly, Women and Men. And there are three stories in this collection. One was published 25 years ago. The others are much more recent, and they've been curated and expanded with the way that they were chosen to be together in this collection and talk to each other.

But these characters are very flawed. I feel like everyone starts out a little bit domestically, but you see... I don't know. I thought I was seeing ordinary people in ordinary moments, but they don't work out that way. And what we end up with is women in extraordinary situations, sometimes perilous situations. I feel Claire Keegan kind of giggling as she's writing these and winking at the reader as they're going along.

Emily, is this sounding good at all?

EMILY: It sounds so good.

[00:45:15] ANNE: Okay. Then I won't overthink it too much.

EMILY: You've chosen all of my favorite things: winking at the reader, an author who maybe laughs at her own jokes while she's writing them. That's what I was imagining. Bracing and gentle. All of the adjectives were right up my alley.

ANNE: Okay. I am glad to hear it. Also, you need some essay collections. And you said that you love to read something kind of peculiar and unexpected, like a detailed history of the banana?

EMILY: Mm-hmm.

ANNE: I understand that wasn't specifically about bananas, but it did make me think of a book by Aimee Nezhukumatathil called World of Wonders. The subtitle will help you know what to expect. It's In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments.

She narrates her own audiobook, and it's fabulous. I should have told you, if there is an audiobook of So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan, I would listen to that in a heartbeat because she's Irish, and I want that accent in my ear, but I have zero personal experience with that. But I have listened to Aimee Nezhukumatathil before, and I love her voice.

[00:46:23] She's a poet writing nonfiction, as she's done with a couple of collections. And what I love about poets writing prose is I just feel like their gift is choosing the exact right words that fall in the exact right order, even when they're writing normal sentences with normal punctuation.

But this is a little bit personal storytelling, memoir-ish, and a whole lot of what she's learned from and observed in the natural world. She's really reveling and viewing the world with wonder and curiosity as she calls you to look at insects that you have or maybe haven't heard of, probably haven't if you're me, and plants, and her own experience just growing up as a kid and now a woman who loved nature and who saw a lot of varied nature as her family moved many times from Kansas to Arizona and then east to New York and Ohio.

[00:47:25] It's great on audio, but if you read the book with your eyes, there are illustrations that are just really lovely and gorgeous and may add to your, I don't know, your like, "Oh," experience of what you're reading. So I think this would be really fascinating, interesting, and also inspiring and calming and grounding. How is this sounding to you?

EMILY: It sounds wonderful. You know, the poets do have a way with words. It's like when a poet writes a novel, you know? You're just like, "Where did you come up with this?" So that definitely appeals to me.

ANNE: Well, I love that, and I'm glad to hear it. Let's go to West Virginia. The book I'm thinking of is actually in this year's Summer Reading Guide. It's Small Town Girls: A Writer's Memoir by Jayne Anne Phillips. Do you know her? She won the Pulitzer in 2024 with Night Watch, but this new release is a memoir in essays that all... I mean, they hang together, but they totally stand alone. I don't believe you would need to read them in order.

[00:48:35] But in it, she's exploring how her West Virginia upbringing, and specifically the small, specific West Virginia hometown she grew up in, shaped her way of seeing the world, her career, her friendships, her entire life. Do you know her?

EMILY: I don't.

ANNE: Well, I like this one for you because it is very extremely uniquely specific, and she goes in... I mean, I imagine she knows. Some people know West Virginia really well. Some people reading this are probably from her hometown, but many of us just don't have a clue. And she knows that she is sharing a unique, otherwise inaccessible experience with... I mean, even I'm practically next door in Kentucky, and I don't know anything about West Virginia.

But when you said that you like books that make the highly specific feel universal, she's amazing at saying, "Look close. Let me tell you what it's like," and then describing an emotional experience that feels so universally human. Or she describes things in such a way where something that I otherwise would've known nothing about, I can look closely and compassionately at.

[00:49:52] So maybe she's describing the legendary Hatfield and McCoy feud, where many people, I think, just know that it's a thing, but she really gets into the details in a way that humanizes the players, and also makes you see how it's relevant a long time ago and relevant today, and why it's a big deal, and what it means. And you're reading about the Hatfields and McCoys, but you know some of those emotions, and you can see them playing out in many places, not just West Virginia.

