Some people read the Great Books, so why not me?

[00:00:00] ANNE BOGEL: I don't know. I kind of feel like Ginger. You don't need me to butt in with any recommendations, but if I can't help myself, then maybe we'll tag-team you, Cheryl.

GINGER HORTON: We could probably give her another 52, like the Anne and Ginger list. Danger, danger.

CHERYL DRURY: I mean, honestly, I do feel like I could read another 52 equally valid books, and it would be awesome. Don't do that yet.

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

[00:00:53] While I love talking about books with readers of all sorts of tastes, sometimes I see a guest submission come across my screen and I think, "Oh, I know just the team member to have that conversation with." If you've been listening along for a while, you may remember when a guest needed book picks for a bucket list trip to Australia and Southeast Asia, and I pulled in my teammate, digital nomad Holly Wielkoszewski, to share her recommendations because she had just spent many months in those parts of the world.

Well, today we are back again with a hopefully dynamic team duo. I hope I'm allowed to say that, Ginger Horton, as she is coming on to help tackle one reader-specific reading dilemma. We're trying something new today, and we hope you enjoy it.

But first, I want to tell you readers, we've been having so much fun over in the Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club lately. And it's funny that Ginger's on today because she is our community manager in that space. Last week, we hosted Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney for a live author talk, and it was so fun to bring her back in a sense, though it was our first conversation with her. But she was a summer reading author in the very first year, back before even Ginger officially joined our team. And now here she is, official in 10 years and counting.

[00:02:10] Ginger has been instrumental in shaping how our community has grown. And you may not know, but she is also the mastermind behind adding a live unboxing event to our Summer Reading Guide. So that was Ginger's idea then.

And at first I said, "I'm sorry, you want to do what? Why? Who's going to come? Who wants to see that?" And now, she was right, and it is, I'm going to say, the most fun thing we do all year. If I'm allowed to have many favorites, like we allow our guests in What Should I Read Next?.

So it's hard to believe that this year marks our 10th anniversary of book club. But it has been so much fun along the way, and we've got great events queued up to celebrate this year. Plus, this is a wonderful time to join because it's summer reading season.

Ginger, do you want to share one thing we do in book club that you really enjoy?

GINGER: Oh, yeah. I have got to...

ANNE: Totally, I did not prepare her in advance for this.

GINGER: Always glad. I mean, it's probably like you, favorite is a category. So this is my favorite at the moment because we're going to talk about some nerdy fun today. I love the nerdy classes that we've had. Things like how to set your reading intentions, things like a great conversation about great books. I might mention a couple of others throughout this conversation that have impacted my own reading life. But I love to get nerdy with classes.

[00:03:22] ANNE: Ooh, I'm glad to hear it. Okay, I'm going to go for a tried-and-true favorite: the Reading This Week Forum. Every Sunday, we kick it off. And by we, I mean one of our members had the idea, and now it's a tradition. But every week whoever wants to, shares what they've been reading that week. And y'all, our members are smart and fun and funny and well-read. And their little one sentence to a paragraph or two commentary about what they're reading could keep me in books until the end of time. But they also give me the information I need to decide what I'm going to choose to read next. For more from Ginger and more book club fun, join us at modernmrsdarcy.com/club.

Readers, today's guest recently completed a classics reading project, and now she really wants to keep up that momentum while also bringing more non-classics back into her reading life. This sounded so fun, so intriguing. And I couldn't help but notice that both Cheryl Drury's tastes and her recent focus on the classics make me think of my friend and teammate, Ginger Horton.

[00:04:36] As we mentioned above, Ginger is our Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club community manager. And while she and I do have a nice wide space in our overlapping Venn diagram, Ginger has recently been immersed in the classics due to her current enrollment in a Great Books graduate study program. So for Ginger, it's not all classics all the time, just mostly classics most of the time these days. That's why Ginger seems like exactly the right reader to bring along for this conversation with Cheryl.

Cheryl hails from Charleston, South Carolina. And while she's always been a reader, she told us that she'd never really dabbled much in classics or great books until 18 months ago, when she embarked on a challenge to read through a year-long list of more than 100 influential books, starting with Plato and finishing with David Foster Wallace. The project energized Cheryl's reading life, but now she's not quite sure where to go in her approach to reading.

[00:05:31] Cheryl shares many reading similarities with Ginger, and I cannot wait to hear Ginger's ideas and offer my own for Cheryl's reading quest today. We will talk about how Cheryl may retain some of the structure from her classics project because that served her well, but also where she can have more flexibility to follow where her reading whimsy takes her. Plus, we'll offer some title ideas that hopefully will feel like just the right bridge between what Cheryl's been reading lately and what she'd love more of in the months ahead. Let's get to it.

Ginger and Cheryl, welcome to the show.

GINGER: Well, I am so excited to be here in this capacity. I am excited and nervous, and Anne, I am impressed that you do this week after week because while I am thrilled to talk books at any time, it's daunting, I think, not to recommend three books, but to limit yourself to recommending three books.

ANNE: Well, you may notice our super secret spreadsheet available to our patrons. It has a lot of slashes in it where there's three books in the spot on the spreadsheet where one book was designed to go, and then there's three of those columns for recommendations for each episode. It's a lot. And I still get nervous every time because what if I can't think of the books? I'll remember tomorrow when I'm walking the dog, and then I'll email the guests. That's what happens. Cheryl, we're glad you're here.

[00:06:48] CHERYL: Thank you so much. It's really fun. And Ginger, I'm so glad to hear you're nervous because I am too, so that's great.

ANNE: What I like to tell all our guests is if we could work this out across time, space, and just logistics of talking and drinking coffee on mic at the same time, I wish we could just do this at my local coffee shop. We'd just be three readers around the table talking books. We would not be nervous a bit, except maybe when we first walked in the door and had to wave and go, "Hi, it's me. Are you Anne?" That would be the only awkward part, and then we'd just have a wonderful conversation.

