I’m looking for 5-star stunners

[00:00:00] MEREDITH WIGGINS: This was the book that single-handedly ended my policy, which up to then had sort of been lifelong, of finishing every book that I read. That was the book where I was like, "I'm not doing that anymore."

ANNE BOGEL: I love that you can point to the one.

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.

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[00:02:08] Readers, today's guest has a book quest I cannot wait for us to tackle together. Meredith Wiggins works in library services from her hometown of Lawrence, Kansas, which means she is well-versed in recommending books to readers and finding great titles for herself.

Lately, though, Meredith has run into a conundrum. Over the past few years, she has struggled to find the five-star reads that leave her in the best kind of tears at book's end. For the past 18 months or so, Meredith has had a hard time finding these books. Instead, she's been on a long run of three or three-and-a-half-star reads. Not bad, but not what she's looking for. And she's here for my help.

Meredith has already tried a few solutions that haven't much helped, so I'm excited to dig deeper into what's going on and what tactics might put Meredith back on track to find these standout titles she's seeking. We will zoom in on what's happening and what's not working, and I hope to leave Meredith with more insight into what exactly is going on here, plus ideas for titles and techniques that might just turn this trend around in the year to come and find plenty of stunners that she'll be glad she read. Let's get to it.

[00:03:17] Meredith, welcome to the show.

MEREDITH: Hi, Anne. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be speaking with you.

ANNE: Oh, the pleasure is mine. I'm excited to dive in today and was really intrigued by your submission. So I'm very excited to get into it. Meredith, we'd love just to hear a little bit about yourself. Would you give our readers a glimpse of who and where you are?

MEREDITH: My name is Meredith Wiggins. I use she/her pronouns. I currently live in my beloved Lawrence, Kansas. I am a queer elder millennial. I've lived in the Deep South, that's where I'm originally from, the Midwest slash Great Plains. I lived in the Southwest for a little while and moved back to Lawrence about a year and a half ago.

In my professional life, I work with law students, supporting their professional development, helping them think about what kind of law they might be interested in practicing, and helping them polish up those skills so that when they go out into the world they feel prepared.

[00:04:17] I also work part-time in my public library, my local public library. I mostly do reader services, so sort of what you're doing here, interacting with patrons, suggesting books if they're looking for something, or helping them locate the read that they're hoping for. But I also do moonlight in sort of nonfiction or info services.

When I'm not reading or at work or spending time with my pets and my friends, I'm a huge thrifter. I've recently taken up junk journaling. That's been really fun. I weirdly love to write parody versions of pop songs. That's a thing I got really into a few years ago and still do fairly regularly. When I get the chance.

ANNE: Need that in your bio. Now, you shared an additional fun fact in your submission that What Should I Read Next? is adjacent. Would you tell us about By the Book?

[00:05:11] MEREDITH: Yes. Some of your listeners may remember the podcast By the Book. I think it wrapped up a couple of years ago, but the hosts would read and live by the advice of a different self-help book for a couple of weeks at a time. I don't remember where I first heard about it, but I wrote a blog post many, many years ago for the public library that I work at now saying, like, "Hey, if you like reading and you're looking for new ways to get recommendations, here are a few things you might try."

I shouted out that podcast in that blog post. And when I was listening to the podcast again a few weeks later, I noticed that they said they were recced by the librarians of Lawrence, Kansas. And I was like, "That's me. I'm the librarian of Lawrence, Kansas." I guess I should say they might have been referring to someone else, but I have decided in my heart all of these years that they probably meant me.

[00:06:04] ANNE: Sounds good to me. And readers, if you are ready for a throwback episode that is still a lot of fun, you can listen to Kristen and Jolenta of By the Book on episode 121 of What Should I Read Next?, where I recommend three books I think would be fun for them to dig into on the show. And they did actually dig into one of them, and they also shared the books that they loved and didn't love for their podcast. It's a lot of fun.

MEREDITH: I think I remember definitely the book they didn't love. I know they talked about it on one of their own podcasts, and I think it was one they talked about with you as well.

ANNE: Isn't it funny how those ones that do not work for us and other people often are really sticky?

MEREDITH: Yeah.

ANNE: Really sticky. And that makes them easy to talk about down the road, which serves our show very well. Okay, that's a fun throwback to 2018. But Meredith, we want to talk about your reading life today. Would you paint a picture for me, past or present? What does reading mean to you? What role does it play in your life?

[00:07:05] MEREDITH: I think that "reader" has always been one of the primary identities that comes to mind when I think about who I am. I started reading really early when I was a kid and just sort of never stopped. Other interests came and went, but wanting to dig into books and think about them and enjoy them in lots of different ways always stuck with me.

I read fairly widely. I think there are excellent books on pretty much every topic and in pretty much every genre. What I read most often these days is romance, though I prefer historical to contemporary. And right now there's a little bit of a lull in historical publication, so that's a little bit of a sadness for me as a romance reader. But I also read a lot of contemporary fiction. I love popular nonfiction, but I think I'm willing to try most types of books.

My default like "this is not going to work for me" is if at any point I start sort of mentally copyediting the book. I'm like, "Oh, I think you used three words there and one word would have been more effective," I'm like, "Okay, this isn't for me. Time for me to be wrapping this up and let it go."

[00:08:27] But I'm in a couple of book clubs, mostly through my work. One is very closely aligned with books that I would probably pick out to read myself. The other has really been more books that I probably would never have picked up. And both of those have been really joyous experiences to be part of because, as I told you when I wrote in, I've kind of struggled over the last 18 months, at this point coming up on two years, to find books that I really loved. And so just having the opportunity to talk about them in depth, even if I didn't love a particular read, with other folks has been pretty great.

