The perfect books for readers fascinated by museums, art, and the creative process

[00:00:00] KRISTINE PARSONS: I have a giant stack of books I bought on spring break and on vacation, and every time I go in the bookstore, I have a lot that I have read recently and that I want to read.

ANNE BOGEL: Well, that sounds amazing. But you're okay with adding to your stack today?

KRISTINE: Of course. I never have any problem doing that.

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.

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[00:01:52] Readers, today I'm chatting with a book lover who's seeking a literary doorway into the creative world of art and museums. Kristine Parsons doesn't have an art background. She works as a county road commission manager in Michigan, yet she is fascinated by art and museums, and finds herself drawn to immersive and engaging stories that incorporate one or both elements into the story.

Kristine loves to travel and visit museums in person, but her day-to-day life between work and two active pre-teens means that in this season, these visits are more likely to occur on the page. Today, Kristine and I are exploring stories featuring art and the creative process, and if I have recommendations that are actually set in museums, well, so much the better.

I can't wait to dive in and share ideas for Kristine's armchair cultural adventures. Let's get to it.

Kristine, welcome to the show.

KRISTINE: Hi there. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:02:48] ANNE: Oh, the pleasure's mine. I'm so excited to talk to another Michigander, and also I will confess, I got real excited when I saw the kind of books you were looking for, so thanks for bringing it to the show today.

KRISTINE: Of course, I have looked forward to doing this for a long time, and any opportunity I get to talk about books, sign me up.

ANNE: Should we tell the readers we were just talking about accosting strangers in bookstores we visit, because they need to know what they might enjoy reading next?

KRISTINE: Yes. I consider myself a book pusher, so if I see you in a bookstore browsing, even anywhere near a book that I like or have loved, I will tell you all about why you should read it. I generally walk into the bookstores and recommend whatever it is that strikes my fancy.

ANNE: Mm, that could be a real gift. The right book at the right time. Okay, I imagine many listeners are just smiling with recognition right now.

[00:03:42] Kristine, tell us a little more about yourself. In addition to your book pusher status, would you give us a little glimpse of who and where you are?

KRISTINE: I live in southwest Michigan, not too far away from Lake Michigan, and I have two children, not-quite-teenage children. I have a husband and two dogs, and I work in road construction. So not the actual construction myself. I manage a road department, so we deal with a lot of road-related questions and problems. It's interesting, but stressful, so reading is my escape. It's my main hobby, my passion, the thing that people know me by, I would say, for better or for worse. If you don't want to talk about books, you don't want to come too close to me probably.

[00:04:31] I have always had a fascination with art, I would say, but an amateur fascination. It feels like one of those things that you need a special entrée into that world or an education and an art history degree, and I don't have that. I'm just a person who really appreciates beautiful art and finding beauty in the world.

I love a book that talks about the creative process, and not just in the traditional ways, either, I would say. Like Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, the development of the video games, I felt like that was really fascinating from a creative standpoint.

So anything that gets me more information about what drives someone to create beauty, whether it be a painting or whether it be writing a book or developing a video game or even just the way the light falls on the grass some days, I think people who can recognize that and translate that into creation or the creative process, and, you know, paintings in particular I find very moving. I would love to know more about that. I would love to have more knowledge about who this artist is or their creative process.

[00:05:41] We have a really wonderful art museum in Michigan, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and I've never been there, and I'm... It's my goal to go and not be intimidated, I guess.

ANNE: Oh, what an amazing goal. And I believe in you. You can do this. But maybe some good novels can help you prepare for your experience when it arrives.

KRISTINE: And that's always the way that I approach any new endeavor is there's gotta be a book about that. So that sounds perfect.

ANNE: Oh, that is so relatable. Kristine, tell us about your reading life.

KRISTINE: Oh gosh, my reading life. I read in every spare minute that I have. I'm very much like if I'm blow-drying my hair in the morning, I'll be listening to a book. I will be reading while I cook dinner. I do a lot of audiobooks. I would say probably 50% of my reading is audiobooks these days just with... I have a long commute. I read my Kindle at night. I'm definitely a multiple Kindle person, but then I also have an abnormal number of book stacks around my house, I'm sure if you asked my husband. So I have a lot of physical books. I find them soothing.

[00:06:50] I have a lot of joy just from having the book in my hand to smell the book, to sit out in my chair in the backyard and read a book, a physical book particularly. There's just a sensation that you cannot pass up on sometimes.

So I read widely, I would say. I have particular genres that I enjoy. I really enjoy historical fiction. I like police procedurals, and I have you to thank for that. I don't think I would've gotten into police procedurals if it hadn't been for your podcast. The Duncan Kincaid particularly I really enjoy.

ANNE: Oh, I'm so glad.

