LISTEN: Fall Book Preview excerpt

[000:00:00] ANNE BOGEL: Hey readers, I'm Anne Bogel and this is What Should I Read Next?.

We hosted our Fall Book Preview last week, and today I'm sharing a taste of that event with you.

We put out the What Should I Read Next? podcast for free every Tuesday, but my team and I are also, all the time, doing exciting, useful, delightfully nerdy stuff in our paid member communities. That's the Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club and our What Should I Read Next? Patreon community.

Fall Book Preview is one of those events that we host for our members, and that for two years now, we've made available to anyone who wants to join us through our a la carte ticket option. The Fall Book Preview experience includes our 12-page digital booklet and our live event video.

Now, that is all ready and waiting for you to enjoy immediately. No delayed gratification, no pre-order required. Go to modernmrsdarcy.com/FBP for Fall Book Preview to sign up and get your access.

[00:01:11] If you're not sure which community you want to be a part of, or if you'd rather opt for an a la carte ticket, that page walks you through it. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. What is Fall Book Preview? That's a good question.

First, I hope you want to hear something funny, because I'm going to tell you. It is mid-September now, and last week, my inbox and cultural news channels really started filling up with Fall Book lists, and I started seeing the same commentary everywhere, which is, these lists are everywhere. It's all Fall Books all the time, and all the lists are the same.

So I started clicking on them, going, There is no way our Fall Book Preview list is like these. And I'm happy to say, no, it's really not. But it really made me stop and think, Oh my gosh, how times have changed.

In 2014, 10 years ago, which is both a long time and also really not, I published a blog post on Modern Mrs. Darcy called Let's Make Autumn Reading a Thing. The first words of that blog post were, summer reading lists abound, but one doesn't encounter many reading lists for Fall. We're changing that today.

[00:02:20] And I talk about the kind of vibes I want for my Fall reading and some titles that might suit those vibes for readers who are interested.

In 2018, we updated that post and republished it with new books, but we still kept the same intro text, which said, Not many people are talking about Fall reading, because apparently it still felt accurate in 2018 that Fall reading just wasn't a big deal. But wow, things have changed. And so has our Fall Book Preview.

This is the sixth time we've hosted this event. And the origin story, if you're interested, goes like this. There used to be this event called the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Fall Trade Show. And in 2019, I went for the third time because I had a book coming out the next spring and I was going to promote it.

I was going to meet with publishers and booksellers to talk about my book. And all those readers, booksellers, and industry people were there to hear what is coming out.

[00:03:20] The publishers were pitching their books, the booksellers were seeing what they wanted to buy, read, and really feature in their stores. And I was one of the further out titles being a March 2020 release.

But going, I thought, "Gosh, I bet my readers would love this, just to see what this event is like, to see the books people are talking about, how they're being talked about, to see what publishers are really excited about, and what's really connecting with booksellers. Also, what are booksellers really enjoying that are kind of like sleeper hits, flying below the radar, not the ones with the big publishing budget?"

And I thought, "Well, what if I brought a little dispatch back to the Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club? That would be good, nerdy fun." And that's what I did. I brought home all my arcs, I stacked them up next to my computer, I went live on a Zoom event and I said, "Let me just tell you what I experienced and saw there."

Those titles kind of sorted into three unevenly distributed categories. They were the big titles of the season that I could see publishers were putting a lot of resources into.

Books that I had already read and loved, either because I happened to know about them in advance, they'd already been published, or maybe because I read my advance review copy on the plane, on the way home, because I just couldn't wait to dive in. And also the books that I was most excited about after learning about them.

[00:04:33] And this has really evolved over time. That was 2019, this is 2024. And as we can see from that, we don't need to make autumn reading a thing anymore. It is.

The publishing landscape has changed, my interests have changed, my team has changed, and yet the heart of our Fall Book Preview remains the same.

We create this fun, immersive tool in two different mediums in the form of our digital booklet and live book talk event to help you think thoughtfully, also in a really pleasurable way, full of possibility, about what you want from your reading life in the season to come.

Many of you will want some new books, and we talk about those, but we also call you to thoughtfully reflect, and in doing so, learn more about your personal taste, your needs in this season, and what that means for your book choices. You're the boss of your reading life. My job is to give you the information you need to choose your next reads.

[00:05:30] In our Fall Book Preview event, I go in-depth with 35 titles, and the titles this fall are so interesting. I love seeing the themes that emerge in each season.

This year we have so many books set in publishing, books about writers, books about people making all kinds of other art, books featuring protagonists of all ages, lots of satire and autofiction, lots of rural stories, lots of stories that revolve around water as a natural resource. We have a lot of unhappy endings in this season, but also lots of redemption stories and gently hopeful books.