ANNE: Let's dive right into that dilemma. So Meredith, you wrote in with a specific plea about your run of... Do you want to take it from here?

[00:09:20] MEREDITH: Sure, yeah. I feel like I've been in a little bit of a rut of three to three-and-a-half-star books, which I think there is a huge place in most readers' lives for that three to three-and-a-half-star book range. To me, that means I probably enjoyed it, I didn't regret that I read it. There were probably some parts of it I thought really worked and some parts of it that I thought didn't really work.

But for many years I felt like I was pretty lucky/skilled at finding consistently a four-star, even a five-star read. And for about the last 18 months, I feel like it's really been three-star after three-star after three-and-a-half-star read. I'm very stingy with five stars, but what I'm looking for really are like the stunners.

I think in my submission I said, I know it's a five-star read if I get to the last page and sort of independent of what else I felt about it during the process of reading it, I clutch it to my chest and I'll often sort of start to well up and cry a little bit. Not necessarily because it's sad at the ending, but because I feel it stuck the landing so beautifully and wrapped up in what, in retrospect, was the only way it could have wrapped up. And I have not had as many of those types of reads as I would like to be finding over the last couple of years.

[00:10:49] I think when I wrote in to you, I said, "Help me, Obi-Anne Kenobi, and then immediately hated myself when I didn't submit." But you know, sometimes the only way to get past a truly cringy moment is to share it with an audience of podcast listeners, I guess.

ANNE: I mean, we found that to be the case here.

MEREDITH: Yes. I've asked people around me whose taste I share and whose taste I don't share for recommendations. I've tried reading more widely. I've tried really honing in on genres I know that tend to work for me. I've tried reading in different formats. I've tried reading more. I've tried reading less. And it just seems like, for whatever reason, I'm not having a lot of success at connecting with those reads right now.

[00:11:33] ANNE: Meredith, what I'm really wondering is, I mean, a reading experience is us meeting a book, very dynamic in a certain time, place, and circumstance. And we're talking about the book end of that equation. But I'm wondering when you reflect on where you are in this season of the past 18 months, if you have any glimmers of insight or if possible hypotheses present themselves. The answer could absolutely be, Mm, no.

MEREDITH: It's interesting that you ask that question because I had, for various personal reasons, a pretty difficult 2020 to beginning of 2023-ish. But I felt like I wasn't having the difficulties sort of with reading that I think I've had more recently, where my life has been a little bit calmer. So maybe there is something there about just I've got space in my life for other things to be taking up more energy and more enjoyment than I did sort of over that period of time.

[00:12:45] But I can't say that there's anything in particular that I would point to and be like, I think you're right. I think it's me, and rather than just not finding the books well.

ANNE: Let's pin that up on the bulletin board of our minds. But also, what I really want for you and every reader is welcome calm in your personal life, great books in your reading life.

MEREDITH: Yes.

ANNE: Both And. So that's our goal. Thank you for describing what a three or three-and-a-half-star book feels like for you. You enjoyed it, no regrets, but definitely not a stunner. But I'd love to hear in the abstract, because I hope you've chosen four and five-star books for your loves. I'm thinking that that's probably the case.

MEREDITH: Yes.

ANNE: Okay, wonderful. Can you tell me in the abstract what a four or five-star read would feel like?

[00:13:38] MEREDITH: I would say a four star read is one where I feel like it's done really well and is probably also aligned with just broadly the kinds of things I tend to enjoy reading about, or the kinds of things that I find make for a compelling read, which is probably going to be strong writing, characters that I find compelling. I don't need to find them likable, but I do need to find them compelling, as well as probably more a setting that interests me than a plot. I can read about a book that is no one doing anything if I think that the writing is good and the characters are compelling, and you put it in a place that interests me. I do not really need a plot to move me forward.

A five-star read would take all of that and combine it with some sort of emotional punch that just really hits me and will usually mean I don't really think there's anything in the book that could have been done better than it was.

ANNE: Whoa.

[00:14:45] MEREDITH: Yeah, I'm pretty picky about a five-star. In a good year, I might hit like five to ten, and even that's a little high, to be frank.

ANNE: And what was it in 2025? Do you happen to know or have a ballpark?

MEREDITH: Probably two to three that I can think of off the top of my head.

ANNE: Okay, Meredith, that's good information to put in the hopper. Thank you very much. I'd love to take this to the specific nitty-gritty and talk about the books you brought to the show today. Are you ready?

MEREDITH: Absolutely.

ANNE: 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, and then we will try to tease out what's going on with your readerly dilemma, and if we might be able to put some potential four, or even five, but I'm going to aim for four-star reads on your radar.

MEREDITH: Fantastic.

[00:15:39] ANNE: Okay. How'd you pick the books you brought today?

MEREDITH: I decided to go for books that I had really enjoyed/loved in the past sort of year and a half that I'd been going through this bit of a reading slump. I picked the book that sort of kicked off the reading slump because it was so good I felt like I was in a little bit of a book hangover afterwards, a book that I've returned to six or seven times over that period of time, and then one book that just sort of came out of nowhere and delighted me.

ANNE: Okay, I love it, and I trust that we'll get to hear which is which.

MEREDITH: Yeah.

ANNE: What's the first book you love?

MEREDITH: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. This is the book that kicked off the book hangover. I am extremely interested in art crime of all kinds and art theft, particularly. I don't remember exactly how I first got into that as a little hyper fixation, but for the past few years, anytime there's an opportunity to engage with that, I just want to know more about it.

[00:16:44] I mentioned this to a former boss of mine, and she was like, "Oh, you've got to read The Goldfinch," and brought me her copy and loaned it to me. It took me a while to get to reading it, but once I did, I really just found myself sort of lavishing in it. I don't know if there's a better word. I wanted to just sort of roll around in the language and the characters.