GINGER: Well, if we're making requests, as much as I love coffee in Louisville, can we meet in Charleston, Cheryl? Because that is one of my favorite cities. My husband and I lived there for a few years, and I have a really fond place in my heart for Charleston.

CHERYL: Well, you should. It's awesome here. We love it.

GINGER: Lots of good bookstores, too.

CHERYL: Yes.

[00:07:43] ANNE: Well, Cheryl, tell us more. We have already learned that Charleston is near and dear to your heart, and we really want to give our readers a glimpse of what the life of our guest is like.

CHERYL: Well, I live in Charleston. We moved here just a few years ago, and so we are still falling in love with the city. My husband and I live here together. There's all the restaurants and the beautiful parks and beaches and history. So that's a lot of what we do while we live here.

Of course, I read. I needlepoint, learning to play mahjong, like half the country right now, I think. And then we travel a lot. We have four young adult children, and they're scattered everywhere from here to Japan. No one ever tells you how busy young adult children keep you. Thankfully, it's very fun. And then we own a large sailboat that we spend time on. Between our kids and our sailboat, we are also traveling a lot. So that's pretty much my life.

[00:08:41] ANNE: That sounds lovely. Cheryl, tell us about your reading life.

CHERYL: I have always thought of myself as a reader, and I think the other people in my family did, too. When my grandmother needlepointed a Christmas stocking for me, she put a little bookworm on my stocking. So I've always been a reader, but through high school and college, I got a technical education. I have an engineering degree, and I was very math-oriented. I like to read, but my English class experiences weren't great. I didn't fall in love with any books when I was in school, even though I like to read. And then when I went to college, I hope y'all are sitting down, I got through Georgia Tech without taking an English class. It's just crazy.

So, anyway, reading when I started working was kind of an escape from the numbers and an escape from daily work life. And then as my kids were born, I became a stay-at-home mom, and I kept reading, and it was just another way to be in a different world for a little bit, and still that escape and an ability to maybe learn something about somewhere else.

[00:09:50] But I didn't have a background in great books. There were a couple of times that I tried, and I always felt like I wasn't quite getting it. In particular, I read The Divine Comedy and loved it before we went on a trip to Italy. I really loved it, but I had this feeling that I was missing something when I came to it because I didn't know all of these backstories that are in it. And it just kind of sat there.

Then I had also read A Gentleman in Moscow, and it sent me down. I was reading Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and really, really enjoyed them, but that little Russian unit stopped. And I really didn't quite know how to satisfy that itch of learning great books until I came across a reading list by a man named Ted Gioia. I've been reading his work for a while, and he offered a year-long immersive humanities course that started in Plato, and I thought, "You know what? This is my chance to maybe get a hold of all of these things and try to get a framework for a big picture." And so I started reading it, and that's been my reading life for the last 52 weeks, actually.

[00:11:05] ANNE: I love the metaphor you shared in your submission about beginning to read the classics. It might just have been unique to the Russians, but do you remember what it was that you could share with us?

CHERYL: Yes. This is exactly how I felt, even with The Divine Comedy. When I was reading the Russians and anything that was supposedly a great book, I felt like I was coming into a movie about a half hour late. I could understand where the plot started from where I got there, but I felt like I was missing something. And when I came across Ted's list, it was like I'd found the rewind button, and all of a sudden, I was able to maybe go back to the beginning with Plato and start at the beginning and kind of get a big picture idea of what was really going on. And that, in fact, did happen. I'm really grateful.

[00:11:58] ANNE: Well, you may have just begun to answer the question that I was formulating, which was, I think, a lot of readers would have been like, "Guess this isn't for me," or "that ship passed me by." I'm wondering what ignited that streak of perseverance. Or maybe you just found the list and saw the solution to the problem you hadn't been able to articulate.

CHERYL: Well, it was a little bit of that, but I think I knew I... well, one of my sons was very influential. He's a classics major from UChicago, master's from UChicago, and a philosophy undergrad, a philosophy and math. So great combo. And he would tell me about the books he was reading and sometimes pass them on to me. But I was like, "This is too much. I cannot understand this." And I finally realized these books have endured for a long time because somebody can read them. Why not me? And when I found the list, Ted had put these in an order that seemed approachable and I could handle it.

[00:12:57] ANNE: Cheryl, I'm so curious to hear... Now, I imagine that everything you learned and all your takeaways could fill many books or a whole podcast series of your own. But I'm wondering just the nugget or two you find yourself reaching for most when people go, "Wait, you did what?" Was this about your Great Books project?

CHERYL: It's a great privilege to get to know people from across thousands of years who invite you into their lives. It's an enormous privilege. And who am I to say that I'm not going to take full advantage of that? I've gotten to know a man who watched the Greek soldiers defend their country against Persia. And I've gotten to know a woman who had a wry eye for couples dynamics in England. And it's Jane Austen. And I've gotten to know a man who was a slave who held on to His humanity while He was a slave, so much so that when He escaped, He was able to explain what slavery does not just to this enslaved person but to the people doing the enslaving. These things are amazing and they're all just sitting there and I can take advantage of that. That's huge. That's huge.

[00:14:25] You know, I can tell you another thing I learned. I learned patience. Like with myself, when I don't understand something, I know how to go back and I can figure it out. I can slow down or I can find somebody to explain it to me. And I learned patience with the author because I quit wanting the author to tell me the story I wanted to hear, and I was able to let the author tell me the story they want to tell, at their pace.

I had gotten into a bad habit of just wanting to read for plot and always what happens, what happens. And I realized that I was missing out on some beautiful characters and some beautiful people if I would just sit and let the story unfold the way the author wanted to tell it. So I became more patient.

