The delight of a reading rabbit hole

[00:00:00] JANE BALDWIN: Oh my God, that is hilarious. I just threw that out, but honestly, those are kind of interesting titles to compare next to each other.

ANNE BOGEL: Those books have a lot to say to each other.

JANE: I'm sure we'll say more about 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.

[00:00:43] Readers, the coming fall weather means sweatshirts will soon be back in my wardrobe rotation, and I have loved the chance to create a few especially cozy styles for the Modern Mrs. Darcy shop over the years. Our latest is the Modern Mrs. Darcy MMD Sorority Sweatshirt, tailor-made for your fall activities on or off campus.

Choose from a crimson or blue jean colored comfort color sweatshirt adorned with navy felt applique letters and white stitching. We also still have a handful of colors and sizes in stock from our 2024 Book Camp sweatshirt design. Order your fall sweatshirt and shop our refreshed for fall collection of bookish merch at modernmrsdarcy.com/shop.

Readers, today's guest has tackled a significant reading project, but she's running into a few roadblocks and is hoping I can help. Jane Baldwin lives with her husband and two dogs in her not-long-ago adopted and much-loved city of St. Louis, where she's an accounting manager by day and a devoted gardener and Dungeons & Dragons regular by night.

[00:01:46] Jane came to us with the desire to feel more intentional in her reading life. She wants to experience the satisfaction of engaging in what she calls meaningful reading more often and sticking with something challenging, but she finds herself easily distracted by the new and shiny. She has ideas for different reading projects but has gotten overwhelmed by the possible options and hasn't done any of them yet.

Right now, she's attempting to fill some gaps she's identified in her American literature reading to date, but she's finding herself stalling out. Jane's put her finger on what to her is an appealing strategy for boosting her enthusiasm for this project. She is wanting to identify clusters of books that can be in conversation with each other, similar to the way we talk about book fights around here. And if you don't know that phrase, no worries at all. Jane and I are about to talk about it plenty. We will catch you up.

Today, Jane is here with her self-appointed 10 classic books she's been meaning to read, and we're going to see if I can identify both contemporary and classic options that will provide interest and context to some of these older picks.

[00:02:49] We're talking about everything from The House of Mirth to The Shampoo Effect, and along the way, we're noticing how much some of Jane's chosen shiny and new books have in common with these older titles she's been less excited to read. But hopefully, at the end of this episode, this'll change. This is good nerdy fun, and I can't wait to dive in with Jane. Let's get to it.

Jane, welcome to the show.

JANE: Thank you so much. I am so delighted to be here.

ANNE: Oh my gosh, the pleasure's mine. I am very excited about what we have in store for us conversationally today. Jane, would you start by just giving the readers a glimpse of who you are? Tell us a little about yourself.

JANE: Yes. I am 33 years old, and my husband and I live in St. Louis, Missouri. We've been here for about five years now, which is hard to believe. We are both Southern transplants. So he was born and raised in Nashville. I went to grad school there, started my career there, and that's where we met. But then we ended up moving to St. Louis for work opportunities.

[00:03:55] We have two rescue dogs. One is a 10-year-old grouchy, small-dog energy. Her name is Francie. And then an 11-month-old puppy named Scout, who is already three times her size. So two very different dog energies going on, but we love them.

For my day job, I am an accounting manager, so most of my workdays look like me just in spreadsheets and numbers, all sort of analytical things. So reading has definitely been a kind of an escape, total opposite of what I do for work, which I love.

ANNE: Do you want to tell us about The Novel Neighbor being your local indie?

JANE: Oh, yes. So fortunately, I live about a mile away, which is walking distance on a good day, to The Novel Neighbor, which is my local indie.

[00:04:52] I actually am on their Young Professionals board for their nonprofit. It's called the Noble Neighbor, and so what we do is we help fundraise for author events at the local public schools in the area. I mean, there's several a year where we'll have “buy books for students”, and then the author will come in and do an author visit. And so it's just been so much fun getting to be a part of that. I've gotten to meet some great people on the Young Professionals board.

Our big thing that we've been doing is we'll do a Kid Lit trivia. So we'll have kids about age 8 to 12 come in, and people at The Novel Neighbor actually help write some of the trivia questions, but it's all to raise money for these author visits. So it's a lot of fun. We really enjoy doing that.

[00:05:44] In addition to that, I've gotten into gardening. We bought our house in St. Louis about four years ago, and whenever we bought it, my goal was just to not kill whatever was in the ground. I didn't really grow up gardening, but I did not want to be the young homeowner with a bunch of dead, dying plants around her house. So I started to really get into it, and now four years later, I am trying to negotiate with my husband how much more of his lawn I can take up with new beds to plant more things in. And so that's a lot of fun.

Another thing that I've started doing is we host a weekly D&D game, or Dungeons & Dragons game with our friends at our house, and that is definitely not anything I ever thought I would get into. It was something that my husband kind of got interested in during the pandemic, and then he slowly but surely convinced me to try it with him. So, yeah, now once a week we'll have people over in our basement and play D&D. And we've made friends that way, and it's a lot of fun. It's kind of stretched me in ways that I never thought, but I'm really grateful for it.

[00:07:00] ANNE: Jane, are there ways that that connects with your reading life? Because you told me what you've been up to lately, and I'm wondering if there's a connection there.

JANE: Yes, slightly. One of our friends mentioned a book series that has gotten pretty popular called Dungeon Crawler Carl. My husband and I have actually been listening to those recently on audiobook together. We've found ourself on a couple of long road trips, and so we've been cranking through those and have really enjoyed them.