I think one of the things that really made me appreciate that book is I often struggle when I feel like a writer or a narrator is using language that the characters wouldn't have access to or wouldn't go to regularly. And because in that book she's writing about sort of a variety of worlds, she's writing about sort of high New York society, she's writing about sort of the down and out slums of Las Vegas, she's writing about Eastern European organized crime, it goes so many places that she's able to really use a lot of really interesting ways of having the characters express themselves.

[00:17:50] I thought that the narrator of the book has such a specific voice that changes across the book because it follows him from being, you know, a fairly young kid to being a grown man, but it always sounds like, Oh, yeah, this person would talk this way.

To tie that back to art crime, the premise of the book, which you may know, is that there's a terrorist attack at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when the narrator of the book is there as a child, and he sort of inadvertently steals a painting, The Goldfinch, while he's there and keeps it with him for many, many years.

It gets into, where did the painting go, who's trying to recover the painting, and I just thought that it was lush, I guess, is the word I'm thinking of. There was never a moment in it where I felt like she doesn't know what she's doing.

And I hit that last sort of six or seven pages, and I started to get that five-star feeling where I started to feel like, "Oh, she's going to stick the landing in a way that always worries me a little bit when I'm reading a book because like, I might not going to feel like this was brought together or completed satisfactorily.

[00:19:08] ANNE: So before you started to get that five-star feeling at the very end, what were you thinking?

MEREDITH: I was thinking this is a really solid four-star read. I'm invested in it. I care about the characters, even if I don't like the characters. Even when it takes a detour into something that doesn't interest me as much, I feel like there's a purpose behind it. But when I hit that sort of last few pages, and it started to tie the rest of the book together, that's when it really hit a five-star for me.

ANNE: That's reassuring to me that it didn't leapfrog because being able to think about the experience of a book as a whole is so much easier than trying to rack my brain for, what are the last six or seven pages like for all these books I might consider recommending to Meredith? So thank you for that.

Speaking of Donna Tartt, I feel like it's about time. I don't mean to be anxious or demanding, but I think it's about time for a new one.

[00:20:02] MEREDITH: It does feel like we've sort of hit that space of time that she tends to put them out. The Goldfinch was what, like 2013? Right? I would love if there were another one.

I also really liked The Secret History. I've started and loved The Little Friend several times, and I always sort of hit the same point. And I'm like, "I think I'm just ready to not be reading right now. I'm just going to move it on."

ANNE: That's really interesting.

MEREDITH: Yeah, I would be delighted if she had another book come out.

ANNE: Now I want to pick up The Goldfinch again, which I don't think I've read since it came out in 2013. Meredith, what's the second book you love?

MEREDITH: The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles. KJ Charles is an extremely prolific romance writer who writes primarily queer historical romance, also does some paranormal. I think she's released somewhere between like 50 and 60 books, and I've probably read maybe all but like five or six of them. And those sort of unintentionally haven't read them, not like purposely sat them out.

[00:21:09] This is one of her more recent releases. I think it came out just a couple of years ago. And it is about a newly made baronet and the smuggler in early 19th-century England that he sort of inadvertently took up with without knowing who they were. I think she writes the most interesting pairings when it comes to romance.

The characters are always really clearly defined and always have really understandable motivations that can push up against each other in really interesting ways. She's also, I think, just a really strong mechanical writer. I never feel like there's words out of place. I never feel that there's a twist I don't understand for the sake of having a twist.

One thing I really love about her writing is that I think she has sort of the perfect amount of external narration. You know, she'll have a character say something that's a little absurd, and the narrator will be like, Oh, yes, he said, comma, inaccurately, period, which is about the amount of sort of external weight I find really charming in writing.

[00:22:21] She also writes just beautiful connection between characters. The books are often pretty spicy and I think really hot. This is also one that I think is fantastic on audiobook. I've probably listened to it six or seven times since it came out on audio. And I'm not normally as much of an audio reader as I am a hard copy reader. But the performer is fantastic and just does a really great job of sort of drawing out the differences in the characters.

ANNE: That sounds really interesting. This feels quite different from The Goldfinch. Like, how would you describe the tone of this book?

MEREDITH: It is a heavier or slightly darker romance. There's a whole subplot with a... actually, now that I'm saying this, with the theft of a lot of gold coin that in the subsequent book you find out is also sort of related to ancient art. So there's a connection that I hadn't articulated in my own brain until then. But there's a whole subplot with sort of difficulty between their families. It brings weighty concerns, but it's not a heavy read.

[00:23:31] I think she's really good at doing the thing that I like best in a romance, which is for it to be about fundamentally good people trying to be kind to one another and operate with integrity in difficult situations. And what kindness and integrity mean to those characters can be so different that that's where a lot of the conflict comes from. I find that really rewarding as a reader.

ANNE: All right, that is good to know. I don't believe I've read KJ Charles before. I might actually hang up with you and then remember the four novels I've read. That has certainly happened before. But I do know that I'm intrigued by the one coming out in April 2026 called How to Fake It in Society from KJ Charles.

MEREDITH: I've read that one.

ANNE: Oh, well, so you know there's a painting in that book.

[00:24:22] MEREDITH: I do. Yeah, it was described as queer Bridgerton meets The Goldfinch, I think. And I was like, "You know what? I work at a library. I'm going to put in for an ARC." It's very good. I enjoyed it very much. A little bit lighter, I think, than The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen. She has some that are much more of a romp and some that are a little bit heavier. And this one, I think, straddles that edge.

ANNE: Putting you on the spot, what is the star rating for these two KJ Charles books?

MEREDITH: So for The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen, I think I started at a four, and then I kept going back and listening to it over and over and I was like, "That's stupid, it's a five." And for How to Fake It in Society, probably a four. It's not among my top tier of hers. So I might say 3.5 if I'm feeling a little ungenerous. But I did really enjoy it.