GINGER: I think about what one of our book club authors said in the title of his book, that by reading the classics we are able to break bread with the dead. And I don't think that was unique to him. I think he was quoting a classical writer whose name has escaped me. But I think that's amazing that we can converse not just with the people that we know and not just with the people that are writing books in our time, but with all of humanity. It's one of the things that I love about reading classics.

[00:15:43] CHERYL: You know, it's one of those things you know in your head but if you experience it over and over again, like I did every time I'd go back and read Plato or I read the Odyssey, and you meet these people where they are and get to know them just over and over again it becomes very clear what you're doing. It's amazing. What a gift!

GINGER: One of the things that always strikes me when I read a classic is this can sound very heady, and it is beautiful. I love it. I think we're the same in that way Cheryl. But one of the things that always strikes me is people are people, humans are humans. I thrill when there is this little snippet of human nature that I think, "Oh, yeah I saw that last week with the guy on the bus beside me on TikTok here in my modern city.

[00:16:29] People are the same throughout history and so it's always so fun to discover how human nature changes but how much it stays the same. And in that way they are so accessible.

CHERYL: I totally agree with you. It's been amazing to meet these people and yet they could be sitting, like you said, beside me on the bus. People just don't change. And it's so fun to get to understand that.

I don't mean to sound so heady because this is actually really about my heart, but these things happen because you just decide to pick up something that maybe is a little bit out of your wheelhouse. It's amazing what it can do to your heart. Take it out and stomp it all over.

GINGER: At times.

CHERYL: Yeah.

ANNE: Cheryl, in hearing what your project has meant to you, we know that the project is over. The reading project never ends, but it sounds like you went from being on a road where you could see the stops ahead of you very clearly and then the road ended. Would you speak to us from that moment? I mean, I imagine there's a lot of freedom, but also other emotions.

[00:17:43] CHERYL: Well for a while I thought that the road ended. In my mind, it was like coming to a door. But what I realized was that this reading project was just bringing me to the door so I could open it and go through. So I don't think of this as a road that's ended. I'm actually standing at an intersection with 45 different ways I could go. And maybe I'll circle back and get another one later but right now I'm kind of sitting pondering, which one of these do I go down next?

And I'm very excited about that. It's opening this door and I get to step through and I have this the only way I can think of it. I have this scaffolding of what I worked so hard to learn and now, as I walk through the door, I'm bringing all that with me. And I get to hang the next things if I know where to put them.

[00:18:38] And they're not just going to sit randomly. I've got places where I can like, "Oh, this guy that I'm meeting in this book, I know what that's like. And this guy also had that go on." I'll be able to start connecting things better, but boy, I was really sad when I got to about week 50 because I thought, "What's going to happen? What's going to happen?" And when I finished week 52, that's when I realized it was a door, not a dead end. And I'm super excited about that.

ANNE: Oh, the road continues.

CHERYL: Yeah.

ANNE: Now you have multiple routes to an indeterminate destination.

CHERYL: Yes.

ANNE: Although maybe you envision the destination. I don't know. How do you envision where you stand?

CHERYL: I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be nerdy, but there's the last lines of C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle.

ANNE: It's a book podcast.

CHERYL: Yeah, it is, isn't it? C.S. Lewis' The Last Battle, the last of Narnia series, and He talked about how they had thought that everything that had happened was only the preparation. And as they've stood at the edge, they were at the true Narnia, ready to have the true adventures, and it was only just beginning. And that's how I feel.

[00:19:51] ANNE: I love it.

CHERYL: All right.

ANNE: How about we hear the books you brought to the show, and we hear about what kind of adventures you'll be embarking on next? And then Ginger and I... I don't know. I kind of feel like, Ginger, you don't need me to butt in with any recommendations, but if I can't help myself, then maybe we'll tag-team you, Cheryl. But-

GINGER: We could probably give her another 52, like the Anne and Ginger list. Danger, danger.

CHERYL: I mean, honestly, I do feel like I could read another 52 equally valid books, and it would be awesome. So don't do that yet.

GINGER: No, we'll try to refrain from a few fewer than that.

CHERYL: Yeah, okay.

ANNE: But I propose we start with your books.

CHERYL: Okay.

ANNE: Are you on board?

CHERYL: I'm on board.

ANNE: Okay. Oh, I didn't mean to use a sailing metaphor for you.

CHERYL: No, it's totally fine.

ANNE: It doesn't feel inappropriate. Cheryl, you do know how this works. You're going to tell me three books you love, one that you don't, and what you've been reading lately, and then we will suss out where you'd like to head next. How did you choose these today?

[00:20:55] CHERYL: One is a long-time favorite and I've already said it. The other two were books that really stuck with me that I unexpectedly loved, loved, loved during this project. So, the first one is Don Quixote, which was a total surprise to me. I had never read it before. It's written in the 1600s.

My only knowledge of Don Quixote until I had read this book: there's a Picasso pen and ink drawing, and it's very scribbly. And I know that everybody has seen it, and it's Don Quixote on his donkey with Sancho Panza with him. And it's just like a scribble, and it's black and white. And I thought, "Ooh, it's going to be a yucky book and I'm not going to like it." And I open it up and it is delightful. It's so funny. Cervantes is making fun of his main character, but he's doing it gently. And there's these fun adventures. Cervantes has so much to say about reading in that book. It's hilarious.

[00:22:00] At one point, some of Don Quixote's neighbors get worried about him and they think he's having delusions. And so they decide his problem is too many books, so they go over and burn some of his books to help him out. It's just a charming, charming book. And I didn't expect that. I didn't expect how much Cervantes had to say about people in that book at all. The whole thing was unexpected and absolutely fun.

ANNE: I'm happy to hear it.