But she leaves West Virginia, too. She describes writers that she loves that have influenced her greatly, but she also describes things like being sent to a western Kentucky funeral in 1997 because her New York editor was like, "You're from Middle America. It's all the same, right? West Virginia, western Kentucky. Go sit at this girl's funeral," who was murdered in a school shooting that happened in Paducah, Kentucky, in 1997. And she's writing about one specific thing. But what she's writing about is about the broader human experience.

[00:50:52] And these essays are on a theme. And while they're all very friendly with each other and feel like they belong in this collection, they're not strongly linked. So it would be easy to read this book slowly, one essay at a time. You could jump around. You could turn to what interests you most first. She reads her own audio. It's good in that format, if that is useful information. How's this sounding?

EMILY: It sounds wonderful. The last story you talked about, I also listen to Pantsuit Politics, and I know that Sarah Stewart Holland, I think that might have been the shooting she was part of at her high school or... So this is a definite yes.

ANNE: Yes. That's the one. Well, I'm glad to hear you might find that interesting. I feel like I've said Secret Lives of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw so many times on this podcast, but it remains a really interesting pick that is so good on audio, and one that I have recommended fervently, and it feels like nonstop for going on six years now.

[00:51:55] Love Jhumpa Lahiri, especially Interpreter of Maladies. I think Ray Bradbury writes a lot of stories where you have no idea what's happening. You think you know what's happening, you're pretty sure you know what's happening, and then at the very end, he's like, "Oh, this is going to be fun when they read my closing paragraphs." I think you may really enjoy his style if you've not read him.

Toni Morrison has only written one short story, but I think you may enjoy it. That's called Recitatif. And then Hanif Abdurraqib wrote a really interesting, engaging, fantastic on audio, he reads it himself, collection called They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, where he writes about specific songs or musical experiences, but then takes that one specific thing and turns it into the universally human. I think you may enjoy seeing that done with music. Flannery O'Connor is another classic where you get to the end and go, "Wait, what?" Anything jumping out at you here? Is this the kind of variety you're looking for?

[00:52:56] EMILY: Absolutely. I already have The Secret Lives of Church Ladies on my TBR, so that one will definitely get read this summer for sure. I've kind of danced around Ray Bradbury, but never picked any of them up, and so I think that will definitely be on my list, too.

ANNE: He'd be great to take just a little taste of. I mean, it'd be easy to Google Ray Bradbury stories I can read right now, so you can hold it in your hand. You could print off a short story that's available on the internet, and then you could get yourself a collection that you can highlight the bits, if you enjoy what you read a sampling of.

EMILY: Yes, definitely.

ANNE: All right. Emily, I really enjoyed our explorations today. How are you feeling about your project?

EMILY: Oh, I'm feeling very excited, like I have a direction to go in, definitely some new authors that I hadn't considered before. This is great.

[00:53:50] ANNE: All right. Well, I am delighted to hear it. Now, we talked about a lot of potentials, but the ones we really honed in on were Seasonal Work by Laura Lippman, So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan, World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and we ended with Small Town Girls by Jayne Anne Phillips. Of those books, what's really jumping out at you? What do you think you might read next in your project?

EMILY: I think I'm going to go for the crime fiction with Seasonal Work. That one sounds like a good place to start.

ANNE: All right. I'm happy to hear it. I hope it's a fit, but regardless, I hope you learn something really interesting about yourself and your reading life with it.

EMILY: Thank you so much.

ANNE: Hey, readers. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Emily, and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next for her short summer. Find Emily on Substack and find the full list of titles we talked about today. We have all those links at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

[00:54:45] Follow our show on Instagram at @WhatShouldIReadNext to keep up with summer reading updates and what's new at What Should I Read Next HQ.

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Thanks to the people who make this show happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by executive producer Will Bogel, Media production specialist Holly Wielkoszewski, social media manager and editor Leigh Kramer, community coordinator Brigid Misselhorn, community manager Shannan Malone, and our whole team at What Should I Read Next? and Modern Mrs. Darcy HQ. Plus the audio whizzes at 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.