I read it very quickly and liked the characters. I think it's more that she's written several books now where it's sort of like the rake or the con and the honest man that loves him. And I know I've just described that being my fundamentally favorite plot in romance, but I've read that enough from her that I think I'm ready for her to maybe explore a different dynamic. So I think that one's a me thing.

[00:25:35] ANNE: Okay. But still, a me thing is definitely something ever-present in your reading life. So we want to know about that.

MEREDITH: Absolutely.

ANNE: Meredith, what's the third book you love?

MEREDITH: The third book I love is the one that sort of came out of nowhere and just delighted me. And it is A Poor Collector's Guide to Buying Great Art by Erling Kagge. So this is nonfiction, and it is written by a sort of Nordic explorer and also an art collector. And I picked it up because I am a collector of many things. I am a magpie. I see something shiny and I want it. I saw the cover of this and was like, "Oh, that's great. I don't have a lot of money to collect art, but I would love to buy great art."

[00:26:22] And it does turn out that when he's saying a poor collector he's speaking in extremely relative terms. But that part ended up being what was so interesting to me about the book was he's saying poor and meaning I have tens of thousands of dollars to spend, or even maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars to spend, but the art that I want costs millions.

And I saw some reviews of it that were really like, "That's not a poor collector. Come on. This is not the book I thought," which I understood. But I also thought that's really interesting because in the world of fine art, yeah, there's not functionally a huge difference between having $50,000 to spend and having $1,000 to spend at a certain point because so much of the art that you are most drawn to or most interested in is still so far outside that range, which I thought was such an interesting perspective that I just instantly was like, "Oh, I want to know what the person has to say."

[00:27:25] He has a really interesting tone in the book as well. He's not telling jokes, but he's being very funny throughout. He's very witty and also very informative in a way that... I think my review of this book was like, I think this guy would be insufferable to be around, but this was an incredibly fun read. And so it was a chance to learn more about something that interests me from a person who I think just had a really singular voice that I enjoyed spending time with. It's also just a beautiful book to look at. It's just an object. It was really gorgeous.

I think he shows up very briefly in the preface to Blair Braverman's Welcome to the [bleep] Ice Cube. She's sort of narrating an experience where she's out doing some Arctic exploration, and there's an explorer there from a Nordic country named Erling. And I was like, "I don't know why you would name-check that person unless it was Erling Kagge." Sorry. That's my brain just running away with me.

ANNE: No, that's really fun.

[00:28:31] MEREDITH: I picked that up recently and ended up not finishing the book for sort of a variety of reasons. But I was like, "I'm pretty sure I'm going to be talking about this guy really soon."

ANNE: That's so fun. I have a story to tell you and I have questions.

MEREDITH: Okay.

ANNE: So when you sent in your What Should I Read Next? submission, I read that you love this book. And I've read several books by Erling Kagge and have really enjoyed them. And something that I think is interesting about his tone is he was like, "I know things, I know all the things, listen to me." And when I want a really strong opinionated take, like have a take and own it, he does that really well.

But his subjects are things like walking, why walking is incredible and why you should walk two miles to work every day like I do. He describes it as the perfect length. And what weather is not amenable to walking two miles to work? None. The answer is none. And they're like these nice little small compacts.

[00:29:30] I read his book on PolarExplorers and I've read some of his other more philosophical books. So I knew his name, but to have him associated with fine art, I was like, "What?" But also, I was interested. And it was hard to track down a copy. And then I ordered it and it came shrink-wrapped. And then... well, the Bogels were not going to do Christmas Eve books and chocolate this year because we thought our college kids just want to read what they want to read. They don't need parental contributions to their titles. They have stacks.

One kid was not inundated with books and wanted some, but at the last minute we ended up doing books and chocolate and everybody got books. But I ended up giving this to Will. And I thought, "Can I do that? Is that rude?" But no, he actually just finished it. He really enjoyed it. And we had a lot of great conversations because of it.

MEREDITH: Oh, that's amazing.

[00:30:16] ANNE: But this book was published by his publisher because he is also a publisher in Norway. This dude is a real, like, Renaissance man in a way that I didn't realize was possible in 2025. I'm intrigued. I want to know what he and Blair Braverman talked about on the Ice Cube. And it was a pamphlet catalog insert. This essay accompanied a show drawn from his collection that showed like 10 years ago at a Museum of Modern Art in Scandinavia. But it was not that easy to track down a copy, but you stumbled upon it. So there's my story. And please tell me how you stumbled upon a copy of this book. I'm so curious.

MEREDITH: I mentioned earlier I do a lot of junk journaling. So I also spend a lot of time just flipping through random magazines and publications. And I think it had gotten a shout out in one of the magazines that I looked at, just as like an ad of a book that you could buy. It wasn't a review or anything like that. But the title was so intriguing. The cover is bright orange so it really drew my eye. I think I ended up putting in a request for it through interlibrary loan.

[00:31:24] So the finding of it initially was a surprise. And then one day I was just like, "That sounds interesting. I'll put in a request. If it comes in, that's great." And it did take them a while to track it down and get it for me. But that is the magic of interlibrary loan is they can, given enough time, find practically anything for you.

ANNE: Well, I'm glad you found it and I'm glad I found it because of you. So thank you very much for that.

MEREDITH: That's so cool. Thank you for sharing that.

ANNE: So, how would you sum up what made it a five-star for you? I definitely have some ideas and I have a picture in my mind, but let's make it better.

MEREDITH: Definitely the chance to sort of immerse myself in an area I just don't know that much about was really interesting. What you said about if you want a take where it's like, I have the right take, and all you have to do is listen to me and then you will have the right take. I don't always want to be in the mind of someone who has that sort of sense of certainty, but this made for a really interesting read. And I think a little bit the surprise of it. I was expecting to enjoy the book, but I was sort of like, "I'll skim the writing maybe."