GINGER: What I was trying not to tell Cheryl before we started recording is that I have never been able to make it through Don Quixote. My husband loves this book. We tried to have a spouse book club at one point, years and years ago. And I was hoping, when I saw this was the first book you loved, that you would somehow be able to talk me into giving it another try.

Here is my theory on why it didn't work for me the last time because to hear you talk about how fun it is, I think I was approaching this like a serious work of literature. Do you hear the capitalization in my voice there? And I don't know that I was giving it its due. Maybe I'm a better reader now. Maybe coming to it at a different place would inspire me to give it a try. But I loved hearing you talk about it. So, maybe this is my urge to go for it again.

[00:23:13] CHERYL: I think you should, because I came at this book midway through the project. And so, I was a better reader at spotting funny things. But there's plenty of humor in the reading list that I did. So I was better at spotting the funny parts and knowing when he's kind of tongue-in-cheek. I was totally ready for it on this book. So, I think you should try it again.

GINGER: I'm excited to hear that.

ANNE: Oh, I can't wait to hear how this works out.

CHERYL: Me too.

ANNE: Cheryl, what's the second book you love?

CHERYL: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This one was a total shocker for me. It was another book that we were only supposed to read the first couple of chapters as part of the reading project, and I loved it so much that I read the whole thing. I was supposed to read it in high school, and the only memory of it from high school for me is... do y'all know what CliffsNotes were?

ANNE: Oh, yeah.

[00:24:06] CHERYL: Okay. My only memory of this book is using the CliffsNotes in high school. And so it was a total shock, again, that I loved this book so much. I loved Huck's honesty. I think part of it for me is now I have raised two boys, and I opened this book, and in chapter one I saw a kid I know. And I just wanted every good thing for him.

So, falling in love with that character was a surprise, but then also his honesty and letting us see how he grows, letting us see how he changes, especially in regard to his opinion of his friend Jim, who becomes his friend through the course of the story. And just Huck's honesty and his forthrightness and everything that he thinks, it's so genuine. I just loved it.

[00:25:00] GINGER: I'm always here for a coming-of-age novel and I don't know that there is a better hallmark. Again, just with the humor. Mark Twain can really move you clearly, and also he's so funny. And yeah, I think we do sometimes a disservice to our young people to hand them these great books, and hopefully they can form a lot of young minds and hearts. But I also wonder if so many of us would be served better by being handed that book after you've met your first favorite six-year-old, or you have fallen in love the first time for yourself. I think about that a lot. I always tease that I need to make a classics list and then say what age you should really read that classic book.

CHERYL: I totally agree. I think it was Winston Churchill who said that it's a pity to come to a great book too early in life. I think about that now that I'm my age. And sometimes I feel like I'm coming too late to them, but at least I came to them.

[00:25:59] GINGER: Well, here's a reminder, and I don't think this will be the last time I talk about this, but to reread those books, because sometimes they'll say one thing to you at 15 and something entirely different at 45.

CHERYL: Totally agree on that. Yes. And there are a lot of books that stand up really well to rereading.

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

CHERYL: Well, it's the book I already mentioned, A Gentleman in Moscow. This is probably my all-time favorite book. If there is a person in fiction that I could have dinner with, it would be the Count. I think that Amor Towles performed a miracle in creating this adventure story in the four walls of the Metropole Hotel. I love everything about it. I love the side characters. I love the way he told the story. I love the Count. I love the foreignness of the setting. Gosh, I've probably read that book five or six times. Talk about rereading. And it's up to the point where I can just pull it open and listen or read anywhere. I have it on audio as well, so I can just pop it open and start reading and kind of know where I am. That book always stands up to rereading.

[00:27:10] And the other part of it that I love and I will be forever grateful for is that it did send me to read some other great books. I read War and Peace because of it. And wow, I thought that was going to be absolutely unreadable. And it's this series of great love stories and this war story. And I had no idea. And then it sent me to read a lot of history. I'm so grateful for that part. But wow, what a story.

ANNE: What brought you to this book?

CHERYL: You, Anne. What Should I Read Next?. I think it was either this or the Modern Mrs. Darcy blog. So, yeah, I found out about that book from you. And then I've read all of his other books now. So, love them.

ANNE: It was the first book we read together in Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club post the initial, "Hey, let's try this thing," Summer Reading Club in September 2016.

[00:28:06] GINGER: Special place in my heart, too. And I have also read it more than once. And now you're making me want to read it again. It's a great character. Yeah, I truly think this might be one that... you mentioned two other books that have stood the test of time. I genuinely think people might be reading this 100 years, 200 years, hundreds of years hence.

CHERYL: I agree, because it offers you such a good window into a world that is gone, hopefully, thankfully. But the characters in there are so memorable. Actually, every time I think of the book, I also think of Misha, his friend. He gives one of the most impassioned speeches in the whole book. I can tear up even thinking about it. Obviously, it doesn't take a lot to tear me up.

GINGER: Good books can do that.

CHERYL: Yes.

ANNE: Cheryl, did you read this one before or after your deepened adventures with the Russian novelists?

CHERYL: Oh, no. This is what set off my adventures with the Russians. This was the start. I called it my Russian rabbit hole.

[00:29:07] ANNE: Gentlemen to the Russians to the 52 books.

CHERYL: Yeah.

ANNE: Whoa. Wow.

GINGER: I might have a tiny literary crush on Amor Towles. I don't mind telling the two of you.

CHERYL: He came to Charleston last year. He was awesome.

GINGER: Yes. His mind is so, so fine and so clever.

ANNE: He came to Louisville too. He was great.

GINGER: You guys, you're killing me.

CHERYL: I think what's interesting is he writes these really great novels that are not alike.

GINGER: That's right.

CHERYL: Like The Lincoln Highway, oh.

GINGER: See, I'm glad-

CHERYL: That's a great book.