KRISTINE: I love anything set in Ireland with an Irish narrator or an Australian. Jane Harper, Tana French, sign me up. I love them. I like nonfiction a lot and most of all, I should definitely say this, I love romance. I'm in a romance book club at my library I help run, and it's called Between the Pages, and we have a fantastic time reading a lot of different kinds of romance and fantasy.

[00:07:51] I read pretty broadly. I will sometimes read outside of what I'm comfortable with if somebody can give me a really compelling recommendation. I need to have a likable character. If the character's not super likable, I don't know if I'm going to finish it.

For instance, let me give you a really good example here, you recommended on the podcast years ago The Likeness by Tana French, and I had not read any police procedurals. I was not a murder mystery person at that time, and gosh, that book, one of my all-time favorites. I bought a copy, I'm like, "I'm going to reread this." It's stuck with me. I think about it regularly, which is just wild to me because I feel like I don't have enough bandwidth to think about all the things in my regular life. But just the compelling nature of the story, the characters, the mystery, the way she wove it, it's just so nuanced and interesting and well-crafted and- To this day, I still think about that all the time. I wouldn't have picked that up if it weren't for the recommendation, so I will try new things with a compelling recommendation.

[00:09:00] ANNE: I'm glad to hear that. I'm wondering what that's going to mean for today. Kristine, I believe you've been listening for a long time. What brings you to What Should I Read Next? now?

KRISTINE: Oh, gosh, I've been listening since the beginning. I've been working at the road department... Gosh, I feel like that you started this right about the time that I started at the road department because I was pregnant with my daughter at the time, or maybe she was a newborn, and I had a lot of time on my hands then. But I love talking about books. I love having conversations with people about the things they love about books, immersing myself in the literary world.

On Friday last week, I heard Shelby Van Pelt speak about Remarkably Bright Creatures here in Michigan, in advance of her Netflix debut. So it was just really interesting to hear how she crafted the story and her whole process and where she was wandering through the aquarium and thinking about Marcellus and had a newborn daughter.

[00:10:00] I find myself so drawn into conversations where people can tell you what book you should read, but also why. Like, don't just tell me what I should read, tell me why I should read it. That's what I want to know, because anybody can give a book recommendation. Anybody can say, "Have you read this?" Or, you know, sure, sure, I probably have, but tell me why. That's the important part for me is I want to understand why you like it, why I might like it.

ANNE: Okay. Well, today you came to the show with a specific request. Would you fill our listeners in on what that is?

KRISTINE: I really feel like that while I have a passion in my interior, heart, mind, however you'd like to say it, for art, it can feel a little intimidating to walk into an art museum and really not understand what is happening. Like, sure, art on the walls, statues, but what does it mean? Where does it come from? How do you understand it? How can you learn more about it? It can be a little intimidating, I think, for the average person. And I'm the average person.

[00:11:02] So I would like to go into a museum and better understand, you know, what's going on when I look at a certain painting or understand the influences of certain artists or how that ties into how the painting was created or what the statue means. As we talked about, I'm a person who if I want to know something, I go to a book, and I feel like, especially in literature, there's a lot of references to art. There's a lot of stories about art, whether it's a fictional story or a nonfictional story, you know, the art thief or the art spy.

Understanding why certain paintings don't exist anymore or what happened and what drove people to collect art, the whole world of it I find really fascinating. I'm really immersed in those kinds of stories. So I'd like to learn more about it. I'd like to walk into a museum and be like, "Oh, I know that painting," or, you know, "I understand where that statue comes from." I don't need to know everything, but I want to have a working knowledge of certain things, some surface-level knowledge of art and where I can go to read more about it. And not just the nonfiction. I don't just want to, like, you know, a program. I want to understand stories and backgrounds and just really understand more than I do right now.

[00:12:23] ANNE: I want to tell you about an experience I had recently in the Saint Louis Art Museum. I walked into a room, and I was checking out the mid-century paintings and was so delighted to recognize a work by Helen Frankenthaler. I had seen this work before, but it didn't mean anything to me before. But in the interim, I had read a novel, and a huge interlude in the novel takes place at a Helen Frankenthaler special exhibit in London.

And I had walked through that exhibit with the protagonist and one of the ancillary characters, and I had Googled all the works that were mentioned, and I Googled the theory about the art that the artist, who was the protagonist, was describing. And I just felt like when I walked back into that Saint Louis Art Museum that I hadn't been in in several years and noticed that card I hadn't noticed before, even though it was there the last time I visited, it meant something to me, and it was because of the book, that I didn't pick up because of Helen Frankenthaler, but that's where the book led me.