[00:32:32] Once I realized that he was not talking about art that would be accessible to me as a much poorer collector, I was like, "Well, maybe I'll just skim through it and I'll look at the art that he has." And then I just really got sort of swept up in what he had to say about the ways that he finds art, what makes him want to collect it. I guess really the voice of the narrator was a big one for me here.

ANNE: The voice of the narrator. Okay. The surprise, the immersion in unfamiliar topic. Reader, since you can't see what Meredith and I are picturing in our minds, this book does contain, if not all the paintings and sculptures and fiber arts that came from his personal collection to be shown in this gallery. It's many, many of them. This is a heavily illustrated book and his words are sharing his philosophy.

[00:33:25] You know, something I think I enjoyed about this, Meredith, is it felt like him saying, after much thought, this is what is working for me. I really appreciated the strong theory that I feel like you could bounce stuff off and think about what's he really saying.

And he said some things that I think are really applicable to the reading life. He talks endlessly about how having the money to buy anything available means you don't end up with a very good collection.

MEREDITH: Great, yes.

ANNE: I thought that was so interesting. He's like, "You think you don't want no limitations. You think like, oh, I only have $50,000 to spend, what could I possibly? But people operating within the confines of tight budgets have to be really thoughtful about what they want to bring into their lives."

And also the way he talked about... now, I don't think this is as applicable to the reading life, but he talked about how the common advice is just like, "Oh, buy what you love. Buy what you love immediately." But he said that's not a way to end up with a very interesting collection.

[00:34:36] MEREDITH: Yeah, I think that's a really great observation from him and for you to call it out as well. When I think about what ends up on my five-star shelf, they are things that I loved, but I also think there are a lot of things on there that people are like, "That book made your list? Next to this book? What puts them together?" And I'm like, "They just hit in a way."

ANNE: Yeah. Now, I started by saying I don't know how much that applies to books, but he does say if all you do is buy the things that — I'm adding words you already know — that you love, there's nothing challenging there. And good art should challenge. It should make you think. It should not give up all its meaning at first glance.

I could bend that to say a lot of things about what brings me satisfaction in my reading life. Like a good book doesn't give up everything it has in its worlds when you're reading it the first time through when you're really tired. Good books are better than that. They demand more than that. Okay, now I think I might be taking Erling Kagge a little too far, but I'm glad you brought it to the show.

[00:35:46] All right, left turn. Tell me about a book that did not work for you, and please tell me where was the mismatch?

MEREDITH: This came immediately to mind. The Nix by Nathan Hill. I think I said in my submission that this was the book that single-handedly ended my policy, which up to then had sort of been lifelong of finishing every book that I read. That was the book where I was like, "I'm not doing that anymore."

ANNE: I love that you can point to the one.

MEREDITH: I remember where I was when I finished it and was like, "Never again." So this book is sort of an intergenerational family saga. It's also a satire. It's also sort of experimental fiction. And it is about sort of failing academic who has been estranged from his mother for most of his life. And she comes back into his life as an adult when she is caught on camera throwing some rocks. Though I think I remember it being more like pebbles at a political candidate that she doesn't like.

[00:36:55] The book goes into a lot of places of exploring who was she that he didn't know, what is his life like. I'm not always a fan of an intergenerational family saga anyway. Sometimes I enjoy them, but for the most part, family saga is not what I tend to reach for.

But I think with this one, what made me feel so alienated from it as a reader was that I felt like the writing was very impressed with itself. I felt like a lot of the choices that were being made were designed to say, look what I can make a book do, look what I can make language do in a way that didn't serve the characters and didn't serve the story. I kept thinking like self-indulgent when I was reading it.

I mean, I love The Goldfinch, which is also, I think, a pretty self-indulgent book in a lot of ways, but I thought always felt connected to who the character was. And for whatever reason, this book just really didn't work for me in that sense.

[00:38:03] It took me a long time to finish it. I remember I kept dragging it out and dragging it out and dragging it out, but I was determined to finish it. And when I finally did finish it, I thought like, "Well, at least I'll feel accomplished that I stuck with it and I challenged myself." And instead, I felt like, "I punished myself."

So many people I know have told me that they really loved this book, that they thought it was really, I don't want to just say interesting again, but that they thought there was a lot to dig into. And what they wanted to dig into, I wanted to roll my eyes at. And so it's the book that I sort of go to because since then, if a book isn't working for me, I will tend to say either this is not for me or this is not for me right now, and I'll just stop. But this is the book that I can point to that I was like, "That was never going to be for me and I shouldn't have kept plugging away at it."

ANNE: [00:38:52] ANNE: That's so interesting. I listened to this book on audio and I did it because I heard such good things, including from... I mean, it was numerous mentions from What Should I Read Next? guests that pushed me over the edge. I don't notice as much about the prose when I'm listening on audio. I mean, I can tell you if it worked, it didn't, but I'm not great at picking up structure and more of the craft. But it's the story that really, I think, hits hard when I listen.

The tone wasn't what I expected. It was snarky and satirical, almost farcical. We have only talked about a limited number of books today, but I was wondering how that tone felt to you and how much that influenced it not working for you.

MEREDITH: When I think about books that I've tended to really love or that have worked for me, I don't think a snarky tone or a satirical tone tends to be a major feature of those books. So it wouldn't surprise me if tonally that was one of the reasons it didn't work.

[00:39:58] ANNE: Okay, I'm just going to think about that. Meredith, what have you been reading lately?