This past weekend, a couple of local bookstores put on a bookstore crawl. It was a Dungeon Crawler Carl-themed bookstore crawl that we went on, so we had to do different tasks at each of the different bookstores, including at The Novel Neighbor, which was so fun. It was honestly just an excuse to hang out with friends and buy stuff at our local indies. It was a lot of fun.

[00:07:59] ANNE: That sounds like a blast. I mean, five bookstores in one afternoon sounds like a blast.

JANE: Yes, it is. I'd been to most of them, but there was one that I hadn't been to yet. Honestly, St. Louis is such a reader's city. It's very bookish. We are very lucky with the number of authors who come through, and we'll do author visits, and then also we have so many bookstores. And so it's always fun to have an excuse to go to a bookstore that maybe isn't your closest one, but you can... It's still fun to go visit and see what they have in store.

ANNE: Jane, would you tell us more about your reading life?

JANE: Yes. I was just the stereotypical bookish kid. I came from a family who really encouraged readers. Even my extended family, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, I mean, they were always big readers as well. And so I always was encouraged to read, and so it has always been such a big part of my life.

[00:09:01] My mom, this is kind of a nerdy memory that just came to me, signed my brother and I up for reading camps during the summers whenever we were kids, so I kind of have fond memories of that as well. But definitely always have been a reader.

Even in middle and high school, my friends fortunately were readers as well, and so swapping books with them. I felt a lot of pride because I introduced my friend group in high school to the Twilight series and The Hunger Games series, which is kind of fun.

But then once I went to college, I actually, even though I'm an accountant now, I majored in English for a semester because I loved reading so much, and that's what I thought I wanted to do. But I'm also a bit practical and analytical, and so I ended up switching my major to accounting, but I still minored in English. About once a semester, I would have an English lit class where I could, you know, have all of my business and accounting and that sort of thing, but then I'd have Shakespeare, or I had women's lit or African American literature.

[00:10:08] So even during college, there was definitely less of personal reading, but I was still really enjoyed my college English classes. But starting young adulthood, like early in my career, I felt like my job was very... It took a lot out of me, so I kind of fell out of reading for pleasure. It was something that I wanted to do, but I found it difficult to make the time and kind of have the brain space until I really started getting into audiobooks.

So around the pandemic, I discovered Libby, and from there, it really started to take off. That's about the time I found this podcast and also the Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club. And so, yes, since probably 2020, 2021, I felt like my reading life has really taken off and which has been such a delight. It's been such a joy to have the desire to read, but then also be able to make the time for it, and being able to discuss it with other people has been really lovely.

[00:11:22] I would say lately, though, have been reading a lot, and I have ... I feel like I've been kind of in tune with a lot of the buzzy, the popular, the kind of noteworthy recent releases. But I found myself kind of seeing my reading life as being checking things off of the TBR or kind of gravitating towards the flashy and the new, and I'm kind of taking a moment to pause and think about, is this satisfying? Am I wanting a bit more intentionality, I guess, in my reading life? That's kind of what I'm, I guess, looking for right now.

ANNE: You know, I've read your submission, Jane, and I know about the project you're working on, but I didn't know about your history with your literary education. I'm wondering if those two things are converging this season in your life.

[00:12:17] JANE: I think that makes a lot of sense. I think that those classes, just that kind of like one class a semester of English lit, that was just totally different from everything else going on in my life. Having classroom discussions, having obviously a professor, a PhD, talk through these things with me, I really, really loved that.

It was just such a fulfilling thing. Even though it wasn't going towards my career necessarily, it added a lot of enrichment to my life, a lot of meaning. I'm a curious… I'm a thoughtful person, and so it's really nice to have things that add balance to your life. Definitely.

I've been reading along with Pride and Prejudice this month for Austen in August, doing the annotated version, and I have loved that so much. I've never done the annotated version. I've read Pride and Prejudice a couple of times at this point, but going through with the annotations has been so delightful. So I'm kind of looking forward to more of that kind of experience in my reading life.

[00:13:29] ANNE: Oh, okay. I am really wondering how many readers are nodding along going, "Yes," and how many are like, "What are you talking about?" Annotations being delightful. Jane, can I tell you my favorite so far? Because I'm doing this Pride and Prejudice read-along of the annotated edition too.

JANE: Okay, yes, absolutely.

ANNE: So very early in the book, Bingley moves to Netherfield, and there's lots of gossip in the community about who he is, and how much money he makes, and who's going to come live with him. And then there's a ball coming up, and there's lots of chatter about how many people he's going to bring. And he ends up showing up with... not the expected number of people. But the little annotation says, "Gossip is so important in this novel. Let me tell you what that's looked like so far, and let me hint at how it's going to play out." And I was just like, "Ooh, juicy. Tell me more." And "gossip" is not a word that I had previously associated with Pride and Prejudice, even though, holy smokes, it's everywhere. That's my favorite.

[00:14:29] JANE: It is everywhere. I've loved it. Or there was one of the footnotes or annotations about just the novel in general, not like that specific novel, but novels during the 19th century and how they were kind of looked down upon. And so just to look over and it's like, "Oh, there's two paragraphs just about the novel and how it was perceived in the Regency era." And it's like, "Oh, that is fascinating." I just love all of that background.

I'm a very curious person. I can go down a rabbit hole so easily. Like, I'm thrilled to go down any rabbit hole. And so yes, I am adoring these annotations.

ANNE: Okay. So you are curious by nature, you can go down any rabbit hole, and you want intentionality.

JANE: Exactly.