[00:13:22] KRISTINE: I know exactly what book you're talking about. I also read that part and was like, "Let me Google all these paintings. Let me Google Helen Frankenthaler." I wish you could have seen my face. I just jumped when you said the experience they had in the museum in London. I was like, "I know what she's talking about." That's the kind of experience. I want to have that tie in to a book or an experience or a memory, something that makes it more meaningful, something that will make it stick with me a little more.

ANNE: So if we could bring you more of that kind of experience, you would be really happy.

KRISTINE: Oh, I would be over the moon.

ANNE: Okay. Readers, you may want to know that the book we're talking about is Writers & Lovers by Lily King. And we're talking about art, so that's all we're going to say about it.

What do you think about this, Kristine? What about if you tell me the three books you love, one book you don't, and what you've been reading lately, and I'll be filtering this through your interest in art and your desire to have more of those kinds of experiences. And then we will talk about what you may enjoy reading next, and we'll see what other clues and nuggets we pick up along the way.

[00:14:29] KRISTINE: Okay, perfect. The first book that I loved was The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai, and this is probably the one I've let longest to go, so I'm not as clear on the details as I was when I read it. But I remember the impressions that stuck with me. Just the history of the AIDS crisis and the way that that was portrayed.

And as a child of the '90s, I grew up and knew about it, but I don't know that I was as aware of it as this story takes you. The way that they wove art into that story, that he worked in a museum, but he was... Or an art gallery, that's what it was. But he was more about donations and getting paintings, so it was a little more mercenary than perhaps... you know, he wasn't just a starving artist, but he was around a lot of artists.

And the dual timelines of that story... I really preferred the historical timeline more than the present-day timeline. But understanding what it's like to create art when also this major historical event is happening, which maybe they didn't realize at the time was this major historical event, but that will completely impact the way that the art is created and looked at and translated into the decades in the future, and what it means when you don't know what's going on.

[00:15:55] I think a lot of us can relate to that with the pandemic. But what it means to have that experience, that traumatic experience, and also be trying to live your life and survive what's happening. I really appreciated the way that she put a human face on the historical events, and also dived really deeply into the characters' lives and into some of the less serious things too, the trips to visit the art donor, and the conversations that he had with her, and how there are still practical concerns. You know, "How much am I going to make off of this if I give you all of my art?"

I mean, all of those things were interesting and relatable, but I think the thing that really moved me the most was what it felt like for those characters to face death and disease and the unknown, and not... You know, it wasn't as well understood then as it is now, or even understood at all, and then also have to keep living their lives, and how that influences the art they create. I think that was a really beautiful story. Really tragic, but also really beautiful.

[00:17:02] ANNE: I believe I remember reading that tragic but beautiful is something not uncommon to your superlative reading experiences.

KRISTINE: Yes. I like a book to both move me and make me feel hopeful, and sometimes also break my heart. Like, the emotional experience of being invested, and you're hoping that it ends well, and that the resolution that you're really yearning for happens, but if it doesn't, that you're so invested, you're like, "Whoa, I need a minute to recover from that." You know, I like a nice, tidy ending, but also I can handle something less than happy if I feel like that I really got emotionally invested.

ANNE: That's helpful. That is The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai. Kristine, what's the second book you love?

[00:17:56] KRISTINE: The second book is The Unseen World by Liz Moore. I read Long Bright River, oh gosh, five or six years ago, and it just blew me away, and I loved it so much, I'm like, "I'm going to read everything she's written." And I picked up The Unseen World, and I was like, "Whoa, this is totally different." Which I read The God of the Woods last year, two years ago, and I feel like maybe that's the theme of her books, is they're all completely different from each other, and that's a real skill, I think, to be able to pick a subject and characters and have them be so different from each other, but yet the emotional heft of the story is still there. Like, you can still feel her mastery of the story happening as she writes it and learning about the characters. And really she makes it easy to get emotionally invested, and for me, I want emotional investment. I think that's a thing that art does well, too, so then maybe that's how that ties in here, is art allows for, it creates emotional investment if it's done well. And I guess that's a subjective thing.

[00:18:59] But I really loved the story of Ada and her father and her unconventional upbringing and how she was very precocious and surrounded by all of this emerging technology. She knew so much. At the same time, she also knew so little. A moment her life changes from the known to the unknown, or the unseen, I guess. And you really go with her on this journey as she discovers what her life is going to look like, what her life means, where she comes from. And you're discovering it with her as she's understanding things about her family that she was unaware of or trying to understand her father better because he was also, even though she was the closest person that he had in the world, he was also a mystery to her, to some degree. So it was a really compelling, intimately told story, and I just really appreciated what the author was able to do.

ANNE: Okay, that was The Unseen World by Liz Moore. I mean, speaking of bittersweet.

[00:20:04] KRISTINE: Oh, that's true. Yeah. And I feel like I've read a couple of books lately that reminded me of that. I can't think... what's the one where the father's a doomsday prepper?