MEREDITH: Recently, I feel like I've been reading a lot of nonfiction. I read a lot of Jon Krakauer in 2025, and I enjoyed pretty much all of it. That included a couple of his bigger works. I read Into the Wild, I read Into Thin Air. I also read a collection of some of his magazine pieces. That was really interesting. Loved that.

I've also read sort of just a lot of books over the past few months, maybe a year that deal with accumulation, consumerism, collection. As I mentioned, I'm a big collector. I collect a lot of things. I don't have a big house, so I think a lot about like, where is the line between this is a thing that I'm collecting for the enjoyment of it versus maybe I'm sliding more into the compulsive buying side of it.

[00:40:57] I'm just about to start rereading a book that I did really love in 2025 called American Bulk: Essays on Excess by Emily Mester, I think. That's an essay collection where she sort of looks at a family history of hoarding and ties that into some disordered eating that she lived through and just sort of the... I'm making it sound like such a bummer of a read and it's not. It's funny and interesting and engaging. But I recommended that to a friend, and so we're sort of pair-reading it right now.

I think when I wrote into you, I was reading Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Ended up not finishing that one. I loved the... I'm saying “tone” a lot. I'm realizing that might be a thing for me. I loved the tone of it, I loved the narrator, but we were 200 pages into a 1000-page book, and I still didn't know what the book was really going to do. And I felt like maybe it's time to put that one down for now.

[00:41:59] I'm listening to Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase on book on CD in my car, which is a classic romance that is just as good as everybody told me that it was. It's wonderful.

ANNE: Book on CD.

MEREDITH: Yes. I have a fairly old car, so I have a CD player and I don't have Bluetooth connectivity in the car. And I found it at a library book sale for a quarter. Brand new, unopened. And I was like, "Well, this feels like the time." And it's wonderful. The narrator is Kate Reading. She's fantastic. It's just so charming. The characters are so compelling and interesting. And it's so funny.

ANNE: We've been talking about all the 80s and 90s media with our 15-year-old lately. Got a tape deck, adding to our CD collection. I just didn't see. Yeah, we'd really love a car with a CD player right now. I'll tell him, and he'll be jealous.

[00:42:52] MEREDITH: Another book that was a five-star read for me in this last sort of 18 months to two years was The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt, which is the story of a young woman who learns that she was kidnapped at a very young age by the people who raised her. She discovers this when they disappear and she is told, "By the way, you are an heiress who was kidnapped at birth." And it's how she navigates that experience using the very particular sort of social skills that her kidnappers/sort of erstwhile parents imparted to her. It's a novella, so it's a quick read.

The first time I read it, I felt like, "Am I missing something?" or "Did I not read carefully enough?" And then I just realized the narrator is very intentionally leaving sort of gaps and things that she says. I got to the end of the book. I was so delighted I just flipped back to the first page and started again just so I could appreciate all of the places that the author left clues that I had just not picked up on.

[00:44:04] ANNE: Well, no, because how could you?

MEREDITH: Yeah. And that one truly was a… just picked it up on a whim in the airport because it has a... Wayne, is it Thiebaud or Thiebaud? He does a lot of really beautiful paintings of food and dessert. He is a painter that my dear friend Harmony loves. So I picked it up intending it to be a gift for her, and then I read it myself and was like, "No, I'm going to keep this." It was just a delight. I so enjoyed it.

ANNE: All right. What that really says to me in composite is you like books that are smart, but maybe not necessarily sharp.

MEREDITH: Ooh, that's a great way to put it. Yeah. Sometimes people will say, "Oh, have you watched this TV show or something?" And they'll be like, "It's so great. It's brutal." And I'm like, "I'm out. I don't need the brutality." Smart, but not sharp. That's a perfect way to describe what I'm looking for.

[00:45:06] ANNE: I love it. Okay, can we talk about what you may enjoy reading next?

MEREDITH: Yes, I would love that.

ANNE: Meredith, it's been so much fun to hear about all your books. I really would love to see you get out of the 18-month, three-to-three-and-a-half-star books, which you're enjoying them, they're solid, you regret nothing, but gosh, I'd love to see you find some books that you love for 2026. But the books you've already loved, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by KJ Charles, A Poor Collector's Guide to Buying Great Art by Erling Kagge. The Nix, not for you. And you've been reading a bunch of books lately. I want to pull up specifically a whole bunch of nonfiction, including multiple books by Jon Krakauer and the smart little delightful five-star novella, The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt. And you're looking for stunners. That is a tall order, or at least, four-star books that just really nail it in one area of your reading life.

[00:46:19] Listeners, I take notes the old school way on the podcast. So, reviewing my pen-written notes, a four-star read is done well, it is emblematic of lots of the kind of things you enjoy, has compelling characters, but they don't have to be likable, and setting is greater than plot. But, gosh, a stunner would be amazing. Is there anything else you want me to know as we think about what you may enjoy reading next?

MEREDITH: I am actually going to be on a trip this weekend. I'm going to Flagstaff, Arizona with some friends. So I'll be on a plane for a few hours and then up in the mountains for a little bit. So, if anything feels like it might be good to read on a trip, I'd love to hear about that.

ANNE: Ooh, I don't know. What do you like to read on a trip?

MEREDITH: You know, maybe you don't hand me the hardback of The Goldfinch to take with me.

ANNE: Oh.

MEREDITH: But if it's available in eBook, that's fine.

[00:47:14] ANNE: Good point. I'm interested in handing you titles in a variety of genres that have elements that I think will appeal to you. So I'm looking for that four-star "kinds of things I enjoy" energy that are smart, well written, but not sharp, not snarky. I don't know that the word "earnest" characterizes your... I mean, that doesn't describe The English Understand Wool at all. But that's like devious and clever, but it's not farcical or satirical. And I'm just aware of that line between soft and hard, between like playful and biting. And we want to stay on the playful side, I think. How does that sound?