[00:15:24] ANNE: I think all these things, all these things are going to come to the fore today. Okay. Jane, so you've been listening a while, and your reading life has been... What were your words? It really took off in 2020, 2021, and here we are. We're talking in August 2026. What brings you to the show right now?

JANE: I have put a little curriculum together for myself. I guess the background of this would be about a year ago, my husband and I went to Chicago for a long weekend, and I took him to the American Writers Museum.

ANNE: Ugh, jealous. I still haven't been.

JANE: Oh, it's small, but it is so wonderful. It was actually he was having a boys' weekend with some of his college buddies and fantasy football stuff, and so I was like, "Okay, so now we're going to go do this."

ANNE: Counterpart.

[00:16:18] JANE: Yes, exactly. So we went, and I loved it. And it made me realize that there are so many wonderful pieces of American literature that I have just not read. I almost got a little emotional there, which I'm also kind of an emotional person, but just feeling so proud of America's literary legacy. And so I was like, "I definitely need to be intentional about reading more of these writers that I definitely have blind spots in."

And then whenever Harper, I think it's HarperCollins, they had those 250th anniversary editions of some American classics come out. That's what really sparked it. This summer I decided, "You know what? I'm just going to put together a little curriculum for myself, 10 works that are kind of blind spots for me, and I want to work on that." I'm not really giving myself a timeline or a deadline, but that was my intention.

[00:17:25] I started with The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, and I have found myself stalling out a little bit. I think I'm trying to read these kind of the same way that I would be reading, like, Yesteryear or Shampoo Effect or kind of these buzzy books that I've been reading lately that I've loved. Don't get me wrong, they are a lot of fun. There's a lot to unpack there in those works.

But these are very different types of books that I've chosen, and so I want to kind of do something that's a bit more intentional, where I'm sitting down, and I'm reading, and I'm not just kind of letting them happen to me, but kind of put some more effort into it. I think that's kind of important to me. It's a muscle that I want to work, I guess, instead of just like, "Oh yeah, this is an enjoyable book that I'm listening to or reading," if that makes sense.

[00:18:31] ANNE: Yeah, I can see how reading The House of Mirth could benefit from a little more additional context than The Shampoo Effect.

JANE: Yes, absolutely.

ANNE: Although I kind of like how those books could play really nicely together.

JANE: Oh my God, that is hilarious. I just threw that out, but honestly, those are kind of interesting titles to compare next to each other.

ANNE: Those books have a lot to say to each other. I'm sure we'll say more about that. But readers, if you haven't listened to episode 536 with Lizzie McFarlane, who talks about classic novels and how she had discovered that she couldn't just fall into bed and knock off a few chapters before bed like she would the 2026 new release she grabbed on the front table of the bookstore, we talk about strategies to approach.

So Jane, thank you for bringing a really wonderful companion to that conversation. And yet, this is important to you. This is something you want to do, and we're going to figure out a way for you to, I don't know, think about it differently. And you had some ideas for that.

[00:19:31] JANE: Yes. So you've introduced the concept of flight picks, and so I thought it might be interesting to add some flight picks to my personal curriculum. That might give me a bit more to chew on. It might add a little excitement, just a bit more intentionality to it. And so that's where I thought I could use your help.

ANNE: Okay. And readers, we made that up. That is the royal "we". Readers, when Jane says book flight, w- that is referencing a Modern Mrs. Darcy blog post from a million years ago, or maybe 2011 or 2012, where I was channeling the idea of a wine flight, or I'm in Kentucky, we have bourbon flights, where you have several options in front of you that have a lot in common but also have been purposely curated for contrast and comparison so that you can better appreciate what is distinctive about each individual component of the flight. So that's what we're talking about.

[00:20:40] Jane, I'm really excited to talk today about... you thought starting with some Edith Wharton flight picks would be a great idea. Can we zoom out first and talk about the books that you've brought to the show today?

JANE: Yes, absolutely.

ANNE: Okay. Well, you know how this works. You're going to share three books you love, one you don't, and what you've been reading lately. How did you choose these?

JANE: I didn't want to overthink it too much.

ANNE: Love it.

JANE: These are just three books that I've read within the past year or so that I really loved, but they also are pretty distinct from each other. So it would take a good picture of what types of books that I enjoy usually.

The first one is The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff. This was, I believe, a 2025 Summer Reading Guide pick.

ANNE: Yes, it was.

[00:21:39] JANE: This was my favorite book that I read in 2025.

ANNE: Wow.

JANE: I remember as soon as you started describing it, I was like, "Oh, that's one that I'm going to end up buying," because, and this is a little sneaky, my favorite book of all time is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and so I'm sneaking in maybe a fourth pick. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith. This book, while definitely not a retelling, it definitely pays homage to that book.

So The Bright Years follows Ryan and Lillian Bright and their marriage, as well as their daughter, Georgette Bright. It takes place in Texas, which I lived in Texas for several years. I have family who still lives there. The book starts with them meeting in Texas while Lillian is reading a copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I was like, "Oh, this book is going to be for me, for sure."

[00:22:42] It talks about their marriage and a lot of the struggles, the secrets that they have, and then it also is part coming-of-age story with their daughter, Georgette, and it kind of mirrors A Tree Grows in Brooklyn that way, which is definitely a coming-of-age story of Francie Nolan at the turn of the century in Brooklyn.

I mean, I just loved it. It is so full of heart, but it also talks about really difficult things. I just loved it. I don't have my copy with me because I mailed it to my aunt and told her, "You have to read this." So, yes, it is just one of my very favorite books.

ANNE: Now, I'm not saying we had the same experience reading this book, but this is telling me that you're okay to go pretty emotional places.