GINGER: I'm making notes here because I had on my list to make sure that you had read both that and his short stories. So, luckily, you're whittling down my massive list for me. So good.

CHERYL: I think The Lincoln Highway made my best book of 2024. I'm trying to keep a record of what were the best books, but I haven't been doing that very long.

[00:30:02] ANNE: Cheryl, perhaps a different headspace now, but tell us about a book that was not right for you. And I'd love to hear your theories as to why it wasn't a fit, not aligned with your taste, poor timing, not what you thought you were getting into. What did you choose?

CHERYL: I read Dead Wake by Erik Larson. I thought it might be for me because I think I had read... didn't he write The Devil in the White City? And I liked it. So Dead Wake is about the sinking of the Lusitania. It's a very sad story. It doesn't need heightened suspense to make it sadder because it's already a huge tragedy.

And what he did when he wrote this book is he had you follow closely along with several sets of characters. And then partway through the book, half of them die. I felt so emotionally manipulated by that. I never do this. I threw the book across the room. I know the room I was in. I was next to a fireplace. I thought I might throw it in the fireplace. I was so mad that he would do this and make me abuse my feelings like that. That was not respectful.

[00:31:18] I just thought it was manipulative. And that, on his part, I was like, I'm done. I don't like sad endings to begin with, but sad endings that are justified. But I felt like this... he had heightened the emotional part of it in order to elicit a feeling from me that I thought that was... that was too much of an ask. He had no respect for the reader on that book at least. Wow, I really came down, didn't I? I don't love a sad ending, but I really don't like to be made to fall in love with a character and then kill them off in a really manipulative way.

ANNE: Duly noted.

GINGER: Do you read much nonfiction? Because I noticed the three books you love happen to be novels. So what's your relationship with nonfiction?

CHERYL: I like nonfiction. I'm actually reading a history right now. Love it. Some of my favorite books from the year-long project were histories. I love memoir. Yeah, I have no problem with nonfiction. I've read a lot of narrative nonfiction and enjoyed it. This just set me off for a very specific reason. And I was like, "Okay, well, I don't know that I can know that when I'm starting, but I can sure be on guard for it."

[00:32:31] GINGER: There you go. Okay, good to know.

ANNE: Cheryl, what have you been reading lately?

CHERYL: A couple of books that were at the tail end of my project. One of the really interesting ones to me was a writer named Susan Sontag. She wrote in like the 70s. She wrote a book called On Photography. Being a mom, I always had the camera in my hand. And I was a horse show mom, and so I got actually very good at taking pictures. And I took a lot of pictures. I was quite good at it.

So I had a relationship in my head with photography, but then here comes this woman about how photography and memory and reality aren't all the same thing. And what does that do to how we think about all of them? It was a really fun thing. I had never thought about it before. And now I think that anybody who walks around with a camera in their pocket, which is basically everyone, should read her thoughts about how photographs affect your memory. I was crazy.

[00:33:32] I also just finished Theo of Golden, which was very high on my list that so many people had been reading while I was in the midst of my project. So I didn't have time to read it. So I've just finished it. One of the most fun parts of that is that unexpectedly, so many of my friends are also reading that. And it's been really fun to be part of a communal experience.

I did enjoy a lot of the book. That part's been so fun to share in that enjoyment with my friends without even planning it. It wasn't like we were reading it for a book club. We were just reading it.

GINGER: Oh, I had three friends one day text me to see if I had read this at one point, maybe months back. But it was definitely in the zeitgeist. So I'm glad you got to be a part of that.

CHERYL: Oh my gosh. I hadn't been a part of anything like that for at least a year because I'd been doing my own thing over here. And so that was really, really fun.

[00:34:28] Then one of the last books I've just finished is Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. It was another one that we had to read a couple of chapters for in the project. I love magical realism. I love it. Apparently, I didn't know this, this book kind of was one of the early ones in the 20th century that was magical realism. So the project introduced me to it.

I had tried to read this book maybe 15 or 15 years ago or so and I couldn't do it. And I think it was that patience problem that I had with not letting an author tell me his story. And now I had developed patience. And this book is so dreamlike and a little wacky. And I was willing to let it be those things this time instead of being like, "Well, this doesn't make sense. That's crazy." Which I know you have to also suspend your disbelief for magical realism. But I didn't get impatient with like, you know, there's like 20 characters, and there's four first names in the book. And it's really funny. So there's like four Aurelianos. It's just you have to keep people straight. But I kind of put all that aside and just enjoyed the book. And I really did love it.

[00:35:44] GINGER: If you can read the Russians, I think you can handle Gabriel García Márquez.

CHERYL: Yeah. I've just finished reading those. I'm actually currently reading a history right now because I'm getting ready to go to England in a couple months. I'm doing a little vacation reading, pre-vacation reading.

ANNE: That sounds lovely. Cheryl, thank you for telling us about your books. As we move into putting books on your radar to potentially read next, what are you looking for in your reading life right now?

CHERYL: I have never done what I just did, this intense project. I loved it. And I loved growing as a reader, but it's a lot. And so I'm trying to figure out a way to grow and yet still have time to do fun books. I mean, I like a spy novel for vacation or, you know, Theo of Golden. It was fun to have time to read those.

[00:36:45] I'm still wanting to do these projects oriented around different things and read intentionally. I think that's the way I want to think of it. Read intentionally, but I also need to build some fun books in. So I'm trying to figure out a way to have that combination. Like I said, we're going to Northern England this summer, and so I've kind of got a little project already started for myself, but I don't have a fun English book in there. Not even Jane Austen. And so that kind of thing. I'm trying to figure out how to plug some more modern things in and just allow some time. I'm really not a grind, but I feel like I am sometimes [inaudible 00:37:26].

ANNE: Has your project changed the idea of what kinds of books are entertaining to you?