MEREDITH: That sounds great. Yeah, I have no objection to an earnest read for the record. But I think playful but not biting is a great way to put it.

[00:48:11] ANNE: All right. I got to say, you also really started some program in my brain when you talked about how you love art crime and art theft, and I might have really run away with that.

MEREDITH: Ooh, I love that.

ANNE: And art books in general. Are you interested in art books in general?

MEREDITH: I am.

ANNE: OK. I just read one that's going to be in the Summer Reading Guide that was so fun, and I can't wait to talk about, but I'm going to because it doesn't come out for a while. And I'm sorry to be vague, but that's all I want to say. Meredith, we might talk about that after.

MEREDITH: Okay. Fantastic.

[00:48:39] ANNE: Y'all send in your submission and you'll get the secret recommendations as well. That's at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/guest.

Okay, let's start very straightforward artsy nonfiction, if that's okay with you.

MEREDITH: Mm-hmm.

ANNE: Now I feel like you definitely may have found your way to these books already. Have you read The Art Thief by Michael Finkel?

MEREDITH: I have, and I really enjoyed it.

ANNE: Okay, excellent. What about Get the Picture by Bianca Bosker?

MEREDITH: Read it and loved it.

ANNE: Oh, yay. Okay.

MEREDITH: Loved it.

ANNE: Well, glad to know. Readers, if you are also interested in art crime and art theft, that is the subject, as you can imagine, of The Art Thief. But also Bianca Bosker is writing a... just an ordinary person's insider work at the world of contemporary fine art and those elements get touched on. But Meredith and I both said today we'd like to know how it works and that book is about how it works. It'll be such an interesting companion to the Erling Kagge as well. Actually, I just pulled that off my shelf and handed it to Will for that reason.

[00:49:44] MEREDITH: I read Get the Picture right before I read All Fours by Miranda July and those made such a great pairing.

ANNE: That's fascinating. I didn't finish All Fours, but I'm intrigued by the comparison. What made those two go so well together?

MEREDITH: Because it helped me think of All Fours as like the woman in the book is essentially being engaged in like nonstop 24/7 performance art, which is... when you get to the end of the book, you learn that she's a writer. But reading that as like, Huh, I think she's doing something similar to what some of the performance artists that Bianca works with did, made for a really interesting way to approach that book. Which was probably like a three-and-a-half-star read for me on its own, but paired with Get the Picture, it made like a really interesting thought.

ANNE: That makes me think of Kevin Wilson's The Family Fang.

MEREDITH: I haven't read that.

[00:50:36] ANNE: Life as performance art. That might be interesting, but we're going to go with another art book. I'm thinking of mystery where the plot is interesting and revolves around art and art crime, but the setting is so cool. This is The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins that came out fall of... ooh, I almost said last year, but we're in a new one, fall of 2024. Is this a book you're familiar with?

MEREDITH: It is not.

ANNE: Okay. This is a thriller that's set in the world of fine art. The thing I love about this book, aside from the art, which we'll get to in a moment, is it has this very cool setting. So I was just fascinated by this island that's not an island. Ooh, it's Scottish, it's isolated, and the constantly running clock that Hawkins set in motion by setting her book in this place is just a fascinating dynamic in the story.

[00:51:29] But this is a thriller that's set in the world of fine art. It's about a reclusive artist who lives on the island alone, and she is cared for by her one local friend, Grace. And lots of people in the artist's life, the artist's name is Vanessa, think that Grace is way too much up in her business, and maybe doesn't deserve the level of access she has. But Vanessa trusts Grace implicitly.

But to everyone's surprise, Vanessa bequeathed her art collection to a foundation. And Grace has always been overprotective, and she is not happy that the curator of this foundation is coming to the island to claim Vanessa's background notes and sketchbooks. But he's doing this because a human bone was found in one of Vanessa's pieces and some are concerned that maybe it's not an animal. Maybe it's human in origin, because that's what the investigators think.

[00:52:21] And her ex-husband went missing a few years back and the idea that perhaps Vanessa or someone committed a terrible crime lingers over the story, and they've got to get to the bottom of it. While dealing with jealous, squabbling gallerists and talking about artists' bodies of work and their legacies. There's a big exhibition at the Tate that factors prominently into the story, and lots of tension and misdirection all around, not just about the art. How does that sound?

MEREDITH: That sounds really intriguing. I'm not always huge into mystery and thriller, but everything that you're describing sounds up my alley. When you said there's a human bone found in one of her pieces, I felt my eyebrows fly up. So I'm extremely interested in that.

ANNE: Okay, well, I'm excited that you are interested. Now, I feel like you must have found your way to Alexis Hall's growing boyfriend trilogy, beginning with Boyfriend Material.

[00:53:24] MEREDITH: I have read Boyfriend Material. I have not read Husband Material. I've read one of the other books set in that world, 10 Things That Never Happened. I really liked that.

ANNE: Well, I do really like the London Calling series for you. Boyfriend Material, which you've already read and enjoyed, Husband Material. And there's a new one coming out this summer called Father Material, which I've seen around, haven't looked into, don't know anything else, but you can get the general gist, I think, from the title. Meredith, have you read The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck?

MEREDITH: I have not.

ANNE: This could be really interesting for you. I was about to say it's not set in the world of fine art, but there are artifacts and paintings that do actually feature in the story. But this is definitely one that came to mind as the setting being immersive and fascinating and ever-changing because this is a book of stories. But the plot definitely takes a backseat to the, I think, atmosphere that he develops as a whole.

[00:54:31] I've talked about this on the podcast about a year ago, and I almost chose this for one of my very best books of 2025. Now, what I love isn't necessarily going to be what you love, but just wanted to put that out there in case any listeners are interested.