JANE: Oh, absolutely. Definitely. I don't tend towards... I don't want it to be overly saccharine, overly sweet, or melodramatic just for the sake of being emotional. But if it's grounded and if it feels true, then I can do emotional. Absolutely.

[00:23:58] ANNE: Okay. I will file that away. Jane, what's the second book you love?

JANE: The second book that I chose is Into the Blue by Emma Brodie. That came out, I believe, this spring. It's the book that made me realize that me and Jenna Bush Hager may have very similar reading tastes, because I believe this is one of her imprint books. It's a romance. It follows AJ Graves the summer before her senior year of high school in the year 2000, and she is working at a movie store when the Noah Drew of the Drew family, if you can hear those air quotes, walks in, and he's also working there.

And he comes from a famous acting family. And so that summer they become acting partners, and there is a lot of yearning, a lot of emotional turmoil, I guess. But at the end of that summer, he just disappears without a word. Then it jumps forward, and they reconnect because of reasons.

[00:25:15] But I loved this one. It's also emotional. There's a lot of yearning, like I said. I also really enjoyed kind of the behind-the-scenes nature of it. There's Hollywood illusions. AJ, the protagonist, she works at SNL, Saturday Night Live, for part of this book. I'm a curious person, so I love any sort of, kind of behind-the-scenes look at anything that I may not be familiar with.

So, yes, that one was a lot of fun, but it also did... definitely was pretty emotional. I remember I read this on a plane, which I'm not a very good plane reader. I get easily distracted. It's hard for me to kind of focus in, but I remember reading this book on both legs of the flight the entire time. Literally, I sat in my seat, pulled the book out, did not put it down until the seatbelt sign went off whenever we landed. Loved it, totally engrossed.

ANNE: Well, that sounds amazing

[00:26:19] JANE: So my third book is Blood Over Brighthaven by M. L. Wang, and this is a fantasy dark academia book. It's a standalone, which I really appreciate in that space. I feel like most of these kind of fantasy books tend to be at least a trilogy. So I always appreciate it whenever an author can tell their story within the pages of one novel.

It follows Sciona, who is an extremely bright, incredibly driven high mage. She is the first one, first woman, that is, to become a high mage at the University of Magics and Industry. That is basically her life, has been working towards this. But what I love about it is how it explores systemic issues and society at large.

[00:27:19] So their society is powered by advanced magical technology. So what I loved about this was it explores so many different types of dynamics. She is given an assistant who was a janitor but he has definitely a backstory. He's more than what he seems. He's from a marginalized group who has come to their city.

What I loved about it was how much it explored gender dynamics, systems of power, systems of oppression. It felt incredibly relevant even though this was taking place in a magical society powered by magic. So it really stuck with me. I made my husband read it. I made a couple other friends read it.

This would have been my favorite book last year if it weren't for The Bright Years. And I don't do a lot of fantasy normally. I think part of the reason that I enjoyed it so much was that it was a bit of a unique reading experience for me. So I'm definitely interested and I've been trying to... I don't know if she has anything else coming out, but I definitely loved this one.

[00:28:38] ANNE: Well, I'm so glad you took a chance on it and that it worked for you.

JANE: Yes, definitely. I think that's part of what comes with the delight of the reading experience, is whenever you kind of take a chance on something, and then it ends up paying off even more because of that.

ANNE: Definitely. Now, Jane, tell us about a book that was not a good fit for you, and we'd love to hear why.

JANE: I'm pretty good at DNF-ing books. That is not a problem that I have. And so I wanted to come with one that I at least finished. The book I've decided was The Shippers by Katherine Center, which was a bit of a surprise to me because I've read several of her other books, like The Bodyguard and The Love Haters, and I really enjoyed those.

[00:29:29] But this one was just kind of a miss for me, I think because the premise seemed a little flimsy maybe, or the character's motivations and the decisions she made and what justified them, it just seemed a little bit of a stretch to me. It didn't feel super grounded. Not that I need a very grounded romance, but it fell a little bit flat for me. It wasn't quite as relatable maybe or I feel like the rationale for the decisions that the main character made seemed a bit unbelievable or maybe kind of a stretch. So it kind of took me out of it a little bit, if that makes sense.

ANNE: So you don't need what happens in your stories to be real exactly, thinking about Blood Over Bright Haven.

JANE: Exactly.

ANNE: But you want the characters' actions to feel true.

JANE: Yes. Yes.

ANNE: Please hear that as a question.

JANE: No, no, no, that makes a lot of sense. I think that's put very well.

[00:30:32] ANNE: Okay. So you and the protagonist, supporting characters as well, were not in sync.

JANE: Exactly, yes. And it's not that I even... I don't even have to have a likable character. Like, I loved Jester Year, and I would say that that was not a likable main character. But I have to at least understand why they're making the decisions that they're making, or it needs to feel logical, or somewhat logical. I don't know. It seemed like a little bit of a stretch, kind of the premise and the reason she made her decisions. It all felt a little bit flimsy. So it just didn't land quite with me like some of her other works have.

ANNE: Okay. I wonder if you didn't feel the sense of trust and comfort you needed to let your guard down with the story?

JANE: That's interesting.

ANNE: I guess there's a couple ways to interpret that. What I mean is that perhaps... I'm thinking of times when my readerly brain is spending a lot of time closer to the surface going, "Do I buy this?" Which prevents me from really entering the story. If I'm still trying to figure out if I'm down with the premise, then I feel, I think, removed from the book.

[00:31:50] JANE: Yeah. I think that makes sense. There was a lot of maybe internal discussion with myself in my brain. I'm like, "Are we buying this?" Like, "What do we think about this?" Instead of really just falling into a story.