In our live event, which you're about to hear a clip from, I walk you through every title in our fall preview, those 35 books. They all publish between September 3rd and the end of the year.

And I'm not just saying this is great, you should read it. I'm saying, this is what your reading experience may be like. Do you want to have it? And also, this is what my reading experience was like, and I think this is why I did or didn't connect with the book in that way.

[00:06:31] In our digital booklet, I sneak in more titles. I include 12 of the biggest books of fall that you may want to know about, but that I didn't want to linger over in our 35 title descriptions because I wanted to squeeze in more under-the-radar titles and ones that you might not know about otherwise and might not encounter on that new release table in your bookstore.

You'll hear me drop in publishing tidbits along the way, like the significance of a particular publisher or the print runs for some titles.

Our reader Amanda said in last night's chat in the event, and she was talking about the way I described Coco Mellors's Blue Sisters, "This description is why I love these events. I've heard so much about this book, but now I feel like I really know what to expect from it but without any spoilers at the same time."

I'm going to share a little clip from last night's Fall Book Preview to give you a taste. You're about to hear me talk about three books in the first category, which covers literary and contemporary fiction.

[00:07:32] In this clip, I'm actually going to skip over the first book in the category. We're going to hear all of the second book, the third book, and part of the fourth book. I hope you enjoy this little snippet, and I hope it gives you a taste of what to expect from our Fall Book Preview.

Okay, next. We have Colored Television by Danzy Senna out from Riverhead on September 3rd. I tried this a couple of times in print. Switching to the audio was perfect for me. I flew through it.

Many of you are going to ask, what's good on audio? This was great on audio. I think I just needed... I mean, the audio was great, but I didn't understand what it was about. I had a hard time getting oriented when I got started because it starts against the backdrop of a stressful home life.

There's two artist parents trying to make art. There are small kids. One of them has been recently diagnosed with a learning difference. They're trying to figure things out. Nobody's getting everything they need. They're feeling really touchy about it. I couldn't figure out what the book was about. So I'm going to tell you what the book's about.

[00:08:33] It's about two artists trying to make art. One of those artists has kind of had enough of trying to make a living as an artist, they want to sell out. They want to sell out so bad, they just need a chance.

This is another auto-fictitious story. Art imitates life here. Y'all just said you love James. I'm trying to think how delicate to be about this. Danzy Senna is married to Percival Everett. Her spouse does not define her. His spouse does not define him. But I just thought that was so cool.

I'm so interested in what goes into the works I love to read. I love both their works and to realize like, Oh, they could be talking about their books or something else entirely like, I don't know, wallpaper at the dinner table. What a life!

This book is also about a biracial artist with a Black father and a White mother married to a Black artist, and that is Danzy Senna. Her parents, in fact, were well-known artists in their own right.

[00:09:38] This book is very much about making art, making art as part of a couple, and about race.

This protagonist has spent 10 years finishing her second book. It was not supposed to take 10 years. Her first book was a big success, and her agent told her, "Write something quick and dirty. It doesn't have to be good. We're just going to put it out there. Write it, write it, write it."

But she wanted to write something great, and so 10 years later, she turns in this book that she's been thinking of as a mulatto war and peace, but her agent says, "I can't sell this," and that means she's not going to shop it, which means it's not going to get published, which means the protagonist isn't going to get tenure, and she doesn't have any money, and she needs money because her art isn't selling, and her husband's art isn't selling, and they need to make some money because they want to live in L.A., and L.A. is expensive.

So our protagonist decides that she is going to take inspiration from her friend, Brett, who used to be a novelist, but he saw the light and he sold out, and now he makes good money as a screenwriter, and she wants to do the same, but she's not exactly straightforward in her methods.

[00:10:46] She's sneaky about some things. She hides some things from some people she should not have hidden things from, and she does get hired. She does get in. She's working on a show, but it's not quite, it just feels off.

Some of you said you left the sense of building dread that Evie talked about in the podcast yesterday. Oh, you can just see her. You can see her building her house of cards, and you're going, Oh, this is not going to end well. So this is satire. It's so funny. And it's a little bit dark. It's highly comic, very insider-y with the publishing stuff. I really enjoyed it. I specifically enjoyed it on audio.

Okay, mood shift.

Our next book is Small Rain by Garth Greenwell out from FSG on September 3rd. This one has an announced first print of 50,000. I could not resist talking about this early in the episode with Hunter of Shelf by Shelf because it was perfect for him.

[00:11:50] This is a first-person story. It's highly interior, quiet, introspective literary fiction, and also, I could not put it down. Garth is writing about something that happened to him. It begins at the beginning of an illness that he, the author, actually experienced. And when it begins, he is a man on the floor in great pain.