This is a collection of short stories, and the structure is really interesting. These are styled as a hook and chain poem, which I've not heard of before. And it's not a poem, but he's using this poetic structure to present stories in pairs. I listened to this book. I went in not knowing anything, and at first, I didn't realize until I heard the first instance of a second follow-up story that provided a totally different perspective on what was shared in the first story. And the way this world walks together is just really fascinating, or at least it was for me as a reader.

[00:55:30] The first and last stories, they are a pair and they kind of bracket the whole thing. So I really think... or how about "I hope"? You're a book abandoner. I hope the first story will reach out and grab you. It's a tale of first love. It's set primarily in Maine in the summer of 1919. And there are two young male musicians who are on this fascinating journey, walking across the state, talking to strangers and using their — almost primitive compared to what we have now — tools to take recordings of folk songs and ballads that the strangers they're meeting will sing for them and play for them.

And what they come away from Maine with, aside from this experience together, which is formative and in ways neither anticipated, they come away with all these wax cylinders that hold the voices and instruments of these strangers they met in Maine.

[00:56:35] But we also find out what happens years later in 1984 when one of these men, who is now an extremely successful musical scholar, receives a package in the mail that is all those wax cylinders that somebody has found in a house he used to live in. And he's like wistfully looking back at what happened back then.

The thing about the story I just described is it's totally different than the other stories in the book, but they all drop you into this moment in time that is vivid and atmospheric and fascinating. I don't know anything about Nantucket or living by the sea or wax cylinders from 1919, but also emotionally resonant in ways I just didn't anticipate.

The collection as a whole hangs together really well. It's not quite a novel in stories, but it is a collection that's more interlinked than many short story collections are. And I love the experience as a whole. How is this sounding to you?

[00:57:38] MEREDITH: That sounds really intriguing. You said drop you into a moment in time. I love when I feel like a book or a movie trusts you to figure things out a little bit as you're going along. That sort of drop in and out and not spending a ton of time setting the stage for you, that sounds really intriguing. I love a sort of multiple perspective on a singular time or event.

ANNE: Okay. Finally, I want to go back to the world of fine art with a Jean Hanff Korelitz story called The Latecomer. Is this one you have read?

MEREDITH: I've never heard of this.

ANNE: Well, she's the author of The Plot and The Sequel, but she is multi-talented. And this is a very different kind of story for readers who just found her through those two books. This is the decades-long story of a wealthy Brooklyn family and their triplets, who throughout the book are known as the smart one, the weird one, and the girl.

[00:58:40] These triplets were conceived with the help of IVF. And when they were born, the mother took that last embryo, and she put it on ice for one day, just in case. That time does arrive. So when the triplets reach college age, they go off to school. And that's when it really comes stunningly to life that this family never quite gels. Like the siblings act like strangers, to the extent that when two of the kids go off to Cornell, nobody knows they're related. They don't see each other. They have no idea what's going on in each other's lives. No one even knows they're related.

So their mother is like, well, my first pancake of my three children did not turn out. Let me try this again. And she decides to thaw that fourth embryo and have another child. And the arrival of that child leads to upheaval and mayhem and the exposure of some deeply devastating/juicy family secrets.

[00:59:48] But something I love for this book and the reason that we're talking about it is that the father of this family is an avid collector of modern art. And throughout the book, we hone in on his perspective and we hear the painting he first fell in love with, how he acquired it, what he paid, how he was praised for his good eye, what that did and didn't mean to him, what his art meant to him, where he stores it in Brooklyn and who he takes to see it and when. And that art matters in the plot of this book. And those details that add so much texture and fascination and just intellectual interest to the story are a big reason it came up in this conversation. Also, there's like a hoarding subplot.

MEREDITH: Ooh.

ANNE: And I thought it was interesting that that thread came up today as well. Does this sound like something you'd maybe give a try?

MEREDITH: Yes, I would definitely give that a try. Like I mentioned, I'm not always into a family saga, but the way you've described this one makes it sound, I don't know, like it could really be up my alley.

[01:00:51] ANNE: I'll be so curious to hear what you think. And I'm also curious, when you're reading about all these works and the art crimes and the things that happened, are you a Googler? Do you want to see pictures and you want to read about the details of the heists and thefts?

MEREDITH: Sometimes.

ANNE: There's a lot to Google in this book if you are.

MEREDITH: Okay. Do you feel like it holds together if you don't Google?

ANNE: Oh, absolutely. Well, luckily, you don't need to know how to pronounce the names to Google. But if you're curious to see the patterns of dots and grids and slashes that is being described in the book, you can absolutely Google. But you don't have to. They're just referencing artists by name. If you think that's fun, you will have fun with it. And if you don't care, you will miss nothing.

MEREDITH: Right.

ANNE: We talked about a lot of books today and we left you with three. So Meredith, I'd love to hear what you are interested in picking up next from The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins, The History of Sound by Ben Shattuck, and The Latecomer by Jean Hanff Korelitz. Oh my gosh. And you're going to the mountains. Of those three, what are you thinking? And are any of them mountain material?

[01:02:01] MEREDITH: I feel like I might go with The Latecomer because that one feels like it surprised me the most when you were describing it.

ANNE: I do love a good surprise. And I remember that the surprise of it really worked for one of your five stars.

MEREDITH: Okay, it did.

ANNE: Well, I will be so curious to hear what you think. Thanks so much for talking books with me today.

MEREDITH: Thank you so much for having me. This has been an absolute delight.

ANNE: Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Meredith and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next. Find Meredith on Goodreads. We've got that link as well as the full list of titles we talked about today at WhatShouldIReadNextPodcast.com. Follow our show on Instagram at @WhatShouldIReadNext for more literary posts and inspiration.

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Thanks to the people who make the 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. With help from 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.