ANNE: Oh, wait, hang on, I got real excited because I thought you were talking about What Kind of Mother.

KRISTINE: I am. I am talking about What Kind of Mother. That is it.

ANNE: Okay.

KRISTINE: You're so good at this game.

ANNE: Well, I recommended that book to my 16-year-old, and then felt really proud of myself when I found out later that it had won an Alex Award, which does highlight adult books that would be especially of interest to teenagers. But I kept thinking as he was reading it if The Unseen World would be a good next pick, so I think those books were already linked in my brain.

KRISTINE: Yes. They reminded me a lot of each other. That's where I was going, is I think that they have very similar premises, but they're done differently enough that I think you could still appreciate them. I don't know if I'd read them back-to-back, but they reminded me a lot of each other. There's an Irish novel, Confessions, that reminded me a lot of Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and I'm like, see-

ANNE: Oh, I haven't read that one.

[00:21:06] KRISTINE: Oh, it's interesting. It's not as good as Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, but it is still very similar. Like, similar premise. And you can have stories that are similar and also be completely different and have different emotional experiences. I guess that's what I love about books. You can read one book one day and a different book the next day, and they remind you a lot of each other, and the emotional experience could be totally different or it could be exactly what you were looking for when you're saying, "I want another book like this." I think what a lot of people mean is, "I want to feel the same way when I read it," you know?

ANNE: Yes, which is why the algorithms often don't cut it.

KRISTINE: Yeah, 100%. It's an emotional experience.

ANNE: I'm with you. I'm with you. Kristine, what's the third book you love?

KRISTINE: The third book is my favorite.

ANNE: That's bold. I love it.

[00:21:54] KRISTINE: I love it so much. I was in the car on the way back from a conference when I read this book, and it's seared into my memory, just the experience of reading it in the backseat of the car. People were talking to me, and I was like, "I cannot talk to you right now. I want to read this book." It's Heart the Lover. I don't think I said that.

Heart the Lover by Lily King, oh, it just broke me in the best possible way. I loved Jordan. I think the thing I loved so much was not necessarily her experiences reminded me of me, but her emotional depth as a character, her growth, the maturity that you see happening in the book, her flaws, her wounds. It reminded me of myself. And maybe it's just of a particular era, the sort of pre-cellphone college experience or early cellphone college experience. I was in college in the late '90s, early 2000s, and it had a very particular flavor that reminded me of my own experiences and being away from home and exposing yourself to different types of people that can be really intimidating.

[00:22:58] She talks about in the beginning of the book how she felt really intimidated by Yash and by Sam because they just seem so knowledgeable. I remember having that same experience. Like, you can go from being a very small world in high school, and you go to college and it just completely expands your horizons. I loved her as a character. I identified with her deeply.

I like books set in academia. It gave me a little bit of The Secret History vibes, not so much for the plot, just the feel, the sort of very academic, literary feel. I always enjoy learning new things. So she talks a lot about art and history and culture and experiences. I felt like I learned a lot, you know, was exposed to a lot of different things, authors and concepts in that book, even though it's just a short little book.

[00:23:48] And then also it was very emotionally packed. It was very wistful, and it was heartbreaking. It just leaves you wrung out in the best possible way. That young love feeling, the way that you experience that first relationship that you're never going to be able to do again because you only have a first love the one time, and the trials and errors that you go through in relationships. Ugh, it moved me so deeply, and I'm fairly certain after I read it, I called everyone I knew, and I was like, "You need to read this book. You need to read this book right now." I bought copies for people. It was just something that I felt like it just changed my life, and it needed to do the same thing for everybody else. But, you know, art is an individual experience, so who knows? But I just was blown away.

ANNE: I love that for you. And I'm making notes. We may be connecting some of those ideas to recommendations shortly. Kristine, now would you tell me about a book that was not right for you? And I'd love to hear where the disconnect was.

[00:24:53] KRISTINE: I'm sure that it's right for other people. It got a lot of publicity and people seemed to really enjoy it. It was A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhirst. The first little bit with the whale, I was like, "Man, oof, exciting. What's happening here?" I love a good, compelling nonfiction story. And then the whole rest of it seemed like it was unlikable characters. And it's real people, so it's their real story and not incredibly sympathetic. It felt a little mundane.

I guess I felt like the story was going to be more about the survival aspect and the adventure of the story and less about the logistics of the trip. There were parts of it in there, the survival parts, but it just felt like that was smaller than I had expected. I wasn't as captivated as I was hoping to be. But it wasn't terrible. I didn't hate it. There are books that I hate, I'm sure. There's books that I'll, you know, for the rest of my life remember how much I disliked it. This one just wasn't for me. It didn't keep my attention long enough. I wasn't as interested as I had hoped. I was looking for more of the emotional experience of survival, and I was really hoping the whale falls on the ship and these people have to survive, and it was not Castle of Water. To be fair, it is nonfiction, but... I was going for a little bit more Castle of Water vibes, but nonfictional.