ANNE: Yeah. And I mean that differently from reading critically. I think you can read critically and still be very much engaged. But that's different from the I'm still in the phase of deciding: do I trust that what the author is telling me is true to the story itself? Not true, like, could it really happen in reality, but is everything aligned the way it needs to be? Does this feel right?

JANE: Yes. I think that makes a lot of sense. There is the good internal dialogue you have with yourself about, oh, making connections, and that makes me think of this, so I want to go look up this afterwards, or, oh, this is making me relate to this, versus what I said earlier, like, yeah, I don't know that I buy this, that I am buying into this story that they're telling. I think that makes a lot of sense.

[00:32:54] ANNE: I mean, I'm thinking about this, and I'm saying all of this as like I love Katherine Center.

JANE: Oh, yeah.

ANNE: But just thinking about the reading experience, like The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff, so much of that book is about topics I do not know enough about to know for sure, like would it really look like this, Sarah Damoff? But I felt like what she was showing me about the characters and their motivations and their actions, even when extreme, felt — repeating myself — felt true and real, and it didn't take me out of the story. I didn't need to step back and go like, "Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. Are we sure? Like, really? Do you think I'm going to buy that? Am I supposed to buy that? Is this plot..." It all felt like seamless story world.

JANE: Right. I would definitely agree with that. Absolutely.

ANNE: So, did you have any takeaways about this reading experience for what it means for future you?

[00:33:48] JANE: Well, I feel like this was a case... I mean, this is an author that I have read before and have enjoyed. I wonder maybe if my taste in romance novels has changed a little bit. During the pandemic, I started to read them a lot more. I think Emily Henry honestly is what kind of brought me to romance novels like that. And so maybe my tastes are changing a little bit, or this was just a case of it was new, and I think it was a Book of the Month choice that I got. And so maybe being a little bit more intentional about some of the things that I'm choosing as opposed to like, "Oh, here's just the flashy newest book." Because if I had read the premise, I probably would've been like, "Eh, do I buy that?"

ANNE: I've heard a lot of readers say also it's too close to COVID for them to read a cruise ship book. Period. The end.

JANE: That's true. Part of it was like, do I enjoy being on a cruise ship right now? I don't know that this is a location that I really want to be on. Truthfully.

[00:34:53] ANNE: Valid. Okay, we will keep that in mind as we think about-

JANE: Yeah, no cruise ships.

ANNE: ...what you'll enjoy for your project. All right. Jane, what have you been reading lately?

JANE: I know that I mentioned The Shampoo Effect earlier, by Jenny Jackson. I really loved this one. I read Pineapple Street, which was her debut work, a couple of summers ago now at this point. I really love messy relationships with interesting characters. They can totally be flawed, but I just love reading about those dynamics, and I think she writes about class and belonging in a really interesting way.

Another one that I've read recently was Sisters of a Halved Heart by Nayantara Roy. I adored this. Talk about messy relationships and emotional work. I was absolutely gripped by it from the start. I loved Mira, even though she was definitely flawed and had her own issues, but I was with her the entire way. I felt exactly how she felt the entire novel.

[00:36:07] I even audibly gasped at the ending. Like, my husband turned, he's like, "What? What's wrong?" And I was like, "Oh, no, just another book got me." It was such an enjoyable experience.

And then also, obviously, I've been slowly working through The House of Mirth. I am maybe a third of the way through it, but have just kind of put it down and have gotten distracted by other things. But I definitely am not wanting to give up on it. I want to find some flight picks maybe that'll kind of draw me back in, that'll give some new life to this project that I've started for myself. And that make me excited to keep going.

ANNE: Jane, as we move forward, I would love to hear you address something you said in your submission that really caught me, in part because I relate and in part because I've heard the same sentiment or similar from so many of our listeners.

[00:37:12] You said that you too often experience being overwhelmed by choices, so you didn't end up doing any of them. And I wonder if you could speak to that more. The struggle, anything you found to work, how that factors into how we think about your literary project together.

JANE: Absolutely. So I feel like the last few years I've decided not to necessarily overwhelm myself by choice with having a big project or anything like that. I feel like reading more and getting through more books and finding so much more enjoyment in the reading life has been such a lovely recent thing over the past few years that I didn't really want to add overwhelm or add a burden to that.

It's interesting also around the time that I really started picking up my reading, I was diagnosed, very surprisingly to me, with ADHD, which is something that, after I realized that, and I talked to a lot of other or some other friends, women around my age, and how they also were diagnosed with ADHD late in life, I feel like so much of the narrative around ADHD is kind of like the stereotypical 10-year-old boy who can't stay in his seat in class, can't stay focused.

[00:38:40] But in women, and I can't speak obviously for all women, I can speak from my personal experience with it, it looks a lot different. We're not necessarily fidgeting and can't stay still in our seat, although there might be some of that. But it's more in our brains. It's more spending a lot of time in our heads and easily distracted, can be easily overwhelmed by things.

So for the past few years, it's really been, for me, about simplifying the reading life, about kind of going where my curiosity takes me, what sounds interesting at the time. I can be a bit of a mood reader, and so just kind of leaning into that and letting enjoyment kind of take the reins.

But it's been more recently where I've decided that I kind of want to find enjoyment in different ways. So instead of just going wherever my curiosity and wherever the wind takes me, or my whims take me, be a bit more intentional, kind of grow that muscle. That's what brought me to deciding to do this reading project of picking books that I have kind of blind spots of in American literature, and let's be a bit more intentional. Let's work on focus and about reading things that may take a little bit more effort, a bit more intentionality, that maybe yesteryear, for example, did not take much effort or intentionality to work through.