I happened to read this at what ended up being the perfect time for me. I have a friend who's very sick. He was just diagnosed with something scary. His first symptom was great pain. The conversations go like, "I can't even tell you what it felt like." And you think that some things in life, you can't even say what it's like. You just don't have the words. But Garth starts as a man in great pain, and he finds the words. And from the very beginning, I thought, "Oh, right book, right time. I'm so happy to be in this world."

So, in his early 40s, Garth, the author, suffered an infrarenal aortic dissection. That means he had a hole in a chamber of his heart. It wasn't there, and then it tore, and then it was, and it caused him great pain.

[00:12:56] He goes to the hospital in summer 2020, first COVID summer, in Iowa, because Garth, the author, is a teacher at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. And he needs to get help, and he sits in the ER with a bunch of other patients, and then he gets triaged, and then he makes his way back to his room where he's told, "Oh, everybody wants to meet you." And he's like, "What?" "So, you are an interesting case." And he's like, "Well, what does that mean?" And he finds out it means what he's experiencing isn't very common, but it is unheard of for someone his age who's been healthy to experience this.

Garth has said, in some senses, this is a book about a man who doesn't get out of bed until the very end of the story for like a minute, and in another sense, it's about everything, like the entire realm of human experience.

It's completely gorgeous on a sentence level. The sentences wind and meander in a way that feels so true to how we think and talk. It sounds so natural, and yet you know it was such hard work to get it that way because his mental wanderings are so much more interesting than my actual transcribed thoughts would.

[00:14:02] And the narrator, who is an artist, is talking about and thinking about books and poetry and music and so much music. Many of you are going to love that.

This is about a medical emergency, and I am so squeamish. I skip some paragraphs because if I don't have to read about veins and blood, I don't want to. And I skip some because of sex talk. Garth has written about how he really values writing about sex and how in that way, by really exploring that deeply and thoroughly, he can explore parts of the human experience that he couldn't otherwise.

And also that makes me feel kind of squidgy. There's a strong Louisville connection to this story, and as a Louisville reader, I really connected with those parts in that way. But that was a fun bonus. That was not a necessity.

I found it so interesting how he was able to take a scary but also not an experience that sounds like a page-turner and make it a book I couldn't put down. I started this on audio, and I flipped back and forth to the Kindle version just because I wanted to finish it in a single day, which I did. This is going to be one of my best of the year, and I'm happy to share it with you.

[00:15:15] Okay, next, a book from the small press Tin House. We have Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga out September 3rd. This has already been long-listed for the Center for Fiction 2024 First Novel Prize. It reminds me of Katie Kitamura or of Ben Lerner's work specifically Waiting for the Atocha Station. It has that kind of rhythm.

It's set in present-day New York City, and it's about an Albanian interpreter. And let me just tell you some of the things that Becky, who I like working with at Tin House, said that made me think, "I'll take a look at that."

She said, "This is a slippery, suspenseful debut about an Albanian interpreter living in New York City who loses herself in her work, helping vulnerable refugees to the point where she jeopardizes her own mental health and her marriage."

It addresses questions such as, where do we draw the line between saving someone else and our own survival, between community and self, and even between something as fundamental as the importance of what is real and what is not?

[00:16:15] Readers, I hope you enjoyed that little snippet. If you're curious, you just heard from the literary and contemporary fiction category. The other categories are literary fiction, family novels, mysteries and thrillers, sci-fi fantasy and the supernatural, love stories, and poetry and nonfiction.

If you are already a member of one of our book communities, our Modern Mrs. Darcy Book Club, or our Patreon community, the unboxing replay and digital Fall Book Preview booklet is waiting for you in your inbox and on those member sites.

And many of you got an a la carte ticket this year, so you will have that at your fingertips.

If this sounds intriguing, yet you don't have Fall Book Preview access at this time, it is easy to join either of our communities today and get your access to the full Fall Book Preview.

Fall Book Preview is one of our four marquee events for our community members. When you join now, you get your Fall Book Preview, unboxing video, and 12-page digital PDF booklet, and you're ready to join us for our next marquee event.

[00:17:24] This is a member-favorite. It's our team best books of the year. A fun look back at what each member of the Modern Mrs. Darcy and What Should I Read Next? team read this year and really, really loved.

By joining one of these communities, you're doing good things for your reading life, and you are also helping us so much. Your membership or your a la carte purchase provides tangible financial support for our show and our team of readers. And this is one way we love to say thank you, by sharing special events just like the Fall Book Preview.

I hope you'll find your way into one of these spaces while you're waiting for next week's brand-new free episode.

Thank you 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.