[00:26:28] ANNE: Oh, I haven't thought about Castle of Water. Well, actually, I think about Castle of Water, readers were talking about the Dane Huckelbridge novel, every time I think about taking out my contacts and not having a new pair.

KRISTINE: I was just thinking about that part.

ANNE: It's about a plane crash on an island, and two people make a life thereafter. But she doesn't have her glasses, contacts. Oh, I'm really grateful for my contacts. Okay, but we are talking about your books, and A Marriage at Sea was not for you.

I distinctly remember reading that, well, I listened to the audio, which was short, it was five-something hours, while I was doing yard work last summer, and I thought it was very interesting. And also that book was another that made me realize how much I appreciate emotional resonance in the fiction and nonfiction stories I'm reading. Like, that's something that really makes a particularly good reading experience for me, and I miss it when it's not there. And so many readers have loved this book. That's worth saying.

[00:27:38] What I hear you saying, Kristine, I think, is that a nonfiction, this happened, this happened, and this happened, is not answering that question you said was so important to you, in a different context, but the question of why. Like, what's the meaning there? What am I to make of this?

KRISTINE: No, I would agree with you. I think that that is part of what the problem was.

ANNE: Okay. Kristine, what have you been reading lately?

KRISTINE: I just finished Yesteryear with, I think, half the rest of the world, and I'm still thinking about it. I feel like that book really is made for contemplation and thinking about, and book clubs. And if you want to talk about it, that's one that you can pick up and talk about. There's a lot of different aspects to it. I've really enjoyed the experience.

[00:28:25] I picked up American Fantasy this week, so I'm super excited about that to see where that's going to go, because I really love Emma Straub, and have not had a bad experience with one of her books yet. I haven't read them all, but I think that this one sounds promising.

I'm also reading Daughter of Egypt by Marie Benedict, and I really love that. I love Egyptology. I reread The Egypt Game last year because it was one of my, I think, historical favorites from my adolescence, and just, ugh, just revived that childhood interest in all things, like, ancient Egypt and pharaohs. It's super interesting. I'm really enjoying it.

I have a giant stack of books I bought on spring break and on vacation, and every time I go in the bookstore that I'm really looking forward to. I'm really looking forward to the new Maggie O'Farrell, so I don't know. I have a lot that I have read recently and that I want to read.

ANNE: Well, that sounds amazing. But you're okay with adding to your stack today?

[00:29:26] KRISTINE: Of course. I never have any problem doing that. When people are always like, "I have to cut my TBR back," I'm like, "I don't even..." If I was to look at Goodreads, I guarantee you there's probably 7,000 books on there. I don't care how many books are on there. I care about what I want to read in the moment, having choices and selection. The more new books, the better. I will never have enough time to read all the books, but half the joy of being a reader is surrounding yourself with the choices of all the books that you crack open and fall into, and they become your whole personality for two or three days. And then, you know, everybody around you is like, "Stop talking about that book, about the tradwife." I'm like, "But wait, I haven't told you about the best part."

ANNE: So more books is more possibility, and you like possibility in your reading life.

KRISTINE: I love possibility. I think that's what makes it exciting is you don't know what you're going to encounter.

[00:30:19] ANNE: Okay. So today we're looking for bookish possibility, including stories set in museums and about art. We've talked a little bit about those characteristics that you really enjoy and the genres that you tend to go to. Is there anything else I should know about what you're looking for, or that you want right now, if that's a different question to you?

KRISTINE: No, I am really open to anything. I trust your judgment. You're the expert. And also, I really enjoy someone's perspective other than my own. I have a really good dialed in sense of what I like, but I think part of the bookish serendipity that appeals to me so much is someone presenting something to me that I might not have considered for myself.

ANNE: Okay, let's go. Kristine, this is going to be fun. Thank you for bringing this request to the show. The first book I have for you is brand new, just out May 5th. It was in the Summer Reading Guide, so I want to focus on a little bit of a different thing than I did at unboxing or in the guide. It's by Alexandra Andrews. It's called The Fine Art of Lying. Do you know it?

KRISTINE: I do not.

[00:31:31] ANNE: Okay. She wrote Who Is Maud Dixon? that came out maybe 2021, give or take a year, which was a suspenseful thriller with no likable character. And I'm really asking myself, I've been asking myself while you've been talking, like, "Are these characters likable?"

But I think the protagonist of this book has a lot that you will like about her. So this is about a woman named Claire. She's a Manhattan stay-at-home mom. She lives a pretty tame life. She is almost done with her art history PhD, and she says that she's been languishing as an ABD, that is All But Dissertation, for years.