[00:40:15] But I do find that being someone with ADHD, it definitely does affect my reading life because there is a lot of overwhelm that can come from it. There are so many different choices. I know that you've mentioned book projects before and like, "Oh, they all sound great. I definitely want to do this." But like I said, I've been working on simplifying my reading life and not putting too much overwhelm, just to foster it, to let it grow.

But what comes with it is a lot of curiosity. Whenever you find something that your brain can kind of sink into and go down those rabbit holes, there's so much meaning that can be found there. It's really such a rewarding experience.

ANNE: I'm so glad to hear that. Jane, I appreciate you talking about the joys and the challenges and what you're doing now that you have this information to try to find more intentionality, and I think ultimately satisfaction from your reading life.

JANE: Yes. Sounds wonderful.

[00:41:23] ANNE: Jane, you said you're looking for flight picks to go with The House of Mirth, especially ones that may be contemporary. Is that right?

JANE: Yes, contemporary would be fine. Honestly, I'm open to whatever you might suggest, but yes, what I'm looking for would be books that be in conversation with The House of Mirth that would kinda give a little more energy, a little more insight, context, anything like that.

ANNE: You've been thinking about this for a little while. How are you thinking about it? What are you coming up with? Where are you getting stuck?

JANE: I have found that I can't read these books the same way I would just like, you know, going to bed before... you know, I'm laying in bed and I'm reading a book before I go to bed. These are going to require maybe a little bit of time blocking, honestly, have a little bit of a schedule for myself. But I'm also finding that I'm kind of stalling out a bit whenever it comes to reading this, because I'm not finding a lot to, I guess, latch onto, if that makes sense.

[00:42:35] I think, like with Jane Austen, even though this book was written probably a century later, it's over a century old. And having all of the annotations, all of the context from Jane Austen, from Pride and Prejudice in the annotated version, has been so enlightening. I think what I'm looking for is maybe something that's more contemporary that would kind of shed a light on more of the context going on at the time that The House of Mirth takes place. Just something like that, if that makes sense.

ANNE: Yeah.

JANE: Or even books that might be an interesting conversation. Like we were talking about Shampoo Effect, even though I did not even think about that at all initially, what that says about belonging, about class, even the setting. I mean, it's Northeast, so not exactly the same place, but same general kind of vibe. Those kinds of picks, I think that would be really interesting for me to kind of see what they might have to say together.

[00:43:54] ANNE: Okay. Jane, when it comes to stamina for reading some of these classics on your list, your classics reading list project, I've heard that you know there's a couple different ways in. Like the annotated edition of Jane Austen is really working for you, and you could do some similar things in that regard.

I feel like SparkNotes gets a bad name in adult reading communities, but reading through the summary on SparkNotes could be really helpful to know the overview of what you're settling in for before you really get into the sentence-level reading of it.

And it sounds like another way, besides those more studious from your English major days approaches is to, like you said, read works that could be in interesting conversation with Edith Wharton about the same themes that you'll find in those pages.

[00:44:56] And what I hear you saying is that reading more contemporary, I think more accessible novels, ones that are easier to read when you're already sleepy, and still follow what's happening and still care about the characters, that that would add a nuance and richness to your appreciation for the topic that would then help Edith Wharton come to light in the same way. Am I tracking?

JANE: No, that makes a lot of sense. I think that's very well put, that what I'm wanting to do is give these books the due diligence that they deserve. But I've, of late, not kind of put myself through the rigor of reading these kinds of books lately. And so wanting to sharpen those — I'm mixing all of my metaphors — build those muscles.

ANNE: We can follow.

JANE: I want to build those muscles, and give these works kind of what they're owed. And so hopefully, as I kind of work through this list, that I'll be gaining the muscle. But, you know, to start with Edith Wharton, I think it would be really helpful to have more of an accessible entry.

[00:46:15] ANNE: Wait a second. You know what we're leaving out of here is how you love to follow your curiosity. So we want to feed your curiosity with maybe surprisingly related, but related works.

JANE: I do love. I love whenever I can make connections with things that are surprising. I think that definitely adds to the delight.

ANNE: Okay. I'm glad to hear it. You know what? I've been thinking about themes in The House of Mirth. Like well, marriage, insecurity, and how those two things go together. Freedom and how marriage takes it away. Agency, beauty, wealth, manners, propriety, and social climbing, one of my favorites to read about in fiction.

But I wonder if something biographical would be a different way in. A couple of years ago, this novel by Maria Fredericks came out called The Wharton Plot, and this is biographical fiction about Edith Wharton. And Frederick's premise here is, what if novelist Edith Wharton, because of the way her brain works, was persuaded to play amateur sleuth to solve the historically real murder of her colleague, the novelist David Graham Phillips, which took place in 1911 in New York City.

[00:47:35] And The House of Mirth came out in 1905. So these are closely enough related in time that you could trust that if Fredericks did her job well as a historical novelist, then she's portraying the New York City that ought to be quite similar to the one portrayed in The House of Mirth. Does this sound promising?

JANE: That sounds very promising. I remember hearing about this title and thinking, "Oh, that sounds like something I should read," but I have not gotten around to it.

ANNE: That's wonderful, because now we can talk about it today. The thing that I enjoyed about this is it was just... I mean, it was entertaining, well-constructed mystery, but also just packed with these little interesting- factual tidbits about Wharton's life, and her writing, and her relationships. And I wonder if getting to know the woman behind the book could be illuminating and maybe add some richness to the way you're approaching the text.