CHERYL: A million percent.

ANNE: Would you say more about that?

CHERYL: Yes. For one thing, I read across genres now. I can read a play really easily now. I've read a lot of Greek drama and I loved it. I loved Shakespeare. It changed me for reading, you know, different kinds of literature. Like I said, I have a patience to read Gabriel García Márquez. His book is so dreamlike, and yet, you know, I also like to read things that are more plot-driven.

[00:38:01] I do find myself really lingering on characters. I find that I fall in love with characters so much now. I did a little bit before, obviously I was in love with the Count. Don't tell my husband. And I read poetry now. Who am I? Who reads...? I read poetry. That's crazy. I'm just willing to pick up and try a lot more things now. I hope that makes sense. I like narrative nonfiction a lot, but I could read a history instead of reading narrative nonfiction now equally happily.

ANNE: Has your project changed your idea of what kinds of lighter books appeal to you?

CHERYL: I'm afraid so. I think it might've made me pickier.

ANNE: I'm just looking for information. I mean, you can feel about it however you want, but your answer is not going to disappoint us.

GINGER: No.

ANNE: Would you say more about that?

[00:38:50] CHERYL: I've encountered some great stories and some great storytellers in the past year. And so my patience with less good storytellers is not... That might be the one place I'm less patient, is if a story isn't being told as well. And I'm not as happy with it.

I had a friend who said, "Oh, you should read this Colleen Hoover novel. A bunch of friends are reading it." And I thought, "Okay, oh, that is not for me." It's too much in a lot of ways. And it's also just not that interesting. On the other hand, I like Liane Moriarty a lot. And What Alice Forgot is still one of my favorite books because the premise is so fun. And I think she executed it really well.

So a lot of popular fiction is frustrating to me. This is the other thing that I noticed about myself this year is that I have a great regard for a person as an individual. I don't like things to be reduced to stereotypes at all. And I didn't realize I felt that strongly about it until this project, where I was reading about individuals. And reading across time, especially reading before about the 1700s, I realized how deeply I love that view of a person as an individual and not as part of a group. I really don't want to read things that have agendas. And it feels like sometimes it's easy to fall into that. And I'm sure people have reasons for writing it, it's just that I don't want to read that.

[00:40:29] GINGER: One thing that I struggle with, with my love of classics and an increasing desire to read the best, and that could be across any genre. I don't read a lot of, say, fantasy. It's just not my go-to comfort genre. But I want to read the two or three best ones that my fantasy-loving friends have read throughout the year, or a romance novel, or some of the genres that just don't happen to be in my personal comfort zone.

And so I don't always know how to balance that, that I keep standards without snobbery. It's a really hard thing that you do encounter when you are trying to go after the best. But yet you don't want to, as I think our team member Leigh always reminds us, don't yuck someone else's yum. It's just not my yum.

CHERYL: No, I'm not trying to. It's not for me. I like how you said that. I don't want to be a snob. I want to read the best. Life is short. You only get so much time to read so many books. And so I want to read the really good ones.

GINGER: I think you put that beautifully.

[00:41:34] ANNE: I did notice you say twice, regarding Dead Wake, and then we were chatting before we hit record, that how a story is told and how the author unspools the information and how it's structured, like these things really matter to you.

CHERYL: They do.

ANNE: It's not just like, tell me a good story to take me away. There's more than that that you're looking for, which is true for many readers.

CHERYL: Yeah. I mean, I think that that's true. And that's been true for a long time, though. I read Dead Wake when it first came out. And I also read World War Z, which is fiction, right? But it's written as a memoir, and so you know the guy writing it survives because he's writing it. And so knowing that, I could comfortably read the whole book without being worried the whole time that he was going to die because he didn't, because he was writing.

[00:42:31] I actually really, really loved World War Z. I thought it was so fun. And it didn't bother me at all being written as a memoir. I think if it had been written like spooling it out as a story, I couldn't have read it because I would have been worried the whole time that he would have died. I don't want my heartstrings to be plucked unnecessarily.

ANNE: I'm thinking of how when Will and I both read in the same season Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. Have you read that?

CHERYL: Oh, yeah.

ANNE: Okay. I was just thinking that'd be an amazing adventure story for your list but-

CHERYL: I read it on an airplane. It was a really long airplane ride and it was freezing cold on the airplane because sometimes they can be cold. I'm reading this book about a cold adventure and it's so cold. I will never forget that experience.

ANNE: Well, the book is dedicated to those who died on the mountain that season. And I was constantly flipping back and forth to the dedication because I wanted to know the fates of the people I was reading about. Will didn't do it that way.

[00:43:36] CHERYL: I'm pretty sure I noticed that too because I have a good memory of reading that book. I enjoyed the experience of it. Now that you say that, that would be part of why I didn't mind it because I knew people were going to die, but it was okay.

ANNE: Okay. We will keep all this in mind. So we're looking for lighter, but still really well-written, some things that aren't terribly challenging that you can still get lost in, but you have so much available to you. You want books that you'll feel really good about having chosen to spend your time with.

CHERYL: Yes. The other part of it is I'm happy to read classic adjacent or the fan fiction, kind of like A Thousand Acres was King Lear, which I loved A Thousand Acres, and The Brothers K was crazy good. I would absolutely be happy to try the, like if it's really well-written, some of the takeoffs on Shakespeare or Dickens or any of these classic type books.

[00:44:48] ANNE: Okay. So, Cheryl, you loved Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. Not for you was Dead Wake by Erik Larson. And lately you've read On Photography by Susan Sontag, Theo of Golden by Allen Levi and One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. And you're looking for something different after your great books here.

Ginger Horton, what are you thinking?