And I'm going to skip to her revelation that she has at the end of the book for her. She finally decides, like, "I, I love art. I grew up in this tiny town upstate, and I went to a museum and fell in love with this one particular painting, and it set me on a path that made me think, 'I want to know more about this.'"

[00:32:41] And she thought, Well, obviously, the thing to do is pursue art history. And if you're going to pursue it all the way, that ends up with pursuing a PhD. And her focus is this fictional artist who's this... she describes him as a successful but enigmatic mid-century painter who's supposed to be the subject of her dissertation, except she's not writing it.

But she comes to this realization that really you reminded me of with your words about art. She just reflects on how she loves art. She doesn't know why. She loves the mystery of it. And she reflects on how no one in the thousands of years that art has existed, has been made by humans, has ever given a satisfactory explanation of what it actually does and why it affects us and how it affects us and what it all means, and why do certain works of art affect some people and not others?

[00:33:32] And she says all these people have written millions upon millions of words about art, and she's read so many of them, but she says not a single sentence has come close to capturing that visceral response she had when she looks at a painting that, for whatever reason, she loves. And she says, "It's not logical. It makes no sense, but it's real, and that is why I love art." And that kinda reminded me of what you said. Like, we can't understand it. I mean, we can't understand why we're drawn to it, but we can learn more about the things we're drawn to.

And in this book, which is a murder mystery, and it begins in this, like, dramatic fashion, then you go back and learn about the bad choices she made that led to her being at the scene of a crime when an art gallerist is murdered, oh, and an $18 million painting is missing.

But she knows all these things about art, but it's not just the knowledge, it's like what they mean to her. And my favorite parts of the book were when she gets pulled into conversations with people who know the art world, and she just really quippily like says what she thinks and why she likes some things but thinks others are overrated, and she's like, "Oh, those multimillion-dollar rainbow dots, like they just look good with people's sofas. That's the only reason that that's popular. You want to see some good dots, how about check out this artist or this artist or this artist?"

[00:34:53] And Kristine, I think maybe the highest recommendation I can give to you for this one after I think you may really feel a kinship with the protagonist, is my search history was so delightfully full of Richard Diebenkorn and Ed Ruscha and James Turrell and Carsten Höller, and artists I hadn't heard of before, like Kusama and Baldessari and Howardena Pindell, and I enjoyed going down that road.

Also, for books set in museums, there's a fictional museum that's crucial to this book. It's called the Museum of Contemporary Art. It's in New York City. And how the museum functions, how the funds are raised, how the museum decides what to acquire, and then the complex process it must go through if it wants to deaccession a work, I'd never thought about any of that.

When I was reading it, I thought, "Oh, of course museums have to make decisions like this, and of course they have to account for the finances and the decisions about the art and everything else," but I'd never thought about it. And I really enjoyed how this book drew me to think about it. How does this sound to you?

[00:35:56] KRISTINE: Oh my gosh, that sounds incredible. I'm just sitting here, I'm like, "How fast can I get this book?" Feels like it perfectly encapsulates what I'm looking for in my reading life right now. And my fascination, if I had to tell you, there's certain things I consider in my reading wheelhouse, museums, art, nuns, code breaking. I'm sure it's a very eclectic list, but it sounds like you have taken the words that I have spoken and breathed them into existence in the form of this book, and I'm just so thrilled to get my hands on it.

ANNE: Well, I'm delighted to hear it. Kristine and I are recording before the Summer Reading Guide, but I will have said more about it by the time this episode is airing, and you can have your hands on it. Past Kristine can be reading it by the time this episode is playing for everyone.

KRISTINE: I can't wait.

ANNE: Okay, I'm glad that sounds like a good fit. Next, I'm thinking about Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel. And this one has been out for a little longer. Have you read this?

[00:36:57] KRISTINE: I have not read this. I have it on hold in the library because-

ANNE: Do you?

KRISTINE: You know, I've always wanted to read The Ensemble, and I read the first few pages and I was like, "Eh, I don't know if I like this." And maybe it was just more not the right book at the right time, because they seemed a little unlikable. Because I don't know if I gave it a fair shot. But I have this one on hold, and I haven't read it. Please tell me more about it.

ANNE: Well, this one has a strong hook for you just with the content, so it could be a great place to start with Aja Gable, and then you can decide. It is very different from The Ensemble. I think this one came out in fall 2024. But I was one of many readers who had just been eagerly awaiting her next one for six years. And she's a screenwriter, so she was writing in the meantime, just not writing books that we could hold in our hands. But this new novel is very different from her first.