[00:48:34] The thing about the Phillips murder was this novelist was shot outside the Fan... I think it was the Princeton Club at Gramercy Park, and his killer was a Harvard-educated musician, who was a violinist in a city symphony, who came from a prominent family. And his killer murdered him because he believed that the novel that the victim, Phillips, had written had cast literary aspersions on the killer's family.

So Wharton's a novelist, and for her, the question is, what kind of book could incite a murder, and why? And she's got to figure out what's in the text, what is it saying, what does the killer think it's saying, how did that lead to the murder? Like, this is how she's going to track down the perpetrator of this crime.

And I asked you this once, but knowing a little more, might that bring a new facet to your reading of The House of Mirth? Or does it sound interesting for its own sake, I suppose?

[00:49:34] JANE: Oh, yes. That sounds definitely interesting. Now I want to know more about the author who was murdered as well. That's really interesting

ANNE: That's going to be in the pages of the book, and you can rabbit trail to your heart's content, looking up what is known about what happened back then.

JANE: No, that definitely sounds very interesting.

ANNE: Okay. Well, that could be one interesting place to start. You've already read The Shampoo Effect, which-

JANE: I have, yes.

ANNE: This is me kind of nodding and smiling, but nobody can see that. What I like about that is you have an outsider coming in, disrupting the long-held and tacitly agreed-upon conventions of how one small society, that is this friend group, functions. And you've got questions of agency and relationships, not marriage exactly, but relationships, and money, and beauty, and status, and you've got social climbing.

[00:50:38] So contemporary and quite different in genre and feel, but not a stranger to the themes in The House of Mirth. So you've already read that one. And then for something that sounds so different, but again, many of the themes, the underlying themes are similar, have you ever read Patricia Highsmith, and specifically The Talented Mr. Ripley?

JANE: I have not, no.

ANNE: Okay. This is a classic from about 50 years later. It came out in the '50s, and it introduces us to one of the best-known characters in literature that many people know second or thirdhand or from a film, or from the references in books like Jean Hanff Korelitz's The Plot. But this is very readable, still relevant, still referenced all the time, and just continues to influence and inspire new works of fiction.

[00:51:33] So when we meet the Mr. Ripley, Tom Ripley of the title, he's living in New York City. This is set roughly in the present day to when it's written, and he's engaged in some petty crimes. But then he has a chance meeting that changes the course of his life, and soon enough, he's taking off for Italy with the task of persuading an old friend to return home to work in the family business and see his ailing mother. And he has positioned himself fraudulently in order to get this gig. He's a social climber.

So when Ripley gets to Italy, at first he admires his old friend, he's glad to see him, he begins to emulate him, but before long he decides he wants to become him. And the way that Highsmith puts this on the page has definitely made Ripley not just one of literature's best-known characters, but best-known psychopaths.

[00:52:27] This is a true crime classic. It uses the writerly perspective in very interesting ways. I mean, you get a little bit of vicarious travel that you also get in The House on Mars. How is this sounding? Too far-fetched or potentially interesting?

JANE: No, no, that's interesting. That's one of those titles that I've definitely heard of before but have never really had the opportunity or thought about reading it, so I'm definitely intrigued. I do find it interesting that, you know, two crime novels potentially, but that is... nothing wrong with that. It's just kind of a funny coincidence. But I do find that definitely interesting.

ANNE: Yeah, there's not as much crime in Edith Wharton, but you know, a good flight pick might be a nice one about gambling. I don't have any on the top of my head, but that is a major factor in The House of Mirth. I haven't read this one, and don't know terribly much about it, but Jennifer Egan has a novel from a while ago, 2000, 2001, called Look at Me, that has a fair amount of Wharton in it, and name-checks The House of Mirth at one point.

[00:53:35] It's about a young woman who used to be a model, who's in a car wreck bad enough that it ended her career. So she comes back to Manhattan, and no longer has what it takes to enter into the fashion world again, but just kind of floats on the edges, as I understand. And this is supposed to be darkly funny, yet sympathetic, about a woman reaching for a life that's always just out of grasp, like Edith Wharton's Lily Bart.

JANE: No, that sounds interesting as well. I love that it takes place in New York City. My brother and sister-in-law used to live there, and I don't get to go there as often as I used to, but I love novels set there. So that definitely sounds interesting as well. I've heard of Jennifer Egan.

I've never read anything by her before, but that definitely sounds like something I would enjoy, especially something that can be darkly funny. I do tend to really enjoy those. Whenever you're laughing and you're like, "Eh, should I be laughing at this?" I can definitely appreciate that.

[00:54:44] ANNE: Yeah. This is one of her older works, not her debut, but one of her earlier works. She's probably best known for A Visit from the Goon Squad. More recently-

JANE: Yeah, that's the one that I've heard.

ANNE: Yeah, yeah. Manhattan Beach, The Candy House. And let's see. One of my favorite novels that feels like an homage to much classic literature, and is historical fiction, is Amor Towles' Rules of Civility. Have you read that one?

JANE: I have, yes. I love Amor Towles. That one's really good.

ANNE: Readers, if this is unfamiliar to you, this is a book that takes place over the course of one year, beginning on New Year's Eve 1937, when a life-changing encounter in a Greenwich Village... Oh, I want to say it's a jazz bar changes the lives of the two young women and one young man involved. A love triangle develops, and we have a fair amount of social climbing and navigating the rules of money and marriage and society and propriety and class. I really love this book. That holds up on a reread. You know, I wonder if Amor Towles in general feels in the line of Edith Wharton.

[00:56:01] JANE: I can see that, especially with Gentleman in Moscow, which I've read, it's been several years, but I loved the way that he was... It also is about class and kind of the reorganization of the Russia's society. But I loved that one as well.