GINGER: I'm so excited to do the honors. My mind is going in a million directions, but I think I have the three for you. I'm going to start off and give you the two that I'm more sure of. And then I'm going to give you a little choose-your-own-adventure.

But the way I structured this in my mind... I love your metaphors about going down a road. The way that my mind usually thinks about books that add to each other in conversation are hooks. So I remember the very first time in this Great Books program that I'm in that I came across a reference in another writer's work to "clear and distinct," which is such a Descartes or a Cartesian as I've learned phrase that I thought, "He's explicitly referencing so and so."

[00:46:10] I always think that now I can put that pot on that hook. Then I can fill that pot with more stuff. So that's the way I'm thinking of it. So each one of these will be a hook that you can then hang a lot of other things from. And so any of these books could become a next mini project for you. So that's what I am endeavoring to do for you today. But all of them also stand completely on their own. You could read it as a one-time thing, get excited about something else and leave it on the shelf.

But the first one I have to recommend is kind of a cheat. True to my maximalist tendencies, the book that I'm thinking of actually has the word or the number 1,000 in it. And it is 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die by James Mustich, who has indeed been on the What Should I Read Next? podcast. Is this one you're familiar with, Cheryl?

CHERYL: Yes.

GINGER: Okay, what's your experience with that? Have you read it? Is it sitting on your coffee table?

CHERYL: No, I haven't read it. I thought, "1,000 books, dude, I need to just start one."

GINGER: Yes.

[00:47:06] CHERYL: It was a little overwhelming. I've tried to like... but yeah, no, I think at this point, I'm more confident at something like this.

GINGER: Well, here's why I actually really like this for you. It's got a couple things going for it. Number one, you could absolutely sit it on your coffee table and read one entry or three entries at a time, say over the course of a year, which is exactly what I did. I read, you know, however many pages. I divided it out, read it over the course of the year, highlighted the ones that sounded good to me, and then started in on reading some of those. And I'm still in that process. And I think I will be for the rest of my life before I die. That's his only qualification there.

But what else I really love about it is listening to you talk about books. I think you're fantastic at something around book club that we call pithy book talk. And I think James is also so good at pithy book talk. He is such a good judge of literature himself, that you really trust his taste. If a book sounds good, it probably is good.

[00:48:04] I also think that just reading about books, being exposed to books, I won't get to all 1,000 of these. And you still feel like you have had a little bit of an exposure with this book. And so it is a little bit of a masterclass in what is in culture.

Something else I really like about this is not just the way he talks about books and the options for you, of course, but also that he has excellent taste that spans old, old classics, and very modern, and a lot in between. So he was telling me about books that probably are out of print, they might be on the shelf of my dad or my grandparents, maybe they were really popular in 1967. And there's just maybe less of a chance that I would have come across that because I would have been not alive yet or quite small. So he has this sort of middle ground that I find really refreshing. And they are some of the favorite books that I would have never come across.

[00:48:57] I think about Oranges by John McPhee has been one of my favorite reading experiences. I discovered that through 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die. I think this could be not only just a really fun read for you. It doesn't have to be done in one sitting. But tell me what you think about that.

CHERYL: Actually, I really love it. I think I love it now. I think that I would have felt overwhelmed a year ago. But now that I have a better confidence in my own reading, and a better background, I think that I'm actually very interested in that now. And it's fun to read what other people think about the books that you like, or don't like. I didn't like every book I read this year.

GINGER: Of course. Great. Well, and I wouldn't recommend this just to anyone, because it's not the kind of book that most people would want to sit and read cover to cover. But I think for you, it might really be something. One thing I meant to ask you before we started is, are you the kind of person that reads one book at a time or do you have a few in process?

[00:49:52] CHERYL: Really depends on what the books are. But this one sounds like I could do it a little bit at a time while I'm reading other things because it's not like a narrative arc.

GINGER: Yes, exactly. I think that is one key part. If this is going to bog you down, then maybe go along to one of the others on my list.

CHERYL: No, I think that sounds really cool.

ANNE: Cheryl, I'm glad you're not overwhelmed by the 1,000 books. But I also think you may enjoy browsing his index in the back, not in one sitting. It's too much for most readers. There's little checkboxes where you can check off and order the books you've already read. And I think you may really perhaps enjoy, especially after your year-long project, just seeing what you've read.

CHERYL: I agree. I took a picture of them all. But yeah, I think that that would be kind of nice to see that too. I agree.

GINGER: And lots of mini project lists there because he groups some of those topics.

CHERYL: Oh, he does?

GINGER: Yeah, thanks for reminding me of that.

[00:50:49] CHERYL: Yeah, I like that. Because, you know, if you're coming at this like I am, and you're just kind of trying to like get books together, you only know about what you know about. This book sounds super helpful for that. Thank you.

ANNE: Yeah, discovery and sifting.

CHERYL: Yes.

GINGER: Okay, well, the second book that I have in mind might sort of go along with your English visit. But my question is, have you read — this is not the book, but this is the setup — have you read 84, Charing Cross Road?

CHERYL: I think I did.

GINGER: It's by Helene Hanff. She is a writer living in New York who writes a bookstore owner living in London, England. And she's writing to request one particular book that was a little hard to track down. The two of them began a correspondence and-

CHERYL: Okay, I haven't read this.

GINGER: ...friendship ensues. Highly recommended. But the one I want to recommend specifically to you is called Q's Legacy. And this was sort of her follow up to 84, Charing Cross Road, which you could read in one sitting, I have no doubt. It's a really slim little book of letters. That might be a good prequel here.

[00:51:55] But Q's Legacy is essentially the backstory about why she wrote requesting that book to begin with. Q is a humanities teacher, a British humanities teacher called Arthur Quiller-Couch. And he had sort of essentially, I think what it sounds like to me, Ted Joa's humanities course for her time.

CHERYL: Oh, wow.