[00:37:49] In this one, a quantum physicist is approached by a rich, egotistical billionaire to work on a secret project involving a dangerous kind of time travel. At first, our scientist, Noah, and his wife, Maya, believe that Noah's been singled out because he's brilliant. And he's definitely brilliant, but he's also been targeted because of a tragedy in his past that's really being exploited here. And the billionaire also has secret, sinister motives, but you know, he's keeping those under wraps for the time being.

So Noah and Maya decide he's going to take the job, they can't turn it down, and they move together to Marfa, Texas, because that's where the billionaire's lab is. I've never been to Marfa, Texas, but I have really enjoyed the books I have read that include stops in Marfa, Texas. I think this might be the first one I've read that's set entirely in Marfa, Texas. But art is big in Marfa, Texas. It is a real destination.

[00:38:46] So while Noah is off trying to figure out this dangerous kind of time travel thing, bad things are happening to Noah, and his work, and his marriage. But the stakes are even higher than that, and that sci-fi kind of story will be deeply compelling to some readers.

But let's talk about the setting and the art for you. Much of the action takes place in Marfa, Texas, which is such a cool place that many of us have only been to, and perhaps will only go to on the page. Maya is an artist from Japan, and her career and interests feature prominently in this book, how she's thinking about her work and her field, and her friends who are artists, her friends who have left.

There is so much art in these pages. I did so much Googling. My search history just makes me smile when I think about it. I looked up so much Donald Judd and Kusama's infinity mirror rooms. Now on... You want to go to the Detroit Museum. I want to see an infinity mirror room in person now, and it's because of this book.

[00:39:50] The Marfa ghost lights. The protagonist describes her visceral reactions to some works she sees, like a Donald Judd installation that she saw and took in and just started crying. And she walks you through why. But also there's some more cerebral breakdowns of how she responds or doesn't to certain pieces.

The Marfa ghost lights are not artistic exactly, but was also a really fun textural detail. But the art is not limited to Marfa. We also go to LA, and New York City, and Japan. There's so much fun, nerdy, creative, intellectual stuff in these pages because her husband's a scientist, she's an artist, and the book really examines that whole interplay between science and art, and the human desire to understand it, and the things we do understand, and also a question it poses is how much is beyond our understanding at all.

And that may sound really deep, but piece by piece with characters having conversations and thinking about the works in front of them, the right reader could really fly through this. How's this sounding to you?

[00:40:56] KRISTINE: Oh, gosh, that sounds really fascinating. And science fiction is not a thing that I would normally gravitate to, but I feel like that it's one of those genres where with the right recommendation such as this one, you can find those hidden gems that are really going to speak to you and be the book that you're like, "Wow, maybe I do need to look into this genre a little more. Maybe there are some stories that I haven't considered."

I don't like to be a person who refuses to pick something up based on genre. Like, you cannot lump them all into one genre and say, "Well, this is not for me." Like, I would generally say horror, not for me, but I know that there are some books that I've read that would be considered horror books that I did appreciate and enjoy if was not a little icked out in certain spots of the book. But the compelling storyline, time travel and space, those are also things I'm super interested in.

[00:41:47] I finished Detour a couple of days ago on audio, and had no idea what it was about besides space, and I am very fascinated by the idea of time travel and wormholes and multiverses. You have to forgive me, I'm not quite up on my science as much as I'd like to be. But it's so fascinating to think about how one choice that you make creates a spinoff universe in which you make the alternate choice, and how that domino effect or butterfly effect, whatever you'd like to say, affects everything else around you. So I'm super excited about this one and feel like I will definitely be picking it up immediately.

ANNE: I'm glad to hear it. Okay, this next one is a little more of a stretch, but I think some of the literary story elements that aren't specifically about art have a lot in common with some of your favorites, including especially Heart the Lover.

[00:42:44] In Heart the Lover, what we have is the protagonist, Jordan, looking back at a distance of many years and reflecting on what happened in her college years, and how these relationships changed her life, and also how she feels differently about them in her, I think she's in her 40s, than she ever knew to think of them when she was in her early 20s. But the book I'm thinking of is Dear Monica Lewinsky by Julia Langbein. It came out mid-April. Is this one you're familiar with?

KRISTINE: I almost picked it up at the bookstore yesterday.

ANNE: Did you really? The cover is really distinctive. Were you drawn in by the cover, or did you put it down because of the cover? Some readers love this, and some readers are like, "What the heck? I don't think this could be for me."

KRISTINE: No, I was drawn in. And the title. It was at the library, and I saw it, and I was like, "Ooh." I almost grabbed it, but there's like a 10 new book checkout limit, and they waived it already for me, so I was like, "I can't do that too. I can't check out another one and have like 15 new books out and be monopolizing them." Our library's amazing, but on the smaller side. So I was like, "I shall save that for somebody else." I saw it yesterday. It's funny that you mention it because I was like, "Ooh, I really want to read that."