ANNE: We talked about how flights are for comparing and contrasting, and I'm just thinking about how the function of morals and virtue and what it means to be truly good and what it means to be good on the surface are quite different in like A Gentleman in Moscow versus The House on Mirth.

JANE: Oh, yeah, absolutely. That's interesting to think about.

ANNE: Yeah, because Lily Bart is struggling to master and live by and accede to the hidden rules of old New York high society. Like, in Gentleman in Moscow, it's more obvious that the rules are a sham and it is what is in your heart that matters.

[00:57:08] JANE: Absolutely. That might be one I need to revisit. It's a book that I love so much, but I haven't read it in so long. That might be interesting to reread. I'm not much of a rereader, but sometimes it's absolutely worth it, especially years later, to kind of see how your reading of it changes as you've changed.

ANNE: Could be. And I wouldn't have thought of Jane Austen as a promising flight pick, except that you're reading it right now. And I was saying how my favorite annotation thus far is about gossip. And The House on Mirth is very much about how, I mean, a malicious rumor can destroy your life. And someone sets out to do that to Lily Bart in The House on Mirth. Not that she doesn't do plenty to undermine her own cause. But economic dependency, marriage equals money equals marriage equals security for women. There's a lot in those two books that's quite similar, even though one was written almost 100 years after the other.

[00:58:13] JANE: That is very interesting to think about, just even the different countries, different centuries, but there is a lot to compare and contrast about a woman's place in society and what the freedom they have to do, but also how dependent they still must be. There's definitely a lot of overlap there.

ANNE: Yeah. I hope those flight picks sound interesting. I do wonder, based on what you say you're seeking, if you could channel your English major days and give yourself like a 5 to 10-minute professorial overview about what you will find in the pages of The House on Mirth and then dive in. Like, if you equipped yourself like you were equipping your favorite student that you wanted to have a good reading experience, and then you sent her on her way into the remaining two-thirds of that book, I wonder if that's an assignment that makes sense in the context of this project.

[00:59:12] JANE: No, I think that does. That's a really good idea just to kind of level set and remember like, okay, this is why we're doing it. And also just to kind of start that curiosity to go, because whenever that goes, it just brings a whole lot more delight and enjoyment to the reading experience.

ANNE: I love that you know what is going to make this satisfying for you. And even as I say that, that sounds amazing to me too. Jane, I wonder if you would humor us and tell us the 10 classics on your classics reading list.

JANE: Oh, absolutely. So the first one, obviously we've talked at length about, The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton, then My Ántonia by Willa Cather, Native Son by Richard Wright, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, which that last one is not exactly a classic, but it's one that I've been meaning to read for a while. And also I thought it was important to include an indigenous work in my personal curriculum about American literature.

[01:00:41] ANNE: It doesn't seem too soon to call that a hugely influential American book.

JANE: Yeah, I would agree with that, for sure.

ANNE: And your project, your rules.

JANE: Exactly. Exactly. And I'm not turning this in for a grade. I'm not going to get points off on a technicality. It's what I want it to be.

ANNE: And for any of these, think about the themes or what interests you about the work, why you want to read it, and to start from there on choosing your flight picks. Come to your fellow readers if you need help.

JANE: Yeah, absolutely. Now I'm like, "Okay, I need to sit down and do this process for each of these books." Some of them are obviously a bit more recent than others, so the access point is not going to be quite as difficult to kind of get into that headspace, but I think it's still worth doing to kind of sitting down, set the intentionality kind of the themes that I'm looking for, look up potential pairings, that sort of... Go to the SparkNotes. I want my line SparkNotes if it's available. So just to kind of level set, just got very excited about this, honestly.

[01:01:48] ANNE: Well, that sounds fun.

JANE: Just kind of started to English major-nerd out a little bit.

ANNE: Oh, that sounds like a dream. Now, you're the boss, but I would encourage you to not do that before you read The House on Mirth, or at least how about the next third? The next third of The House of Mirth.

JANE: No, I agree. I will only do it for House of Mirth. I'll do it one at a time. How about that? I will do it one at a time. As I finish one, then I can kind of go to the next... go to the next section, I guess, if you will.

ANNE: That sounds great. Jane, what's your next move on your project?

JANE: So I think what I'm going to do is I do need to pick up House of Mirth again, but before I do that, I think I'm going to do a little biographical reading. The Wharton Plot, I think I'm going to start with that, honestly, and kind of get into that mindset, and then finish The House of Mirth, and then move to one other flight pick suggestions.

[01:02:48] ANNE: That sounds like a solid plan. How are you feeling about it?

JANE: I'm very excited. I'm really looking forward to it.

ANNE: I'm glad to hear it. Jane, thanks so much for the conversation and for bringing your reading project to What Should I Read Next?.

JANE: Oh, thank you so much. This has been so helpful, and it's been such a delight to get to chat books with you.

ANNE: The pleasure's mine

Hey, readers. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Jane, and I'd love to hear what you think she should read next. Find Jane online. She's on Substack, Instagram, and StoryGraph. We have all those links, along with the full list of titles we talked about today at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com, as always.

[01:03:32] Sign up for our email list and we will send you an update every week about our latest episode and what is happening at What Should I Read Next HQ. Sign up at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com/newsletter.

Connect with us on Instagram. Our show is there @whatshouldireadnext.

Make sure you're following in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, wherever you get your podcasts. When you subscribe, and especially when you download each episode when it releases, that helps us so much in real and practical and tangible ways. So thank you if you've already done so. Thank you in advance if you're doing it next.

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