GINGER: You know, maybe when she was living, he would have been the Ted back then. And so she sets out to take his course essentially, and, you know, begins a correspondence with these friends. They write back and forth about books. Q's Legacy is really kind of the literary memoir version of her syllabus. And I find it delightful. Whenever someone says they've read 84, Charing Cross Road, the next sentence I ask is, but have you read Q's Legacy? I love it even more. I really do. And I think it's good, nerdy fun. And it will also send you down a project if you so wish.

CHERYL: Oh, I love that. Yeah, that sounds so fun. Thank you.

[00:52:50] GINGER: It's also just a delightful read because Helene Hanff is such a funny writer. You mentioned that you loved humor. She's real funny, quite witty.

CHERYL: When did she write it?

GINGER: Oh, that is a great question. I believe that would have probably been in the 80s. It would have been a follow-up to 84, Charing Cross Road, which I think was written probably more in the 60s or 70s.

CHERYL: Okay. Yeah, that sounds really cool.

GINGER: But it has that old feel. She feels like she could be one of those, you know, Hollywood gumption-y actresses. She's very bantery.

CHERYL: I found in this project that I just finished that I really, really enjoyed some of the mid-20th-century writers. Shocking. But it was just really fun to read them. And so this sounds like a great addition. Thank you.

GINGER: It's also quite short. Okay, for my last pick, I'm going to make you do a little decision here because my mind is going in a couple of different directions. Would you like a modern literary novel written based on a classic play or would you like — actually, both of these are based on a play — or would you like another modern literary novel but a little bit more of a gritty, mysterious element based on a very different kind of play, but it could send you off on another syllabus type series?

[00:54:12] CHERYL: I think I want the gritty.

GINGER: Okay, okay. That is what I find to be a little-known Margaret Atwood title called Hag-Seed. This was part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series where different famous writers rewrote some of the Shakespearean plays. And this one is based on The Tempest, which is one of my favorite plays.

CHERYL: Oh, I just read it earlier this year.

GINGER: Oh, that'll be fresh in your mind.

CHERYL: Yes.

GINGER: So this is the story of a man who is trying to revive a prison theater program. He is sort of confronting his past. There is that same kind of betrayal involved. The setting is a prison. It is Shakespeare's The Tempest. It is a little grittier, but I think what it could do is it could send you down that path.

[00:54:59] A lot in that Hogarth Shakespeare series were really, really fine novels and written by excellent writers like Margaret Atwood. But I feel like when people talk about Margaret Atwood, they talk about The Handmaid's Tale, rightly so, you know, some of her other more well-known books, but I don't hear people talking about Hag-Seed that often. But I really loved this one.

CHERYL: That sounds great. I'm very interested in reading that. Thank you.

GINGER: Okay. So all three of those could really send you down a path of a syllabus and Q's Legacy, another Shakespeare retelling grouping, and then of course, the big tome, 1,000 books, or however many of those you so choose.

CHERYL: That's fine. No, that sounds really cool. And I appreciate your thinking about the big world of books and how you find the right books and that 1,000 books you should read... you read before you die. That sounds very helpful for me. Thank you.

GINGER: Well, as Anne usually asks our guests, what do you think you'll read next?

[00:55:55] CHERYL: So I think because of our England trip, I'm going to read Q's Legacy and 84, Charing Cross Road. I think that I'm going to read those because that'll blend in really well with that. But part of my reading going forward after this project, I found I loved Shakespeare. Like loved it. The big surprise. And so I am going to be reading one Shakespeare play a month until I finish. And I love the idea, not just of the Margaret Atwood novel, but the fact that there's these others, that's very interesting to me. Thank you.

GINGER: Give them all a look. Good. I'm so excited to hear that.

ANNE: We're excited. You're excited. Look, this doesn't even count as one more because if we've already talked about two Helene Hanff. The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street is her book about finally traveling to London to meet the bookseller that she corresponded with and his family and associates. And I don't believe she makes it as far north as York, but she does take many a jaunt out to the surrounding London countryside to see the sights while she's there.

[00:57:01] The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street because that's where her hotel is and someone teases her about how she just holds court. She entertains visitors and dresses up and goes out in the world to be squired around seeing the sights. It's charming.

GINGER: Sounds like a great life, actually.

ANNE: It does. It does.

GINGER: That could be such a fun trilogy because, again, they're all quite slim, and so you could probably tuck those in your bag and read those on the airplane if you were so inclined.

ANNE: Yeah, indeed. That sounds great. Oh, I'm so excited.

ANNE: Cheryl, thank you so much for being our guinea pig and for joining us today.

CHERYL: It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.

GINGER: And here's the real question. Am I allowed to email you with the 11 billion more thoughts that I had?

CHERYL: Please. Please do.

GINGER: Before they come tumbling out of my mouth and this podcast is 17 hours long.

CHERYL: Yes, because there's no limit on email. So please do.

GINGER: I love it.

ANNE: And Ginger, thank you for bringing yourself and your book recommendations to the show today.

GINGER: This was great fun.

ANNE: It's been a pleasure. You too. Thank you so much.

CHERYL: Thank you.

[00:58:01] ANNE: Hey, readers. I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Cheryl, and we would love to hear what you think she may enjoy reading next. Find Cheryl on Substack and other platforms at Crack the Book. We will have all those links in our show notes, and that's where we'll also share all the titles we talked about in today's episode. That's at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

Follow our show on Instagram at @whatshouldireadnext and follow along with updates from the MMD Book Club, spearheaded by Ginger Horton at MMD Book Club.

Join our email list to get updates on new episodes and other happenings at What Should I Read Next? HQ. Sign up at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/newsletter.

Thank you to Ginger Horton for joining me today. And to all of the people who make this show happen every week. What Should I Read Next? is created 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.

[00:59:12] 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.