[00:43:57] ANNE: Oh, okay. It's kind of you to look out for your fellow readers. I'm not sure what you gathered from the jacket, but I'll start from scratch. Well, Holland Saltsman of The Novel Neighbor gave me a galley of this a million years ago and said, "Read it. I want to know what you think." And I was like, "What is happening with this cover?" But I did, and the premise is so audacious. I thought, "This is a big swing." It's a little bit Dickens' A Christmas Carol, but also not at all that.

So, in this book, we have this woman in her, I think, early 40s, looking back on what her life could have been, reflecting on how she was so in love with the art, and also she thought so in love with this man who she felt really took advantage of her innocence, and love and appreciation for beauty and beautiful things, and never fully understanding how it wrecked her or why, and finding guidance in what seems like both a highly unlikely but ultimately perfect place that feels like it's able to explore themes that are really perfect for right now. Lots of descriptions of art. Also, if you're into that, really terrific descriptions of France and food. How's this sounding to you?

[00:45:19] KRISTINE: There were several things that you said that really just struck a nerve, and... oh gosh, like this is going to be amazing. I'm kind of at a loss for words. I feel like I'm anticipating the experience before I've even had it, and I'm so excited just to be able to do that. But talking about the timeline of the story, you know, my college experiences are about that same timeframe, and I feel like that I can really relate to that, that if you could've developed a comparison to Heart the Lover, like, come up with it yourself, I don't think you could've done it any better than this.

This sounds like exactly the type of story that is not the same story, but same emotional experience, and I'm incredibly excited about it because it's both relevant to things that I'm aware of, but also there's so much in there to unpack and to learn about. I love learning new things about medieval art. I don't really know anything about medieval art. I have a loose knowledge of, you know, medieval times.

[00:46:15] It reminds me a little bit from what you're saying about The Rachel Incident, and I adore that book, just the relationships in there, really getting into those and understanding, like, how you feel in that moment emotionally versus perhaps looking at it later with perspective and understanding that the power dynamics were not what they should've been, and it... seeing it through a different set of lenses, perhaps. The whole book sounds incredible, and I cannot wait to pick it up. Gosh, you are so good at this.

ANNE: I'm so glad that sounds like a good fit. And The Rachel Incident is such a good comp. I love that book, and I'm always looking for more of that flavor, and it hadn't occurred to me that Dear Monica Lewinsky actually fits that description.

KRISTINE: I love that book. I listened to it, I think, and I don't know what about it. I think I initially was like, "I'm not sure this is for me," and then I'm pretty sure that was one of those... I have several in my pocket of, like, go-to recommendations, and that's one of them. That, and the Likeness, and Beartown.

[00:47:22] I'm trying not to recommend the same books all the time. I really try to think about what somebody might like because I don't want to just tell you, "Read this book." Like I said, I want to recommend a book for a particular person based on their taste because that's so much more meaningful. But there's some that are universally appealing.

ANNE: Do you want to hear the why?

KRISTINE: Yes. Yes, I do.

ANNE: All right. Well, good news, I hear your library has it.

KRISTINE: My library. I hope it's still on the shelf.

ANNE: Well, if not, I also hear you have plenty to read, but you know, you want to know what's going to strike your mood right now. Okay, speaking of, so we talked about... we talked about a lot of books, but the three we're left with are The Fine Art of Flying by Alexandra Andrews, Lightbreakers by Aja Gable, and Dear Monica Lewinsky by Julia Langbein. Kristine, what do you think? What do you intend to pick up next?

[00:48:11] KRISTINE: Oh, gosh, Dear Monica Lewinsky, just recency bias. You talked about that one last and it just... All of them sound incredible. I cannot wait to go out and get them as soon as possible, pick them up today on my way home from work if I can. But I just am so excited about that one. That one sounds unique and different, and I don't know... not that I wouldn't have picked it up because clearly I saw it at the library yesterday, and I might have, but I love a unique reading experience, something that I didn't expect to have that now I get to, and then I can share with everybody else. So thank you so much for doing this. This has been absolutely incredible.

ANNE: Oh, well, the pleasure's mine. Thank you for sharing your life and your reading life with us, and I'm so excited you're excited about what you can read next.

[00:48:59] Hey, readers. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Kristine, and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next. Find Kristine on Instagram and Goodreads. We have those links and the full list of titles we talked about today at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

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[00:49:49] Thank you to the people who make this show happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by executive producer Will Bogel, Media production specialist Holly Wielkoszewski, social media manager and editor Leigh Kramer, community coordinator Brigid Misselhorn, community manager Shannan Malone, and our whole team at What Should I Read Next? and Modern Mrs. Darcy HQ. Plus the audio whizzes at Studio D Podcast Production.

Readers, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading." Happy reading, everyone.